Technology

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #281) - hint #1 - today's theme What is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… Quiet at first

NYT Strands today (game #281) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• SLAP
• POEM
• NOISEY
• MILE
• SMELT
• PONY

NYT Strands today (game #281) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram?

• What’s an aphthong?

NYT Strands today (game #281) - hint #4 - spangram position What are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

First: left, 4th row

Second: right, 3rd row

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #281) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #281, are…

• WRAP
• PSALM
• GNOME
• HONESTY
• MNEMONIC
• KNUCKLE
• SPANGRAM: SILENT LETTER

• My rating: Hard
• My score: 2 hints

After seeing the clue and spotting the word Noisey in the grid, it appeared that today’s Strands was about sounds; instead Noisey and Noise just helped get closer to a hint – something that was much needed with today's SILENT LETTER theme.

Even after working out the connecting theme once I'd been gifted WRAP, I still struggled to find these dreaded aphthongs – you could say it gnawed at me and momentarily turned me into a psycho ready to wreak havoc on the pseudo Strands setters, pterodactyl style – but then I connected the Spangram snake, untwisted my knickers and all was good with the world.

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Sunday, 8 December, game #280)

• FACE
• HANDS
• BEZEL
• CROWN
• LUXURY
• DIGITAL
• ANALOG
• SPANGRAM: WATCHWORDS

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT's new word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now out of beta so is a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable and can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.

What's better than giving great gifts? Giving great gifts that you got for a great price. And that's what Back Market brings you this festive season. Whether you're looking for a stunning smartphone, a set of headphones, a PlayStation, a PC, a Nintendo Switch or a smartwatch, you can get them all for exceptionally low prices at Back Market.

How low? Up to 50% off new prices in the UK, and up to 70% in the US. So whether you're buying for friends, family or for yourself, there's never been a better way to fill up Santa's sleigh with gifts – and prices – that slay.

Serious savings on tempting tech gifts

If you're buying for young family or the young at heart, Nintendo's Switch is guaranteed to delight gamers of every stripe. It's down to just $157.24 in the US and £157 in the UK, with the standard Switch down to just $239 in the US and £249.98 in the UK.

The Switch OLED 64GB is just $270 compared to $349 new; in the UK it's down from £314.99 to just £252. And there are some fantastic deals on consoles too. The PlayStation 5 is down from £479.99 to just £350 in the UK, and in the US it's down to $419.

If you're buying for a student, for your own studies or for your creative projects you probably know that Macs are brilliant buys – but they're usually very expensive too. Not at Back Market. The astonishingly fast M2 MacBook Air 13" with a massive 1TB of storage is just $965, down from $1,899. And the M3 13" is down from $1,299 to just $999. In the UK, the M1 MacBook Air 13" is down from £999 to an incredible £496.65.

There's more good news. Those prices don't include trade-ins, which are available on many items and which bring the price you pay down even more.

(Image credit: Back Market) Big bass for low, low prices

If you're looking for the perfect present for a music fan, nothing beats Beats headphones – and nothing beats Back Market's prices on Beats headphones such as the brilliant Beats Studio3 wireless headphones. They're down from $349 to $147.49. In the UK, where they cost even more to buy new, the discount is bigger still: instead of £599 new, you can pick up a pair of Studio 3 for just £199.99. And there are lots more headphone and earbuds deals where they came from, for customers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Beautiful prices on beauty and grooming gadgets

Back Market has some brilliant beauty buys, such as the Wazor professional 1875W hair dryer; that's reduced from £99 to a much happier £25. The Remington AS7051 Styling Brush is down from £69.99 to just £22. And there are great deals on a wide range of hair dryers and styling tools, such as the Shark HD440 Curling Iron – down from £289 to £230 – and the GHD Helios hair dryer, £145 compared to £170 new.

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(Image credit: Back Market) Home is where the heart is

For UK shoppers, Back Market also delivers great deals on practical presents. There are some absolutely eye-popping discounts on coffee machines such as the fantastic Sage The Barista Express Impress, winner of multiple rave reviews: that's down from £729.95 to just £469.99.

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We're barely scratching the surface of the deals you can find on Back Market for everything from air fryers to hair dryers. It's a fantastic place to shop this festive season, and all year round.

Why Back Market is better

Back Market is the leading global marketplace for refurbished electronics, devices and accessories. And it doesn't just save you money. It helps cut your environmental footprint too. When you buy refurbished tech, you're massively reducing the amount of water, energy and raw materials needed to deliver your new-to-you device.

If you haven't bought refurbished before, we think you'll be impressed. Refurbished gives you all the benefits of buying pre-loved – but without the risks of receiving a locked phone, a dead battery or a dodgy history. Any faults have already been spotted and sorted, with the device getting a full inspection by industry professionals before it's sent on to you. Not only that, but you also get a 30-day return policy and a year's warranty for extra piece of mind.

When you see the huge savings you can get on Back Market we think you'll be an instant fan. And there's another reason to love buying refurbished: you can buy with a clean conscience. When you buy refurbished, you're getting a device with up to 92% fewer CO2 emissions than the same product sold new.

(Image credit: Back Market) Save serious sums on great gifts

Whether you're looking for a phone, a PlayStation, headphones or hair clippers, simply browse the Back Market listings until you find the product you'd like for the price you'd like to pay.

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No matter what category you choose, every gadget Back Market sells is fully guaranteed and 100% functional. But if you're not too fussed about getting a gadget with a pristine appearance you can save even more cash by opting for Good or Fair. Items marked as Fair may have a few minor cosmetic imperfections and signs of use but the savings are massive. Good ones cost a little more but look great, while Excellent are even better. And if you'd rather get a phone that looks factory-fresh, Premium is the tag for you.

When it comes to making serious savings this festive season, there's only one place to go-ho-ho for great gifts at great prices. Click here to visit Back Market for US shoppers, and click here for Back Market UK.

• South Korean citizens were hit with a zero-click malware from the North
• The malware used pop-up ads to install payloads
• Keyloggers and other malicious surveillance software was also installed

North Korean state-linked hacker ScarCruft recently conducted a large-scale cyber-espionage campaign using an Internet Explorer zero-day flaw to deploy RokRAT malware, experts have warned.

The group, also known as APT37 or RedEyes, is a North Korean state-sponsored hacking group known for cyber-espionage activities.

This group typically focuses on South Korean human rights activists, defectors, and political entities in Europe.

Internet Explorer Zero-Day flaw exploited

Over the years, ScarCruft has developed a reputation for using advanced techniques such as phishing, watering hole attacks, and exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in software to infiltrate systems and steal sensitive information.

Their latest campaign, dubbed "Code on Toast," was revealed in a joint report by South Korea's National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) and AhnLab (ASEC). This campaign used a unique method involving toast pop-up ads to deliver zero-click malware infections.

The innovative aspect of this campaign lies in how ScarCruft used toast notifications - small pop-up ads displayed by antivirus software or free utility programs - to spread their malware.

ScarCruft compromised a domestic advertising agency’s server in South Korea to push malicious "Toast ads" through a popular but unnamed free software used by many South Koreans.

These malicious ads included a specially crafted iframe that triggered a JavaScript file named ‘ad_toast,’ which executed the Internet Explorer zero-day exploit. By using this zero-click method, ScarCruft was able to silently infect systems without user interaction.

The high-severity vulnerability in Internet Explorer used in this attack is tracked as CVE-2024-38178 and has been given a severity score of 7.5. The flaw exists in Internet Explorer’s JScript9.dll file, part of its Chakra engine, and allows remote code execution if exploited. Despite Internet Explorer’s official retirement in 2022, many of its components remain embedded in Windows or third-party software, making them ripe targets for exploitation.

ScarCruft’s use of the CVE-2024-38178 vulnerability in this campaign is particularly alarming because it closely resembles a previous exploit they used in 2022 for CVE-2022-41128. The only difference in the new attack is an additional three lines of code designed to bypass Microsoft’s earlier security patches.

Once the vulnerability is exploited, ScarCruft delivers RokRAT malware to the infected systems. RokRAT is primarily used to exfiltrate sensitive data with the malware targeting files with specific extensions like .doc, .xls, .ppt, and others, sending them to a Yandex cloud every 30 minutes. In addition to file exfiltration, RokRAT has surveillance capabilities, including keylogging, clipboard monitoring, and screenshot capture every three minutes.

The infection process consists of four stages, with each payload injected into the ‘explorer.exe’ process to evade detection. If popular antivirus tools like Avast or Symantec are found on the system, the malware is instead injected into a random executable from the C:\Windows\system32 folder. Persistence is maintained by placing a final payload, ‘rubyw.exe,’ in the Windows startup and scheduling it to run every four minutes.

Via BleepingComputer

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• Chinese firms are driving LED adoption in cinemas globally
• Challenging established tech giants like Samsung and LG
• LED screens show global promise, only 0.5% penetration to date

Whole international companies such as Samsung and LG currently dominate the LED cinema screen market, that looks set to change as Chinese companies, buoyed by domestic success, begin driving the global adoption of LED cinema technology.

A recent report from TrendForce claims LED cinema screens are gaining traction in China, driven by supportive government policies.

Leading companies like China Film Global Technology Limited (CFGDC), HUAXIA LEYARD, QSTECH, Unilumin, and LOPU are actively promoting LED cinema solutions domestically and in overseas markets, including North America, Europe, Japan, and South Korea.

Plenty of room for growth

TrendForce notes that China Film Group Corporation (CFGC) recently announced that a cinema in Dinkelsbühl, Germany, had purchased 10 of its CINITY projection systems, creating a fully LED-based cinema experience. LEYARD has installed LED screens in over 20 international cinemas, including locations in France, the US, and Spain.

Earlier in 2024, Rio-tech and Timewaying introduced HeyLED screens, measuring 10 meters (32.8 feet) wide and 5.5 meters (18 feet) high, to a cinema in Romania.

These screens, which eliminate the need for traditional projectors, have gained traction in Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. Meanwhile, LOPU’s transparent LED cinema screens are also attracting interest from international investors and at CinemaCon in April 2024, Cineappo showcased its VLED products, reporting strong interest from global cinema operators.

We’ve previously written about Unilumin, which created a giant display at Xinjiekou International Cinema in Nanjing Deji Plaza, China. Its 20.48 meter (67 feet) wide by 10.8 meter (35 feet) high screen serves as an alternative to IMAX and uses the UCine LED film projection system. Unilumin has also installed screens at the Regency Theater in Los Angeles and the San Ya cinema in Hainan province.

TrendForce projects global LED installations will reach 160 units this year. With only 0.5% market penetration for LED cinema screens so far, there is substantial room for growth, and Chinese companies are evidently eager to capitalize on the opportunity.

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• Valve could be making a streaming box
• Hints found in the Steam Deck code
• No indications of a launch date yet

It might be five years since the Nvidia Shield last had a refresh – see our Nvidia Shield (2019) review for details – but the device remains one of the best streaming boxes in the business. We're now hearing it may get a new competitor, courtesy of Valve.

As per a Reddit thread analyzing changes to the Steam Deck code (via XDA Developers), it looks as though the software used on the portable console could soon be adapted to run on a streaming box connected to a television.

You'd then have a lightweight, versatile device that could both play games and stream video and audio to the big screen – much like the Nvidia Shield does. This is mostly speculation at this point, but we could definitely see it happening.

There are references in the code to an AMD 8540U processor, though this may only be referring to a prototype device, so the configuration could change. That would certainly offer more power than the current Steam Deck specs.

HDMI and Android

The Valve Steam Deck (Image credit: Valve)

According to the tipster who spotted the code change, extra support for HDMI control is being added – and the changes match some of the code seen on ChromeOS devices, suggesting support for both Android and web apps.

Apart from that, there are no real details about what could be coming. We don't know anything in terms of dimensions or pricing, and there's no indication here about how long it's going to be before the product is announced (if it ever is).

Go all the way back to our Nvidia Shield (2015) review, and you'll see that it's always been an impressively versatile device. It's earned itself a relatively small but loyal group of users, though we haven't seen any signs that we'll ever get a new model.

What we did get a couple of months ago was the first software update for the Nvidia Shield in a year – though it was intended to squash some outstanding bugs on the streaming box, rather than add any new features.

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• Lyve Cloud offers scalable, secure, S3-compatible object storage
• Infrequent access tier offers cost-efficient storage for rarely used data
• Affordable at $3.75/TB, ensures security, durability, and flexibility

First launched back in 2021, Seagate’s Lyve cloud storage is a scalable, S3-compatible object storage platform designed to help enterprises manage, store, and access their data efficiently, offering high durability, low latency, and predictable pricing.

In a bid to help enterprises manage long-term data retention, Seagate has introduced a new, affordable “infrequent access" tier for its service which can provide cost-efficient storage for data that is accessed infrequently, while maintaining instant availability and eliminating retrieval fees.

Melyssa Banda, senior vice president of Edge Storage and Services at Seagate, said, “Nearly 65% of our customers are actively seeking an archive tier that is economical and provides both flexibility and customer choice to their S3 offering. Now our cloud object storage users can easily scale storage resources to accommodate their growing and evolving data requirements.”

Highly affordable

The new tier allows enterprises to move less frequently used data to a lower-cost storage option. Despite the reduced pricing, Seagate insists users retain the same high durability, low latency, and performance guarantees as its standard Lyve cloud object storage service. It also offers enterprise-grade security features, including encryption and immutability.

The infrequent access tier is expected to be particularly beneficial for industries such as healthcare, finance, and media that have large volumes of data that must be preserved but are not accessed regularly. Examples of data suitable for this tier include active archives, compliance and regulatory records, and log data for auditing and historical analysis.

The infrequent access tier is available now via subscription with pricing at $3.75/TB per month ($45/TB a year), potentially allowing organizations to budget more effectively for long-term storage needs. Features include SOC 2, ISO27001, and HIPAA compliance, ensuring secure and reliable data management.

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