Technology

• Mizuno USA files new report with the Maine Attorney General
• In the report, it detailed a cyberattack that happened late 2024
• Cybercriminals were exfiltrating sensitive data for months

Mizuno USA has confirmed suffering a cyberattack in which it lost sensitive customer data.

The American sports gear manufacturer filed a new report with the Maine Office of the Attorney General in which it shared a data breach notification letter sent to affected customers.

In the notification, Mizuno USA said that it detected suspicious activity on its network on November 6, 2024, which prompted it to launch an in-depth investigation. "The investigation determined that certain systems within the network were accessed by an unknown individual and files were copied without authorization periodically between August 21, 2024 and October 29, 2024," the breach notification says.

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BianLian

While not saying exactly how many people were affected by the attack, Mizuno shared the type of information stolen: people’s names, Social Security numbers, financial account information, driver's license information, and passport numbers.

In response, Mizuno USA will be offering a year’s worth of free credit monitoring and identity protection theft services to impacted individuals, and urged them to keep a close eye on their financial accounts for signs of fraud.

The company did not say who the miscreants were, but BleepingComputer determined the BianLian threat actor assumed responsibility for the attack in November 2024.

“The BianLian ransomware group claims to have breached the USA branch of Mizuno,” an X post by HackManac said at the time. “Allegedly, exfiltrated data include financial data, HR records, contracts and confidential agreements, partner and vendor information, client and customer data, drawings, trade secrets and patents, as well as mailboxes and internal and external email correspondence.”

Mizuno USA is the American subsidiary of Mizuno Corporation, a Japanese sports equipment and apparel company. It specializes in high-performance gear for sports like baseball, golf, running, volleyball, and softball. Last year, Mizuno Corporation reported global revenues of approximately $1.5 billion, with Mizuno USA contributing roughly $224 million.

Via BleepingComputer

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• CISA issues warning about Chinese-made monitor quietly relaying sensitive data
• Multiple devices were found carrying malicious code in the firmware
• The company tried, and failed, to address the flaw

At least three healthcare devices built by Chinese manufacturers were found with firmware backdoors apparently relaying sensitive information to a Chinese university.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recently issued a warning about Contec CMS8000, a patient monitor used in hospitals and clinical settings to track vital signs such as ECG, blood pressure, oxygen saturation (SpO₂), respiratory rate, and temperature.

The agency said that an independent researcher discovered that the device was engaged in malicious activity, connecting to a hard-coded external IP address. BleepingComputer managed to determine that the IP address belonged to a “Chinese university”, but did not say which one.

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No patch

The researchers then uncovered the malicious activity was tied to a backdoor planted in the firmware, which would quietly download and run files on the device. The backdoor would allow unknown third parties the ability to execute programs remotely, take over patient monitors entirely, and send patient data across the pond. The activity was not being logged, either, flying under the radar of IT admins managing the devices.

Further investigation uncovered that the same IP address was discovered in software for other medical equipment, including a pregnancy patient monitor from another Chinese health manufacturer, BleepingComputer added. FDA said it also found it in Epsimed MN-120 patient monitors (essentially re-branded Contec CMS8000 devices).

CISA reached out to Contec, notified it about the backdoor, and the company came back with “multiple firmware images” that were supposed to mitigate the issue. However, each of the firmware updates did not address the issue properly, allowing the backdoor to continue operating.

Since the vulnerability has not yet been fully addressed, CISA urged all users to disconnect the endpoints from the wider network, if possible.

Via BleepingComputer

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The landscape of enterprise work is undergoing a significant shift. As content volumes explode and tasks become increasingly complex, the need for intelligent automation has never been greater.

In parallel, the AI landscape has also been rapidly evolving, and one can liken it to a human’s journey, from nascent to adulthood.

Infant AI: AI’s initial stages were all about rules-based systems, limited capabilities and functionalities. Because of this, the applications of “infant AI” could only be on narrowly trained uses, like recognizing simple patterns, or playing chess.

AI in its teens: A significant leap with the advent of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3 demonstrated that AI had progressed greatly into its “teens,” being capable of generating content, including text, images, videos, advanced reasoning, and even understanding intent.

Post-grad AI: AI now has advanced more to reason across multiple modals, including image, audio, and even performing calculations on spreadsheets. This enables AI to understand much more complex asks, situations, and sophisticated reasonings.

Where does AI go post-graduation? Into the workforce of course, as AI Agents.

AI agents are the next technological evolution, acting as virtual assistants that augment human capabilities and transform the way we work.

What are AI Agents?

AI agents are intelligent software programs that are capable of understanding, learning, and acting within an organization's specific context. Much like humans, they take actions to achieve specific goals, and even learn from experience, often operating alongside a human with minimal need for input. Imagine a digital assistant that is seamlessly integrated into your existing enterprise systems, with all the security and privacy controls built in. AI agents can access and analyze vast amounts of data, automate repetitive tasks, and make informed decisions to optimize routines.

Where do AI agents fit into an organization?

To understand where AI agents fit into an organization, let’s take an insurance claims department and see how AI agents at each level of the organization can have an impact, from the employee, such as the one who processes claims, to the organization-level, and finally working across multiple organizations.

To start, a picture of a car damaged in an accident is submitted to an insurance claims company. The claims employee would need to research and understand the damage in the submitted photo, submit the right claim form, obtain end-to-end approval, and trigger repair work.

AI agents can help the employee skip some of these preliminary steps in their routine. First, they most likely want to know and assess the damage based on the submitted photo. Without an AI agent, the employee would have to do this manually, taking time to carefully review the submitted photo. But with AI’s capability to analyze images, this employee can ask the “AI Claims Agent” to “describe the damage to this car, and guess the cost of repairs.

The AI Claims Agent can provide a ballpark estimate for the employee and reduce the guesswork, or search through similar past incidents to predict the cost of repairs.

The benefits extend to the organizational level as well. With AI agents integrated into business routines, organizations can scale productivity across departments. Commonly referred to as agentic routines, they can not only automate repetitive processes, but also improve decision-making, by understanding enterprise content using its metadata.

Let’s again take the example of the insurance claims department, but take a step back, and view the entire insurance company as a whole. The “AI Claims Agent” can not only analyze images, but also create new claims forms, fill out forms based on the metadata and analysis of an image, and generate a draft report that the employee can then move forward. This agentic routine eliminates the number of steps and time taken to generate a claims report.

Extending productivity outside of the organization, advanced AI agents can also effectively coordinate and collaborate with other agents across different organizations, facilitating seamless information sharing and workflow integration. Imagine multiple agents, such as the “AI Claims Agent” and the “Mechanic Agent”--they can coordinate together, align on the more accurate estimate of cost of repairs, and provide a schedule for it.

Intelligent content management: the power of AI Agents

Content is at the heart of enabling this kind of automation. Enterprises can unleash AI agents to streamline content lifecycle, unlock deeper insights from their content (90% of which is unstructured), and help enhance security and compliance.

There is a goldmine of valuable information in unstructured content, but extracting insights often requires manual analysis, a time-consuming and resource-intensive task. AI agents can unlock this potential by:

Automated content summarization: AI agents can analyze large volumes of text and generate concise summaries, allowing users to grasp the key points of documents quickly.

Sentiment analysis: AI agents can analyze text to identify the overall sentiment expressed, helping businesses understand customer feedback or gauge employee morale within internal documents.

Trend identification: AI agents can scan large datasets of content to identify emerging trends and patterns. This allows businesses to make data-driven decisions and capitalize on new opportunities.

Enhancing security and compliance

Content security and compliance are critical concerns for organizations of all sizes. AI agents can actually help address these concerns in a number of ways.

Automated Data Loss Prevention (DLP): AI agents can scan content for sensitive information and automatically apply security measures to prevent unauthorized access or leakage.

Compliance automation: AI agents can be used to analyze content to assist customers to adhere to specific regulations like HIPAA or GDPR. This reduces the risk of non-compliance and associated penalties.

Risk assessment and anomaly detection: AI agents can identify unusual access patterns or suspicious activity related to content, allowing for timely intervention and safeguarding sensitive information.

As AI agents become more pervasive, it is crucial to address security and permissioning concerns. AI agents leveraging secure RAG ensure that AI only access content that the user has access to, generating relevant answers, while honoring content and user permissions.

The employee-AI partnership: a new chapter for content management

AI agents are not here to replace entire departments of employees. Instead, they act as intelligent and proactive helpers, automating tedious tasks and uncovering hidden insights. They empower employees to focus on building relationships with their customers and end users and other higher-order tasks that require creativity, judgment, and strategic thinking. This employee-AI collaboration will usher in a new era of intelligent content management, where content is not just stored, but actively leveraged to drive business success.

The future of content management is intelligent. As AI continues to evolve, from infant stages, to now having the potential to work autonomously in an organization, executing on routines, we can expect even more transformative advancements that will revolutionize the way businesses interact with their content.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here : https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

• Nvidia's Smooth Motion replicates AMD's Fluid Motion Frames, a driver-based version of Frame Generation
• This will allow you to activate Frame Generation in games that don't have native support
• The feature only works in DX11 and DX12 games as of now

Nvidia is firing on all cylinders this generation, with the RTX 5000 lineup at the forefront of the GPU department - and now, Team Green looks set to replicate AMD's Fluid Motion Frames not only for its new GPUs, but the RTX 4000 series too.

Highlighted by VideoCardz, Nvidia's new Smooth Motion technology (currently exclusive to the RTX 5000 GPU lineup) will be making its way to RTX 4000 series GPUs in a future update - this will act similarly to its rival AMD's Fluid Motion Frames, which will allow Frame Generation to be utilized in any DX11 or DX12 game via driver settings - unlike how Nvidia’s DLSS and frame-gen tech currently needs to be implemented at the developer level.

‘GeForce Evangelist’ (an Nvidia promoter) Jacob Freeman, further hinted that while the new feature will act similarly to Frame Generation (now Multi Frame Generation for the RTX 5000 series), it won't come close in terms of image quality and input latency. Despite this, Smooth Motion will still be highly beneficial for older games that don't have access to Frame Generation and are unlikely to have any native support added by developers.

While DLSS 4 has already been shown to provide a significant leap in image quality and stability while using performance mode in games (and it’s now available for all RTX users), this is yet another addition that will help gamers in cases of poor optimization on PC.

Nvidia is really going at it against AMD this generation? Can Team Red hit back? (Image credit: Shutterstock) Perhaps this could finally be a gateway for RTX 3000 and 2000 series users to utilize Frame Generation...

Now, looking at AMD's Fluid Motion Frames, it's already widely available for Radeon RX 6000 and 7000 series GPUs including a range of mobile laptop GPUs and even APUs in handheld gaming PCs. It functions by inserting an AI-generated frame in between two rendered frames, as a driver-based solution to increase in-game smoothness and increased frame rates, much like how Nvidia’s existing DLSS frame-gen solutions work. Nvidia's Smooth Motion promises the same thing, and will even work in games that don't support DLSS.

Not too long ago, Nvidia's Applied Deep Learning Research VP Bryan Catanzaro hinted at the chances of Frame Generation coming to RTX 3000 series GPUs - the matter supposedly comes down to optimization of the technology, and the promise of being able to get the best out of older hardware was clear, so could Smooth Motion be the start of that?

We've already got confirmation that Team Green's Reflex 2 feature will first be exclusive to RTX 5000 series GPUs but will eventually be rolled out to older GPUs, so perhaps the same could happen here. It might not turn out to be as effective as native Frame Generation (or Multi Frame Generation) in games, but it gives plenty of players a solution for games that may need it for better performance on PC.

Regardless, it's nice to see that Nvidia isn't locking certain features to the RTX 5000 series when they can reasonably be used on older GPUs, and long may it continue. After all, getting your hands on an RTX 5090 isn’t exactly easy right now…

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AI is increasingly being adopted across healthcare and in 2025, it will be a driving force behind a smarter, nimbler, and more personalized experience. From research labs to patient care, AI-powered solutions will enhance the healthcare experience for administrators, professionals, researchers, and patients alike.

With a year of promise, innovation, and excitement ahead, there are three areas where AI will have a transformative impact on the industry. These include digital health agents that will improve the patient healthcare journey, robots capable of performing complex surgical tasks and generative AI tools that will aid and speed up drug discovery.

The dawn of agentic AI

In the healthcare setting, agentic AI and multi-agent systems will help address the existential challenges of workforce shortages and the rising cost of care.

Agentic AI is a new category of generative AI that operates virtually autonomously. It can make complex decisions and take actions based on continuous learning and analysis of vast datasets. Agentic AI is adaptable, has defined goals and can correct itself, and can chat with other AI agents or reach out to a human for help.

This new era of ‘digital humans’ can take clinical notes and book patient appointments. This introduces an era of services delivered by software, leading to the emergence of the service-as-a-software industry. The new normal will soon be always-on, personalized care services. Healthcare staff will collaborate with agents to reduce their administrative workloads. AI agents will retrieve and summarize patient records, as well as recommend clinical trials and state-of-the-art treatments for their patients.

The role of robots

Robots will work alongside and support human clinicians in a variety of ways. On one end of the scale, they’ll be much better equipped to respond and react to human commands. They’ll also play an increasingly central role in assisting and performing complex surgeries.

While robots are nothing new, we haven’t seen them integrate into society and support our daily lives as we have with other technological innovations. But that is set to change. This transformation is being made possible by digital twins, simulation, and AI that train and test robotic systems in virtual environments to reduce risks associated with real-world situations. These tools also train robots to react to virtually any scenario, vastly enhancing their adaptability and performance across varying clinical situations.

These new virtual worlds for training robots are the key to making autonomous surgical robots a reality. The surgical robots will perform complex surgical tasks with precision, decreasing cognitive workloads for surgeons and reducing patient recovery times. There is a tremendous potential here to increase equity of access to high-quality care, particularly in developing countries.

AI factories for drug discovery and design

Generative AI models in drug discovery will liberate scientific thinking and exploration. Take a generative AI tool like ChatGPT — when you prompt it to generate an email, it doesn’t need to put pen to paper for trial and error. Now think about the impact this will have on drug discovery.

We’re already witnessing techbio and biopharma companies combining models that generate, predict, and optimize molecules to explore near-infinite possible target drug combinations — all before needing to enter time-consuming and financially costly wet lab experiments.

AI factories, a new class of data centers that enhance AI capabilities, will transform the drug discovery process. These AI factories will use all available wet lab data to improve AI models, then update and redeploy those models for future experiments. Each experiment will benefit from the last and new information will be fed into the next. This will shift the focus of drug discovery from beyond just discovering new drugs to actively designing and engineering them.

As we look ahead to 2025, we’ll discover new applications and ways to interact with AI. In the coming year, the healthcare industry will be able to use AI models, combined with their proprietary data to develop systems that can reason. This will empower the next generation of digital health agents, unlock a new age of robotics and enable new developments and breakthroughs in drug discovery and design.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

The market’s reaction to the latest news surrounding DeepSeek is nothing short of an overcorrection. While the enthusiasm around breakthroughs in AI often drives headlines and market speculation, this feels like yet another case where excitement has outpaced evidence. Investors should be cautious about blindly jumping on the hype train without asking the tough questions.

Skepticism Around DeepSeek’s Claims

DeepSeek’s assertions about its advancements have drawn significant attention, but much of it remains unverified. For a technology that allegedly leapfrogs existing capabilities, the specifics around its breakthroughs are conspicuously lacking. Transparency has always been a cornerstone for evaluating cutting-edge technologies, and until DeepSeek provides more concrete evidence, skepticism is not just warranted—it’s necessary.

Chips on the Table: Do They Have More Than We Think?

One of the most puzzling aspects of the DeepSeek story is the apparent discrepancy between the resources they claim to have and those they might actually possess. Analysts are increasingly suspicious that DeepSeek may have access to far more hardware—particularly high-performance chips—than has been publicly disclosed. If true, this could have significant implications for their capacity to train and deploy their models at scale, raising questions about how they’ve managed to secure such resources.

The Training Puzzle: Costs and Methodology

Another critical angle here is the cost and methodology behind training their purportedly groundbreaking model. Training large language models (LLMs) is notoriously expensive and resource-intensive, often running into tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. How did DeepSeek manage to foot this bill, especially given their previously disclosed financials? Additionally, there’s an elephant in the room: Did they rely on other LLMs during training? This would raise ethical and competitive concerns, as it has long been recognized as a controversial practice in the AI community. Leveraging other providers’ models for training—potentially without permission—distorts fair competition and undermines trust in the ecosystem.

Overreaction vs. Reality

The broader market response underscores the dangers of overreaction. While innovation in AI tools is undeniably exciting, we’ve seen time and again how unverified claims can lead to speculative bubbles. For investors, this is a moment to pause, ask questions, and demand clarity before assigning sky-high valuations to unproven technologies.

In summary, while Deepseek’s story is intriguing, it’s imperative to separate fact from speculation. The market needs to temper its enthusiasm and demand more transparency before awarding DeepSeek the crown of AI innovation. Until then, skepticism remains a healthy and necessary stance.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro's Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

• Globe Life was hit by a cyberattack in summer 2024, which affected thousands of users
• The investigation has now determined the attack affected more than 850,000 victims
• The attackers tried to extort the company for money

American insurance company Globe Life says approximately 855,000 people are now thought to have been affected by the ransomware attack it recently suffered.

In mid-June 2024, the company reported a cybersecurity incident in which unknown third parties accessed sensitive customer data through one of its web portals. In an 8-K form filed with the SEC at the time, Globe Life said crooks accessed sensitive data on at least 5,000 customers, but stressed that the final number, confirmed after an in-depth investigation, is likely to be a lot bigger.

The new investigation has now claimed, “approximately 850,000 additional individuals” were impacted, with the unnamed perpetrators stealing people’s names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, and in some instances, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, health-related data and other insurance policy information - but fortunately, financial information was not stolen.

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No payment

Globe Life said that the attackers tried to extort money for the stolen data, but failed.

“The company did not pay the demanded extortion payment and instead notified federal law enforcement and continues to assist law enforcement in the investigation of this activity,” Globe Life said in its latest report.

“The company has initiated the process to provide notification to, and credit monitoring services for, these individuals.”

Although the crooks demanded a ransom payment for the data, they did not lock down the systems, or delete files from the affected systems. Therefore, the breach did not impact the company’s operations, Globe Life stressed. Therefore, it doesn’t expect the attack to have a material impact on its business. Costs and expenses stemming from this attack will be covered by insurance.

Globe Life is one of the biggest life and health insurance providers in the United States, with annual revenue of more than $5 billion.

Via BleepingComputer

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Double the polyphony, quadruple the tracks, and three new synth engines make this a worthy successor.

Microsoft is set to kill the free VPN service included with its Defender app on Windows 11, macOS, Android, and iOS devices. The reason? Lack of usage and effectiveness.

As first reported by Windows Latest, the Big Tech giant has notified users of the change via its Support page. The date for the end of the virtual private network (VPN) service is set for February 28, 2025.

While you have time until the end of the month to find a best free VPN replacement, other Microsoft Defender features – Device Protection, Identity Theft, and Credit Monitoring (US only) – won't be affected.

Why is Microsoft removing its VPN feature from the Defender security suite?

As per Microsoft's own words: "Our goal is to ensure you and your family remain safer online. We routinely evaluate the usage and effectiveness of our features. As such, we are removing the privacy protection feature and will invest in new areas that will better align with customer needs."

If you ever use the Microsoft VPN Defender feature, this announcement may not come as a total surprise. Launched in 2023, Microsoft's VPN tool came with quite a few considerable limitations when compared with some of the best VPN services on the market.

For starters, it doesn't allow you to choose the location you wish your internet connection to be rerouted from. This means that you can't use Microsoft's tool, for example, as a streaming VPN to watch your favorite TV shows when abroad, nor to bypass internet censorship.

Another possible reason behind the lack of usage is that Microsoft only rolled out the VPN feature for Microsoft 365 Individual and Family subscribers across the UK and US. As Windows Latest points out, Microsoft originally shared plans for Defender VPN to arrive in new regions "but that never happened".

If you're an iPhone VPN user, "you will continue to see a VPN used for the purposes of web protection and this local (loop-back) VPN is different from the privacy protection feature," Microsoft explains. (Image credit: Microsoft)

Once Microsoft retires its Defender VPN feature for good, no action is required from Windows 11, macOS, and iOS users. If you're using Android, however, you'll need to manually remove your VPN profile from the device if you ever used this tool. You can do so by heading to your phone's Settings, tapping on VPN, and the info bar on Microsoft Defender's VPN profile to remove it.

This isn't the first time a Big Tech giant has decided to kill its VPN functionality for lack of usage. Google dispatched its Google One VPN for similar reasons back in June 2023.

As mentioned earlier, Microsoft Defender VPN users until the end of the month to find an alternative. If you aren't familiar with the VPN world, you can check all the benefits of using a VPN in 2025 here.

NordVPN is currently TechRadar's top pick. It's a great all-rounded service, boasting heaps of privacy and security features, some of the fastest connection speeds, and easy-to-use apps across all major platforms. If you are looking for a free VPN service instead, PrivadoVPN and Proton VPN are currently the most secure out there.

• Another improvement is spotted for Phone Link
• It will soon be easier to unlink handsets
• The app has been regularly updated in recent months

The Phone Link app that's part of Windows lets you sync data, texts, and calls between the desktop operating system and a mobile device – and a new upgrade for the tool is being tested that makes it easier to swap between handsets in Phone Link.

As per tipster @phantomofearth (via Windows Latest), some users now have the option to unlink a connected iPhone or Android phone from Phone Link, right from the Bluetooth & devices > Mobile devices page in Windows Settings.

At the moment, you need to head into your Microsoft account settings page on the web to manage this – so it potentially saves a lot of clicking around and logging in. Previously, an unlink button was available in the Phone Link app itself, but it was removed a while ago.

One obvious reason why you would want to do this is when you're upgrading your phone, and anything that makes switching phones more straightforward is welcome – what with all the other data transfer jobs involved.

Regular upgrades

The Cross Device Experience Host (Manage mobile devices) app is getting the option to easily remove a mobile device from your account, a nice addition! pic.twitter.com/Ce0JtgGdp3February 2, 2025

The options you get through Phone Link depend on the handset you're using. Both iPhones and Android phones are able to connect to Phone Link, though you get the most features with the best Samsung Galaxy phones.

Another feature currently in testing is an iPhone info panel to match the one for Android devices, which can be viewed right inside the Start menu. This all follows on from regular upgrades to Phone Link that we've seen over the last year or so.

Quite how long it's going to take for the improved unlinking feature to roll out to everyone remains to be seen – and it might get one or two other tweaks along the way – but it shouldn't be too long before it shows up in Windows.

Of course you get a wealth of syncing and integration features if you've got an iPhone and a Mac working together, which is the high bar Microsoft is working towards with Phone Link on Windows – with more upgrades likely to be on the way.

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• Windows 11 has gained 2.5% market share in January 2025
• That’s a sizeable uptick that’d usually take two months
• Expect the pace of upgrades to increase as the October 2025 End of Life deadline for Windows 10 comes nearer

Windows 11 gained a large number of converts over the past month, according to a fresh batch of stats from an analytics firm.

Statcounter recorded a big gain for Windows 11 with its January 2025 market share (of all Windows versions worldwide), namely a 2.53% uptick. Windows 11 is now on a share of 36.65% compared to the previous month when it was on 34.12%.

We’ve seen recent gains coming up to 2%, but a 2.5% increase is a fresh high here (an uptick that’d typically happen over the course of two months, as witnessed last year).

Windows 10 dropped from 62.7% to 60.33%, so don’t be under any illusions that the older operating system has been dethroned yet – it’s still the reigning monarch by quite some margin (away from PC gamers, who’ve adopted Windows 11 much more swiftly).

The margin between Windows 11 and Windows 10 is steadily decreasing though, and now stands at a lead of only 23.7% for the latter.

Windows 7 fell by 0.17%, but most of the people migrating to Windows 11 came from Windows 10, as the numbers rising and falling for both operating systems clearly illustrate.

It’s not surprising that more folks are shifting over to Windows 11, however, given that the deadline for Windows 10 End of Life, when updates are no longer delivered to the OS, is October 2025 – which is only eight months away now.

(Image credit: Microsoft) Analysis: An inevitable migration

Given how time flies seemingly faster and faster these days (don’t tell me I’m the only one who has noticed), six months will be gone before you know it, and that Windows 10 support deadline will be right on the horizon like a big, red, flashing warning sign. (One that proclaims: “Upgrade now, or put your PC at risk due to new vulnerabilities in Windows 10 that won’t be patched by security updates”).

Well, outside of defecting to another OS entirely, there is another choice rather than upgrading to Windows 11, and that’s paying for an extra year of support for Windows 10 – it’s the first time consumers have been offered this option, in fact. However, in some ways, that’s just putting off the inevitable.

What we’re starting to see here, I believe, is the first signs of the rush just to get the upgrade done – something I have advised is the best course of action at this point in time. After all, why hang around, especially if you need to sort something in order to make your PC eligible for the upgrade, which might be as simple as flipping an option in the BIOS to enable TPM 2.0.

Windows Latest, which spotted the release of the new stats for Windows versions, observes that businesses – which obviously need much more planning for an upgrade across a fleet of computers – are already making the move to Windows 11. And that activity will represent some big boosts for the newer OS. An IT admin who has over 1,500 PCs in their care told the tech site: “We’ve been testing Windows 11 for months now, and we think it’s the [right] time to move away from Windows 10.”

In theory, there should be even bigger tips in market share towards Windows 11 as 2025 progresses. Indeed, I’d be worried if this wasn’t the case. Given how slow Windows 11 adoption has been overall across its existence, we’re likely to witness some 5% shifts, month-to-month, moving to Microsoft’s newest OS, or even greater.

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• The British Government is introducing a new AI Code of Practice
• The voluntary framework will help guide businesses using AI
• Protecting businesses hopes to boost growth and productivity

The UK government has introduced a new ‘world-leading AI cybersecurity standard’ which hopes to help protect its increasingly-important digital economy.

The new ‘Code of Practice’ is aimed at giving public services and businesses the "confidence they need to harness AI’s transformative potential safely". It is a voluntary structure, and includes principles such as securing your supply chain, monitoring system’s behaviour, and evaluating and managing threats and risks to AI systems.

This promises to form the basis of a ‘new global standard’ for secure AI, and represents a major step to ‘cement the UK’s position as a world leader in safe innovation’, and comes alongside the UK government’s recent master plan to ‘unleash AI’ with a 50 point plan to push AI into all corners of British industry.

Growth and productivity

Cyberattacks are hitting British businesses more than ever before, and almost half of all organizations experienced an attack or breach in the last 12 months. By adopting these principles, businesses can bolster their cyber defences and are given guidance on best practices.

The UK’s AI sector is attracting ‘millions per hour’, the government claims, and the Government has estimated that supporting cyber skills could boost the £11.9 billion cyber security industry which will help drive growth and boost productivity for the British economy.

“It is vital that we harness the transformative potential of AI securely so that our society can reap the benefits of new technologies without introducing avoidable vulnerabilities and cyber risks” said NCSC Chief Technology Officer Ollie Whitehouse.

“The UK is leading the way by establishing this security standard, fortifying our digital technologies, benefiting the global community and reinforcing our position as the safest place to live and work online.”

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• Community Health Center confirms suffering a data breach
• The criminals stole sensitive information on more than a million people
• This was not a ransomware attack, CHC claims

More than a million people may have had their sensitive information stolen, after a “skilled hacker” broke into the IT system of Community Health Center (CHC).

The company filed a new report with the Maine Office of the Attorney General which said it spotted “unusual activity” in its computer systems, on January 2.

“That same day, we brought in experts to investigate and reinforce the security of our systems. They found that a skilled criminal hacker got into our system and took some data, which might include your personal information.”

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No ransomware

The data stolen in this attack includes people’s names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, emails, diagnoses, treatment details, test results, Social Security numbers, and health insurance information - all of which is more than enough to run highly personalized phishing attacks, and maybe even wire fraud.

CHC is a Connecticut-based nonprofit healthcare provider that offers comprehensive primary care, dental, behavioral health, and specialty services to underserved communities.

This doesn’t seem to have been a ransomware attack, however, as CHC added that the actors did not delete, or lock, any of the affected data. Therefore, the attack did not affect its daily operations, it added.

“We believe we stopped the criminal hacker’s access within hours, and that there is no current threat to our systems.”

CHC is now notifying affected individuals about the breach and offering assistance, including free identity theft protection through IDX. In the letter, CHC said that IDX will provide 24 months of credit and CyberScan monitoring. Furthermore, the company set aside a $1M reimbursement policy, and promised to help recover stolen identities.

In recent months, ransomware groups have started moving away from encryptors and focusing solely on data theft. Apparently, it is equally effective in terms of ransom demands, yet cheaper and easier to pull off. It seems that in this case, CHC was not asked for a ransom yet.

Via TechCrunch

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• Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 are reportedly set for launch in March
• This will directly compete with AMD's Radeon RX 9000 series launch
• We could be seeing a repeat in this generation of 8GB of VRAM with the RTX 5060

Nvidia's RTX 5000 series GPU launch is well underway with the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 now sold out at virtually every retailer (unsurprisingly), and Team Green looks set to roll out the rest of its lineup very soon - which means key rival AMD may be set for a big battle.

As reported by Tom's Hardware, the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060 are supposedly set to launch in March according to Chinese hardware manufacturer Chaintech. This is when AMD's Radeon RX 9000 series GPU lineup is slated to launch, which would ultimately put Team Green and Team Red in direct competition - AMD has already made it clear that mid-range GPUs will be its focus, and the new xx60-class Nvidia cards could likely challenge them.

Will the RTX 5060 prove to be the greatest budget GPU the world has ever seen? The jury's still out. (Image credit: Nvidia, Shutterstock)

We're awaiting details regarding the pricing of the RX 9000 series along with just how powerful they could be compared to the previous RX 7900 XT and XTX GPUs - considering the official pricing of Nvidia's RTX 5070 ($549 / £549 / AU$1,109), prices for the RTX 5060 Ti and 5060 could be much lower. Depending on the performance of these GPUs, AMD could win the mid-range battle - just as long as prices for its next-gen GPUs are reasonable.

Can we just be done with 8GB GPUs, please?

Looking at both Nvidia’s and AMD's low and mid-range GPUs, my only hope is that we can finally say goodbye to 8GB of VRAM as a baseline industry standard. Games are becoming increasingly VRAM-hungry, and gamers need every advantage possible considering how bad PC ports have been recently. I believe a minimum of 12GB of VRAM is necessary for modern PC gaming - even just at 1080p - but unfortunately, it doesn't look like that will happen.

EEC filings from Maxsun suggest the RTX 5060 will utilize 8GB of VRAM, which could mean it ends up following in the same footsteps as its predecessor - this will be disappointing, to say the least, especially since Intel's affordable new Battlemage GPUs have opted to give that 8GB figure the boot.

The Intel Arc B570 uses 10GB of VRAM while its big brother the B580 dons 12GB of VRAM - these are both considered to be budget- to mid-range GPUs that are capable of 1440p gaming. While the rumored 8GB RTX 5060 will likely do the same using DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation, the comparatively low amount of VRAM would be a worry for those looking for an affordable way into the RTX 5000 series experience.

There's nothing confirmed on Nvidia's part regarding the RTX 5060 Ti or 5060, but let's hope these VRAM rumors are false. But with the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti slated for release later this month, March certainly does seem like a reasonable launch window for the budget Blackwell GPUs.

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• ChatGPT deep research turns hours of human time into minutes of compute time
• It’s built on the o3 model and promises more context than o1
• Available for ChatGPT Pro now, Plus and Team next

OpenAI has lifted the wraps off a new ‘deep research’ tool which it says is designed for in-depth, complex research tasks within ChatGPT.

Described as a, “new agentic capability that conducts multi-step research on the internet for complex tasks,” deep research promises to do hours of human work in tens of compute minutes.

Much like a human research worker, it will “find, analyze, and synthesize hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report at the level of a research analyst,” OpenAI said in its announcement.

OpenAI creates its own researcher

The tool is built on an upcoming version of the OpenAI o3 model, which is specifically optimized for optimized for web browsing and data analysis, and is capable of handling text, images and PDF files that can all be accessed via the internet.

Although the mind first arrives at scientific research, keen to demonstrate deep research’s usefulness, OpenAI says it’s particularly strong at helping consumers make decisions based on “hyper-personalized recommendations,” including some of the biggest decisions we’re likely to make such as buying cars, appliances and furniture.

Given the extent to which deep research trawls the internet, the documented output includes citations to help users validate information sources and ensure accuracy.

OpenAI says the o3-based deep research also addresses the shortage of context and other information that o1 currently struggles with – that model is better suited to coding, maths and other technical domains.

It’s important to note that, while many ChatGPT users have become accustomed to near-instantaneous responses, deep research could take 5-30 minutes to complete a task. Users will receive a notification once the research is complete, so they won’t have to hang around to wait for a response.

The response comes in the form of a report within the chat interface, but embedded images, data visualizations and other analytic outputs are in the pipeline and could arrive in a matter of weeks.

Deep research is already available for Pro users paying $200 per month, but Plus ($20/month) and Team ($25/month) subscribers are also set to get access to the powerful upgrade.

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• The first fully-electric Aston will arrive by 2030
• Aston boss eyeing up a vibrating body structure
• A resonating chassis could mimic the feel of a thumping V12 engine

Even the world’s most revered sports car makers can’t ignore the fact that the future of the automotive industry is increasingly likely to be all-electric, and Aston Martin’s boss is already exploring ways to ensure his brand (among the world’s coolest) remains exciting.

But rather than rely on fake engine noises, outer space soundtracks or even synthesized gear shifts, Aston Martin’s CEO Adrian Hallmark feels that building physical vibrations into future vehicles could help create better emotional connections between customers and otherwise silent machines.

Speaking to Top Gear, Hallmark says that a recent drive of the Mercedes- AMG EQS led to the lightbulb moment, as he says that car “physically resonates” without the need for fake gearshifts or engine noises.

Building on the idea, Hallmark claims that by mapping the telemetry of the V12 engine found in the Valkyrie, measuring the frequencies and building these into “the body structure of the vehicle” it would replicate the feeling of being in control of a 12-cylinder car.

“So I believe without fake noises but by actually oscillating body structures and other structures with the frequencies that you get from a combustion powertrain, you can create an emotional connection,” he told Autocar.

Although the Aston Martin boss won’t be pinned down on an exact date that the debut fully-electric vehicle will be released, he has gone on record to say that customers can expect more hybrid versions to come in the near future, before pure battery electric vehicles arrive.

The problem, he says, is that battery electric vehicles remain heavy and therefore producing something that offers the dynamic drive of a lightweight sports car is difficult. Secondly, Hallmark says that half of the current Aston Martin customers base hate EVs “with a deep-rooted passion,” according to Top Gear.

Analysis: making EVs 'fun' is a complicated business

(Image credit: Aston Martin)

Despite partnering with Lucid, which will provide its battery and motor knowledge, as well as Mercedes-AMG, Aston Martin is still working out how it will develop an electric vehicle that will emotionally appeal to its discerning customer base.

Hyundai has been praised for attempting to crack the conundrum with its Ioniq 5 N, which has been touted as one of the most involving and visceral EV drives on sale, thanks to a plethora of technology that includes simulated gear shifts, realistic engine notes (including the crackle and pops of an exhaust) and trick steering that disguises the mass of the vehicle.

Later this year, we will see if Porsche can produce genuinely fun electric two-seater sports cars when the next generation of electric Boxster and Cayman arrive. Although the brand has already said it will continue to produce internal combustion engine counterparts in parallel.

Weight, cost, limited battery range under ‘spirited’ driving conditions and a lack of a spine-tingling, emotional connection have long been the major roadblocks standing in the way of electric sports cars.

But as EVs gain popularity and become more normalized, perhaps the old performance car markers will cease to play such an important role. It’s a point that the likes of Lamborghini and Ferrari are pinning their hopes on.

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