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Last Halloween, the FDA said that some cinnamon, a spice loved by many kids and adults, was contaminated with lead, a metal that can cause irreversible damage in babies and young children.

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As more states ban gender care for youth, doctors and clinics in Minnesota are building up capacity to help the influx of trans patients who are traveling or moving to the state for care. 

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Intel’s new Arrow Lake desktop processors (Core Ultra 200S range) are just out, and inevitably that means overclockers are already pushing the flagship to its limits, which thus far has resulted in an overclock of 7.5GHz for the Core Ultra 9 285K.

This was achieved by well-known overclocker Elmor as Asus explains in a blog post, with the Core Ultra 9 CPU sitting in an Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Apex motherboard.

Elmor – and a team working on the project, comprised of 3D Systems, Diabatix, ElmorLabs, and SkatterBencher (another famous overclocker) – hit 7488.8MHz, to be precise, using liquid helium cooling. By default, the Core Ultra 9 285K boosts to 5.7GHz (clocks, and power usage, are tamer with Arrow Lake than its predecessors).

Asus also highlights that the LN2 pot – which is literally a pot, the container used for the LN or liquid nitrogen (or helium) gas to cool the CPU being ramped up to ridiculous speeds – was designed using generative AI tech from Diabatix.

So, in a small way, AI helped to provide optimum cooling here in terms of the container design, or rather the ability to explore a bunch of design alternatives in a swift manner.

Asus notes: “The output of the generative AI process was unlike anything else on the market and required the cutting-edge 3D printing tech of 3D Systems to bring to life, but the results speak for themselves.”

Running at this speed, the 285K managed to set a clutch of new world records – four of them, all in 3DMark CPU – along with 19 global first place records (and 31 first places in various benchmarks, in total). A good deal of those were different Cinebench and Geekbench results as you might imagine.

Separately, Wccftech also points out that overclocker BenchMarc managed to ramp up their DDR5 RAM to an incredible speed of 12066MT/s in the Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Apex motherboard.

Analysis: Impressive stuff – but it’s unlikely to help public perception

Arrow Lake desktop chips have had a lukewarm reception, so Intel will likely take any win it can – and the Core Ultra 9 285K does do very well when it comes to the world of extreme overclocking.

The obvious problem being that this niche view of performance is clearly not relevant to the real-world – though it is at least a hint that PC enthusiasts may get more mileage out of the 285K than others, via more traditional overclocking. (Depending on how much headroom there is to push harder with the chip, mind).

In fairness to Team Blue, Arrow Lake isn’t terrible, and certainly for app performance, the new CPUs do well enough. They do not, however, represent much of a compelling upgrade over Raptor Lake or its refresh, despite efficiency gains, and the gaming side of the equation is shoddy, frankly. (The 14900K is much stronger for gaming – and the 285K is a bit all over the place in general, with some odd benchmark results in evidence).

Those gaming oddities are possibly wrinkles that’ll be ironed out with updates from Intel, but this shouldn’t be happening with CPUs at launch (just hold them – and get it right, please, off the bat).

Still, we can’t argue with the overclocking results here, and as ever, we can expect the Core Ultra 9 285K to be pushed faster in the future, and doubtless break more heavyweight benchmarking records.

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The smartwatch has a 40-millimeter screen, 16GBs of built-in storage and is available from $170.

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In this week's StoryCorps, a man from Briton remembers his first Halloween in America.

The four-page letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland calls on the department to investigate potential crimes committed by Israeli soldiers and civilians and is a rare instance of public disagreement inside the department.

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The success of Silent Hill 2, and the announcement of several other projects, begs the question: How serious is Konami about revitalizing its most beloved franchises?

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Election officials say ballot drop boxes are a secure and accessible way for voters to return mail ballots, but they've also been the subject of numerous attacks from Donald Trump and his allies.

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Voters in the crucial swing state have seen a return of the same kind of extreme rhetoric that dominated discussion in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Many worry it will lead to violence.

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Biden visits Arizona on Friday to apologize for the horrors of the federal Indian boarding schools that ran for over 150 years, and also trumpet the administration's policies to help Native American communities.

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Texas isn't a swing state, but both campaigns will visit on Friday. Beyoncé will perform at a Harris rally focused on abortion rights, while popular podcaster Joe Rogan interviews Trump.

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Grab yourself -- or the Force user in your life -- a pair of sneakers from the Star Wars collection, starting at $115.

It’s easier to talk about the areas of life that AI won’t affect than where it will. Businesses are at the forefront of that adoption. But where businesses go, bad actors often follow - sometimes, they’re even ahead.

Whilst Gen AI is being used positively amongst businesses, speeding up admin tasks and acting as an assistant to many, it has already gotten into the ‘wrong hands’. More and more Gen AI offerings are available on the dark web to assist wanna-be hackers and bad actors in their endeavours. The commodification of AI can help cybercriminals make phishing attacks seem more personable and realistic, which can increase the likelihood of successful intrusions that could lead to ransomware attacks. Ransomware is one of the biggest threats to businesses today, putting businesses, reputations and careers at risk, and it is here to stay.

In the face of these evolving threats, the onus is on businesses to engage all its stakeholders including C-Suite and prioritize cyber resilience to ensure business continuity. It is not a case of if an attack happens, but when. Data is every organization's most important asset and if your data is secure, your business is resilient.

Fuel to fire

Typically, we associate AI with large language models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard AI, and not with the potential cybercrime threats that tools like Worm GPT and FraudGPT can bring.

However, in the cybercrime field, we are all too aware of cyber criminals focusing on the biggest return and reward for the lowest investment of time and effort, and Generative AI can represent a perfect synergy in this respect in the cybercrime underworld.

AI can be used by adversaries to optimize and expand the reach of their threat campaigns far more efficiently than ever before, resulting in attacks that narrow the window for defenders to respond and mitigate.

Emotional strain

As AI technology advances, the sophistication of scams is following suit. In the future, AI threats could include autonomous systems capable of making decisions on how to modify their attack strategies in real time, with the ability to analyze attack campaign effectiveness. It could enable the use of data sets to constantly evolve and improve automatically, building an adeptness at bypassing traditional security measures - something that we’ve not seen in the history of cybersecurity.

For stretched CISOs and IT teams, however, AI can appear to be an additional strain on their workloads. This is as in the UK, 92% of senior IT and security leaders in the UK reported changes to their emotional and/or psychological state as a direct result of a cyberattack, with 36% worrying over job security.

That doesn't have to be the case however. For example, Generative AI companions can help stretched teams in simplifying and automating cyber incident responses and therefore recovery.

AI for good

Despite the threats, it does pay to get ahead. Businesses need to be leveraging AI in controlled environments where they are confident of its benefits, which typically includes the automation of admin tasks, support with data compiling, and creative inspiration.

When used by CISOs and IT teams to support cyber resilience, AI can assist in the areas of analysis, investigation and threat modelling to understand potential attack vectors and enhance their anomaly detection capabilities. This not only takes away some of the strain on stretched teams, it reduces their admin time and allows them to focus on ‘bigger fish’ activity - and their cyber resilience strategies.

Investing in AI tools should include training employees on its use cases in controlled environments, shining a company-wide light on cyber resilience. However, IT teams and CISOs must continue to closely monitor its use, govern access to training data, and set guardrails.

It is imperative that the C-Suite is heavily involved in cyber resilience, as the ultimate responsibility to adopt and implement compliant AI functions will always lay with the executive leadership in an organization.

A new chapter

Simply relying on prevention is not enough. To help ensure uninterrupted business operations in the face of threats, IT teams and CISOs must build cyber recovery and resilience strategies that proactively safeguard data integrity, identify sensitive data and threats, and enable a clean, rapid recovery.

The newly proposed Cyber Security and Resilience Act introduces expanded reporting requirements for ransomware attacks, providing government agencies with valuable new information on the scale of attack and the ability to increase support to affected businesses.

The aim of the bill is that mandatory reporting requirements will provide policymakers and threat intelligence agencies with valuable data on the prevalence of cyberattacks, currently seen as a "known unknown." With all of this additional data to hand, it is critical that it is managed effectively, and with law enforcement and cybersecurity companies involved, to mitigate threats effectively.

When it comes to the impact on businesses, it is important to have a balanced approach - one that combines regulatory measures with practical support for affected organizations. Despite the threats when used positively by CISOs and IT teams, AI can help with analyzing, investigating and threat modelling to help build cyber resilience strategies, and better understand potential threats.

To meet these growing threats CISOs and IT teams must fight fire with fire or risk losing the AI cyber arms race.

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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

Only 11% of IT budgets are being earmarked for cybersecurity needs despite half of UK organizations detecting and responding to cybersecurity threats at least once a week, new research has claimed.

A survey by Vanta found the majority (54%) of firms agreeing security risks for their business have never been higher, with phishing attacks (35%), AI-based malware (34%) and compliance violations (27%) all increasing over the past year.

Despite the clear need for greater investment in cybersecurity, the report reveals 17% of an IT department’s budget represents the sweet spot, indicating that companies don’t have far to go.

Cybersecurity deserves more

While artificial intelligence has impacted security globally, only two in five (43%) UK organizations conduct regular AI risk assessments, and fewer than half have implemented an AI policy to regulate its deployment and usage among employees.

The report also highlights the burden of compliance tasks. Around two in three (69%) noted that customers, investors and suppliers require more demonstration of compliance than before. UK businesses are now spending two extra weeks each year – a total of 12 weeks – working on manual security compliance tasks compared with last year.

Furthermore, IT decision-makers (ITDMs) are spending an average of seven hours, or around one day, each week assessing and reviewing vendor risk. This is because 44% of the British companies surveyed revealed that a vendor of theirs had experienced a data breach since they started working with them, highlighting that cybersecurity threats don’t always come from within.

Besides tackling threats head-on, increased IT budget allocation for cybersecurity also promises to drive customer trust and reduce financial risks.

“To uphold trust in an AI world, security leaders need to go beyond the standard way of doing things," noted Vanta CEO Christina Cacioppo, "they need to make trust continuous, collaborative and automated across their business.”

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