From clunky spreadsheets to modern project tools, I've tried it all. Here's the Gantt chart software worth switching to.
The post Best Gantt Chart Software in 2026: 8 Tools I Trust the Most appeared first on TechRepublic.
OpenAI has doubled its top bio bounty to $50,000 for researchers who can develop a universal jailbreak against its biological safety challenge. The ongoing private program begins with GPT-5.6 and keeps GPT-5.5 in scope through July 27, 2026.
The post OpenAI Raises Bio Bounty to $50,000 for Universal Jailbreaks appeared first on TechRepublic.
Researchers have found yet another extension for Chromium-based browsers that is designed solely to steal people’s hard-earned cryptocurrency.
A report from McAfee has sounded the alarm on Silent Swap, a piece of malware hiding inside a benign-looking Google Notes extension.
Victims who stumble upon and download it (most likely through phishing, social engineering, or shady forums and websites), will get an extension that, on the surface, works as intended. It shows a small window where the victim can type a note and save it. They can color-code the notes and search through saved ones. However, this was only made to hide the program’s true intentions, which are to steal cryptocurrency.
Hijacking the clipboardSilent Swap works like a typical clipboard jacker. It monitors the clipboard for strings that look like a crypto wallet - seemingly random strings of 26 to 42 alphanumeric characters.
When it spots one, it replaces it with a different one belonging to the attacker, so when the victim pastes the address into the wallet to send the funds, they are actually sending them to the address belonging to the attackers.
This works because crypto wallets are almost impossible to memorize, and too risky to type in from a piece of paper or a different document, forcing users to rely on copying and pasting.
Once the victim sends the funds, they are almost certainly irretrievably gone. Only if the funds are being sent from a centralized exchange (like Coinbase, for example), and if the victim spots the attack fast enough, can they ask the exchange’s support to freeze the transaction. In all other cases, once the money is sent, it’s gone.
The best way to defend against these attacks is to cross-reference the strings before hitting send. Some people would only check the first and last few characters, but security researchers don’t recommend it, because some clipboard jackers can generate addresses that only differ in a few characters.
The Garmin Forerunner 170 and 170 Music sit nicely between the cheaper Garmin Forerunner 70 and more expensive 570 and 970 duo, the latter of which features on our best Garmin watches guide. As such, both Music and non-Music versions are a bit of a halfway house; not quite cheap enough to be picked up on a whim by budget-conscious consumers, nor expensive enough to be stuffed with top-quality premium features.
However, it is stuffed with plenty of robust fitness features that will suit any active exerciser, especially runners. Sebastian Sawe, who who broke the world record by running a marathon under two hours in London, was toting a Garmin Forerunner 55 — Garmin’s cheapest, most stripped-back running watch.
What you’re paying for here is the Garmin Forerunner 70 — an excellent smartwatch on the cheaper end, and the successor to the popular Garmin Forerunner 55 — with additional smartwatch features attached. These include Garmin Pay, a virtual wallet which lets you pay with cards held on-watch, and the Smart Notifications feature, which allows you to view and manage alerts from a paired smartphone. The Forerunner 170 Music adds an extra 4GB of music storage.
If you’re largely uninterested in these features and you just want an excellent training tool, I’d get the Garmin Forerunner 70 instead, as it’s the best value of the three newcomers overall. But the Garmin Forerunner 170 Music does allow you to hit that Saturday morning parkrun, pay for your coffee, and jog home with headphones in — all without using your phone at all. It’s incredibly convenient, but not a package everyone will need or want.
Still, during my testing I found the watch good to use, comfortable to sleep in, and accurate against testing units like my Polar H10 heart rate monitor. Our writer Michael Sawh found the same with the Garmin Forerunner 70. You can read my full thoughts on the 170 Music below, but whichever watch you choose, you’ll be in good hands.
Garmin Forerunner 170 review: SpecificationsGarmin Forerunner 70
Garmin Forerunner 170
Garmin Forerunner 170 Music
Price
$249.99 / £219.99 / AU$399
$299 / £259.99 / AU$479
$349.99 / £299.99 / AU$549
Dimensions
42.6 x 42.6 x 11.9mm
42.6 x 42.6 x 11.9mm
42.6 x 42.6 x 11.9mm
Weight
40g
41g
41g
Case/bezel
Fiber-reinforced polymer
Fiber-reinforced polymer
Fiber-reinforced polymer
Display
AMOLED 390 x 390px
AMOLED 390 x 390px
AMOLED 390 x 390px
GPS
GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou, QZSS, SatIQ
L1 GPS, GNSS, Galileo, and BeiDou
GPS, Glonass, Beidou, Galileo
Battery life
Up to 13 days, all-systems GNSS mode: Up to 16 hours
Up to 10 days, all-systems GNSS mode: Up to 14 hours
Up to 10 days, all-systems GNSS mode: Up to 14 hours (6.5 with music)
Connection
Bluetooth, ANT+
Bluetooth, ANT+
Bluetooth, ANT+
Garmin Forerunner 170 review: Price and availabilityThe Garmin Forerunner 170 without music storage costs $299 / £259.99 / AU$479.
The Garmin Forerunner 170 Music, the upgrade with 4GB internal memory for music storage, costs $349.99 / £299.99 / AU$549. The Forerunner 70, which doesn’t have the 170’s smartwatch features such as Garmin Pay and Smart Notifications, is cheaper at $249.99 / £219.99 / AU$399.
We’re zeroing in on the Garmin Forerunner 170 today, and I think the watch is generally good value for money compared to some of the seriously expensive premium Garmins in the lineup, but perhaps not compared to the 70, which is $100 / £80 / AU$150 cheaper for a very similar watch. If you don’t want Garmin Pay or notifications, you’re better off saving your cash and getting the 70.
None of the Garmins have a particularly wide feature set compared to watches from Apple and Samsung at a similar price point, but their batteries last far longer — up to 10 days for the 170 — and their workout credentials are fantastic. This ensures you can get multiple battery-sucking GPS workouts in each week while still retaining enough smartwatch functionality to matter, all without needing a charge for ages. Each Garmin watch is durable too.
I’d say it’s generally a good value prospect, even if it does edge into the expensive end with the 170 Music.
The Garmin Forerunner 170 looks very much like every other Forerunner, but if this is your first Garmin that won’t mean much. It’s got a five-button configuration — up, down, light, start, stop or select, and back (or lap). You can use these, a touchscreen, or a combination of the two to navigate the watch, which is ideal if you’re wearing gloves.
It comes in a single size, with a 42.6mm screen, and its packing an AMOLED display rather than the duller digital-watch-style memory-in-pixel screen of older watches, but it’s not particularly bright even at full power. It comes with a silicon two-tone strap, and on the back it has one of Garmin’s older heart rate sensors, the Elevate V4. More expensive watches get the more accurate V5, but the V4 has been included here presumably to keep the cost down.
It’s very light, with a listed weight of 41g, and feels like less than that in the hand. A light watch is great for running and collecting wellness info as it’s easy to wear, and this checks the boxes.
Those familiar with Garmin products will be happy to know no liberties have been taken with the design of Garmin’s established software, either on-watch or in the Garmin Connect app. I think it’s the perfect mix of stripped-down and information-heavy, although there are a lot of menus to lose yourself in. The buttons make it fairly intuitive to navigate around for old hands. It’s a tried and tested design, that doesn’t break the mold in any significant way.
Plenty of running features abound here. As the name suggests, Garmin’s included its advanced running dynamics tools such as running power (a measure of your total running effort using motion data as well as heart rate), along with advanced statistics such as stride and cadence data after your run. During workouts, you can set up routes in Garmin Connect with virtual pacers to keep you on time.
You also get the usual health stuff, such as heart rate and sleep score, 80 workout modes (although not all have dedicated metrics or GPS enabled) and reports in the morning and evening that provide information about your training along with the weather and a motivational quote. The Garmin Forerunner 170 gets Smart Notifications, which allow you to answer some tests with simple replies and the Garmin Pay functionality which acts as a virtual wallet like Apple Pay.
The 170 Music’s 4GB of storage allows you to upload tunes directly onto the watch, including by saving playlists from the likes of Spotify. Even without the dedicated Music model, you can listen on apps like Spotify, Deezer, YouTube Music and so on through your phone, and control music on the watch there. The Garmin Connect IQ store has dedicated widgets for these services, along with thousands of other apps from a mixture of big-name brands and enthusiastic amateurs.
Otherwise, what’s missing? I wasn’t expecting full-color maps at this price, just the breadcrumb navigation and route direction common on most Garmin watches without maps, so I don’t feel like the feature is missing, as such.
However, to justify the price increase from the 70 to the 170 Music, I think it needs more hardware features. A microphone like the Garmin Forerunner 570, and the ability to take calls on watch and use Garmin’s simple voice assistant, would better separate it. As is, most people who want dedicated smartwatch features will just get one of the best Apple Watches or best Samsung watches instead.
I checked the Garmin’s heart rate accuracy against an electrical chest-mounted Polar H10 heart rate monitor — the gold standard of heart rate accuracy — during a 25-minute treadmill test, and was very pleased to report that despite the older sensor, both average and maximum heart rate were within 1-4bpm of the heart rate monitor; a very acceptable margin for error and not a statistically significant one.
GPS was accurate compared to my Apple Watch Ultra 3, and battery life was representative of its claims, with total drain taking just over a week with multiple GPS workouts completed. I feel as though the ‘up to 10 days’ listed battery life is reflective of reality.
Being lighter and smaller than many Garmins I’ve tested, it’s comfortable to wear every day and fine to sleep in.
Category
Comment
Score
Value
It’s not barnstorming value compared to the 70, but unlikely to disappoint.
4/5
Design
Builds on the solid existing Forerunner design with little iteration.
4/5
Features
Rich training insights and smartwatch features.
4/5
Performance
Solid performance against industry standards and contemporaries.
4.5/5
Garmin Forerunner 170 review: Should I buy?Buy it if...You’re a runner
The Garmin Forerunner 170 series shines when your favorite pastime is running in any form.
You want smartwatch features
Garmin Pay and Notifications make it a useful tool outside of workouts.
Don't buy it if...You’re on a budget
The Garmin Forerunner 70 does almost everything you need, for less.
You’re looking for premium performance
Rugged metal bezels, the Elevate V5 heart rate sensor, and full-color maps are the province of pricier Garmins.
Also considerCoros Pace 4
A worthy alternative training tool, the Coros Pace 4 is a fantastic watch.
Garmin Forerunner 70
A better value option if you don't want the 170/Music's smart features.
How I testedI wore the Garmin Forerunner 170 Music for over a week, draining the battery down and using as many of its features as possible. I ran and used it for strength and yoga sessions, tested its smart features, and pitted it against multiple competitor devices, including a chest strap heart rate monitor.
Philips Hue bulbs are a hugely popular smart lighting solution, and with good reason. But if your setup consists only of Hue bulbs (and a hub), you're missing a trick. The brand makes a range of accessories that can make a major difference to how you use your smart lights, and most are very affordable too. I asked the TechRadar team for some of their favorite cheap smart home upgrades, and almost all the answers I got back were Philips Hue accessories, so I decided it was worthy of its own article.
Entertainment Editor Matt Bolton is a big fan of his Philips Hue Smart Button, a compact, simple, wireless switch. "I stuck the Smart Button on my wall next to my regular light switch, giving me a way to control just the lamps in my living room separate to the other lights," he says. "It's so nice and easy, and no rewiring needed."
Matt also makes use of the Philips Hue Smart Plugs, which can be used to integrate non-smart lights into your Hue ecosystem. "I use the Hue Plugs to add little lamps that are too small for Hue bulbs into my lighting setups," he says. "I also use it for my Christmas tree lights every year, so I can plug them in somewhere awkward, but I can still turn them on and off at will."
Senior News Editor Mark Wilson is a big fan of his Philips Hue Tap Dial Switch. This physical switch has four buttons and a dial, and can control nine different actions; it's a more complex alternative to the Smart Button. "I hate using my phone or voice controls for smart lights. My favorite feature is turning the dial to dim my Hue lights — it's so much better than tapping the buttons on other switches," says Mark. "It’s simple to use, while also being really versatile thanks to those four buttons, which can set scenes in different rooms."
Homes Editor Cat Ellis has a slightly different suggestion: if you're finding regular Hue bulbs too expensive, she recommends checking out the much cheaper Essential range. "I put a regular Philips Hue bulb and a Hue Essential bulb side-by-side in identical lamps, and it was almost impossible to tell the difference when shifting colors — I could only really notice a distinction when dialing down the brightness."
A smarter setup Philips Hue Tap Dial Switch ProsWhile there are a few other brands, the hard drive market is essentially a three-horse race between WD, Seagate and Toshiba.
Having looked at WD and Seagate NAS HDDs recently, it seemed appropriate to look at what Toshiba offers that’s different to the other two.
Toshiba Electronics Europe launched the N300 NAS drive series in January 2017. By that point, Western Digital and Seagate had been in the dedicated NAS drive market for years. WD Red has been on sale since 2012, and Seagate IronWolf launched in 2016. Toshiba was late to this party, and that certainly coloured its product range from the outset.
The N300 launched at 4TB, 6TB, and 8TB, all carrying a 128MB data buffer and a 7200 RPM spindle. That last detail is the key one. Toshiba did not try to match WD and Seagate on their terms; instead, it went faster.
The N300 range runs at 7200 RPM on every capacity variant, from the smallest to the largest. That decision produces a drive with meaningfully higher sequential throughput. The N300 achieves up to 298 MB/s sustained transfer speed. The WD Red Plus manages around 180-190 MB/s. The IronWolf reaches 202 MB/s. The N300 leaves both behind in raw sequential performance.
And, this newer HDWG740EZSTC model covered here offers 512MB of cache, where older revisions had 128MB or 256MB.
However, there are tradeoffs here. On the hardware side, the additional rotational speed makes the N300 noisier, it generates more heat, and uses more power. That makes it less suitable for a NAS that’s sitting on the desktop, and more acceptable if you have a server room. And, the other awkward aspect of the N300 is that Toshiba has jacked the price up of this drive to around 50% more than what WD and Seagate are asking for the same capacity from some sources.
There are a few deals to be had on the N300, but it does make you wonder whether it's competing with the WD Red Plus and Seagate IronWolf, or the Red Pro and IronWolf Pro?
If only Toshiba would price the N300 more appropriately, it might become one of the best NAS drive options.
Toshiba N300 4TB: PriceWithout doubt, the worst possible place to buy the N300 4TB drive is from Amazon.com and the Toshiba Store on that retailer.
The current asking price there is around $330, which is utterly outrageous. To put that into perspective, in January 2026, the price was $215.62, and in August 2025, it was $154.99. Therefore, it has seen a 212% price increase in just nine months. Given that I wouldn’t believe there is much interest in 4TB drives for Datacentres, this is purely corporate greed in action.
But what’s even more curious is that even in the US, you can get this drive for cheaper, since B&H Photo sells it for $244.99, and Newegg wants $299.
Outside of the US borders, the prices are still elevated but not as excessively. From Amazon.co.uk, the 4TB capacity is priced around the £200 mark, and across Europe on Amazon, it's €237.86, if they have stock.
For comparison, American customers on Amazon.com can pay $194.99 for the 4TB WD Plus drive, and the 4TB Seagate IronWolf is only $189.
In short, wherever you buy the N300, it's seen a much larger price increase than its competitors, and this is true across all regions.
One important difference to note is that the N300 is available in a much larger range of sizes than Red Plus and IronWolf. The smallest N300 is 4TB, and it is available in 6TB, 8TB, 10TB, 12TB, 14TB, 16TB, 17TB, 20TB and 22TB.
The Red Plus only goes from 1TB up to 12TB, and the IronWolf goes from 1TB to 16TB, with some truly odd sizes such as 7TB in between the usual capacity increases.
However, you look at the N300 pricing, this is an expensive drive that tries to go between the Red Plus/IronWolf and the Red Pro/IronWolf Pro product ranges.
What makes this more complicated is that while officially IronWolf Pro drives are made in 4TB capacities, I could only find 12TB and larger. But the 4TB WD Red Pro can be found for $249.99 on Amazon, which is cheaper than the N300 for the same capacity.
What’s genuinely confusing about the N300 range is that if you go looking for drives of a particular capacity, you might find that drive with three different part numbers, one being the retail number, others being OEM, and I managed with some sizes to find ones with 128MB, 512MB and 1024MB caches. Obviously, the larger caches are better, especially on bigger capacity drives.
As an example of how messed up Toshiba is on Amazon.com, clicking “Visit the Toshiba Store” sometimes takes you to Toshiba kitchen products.
These prices need to be more consistent and gouge less.
(Image credit: Toshiba)Toshiba N300 4TB: DesignSince its launch, Toshiba has developed several proprietary technologies for the N300 and has kept them consistent across the product line.
These include Stable Platter Technology, which uses a tied spindle motor to secure the drive shaft at both ends. This reduces system-induced vibration and is directly comparable with WD's 3D Active Balance Plus approach. Both address the same problem, where in a multi-drive enclosure, vibration from one drive affects the others.
Also special to the N300 is Dynamic Cache Technology, a self-contained algorithm with on-board buffer management that optimises cache allocation between read and write operations in real time. From the outset, the N300 has typically had more cache than its competition, so managing the use of that is important for performance.
One of the hidden issues with faster-rotating drives is wear, and on the N300, this is addressed in a few interesting ways, one being Ramp Load Technology. This parks the read and write heads on a ramp outside the platter surface when the drive is idle. It reduces head wear during power cycles and protects the media surface.
Error recovery control has also been present since the original launch, limiting recovery time to avoid RAID array ejections in the same way that WD's TLER does.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)All these features I’ve mentioned arrived with the first N300 drives, but since then, the N300 has undergone some subtle changes, one of which is the introduction of NASLink Technology.
This fine-tunes drive behaviour for rapid data access and includes firmware-level optimisation for RAID performance through improved disk coordination. The more drives you have in an array, the more important it is that they’re all moving to a common beat, and Toshiba has baked that into the N300 via firmware updates.
Having larger arrays improves performance, but it introduces vibrations that can migrate from one drive to those either side of it. To combat this, the N300 also carries three built-in rotational vibration sensors. These detect and compensate for the knock-on vibration effects that become a serious problem once a NAS enclosure has more than four drives installed.
Overall, while Toshiba hasn’t come up with anything like Seagate IronWolf Health Management. In other respects, this is probably the most sophisticated drive serving the home and small-business NAS market.
However, when Toshiba only offers a three-year warranty and 180TB/year workload, it doesn't seem much like it's that special.
(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)Toshiba N300 4TB: Performance(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)Since Toshiba only provided two of these drives, there seemed little point in trying to work out what array advantages running the N300 offered. Therefore, I went with the same PC analysis that I used on the WD Red Plus and IronWolf drives
Here are my results:
Drives
Toshiba N300
WD Red Plus
IronWolf
Part No.
HDWG740
WD40EFPX
ST4000VN006
Capacity
4TB
4TB
4TB
Cache
512MB
256MB
256MB
Rotational Speed
RPM
7200
5400
5400
AJA
Read
MB/s
282
187
190
Write
MB/s
283
179
185
ATTO
Read
MB/s
291.57
206.24
192.35
Write
MB/s
294.25
197.35
191.76
CrystalDiskMark Default
Read
MB/s
299.18
201.23
200.77
Write
MB/s
300.50
208.26
199.33
CrystalDiskMark RealWorld
Read
MB/s
286.95
212.46
200.22
Write
MB/s
290.01
204.42
199.11
PCMark
Score
651
801
677
Bandwidth
MB/s
99.87
124.49
103.69
MS Winsat
Random 16 Read
MB/s
2.37
1.71
1.6
Sequential 64.0 Read
MB/s
218.38
168.53
158.16
Sequential 64.0 Write
MB/s
289.31
204.65
190.5
Read Time with Sequential Writes
ms
4.810
1.385
1.946
Latency: 95th Percentile
ms
31.620
12.685
34.685
Latency: Maximum
ms
75.357
64.723
62.341
Average Read Time with Random Writes
ms
12.021
5.267
9.898
Aside from PCMark10, all other tests show that the N300 is a country mile faster than either of the alternative NAS drives with the same capacity. I can put those results down to the increased rotational speed and also the 512MB cache on the N300.
One extra test I did perform on a NAS was to take a single drive on a Ugreen NASync DXP4800 Plus NAS, connect to it over a 2.5GbE LAN link, and bench test it from my PC.
I achieved read and write speeds over 285MB/s, which is the practical limit of 2.5GbE LAN ports. That with a single N300 drive, you can saturate a 2.5GbE Link is impressive, and it implies that with four drives in a RAID 5 configuration, you should be able to saturate a 10GbE LAN port. To do that on both WD and Seagate would involve moving up to their Red Pro or IronWolf Pro range.
Based on these numbers alone, the N300 might be worth what Toshiba is asking for it, depending on how your NAS is configured and if raw speed is important to that system.
However, I should also point out that the power consumption on the N300 is dramatically more than on the Seagate and WD drives. The current 4TB N300 draws 7.43W typical under active operating load, where the Red Plus only consumes 4.7W and the IronWolf 4.8W.
And, the N300 will be converting most of that power into heat, regrettably. If you already have a machine room where the cooling isn't coping, then maybe using these drives might not be the best plan.
Toshiba N300 4TB: Final verdict(Image credit: Mark Pickavance)If this drive were cheaper and Toshiba had technology like the IronWolf Health Management scheme, there would be little debate about this being one of the best options.
However, there are a few things about NAS and RAID arrays that make this choice slightly more complicated.
For starters, the majority of NAS are bottlenecked by their LAN connections, so if you only have a NAS with a 1GbE or 2.5GbE LAN port, then you won’t see the improved performance of the N300 over the WD Red Plus or IronWolf. If you do have a 10GbE LAN port, it will be saturated with four drives; extra drives won’t make any difference unless you have multiple LAN ports and bandwidth aggregation.
What you do get with the N300 is internal NAS performance, which, if you are running AI on your NAS, might be a factor. However, most people using their NAS that way use NVMe drives for caching, allowing them to get higher performance from 5400RPM drives. Rebuilds will be quicker, but the value of that comes down to whether the NAS is a point-of-service or other mission-critical function, and it assumes that a drive (or drives) dies in the first place to trigger the rebuild.
The fly in this ointment is the price, because for a four bay NAS, that’s a jump from roughly $800 in storage to $1200, and for that increase, you might consider Pro-level media.
Interestingly, currently the WD Red Pro 4TB is $250, offers 7200RPM spindle speeds, for less than the 4TB N300 on Amazon.com. And deals on IronWolf Pro models undercut Toshiba's pricing at that retailer.
In the UK, the IronWolf Pro 4TB is only £169.99, the WD Red Pro is £234.75, making the £195.15 N300 4TB a better deal than the WD, but much worse than the Seagate drive.
That’s the biggest issue here, because Toshiba aimed this product to hit the open ground between the entry-level NAS drives and the Pro series mechanisms, and now adjusted the price to compete with the premium layer. These Pro drives have 300TB/yr workload ratings and a 5-year warranty, whereas the N300 only has 180TB/yr and a 3-year warranty.
Based on these Toshiba defined ratings, it can't compete on reliability.
While I expect that if I tested the N300 against the Pro hardware, it would do well, since both of the competing brands typically only include 256MB of cache, not 512MB. But those who buy those mechanisms are looking for longevity above all else.
Overall, I liked the N300, as it takes less time to get operational on a NAS and in small arrays, the performance is excellent. But I can’t get on board with Toshiba’s pricing, which seems excessively high in some regions and lacks any consistency.
For more storage solutions, we've reviewed the best NAS devices.
The IoT and AI are a likely partnership: IoT generates and captures data, often in large volume, AI is ideally placed to analyze it.
Combined, AIoT presents new opportunities, so much so that Transforma Insights forecasts no fewer than 9.1 billion AIoT connections at the end of 2033, a more than six-fold increase in 10 years.
The potential for AI in the IoT is far-reaching, and one standout application is enhanced security.
The security risk to the IoTAll connected devices are under growing levels of threat, but the IoT is particularly targeted. According to Beaming’s cyberthreat report into UK businesses, IoT devices were most frequently attacked in 2024. They are attractive targets for the data they exchange and their potential to be compromised.
The devices are often unmanned and generally sit outside corporate security perimeters. They may be in remote spots, where they could be subject to unauthorized physical access attempts, and often remain in place for long periods of time. Many, such as the IoT devices used in energy, transport, utilities and retail, transfer sensitive data of high value.
Businesses need confidence that data collected through the IoT—both real-time and historical—comes from secure and trusted sources, not least when it comes to developing and training AI models. In this, the IoT works with digital twins, which are digital representations of physical objects or systems.
The IoT enables the seamless flow of real-world data between the physical and the digital, while the digital twin’s attributes provide the features for AI modelling. Historical data collected through IoT is then used to train and refine the AI model.
How AI is helping secure the IoTAI applies its automation and analytical capabilities to many tasks and priorities. It is making inroads into cybersecurity, something that has not gone unnoticed. Last year, the IEEE revealed almost half of the global technology leaders it surveyed (47%) expect vulnerability identification and attack prevention to be a top use of AI in 2026.
That may be some comfort to enterprises and connectivity and solutions providers grappling with the problem of protecting IoT devices and applications. This challenge is compounded by the fact that attackers are increasingly using AI themselves to automate phishing, accelerate reconnaissance and develop adaptive malware that evades traditional detection. However, it is more comforting still, that AI is already making a difference in the IoT, redefining how organizations protect their devices.
AI-powered anomaly and threat detection (ATD) is helping security teams identify threats like suspicious network traffic and botnet activity faster and improving resilience across large-scale IoT environments, something enterprises must strive for.
In the recent past, the focus on the IoT was arguably getting devices online. That is no longer the challenge; the test now is keeping them operational: compliance readiness and the flexibility to adapt to ever-evolving commercial and technological changes. It also means maintaining resilience.
IoT security must follow a clear defend against, detect and react approach to swiftly counter attacks. No one or two of these three measures are enough without the others.
How AI improves IoT visibility and incident responseAI-powered ATD detects anomalous behavior, such as remote code execution, abnormal port connection or a suspicious IP. These could indicate the beginnings of a cyberattack on an IoT device. It analyses the anomaly and can identify the attack type, be it distributed denial of service (DDoS), man-in-the-middle (MiTM) or an attempted device takeover.
ATD can then trigger direct action, if business rules dictate an automated response. This could take the form of threat isolation or referring the incident for full review.
Anomaly and threat detection protects over one million devicesATD runs entirely in the mobile core network infrastructure, rather than through software agents on a device, so it can be retrofitted to existing systems.
Enterprises that have identified IP backdoors and Mirai botnet infections within hours.
With IP backdoors, ATD detects unusual outbound connections, or traffic, to suspicious IPs. Such backdoors may allow remote control or data exfiltration, both of which leave identifiable behavioral traces.
In the case of Mirai, anomalous behavior typically exhibits as spikes in outbound traffic, uncommon ports use, or repetitive scanning of external IPs. ATD can flag these irregularities in real time and trigger corrective actions, such as blocking or quarantining the device, blocking or throttling traffic or patching firmware.
Automation and analytics can shape the next phase of IoT securityThere is a clear shift in IoT implementation and management. It is insufficient to plan for device deployment, sit back and gather the data. Without a strategy that accounts for the stresses, threats and changes that beset IoT estates, enterprises risk costly surprises like unplanned site visits and service disruptions.
AI, through automation and analytics, can shape the next phase of IoT security. Enterprises that detect, analyze and even automatically address, anomalous activity reduce the risk of cyberattack-related outages and inconvenient site visits to access devices.
Sending field technicians to maintain or repair devices can add significantly to total cost of ownership. Each truck roll, which incurs expenses for labor, fuel, vehicle wear and often missed productivity opportunities, can add up to over $1000 per site visit.
IoT downtime, meanwhile disrupts operations and can have a catastrophic reputational, as well as financial, cost.
How to balance innovation, data privacy and operational controlEnterprises are, for the most part, keen to innovate through AI but have understandable questions about data privacy and operational control.
It is important to know what AI does, in all process integrations, to understand why it does it and to have control that prevents AI deviating from its purpose.
On data privacy, ATD isn’t installed on IoT devices. Only packet headers from device cloud communications are mirrored from the mobile core to the ATD engine, with threat levels and AI-driven insights relayed through a customer portal.
Operational control is maintained through the business rules that dictate how the ATD engine reacts. The option to refer an anomaly for review, for example, gives enterprises the flexibility to incorporate human oversight, under predetermined circumstances.
This is especially useful when you consider there can be genuine reasons why a SIM may increase or cease communication, that an incident reviewer will understand.
AI-powered IoT securityAI is making a difference to the speed, efficiency and depth of response to cyberthreats. Automation and advanced analytics within IoT solutions’ security measures also help enterprises manage costs, by minimizing labor-intensive manual tasks and site visits, and reducing the risk of expensive cyberattack reparations.
For CISOs, CIOs, product and operations managers seeking to maximize IoT value and protect their enterprise IT domains from external threats, AI-powered ATD offers visibility and actionable insights to take IoT security to the next level.
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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to 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/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit
Is AI taking our jobs?
Even as Artificial Intelligence displaces a significant number of roles in the United Kingdom, it’s clear the net-positive impact on the job market remains favorable.
A new study estimates that evolution in AI technologies could create as many as 610,000 new jobs by 2028.
What’s more, employees can look forward to not just more jobs but better ones; an analysis of over 500 million job advertisements from 15 high-income countries revealed that employers in the U.K. were willing to pay 14% more to workers with AI skills.
People with AI skills also have an expanding choice of roles, as organizations in every industry look to hire data scientists, machine learning engineers, computer vision specialists, AI trainers, human-machine teaming managers, AI ethicists and compliance officers and more.
AI is increasing the job marketIn the highly digitalized U.K. financial services sector, 75% of organizations are already leveraging AI and another 10% plan to adopt within a few years. The wide range of AI use-cases spanning process optimization, cybersecurity, fraud detection, customer support, credit scoring and compliance management etc.is opening up a variety of opportunities for job seekers with relevant skills.
20% of education sector professionals in the U.K. are using AI in their current role to improve learning content, motivate students and accommodate their different needs, or even to complete administrative tasks. As roles combining technology and education evolve, there will be a need for skilled learning experience designers to create effective learning platforms, content creator managers for ensuring educational content meets quality standards, and specialists who leverage AI tools to create and manage online communities for learners.
Even in healthcare, where human expertise and in-person interaction are highly valued, there’s a huge need for AI professionals, in the near future, to build algorithms that can generate personalized treatment plans and predictive analytics models that identify disease patterns and risk factors. With telemedicine becoming common, the healthcare industry will require staff who can operate AI-enabled remote patient monitoring systems.
The use of smart health assistants, AI-based medical imaging and intelligent hospital workflow optimization tools will create a demand for medical professionals with varying degrees of AI capability and also for medical AI specialists, telehealth coordinators, and data analysts for managing and processing massive volumes of health data.
But where are the skills?In a recent UK survey, 68% of IT decision makers said that insufficient skills and expertise was their top challenge in implementing AI projects, more problematic than integrating disparate data and fragmented systems. Training is the obvious answer, but it appears that 19 percent of the U.K. workforce – 6.31 million employees – have not been trained in how to use AI tools at work.
Organizations need to take urgent measures to prepare their employees to deal with the change that AI will bring to their work and workplaces. Besides training employees in functional AI skills that enhance productivity, employers should build capabilities in communication, empathy and problem finding to optimize the performance of human-machine teams.
Training with and for AITraditional training methods, involving scheduled classroom-based lessons with standard curricula, are ineffective for AI technologies, which are evolving at a blistering pace. Organizations need to establish an environment of continuous, lifelong learning where employees can learn new skills on the job, throughout their careers.
AI-powered learning platforms support this by providing rich training materials that employees can access from anywhere, and at any time, to learn what they want, when they want it. Importantly, training also addresses cultural barriers to AI adoption, such as apprehension about learning new technologies.
Next StepsTo successfully bridge the AI skills gap, employers should follow best practices, including integrating AI literacy in different functions to prepare employees across the enterprise for a future in AI and partnering with educational institutions to offer learning programs aligned with business and market needs.
The U.K. government can play a major role in building an AI-ready workforce by offering incentives to organizations investing in AI training and also providing internship opportunities for young people to gain practical experience in AI tools and technologies. This is also in the administration’s interest because AI has the potential to increase GDP by £550 billion over the next decade.
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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.
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For years, the artificial intelligence industry operated under a philosophy of rapid innovation. Whilst this benefits sectors like healthcare, the initial wave of optimism surrounding generative models is giving way to a challenging reality. Numerous national security agencies and research bodies are issuing warnings regarding the potential for these models to be weaponized.
At the heart of this warning is the realization that large language models do more than process text - they democratize technical knowledge and act as decision makers rather than tools. In the wrong hands, this capability can be applied to malicious cyber operations and the subversion of critical digital infrastructure.
Historically, executing sophisticated cyberattacks required years of specialized technical expertise in exploit development and network intrusion. Today, artificial intelligence bridges the knowledge gap for individuals who lack formal training but possess malicious intent.
Recent assessments by international security bodies, such as the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, highlight that the emergence of data driven molecular design models means that those with limited expertise can bypass monitoring from regulatory frameworks.
New frontier AI models such as Mythos could theoretically identify alternate synthetic pathways to design toxic chemicals using ordinary laboratory reagents.
Within enterprise environments, the exposure of software supply chains and cloud infrastructure also remains an acute vulnerability. Third party applications account for a high percentage of emerging security risks, and modern enterprise operations rely on a web of digital service providers and data aggregators that were barely visible a short time ago.
Every vendor represents a potential point of entry, and a single compromised credential at a small third party service provider can grant an attacker the freedom of lateral movement within a corporate or government network.
Current public skepticism is a response to the lack of transparency in how these frontier models are trained, monitored, and integrated. Companies developing models have a responsibility to ensure that their innovations do not compromise the stability of public systems.
This requires a commitment to the responsible deployment of these tools, prioritizing national security and architectural resilience over speed to market. The industry must move away from generic statements and focus on explicit, verifiable security practices.
A new framework for technological visibilityOrganizations must adopt a rigorous approach to machine visibility and network defense. Traditional perimeter focused security tools are insufficient - defensive structures must shift toward continuous internal monitoring.
This means analyzing east west traffic within an organization network to scrutinize communications between systems and understand normal data flow patterns. Anomalies must become immediately apparent so security operations teams can act before an intrusion escalates.
Response times must also collapse. The traditional multi week window that attackers enjoy gives automated threats too much leeway to cause damage. Modern network detection and response platforms shrink attacker dwell times by identifying suspicious machine behavior in real time.
Because systems prefer structured layouts and consistent schemas, defender tools must leverage network telemetry to track how these models interact with internal data stores. Security teams need to see exactly how data is being processed, ensuring that unauthorized models are not mapping corporate assets.
Governments are responding to this reality with updated legislation, such as the strengthening of national cybersecurity laws in the UK. These updates expand the scope of statutory regulations to include essential digital service providers, managed service providers, and data centers.
Tougher penalties raise the cost of non compliance, and mandatory incident reporting requires organizations to alert regulators within tight windows, often 24 hours. These legislative changes acknowledge what technical experts have warned about for years - that cybersecurity breaches on critical infrastructure are a national security threat.
Breaches and automated attempts at exploitation are inevitable. The industry must treat advanced software infrastructure with the same level of caution as critical physical assets. In a world where automated systems can orchestrate complex network intrusions, the move towards more comprehensive security measures is essential.
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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.
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If I'm going to watch yet another movie or TV show about a mafia-style gang in New York — because why bother in the wake of The Godfather and The Sopranos, right? — I want to come away from it having learned something new.
New MGM+ crime drama The Westies achieved this at conception, because I didn't know the first thing about the real-life Irish-American crime family of the same name. In fact, I didn't even know that they existed. But sure enough, they were known for racketeering, drug trafficking, and contract killing in Hell's Kitchen from 1960s-1980s.
I know what you're thinking: isn't Hell's Kitchen exactly where the Italian-American mob operated from in New York City. You'd be right in thinking that, and it's one of the main sources of dramatic tension across the show's eight-episode run.
Add in the fact that an FBI team has been tasked with tracking down our fictional version, led by family patriarch Eamonn Sweeney (J.K. Simmons), and you've got a proper old-school cat-and-mouse chase.
Interestingly, the biggest pro and con of The Westies is almost the same thing. While you're streaming it, you're engrossed — the storytelling itself is solid, dependable and superficially fun. But from the moment you switch it off, it will be completely erased from your mind.
Fans complained The Westies would be too tame just from the trailer — and I think they were rightAfter the above trailer for The Westies was released, I couldn't help but notice that the overwhelming fan response was to criticize scenes for being "too tame" compared to what mob behavior would have been like at the time.
Now that I've watched the entire season, I have to agree. Even if you don't know the story of the Westies, you're tuning into a gangster crime show expecting a severe level of violence — or even just an overarching sense of nasty brutality.
Of course, blood, guts and gore don't make a story any better objectively, but come on... we're trying to have some fun here. On top of that, it's difficult to invest in something new if you feel as though it is holding back, especially if it's aiming for a second season and beyond.
Still, the core storytelling is both engaging and well constructed. As Eamonn Sweeney's cronies face off against the local Italian-Americans, you're as engrossed in the inevitably fatal outcome as much as you are the complicated family dynamics.
The cast is stronger than its story(Image credit: MGM+)Bosch star Titus Welliver plays our ragged FBI lead Glenn Keenan, with an 80s "pornstache" so commanding that it might as well have had its own acting credit. When you can get past the facial accessories, you know you're in good hands... once Harry Bosch, always Harry Bosch, if you get what I mean.
If anything, I wish we had more of Simmons himself on screen. Sweeney isn't exactly the Don Corleone type, but it feels as though Simmons has somehow been a mobster boss in a former life. If you're selling him as number one on the call sheet, let's see that translated in each episode, please.
Really, I'm looking for holes when there aren't any — or at least I'm ripping tiny damaged flecks in the story's fabric into gaping tears. Because we've been so spoiled by shows such as Peaky Blinders and MobLand in recent years, we have to hold everything that comes after to an incredibly high standard.
Truthfully, The Westies just doesn't meet it. Not because there's anything wrong per se, but because the competition is so tough. It's kind of like studying really hard for an exam knowing you're going to get creamed by the kids who are naturally better at the same subject. Thems the breaks, so just enjoy the ride while it lasts.
The Westies begins airing on MGM+ from July 12.
Let’s face it, 2026 — with its component price hikes, sweeping layoffs, cancellations, expensive AAA titles, and Sony’s promise to stop making physical games — has been something of a year of Ls. But one of the few lights in this darkness, and game of the year contender, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies just announced brand new content is dropping: it’s a tabletop version of its gameplay, and it’s totally free.
If you head over to one-shot site you’ll find everything you need to get started including a simple core rulebook and a One Shot story set in the Zero Parades world 30 years before the events of the game.
The One Shot comes with everything you need to play your first session including location maps, premade characters, GM materials (to help whoever is running things) and adapted rules that bring the game’s mechanics to life in TTRPG form.
Scratching the itchAnyone who has played Zero Parades: For Dead Spies or its spiritual predecessor Disco Elysium will have already felt the TTRPG inspired elements — all challenges in the games are already presented as dice rolls.
Just like in Zero Parades the pen and paper game has the same stats and Faculties — Action, Relation, Intellect — which determine how capable your character should be at certain actions, as well as details on how you can exert yourself to increase your odds of success — at the cost of raising your Fatigue, Anxiety, or Delirium respectively.
You also find items of clothing you can equip to make your stats better (and sometimes also worse), or tools which unlock actions like a camera allowing you to snap photos to use later — or to remember a sick spy moment you just pulled off, the decision is all yours.
As a major fan of both TTRPGs like Dungeons and Dragons and of Zero Parades I had been thinking of adapting the digital gameplay into something pen and paper for my regular playgroup. With this free release I don’t need to do any work at all — though I love there are the resources to create your own adventure and stories if you want to move away form the premade One Shot.
(Image credit: ZA/UM)Zero Parades: For Dead Spies is everything you’d want from a follow-up to Disco Elysium. It keeps the post-Soviet vibes and aesthetics with a whole new story and setting. The gameplay is very similar too, with a few updates that fine-tune mechanics in a way that feels better and yet utterly familiar.
There’s also that general and gradually growing weirdness that made Disco Elysium so much of a joy to play through.
So many people I know who loved Disco Elysium had no clue Zero Parades is a thing they can play, and the perfect game to scratch the itch Disco Elysium leaves you with.
Plus if you’re reading this article the day it comes out the full Zero Parades: For Dead Spies game is 10%-off for everyone, and 20% off for owners of Disco Elysium in the Steam Summer Sale. What are you waiting for? Go and play it!
As of this week, the European Commission has stated that all new vehicles registered in the European Union will have to be fitted with Advanced Driver Distraction Warning (ADDW) systems to comply with new, more stringent safety legislation.
While European roads are among the safest in the world, the European Commission said in its announcement that "the number of deaths and injuries from road accidents is still too high." As a result, it is set to expand its General Safety Regulation to include several new requirements.
Among the new requirements are advanced emergency braking systems that detect pedestrians and cyclists, as well as "better forward vision" and camera-based driver distraction technology that audibly warns drivers to pay attention to the road.
Many new cars already feature this technology, which uses a small camera mounted behind the steering wheel or somewhere above the infotainment system in the center of the dashboard.
Constantly active, the system monitors the driver's eyes and facial expressions, intervening if it detects that the driver is looking away from the road for too long.
(Image credit: DS Automobiles)Today's manufacturers' systems range from audible bleeps and on-screen safety notifications when it detects distraction, to the deactivation of automated cruise control and other functions.
Critics have already hit out at the decision, with the European Conservative describing the commission's move as the "latest annoying piece of EU overregulation," which arrives with little clarification on how the data will be handled.
These ADDW systems should operate in a closed-loop system, where all data is processed locally in the car and never uploaded to any third-party server.
However, since April 2018, all newly approved passenger cars and light vans in the EU have been required to include an eCall emergency system that automatically contacts emergency services in the event of a serious crash.
This, coupled with the fact that consulting firm McKinsey predicts that 95% of all vehicles will be connected to the internet by 2030, means it isn't a huge stretch to think that driver-monitoring data could eventually leave the vehicle.
Analysis: a data privacy nightmare(Image credit: Volkswagen)Analysis by Mozilla in 2023 examined the privacy policies of 25 car brands and found that every single one failed to meet its own privacy and security standards. Mozilla concluded that cars were "the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy."
In 2024, the Texas Attorney General opened an investigation into several automakers following reports that they had been collecting large amounts of driver data and selling it to third parties.
As the European Conservative points out, there is currently very little clarity from the EU over how driver data is handled, meaning there is the potential for these systems to eventually help determine insurance premiums or act as evidence in a court of law, for example.
Beyond this, ADDW technology can also prove extremely distracting when implemented poorly.
I've lost count of how many times a system has warned me to pay attention when all I'm doing is trying to find a simple function in a baffling series of touchscreen menus.
On the one hand, Euro NCAP says it will target "annoying" safety tech, but on the other, the European Union is mandating greater reliance on these systems. Now is a confusing time to be a motorist.
The Asus ProArt GeForce RTX 5090 32GB GDDR7 OC Edition is a specialised flagship GPU built for a niche audience and isn’t going to appeal to those looking for a premium upgrade for a gaming build. It’s aimed at creators, AI users and compact workstation builders who want full RTX 5090 performance without the bulk of larger 3.5 or 4 slot coolers.
The ProArt uses the normal RTX 5090 spec: 21,760 CUDA cores, 32GB of 28Gbps GDDR7 on a 512-bit bus and PCIe 5.0 support. The card has a 2482MHz default clock and a 2512MHz OC mode, and a 1000W power supply is recommended.
The 32GB of VRAM helps when rendering, running larger AI models or heavily modded 4K games would exceed the memory available on lower-tier cards. The ports — HDMI 2.1b, DisplayPort 2.1b and USB-C — give excellent monitor setup flexibility.
The 304 x 140 x 50mm, 2.5-slot SFF-ready design is a key selling point, as most flagship RTX 5090 cards are much chunkier, while the slimmer ProArt leaves more room for nearby expansion cards, side-panel clearance and power-cable routing.
Installation is straightforward: a 1-to-4 adapter is included and the 16-pin socket on the card is angled back for easy cable routing, plus the included adjustable GPU support can be used to help prevent sag.
Build quality is top-notch, with no obvious flex, and the GPU avoids gamer-style RGB lighting in favour of a subdued creator/workstation look with brown wood-patterned laminate trim and subtle ProArt gold markings.
Cooling is provided by two large Axial-tech fans, a vapour chamber, liquid metal on the GPU and a double-vented backplate. In OC mode, the GPU peaked at 76°C and memory at 86°C, with a 36dB peak sound level, which is reasonable for a slimmer RTX 5090 cooler. Unfortunately there was noticeable coil whine under heavy loads, and at times it was louder than the fans.
Standard mode was about 5% cooler and 6% quieter, but most importantly, barely slower, while Quiet mode was about 7% cooler and 6% quieter than OC mode, but gave around 2% less performance.
placeholder image (Image credit: Future)Overall performance is excellent, as expected from an overclocked RTX 5090. OC mode was about 3% faster than a stock RTX 5090, around 45% to 50% ahead of the RTX 5080 in compute loads, and up to 60% in gaming. The improvement is most obvious at 4K, in ray tracing and compute-heavy workloads.
The coil whine is frustrating given this is a card designed for creators, though it’s not so bad that you’d hear it outside a well-designed closed case.
Otherwise, the ProArt RTX 5090 OC Edition does a difficult job well. Yes, it’s expensive and specialised, but its slimmer design, quiet fans, 32GB of GDDR7 and top-end performance make it a capable choice for creators and high-end builders who can use what it offers.
That said, unless you can find it at a compelling price, it faces stiff competition from slim RTX 5090 cards that use AIO water cooling.
Asus ProArt RTX 5090: Price & availabilityplaceholder image (Image credit: Future)The Asus ProArt RTX 5090 is available now, retailing for about $4,099 / £3,799 / AU$6,499 depending on the region and retailer. That makes it around the typical price for a premium RTX 5090, though it sits above many cheaper air-cooled cards with the same spec.
While the ProArt would always be an expensive card, AI data centre demand has really pushed up prices, so it’s a tough sell unless you really need the features.
The premium price mostly gets you the compact ProArt design rather than a big performance uplift. You still get the full RTX 5090 spec, a mild factory overclock, 32GB of GDDR7, USB-C display output, a slimmer 2.5-slot cooler and a three-year warranty.
The main competition is from other RTX 5090 cards, and if you don’t need the SFF-ready form factor, cheaper air-cooled models will get you very similar core performance for less, while larger premium or all-in-one (AIO) water-cooled RTX 5090 cards may offer lower temperatures, less noise or more overclocking headroom for similar money.
If the compact creator-focused GPU is perfect for your next build, the ProArt may be a compelling buy. If you just want the cheapest route to RTX 5090 performance, wait for the price to come down a little, or look at alternatives.
Asus ProArt RTX 5090
Stock RTX 5090
RTX 5080
Process Node
TSMC 4N
TSMC 4N
TSMC 4N
Transistor Count (Billion)
92.2
92.2
45.6
CUDA cores
21,760
21,760
10,752
RT cores
170
170
84
Tensor Cores
680
680
336
Render Output Units
176
176
112
Cache (MB)
96
96
64
Boost Clock (MHz)
2,482 default / 2,512 OC
2,410
2,620
Memory Speed (Gbps)
28
28
30
Memory Type
GDDR7
GDDR7
GDDR7
Memory Pool (GB)
32
32
16
Memory Interface (bits)
512
512
256
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s)
1,792
1,792
960
PCIe Interface
5.0 x16
5.0 x16
5.0 x16
TBP (W)
575
575
360
Recommended PSU (W)
1,000
1,000
850
Power Connector
1 x 16-pin, 1-to-4 adapter
1 x 16-pin, 1-to-4 adapter
1 x 16-pin, 1-to-3 adapter
The ProArt design is the main reason to choose this particular RTX 5090 over a more conventional option. Asus has kept the card to 304 x 140 x 50mm (12.0 x 5.5 x 2.0in) and a 2.5-slot thickness, which is much easier to work with than the very large 3.5-slot and 4-slot RTX 5090 designs.
It’s also SFF-ready, which means it fits Nvidia’s size guidelines for small-form-factor enthusiast builds rather than just being smaller than average. That doesn’t make it a tiny GPU, but it does mean the ProArt is built to work in more compact cases that support SFF-ready graphics cards, as well as larger systems where you want more room for other expansion cards or easier airflow.
Visually, it avoids the usual gaming-card look. The brown wood-patterned laminate trim and small ProArt gold details give it a more subdued workstation feel, and there’s no RGB lighting to worry about.
Cooling is handled by two large Axial-tech fans, a vapor chamber, liquid metal on the GPU and a double-vented backplate. That’s a decent cooling setup for a thinner RTX 5090, though the slimmer cooler does mean it has less heatsink volume than some of the much larger cards.
FutureFutureThe card includes a dual BIOS switch for Performance and Quiet modes, a solid backplate and an adjustable GPU holder in the box. The 16-pin power connector is angled back toward the end of the card, which helps cable routing, but you’ll still need to be careful with bend clearance, especially in smaller cases.
Overall, the design feels practical, premium and nicely understated, but it only really makes sense if you specifically need a thinner RTX 5090.
FutureFutureFutureFutureThe Asus ProArt RTX 5090 is at its best when you look beyond gaming and treat it as a compact high-end creator card. In Geekbench 6 Compute and Blender, it performs at the level expected for a tuned RTX 5090, with small but useful gains over the stock RTX 5090.
The gap is much bigger against older or lower-tier cards. Across the compute tests, the ProArt was about 50% ahead of the RTX 5080 on average, and around 40% ahead of the RTX 4090. The RTX 4090 is still a very capable GPU, but the ProArt’s combination of 32GB of faster GDDR7 and Blackwell architecture gives it a clear advantage in compute workloads and makes it a worthwhile upgrade.
While not the focus, gaming is still excellent, as you’d expect from an RTX 5090. Cyberpunk 2077 reached 98fps at 4K using Ultra Ray Tracing and balanced scaling, while Black Myth: Wukong hits 88fps at 4K with ray tracing, Cinematic settings and 50% upscaling. So while not the point of the ProArt, it’s a very capable gaming card.
FutureFutureFutureThermals are quite good for a slim RTX 5090. The ProArt peaked at 75°C, which is much warmer than larger 5090s with aftermarket cooling, which typically run about 10°C cooler. The VRAM reached 86°C, which is again higher than most 5090s but not in any way problematic.
Fan noise was also very low, with the ProArt peaking at just 36dB in my testing. That’s about the same as 5090s with big coolers.
All in all, Asus has done a good job tuning the ProArt to keep performance high and fan noise under control, even if that means letting temperatures sit a little higher than some larger cards. That trade-off is perfectly fine for a 2.5-slot RTX 5090, and the GPU and VRAM temperatures stay well within reasonable limits.
The catch is coil whine, which is an electrical buzz caused by components vibrating under heavy power load, rather than the fans themselves. In fact, most of the time it's louder than the fans themselves.
Some coil whine isn’t unusual on very high-power graphics cards, but it’s still disappointing on a premium creator-focused model where low noise is a key selling point.
Benchmark resultsAsus ProArt RTX 5090
Stock RTX 5090
RTX 5080 OC
Synthetic Benchmarks
3DMark Steel Nomad
14,440
14,430
8,743
3DMark Speed Way
14,366
14,560
9,435
3DMark Port Royal
38,501
36,310
22,021
Compute benchmarks
GeekBench 6 Compute (OpenGL)
391,245
383,000
275,612
GeekBench 6 Compute (Vulkan)
408,212
355,000
259,633
Blender (aggregate score)
4,551
4,440
3,001
Thermals / noise
Peak GPU temp
76°C
72°C
67°C
Peak VRAM temp
86°C
89°C
70°C
Idle temp
43°C
35°C
45°C
Peak sound level
36dB
50dB
38dB
Gaming (average fps)
Cyberpunk 2077 - 4K
98
94
50
Black Myth: Wukong 4K
88
84
55
Cyberpunk 2077: Ultra Ray Tracing, balanced scaling
Black Myth: Wukong: Ray Tracing, Cinematic, 50% upscaling
Category
Notes
Score
Value
Very expensive but on par with other premium RTX 5090s.
3.5 / 5
Specs
A 5090 GPU with 32GB of GDDR7, USB-C display output and a mild OC mode.
4 / 5
Design
The 2.5-slot build and understated styling suit compact creator PCs.
4.5 / 5
Performance
Solid performance overall, with low fan noise and temps kept under control. The coil whine is frustrating though.
4 / 5
Final score
A capable specialised RTX 5090 for compact high-end builds, but the high price and coil whine keep it from being an easy recommendation for everyone.
4 / 5
Buy the Asus ProArt RTX 5090 if...You want RTX 5090 performance in a slimmer build
The ProArt is easier to fit than many oversized flagship cards, while still giving you the mighty RTX 5090 GPU and 32GB of GDDR7.
You want a creator-friendly card
The subdued design, USB-C display output and included GPU holder make it a better match for a compact workstation or high-end creator PC.
You just want the best-value RTX 5090
Cheaper RTX 5090 cards will get you very similar performance if you don’t need the ProArt size or features like the USB-C output.
Coil whine will bother you
Fan noise was low, but coil whine was very noticeable under heavy load, so it’s best in a case that insulates sound well.
Here are the specs on the system I used for testing:
Motherboard: MSI Z890 Tomahawk Wi-Fi
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 285K
CPU Cooler: Corsair Titan 360 RX
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5 (2 x 16GB)
SSD: Samsung 9100 Pro
PSU: Corsair HX1000
Case: Thermaltake Core P3 TG Pro
I spent about a week with the Asus ProArt RTX 5090, testing it in OC mode and comparing it against other high-end cards. The main comparisons were stock RTX 5090 and RTX 4090 performance and the Asus ROG Astral RTX 5080 OC.
I used 3DMark for synthetic performance, Geekbench 6 Compute and Blender for creator workloads, and games including Cyberpunk 2077 and Black Myth: Wukong for real-world gaming results.
Looking for a coffee machine that serves up a delicious espresso but won’t break the bank? Look no further than the Philips Baristina. This adorable, cost-friendly bean-to-cup machine currently holds the spot for the best budget coffee machine in Australia, and it’s now even cheaper in the Prime Day sales — just AU$418.99.
My colleague Cat Ellis couldn’t have been more positive in her Philips Baristina review, and she loved the fact it combines the best of bean-to-cup machines, with the convenience of capsule machines.
It handles all aspects of the coffee-making process — grinding, dosing, tamping and brewing, so you barely need to lift a finger. What’s more, it puts on a bit of a show, as it will automatically slide the portafilter into position once it's finished grinding and tamping. It’s unlike any other coffee machine I’ve come across.
The best entry-level bean-to-cup coffee maker was already amazing value, and this 30% discount makes it even more incredible. If you were thinking of buying a compact espresso machine on Prime Day, you won’t find better than this.
Also available in white for the same price.View Deal
When Philips announced the Baristina, it certainly piqued my interest. My colleague Cat was able to get her hands on a unit first though, inflaming my jealousy.
What drew me to the compact machine was its simplicity. Once you’ve loaded in some beans and filled the water tank, just push the portafilter handle into its slot and slide it to the right. Select which drink you want — it can only brew a 40ml espresso or a 110ml lungo — and the machine will get to work grinding the perfect quantity of coffee into the filter basket and tamping it down.
Ensuring the whole process is as hands-off as possible, the machine will then slide the handle to the left and dispense the coffee into your cup.
It even helps with cleaning, as once your coffee has finished pouring, the handle will release so you can pull it free and knock out the grounds.
FutureFutureFutureFutureI also love the look of the Baristina, in either its white or black guises it’s very modern. Do note that there’s no steam wand on this machine, but there is a matching Baristina Milk Frother. I do have this and use it daily to froth oat milk, perfect for lattes and cappuccinos. It’s also on sale right now during Prime Day.
The only negative Cat could find with the Philips Baristina is that it doesn’t let you adjust the grind size, so you'll have to choose beans that work with the machine's default settings. There’s no real guidance on this in the user manual, so it may require some trial and error. If your coffee tastes under- or over-extracted then you'll need to try a different bean.
Otherwise, there’s very little to find fault with the Baristina. It looks great, works a charm and brews a delicious espresso, all for an affordable price. What more could you ask for?
A camera roughly the size of a small car has begun the most ambitious astronomical survey ever attempted from Earth.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, perched atop Cerro Pachón in northern Chile, officially started its Legacy Survey of Space and Time.
Every 40 seconds throughout the night, the 6,600-pound instrument captures a new image using its 3200-megapixel sensor, the largest digital camera ever built.
A decade-long cosmic recording beginsOver the coming decade, the camera will return to each patch of sky roughly 800 times, building a living record of celestial change.
Željko Ivezić, head of LSST, said the launch followed extensive system optimization and a careful review of technical readiness across multiple performance measures.
"Important factors that played a role in this decision included image quality, effective survey speed, system uptime and reliability, and calibration accuracy," Ivezić said.
The $800 million observatory is jointly funded by the US National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy's Office of Science.
“Today, we begin filming the greatest cosmic movie ever made…This moment reflects decades of vision, innovation and the power of federal investment,” said Brian Stone of the US National Science Foundation
Each night, the camera collects approximately 10 TB of data while generating as many as seven million alerts flagging changes across the sky.
During early optimization surveys lasting roughly six weeks, Rubin already discovered more than 11,000 previously unseen asteroids, including 33 near-Earth objects.
Mapping dark matter and the solar systemScientists intend to use the completed dataset to build a new inventory of the solar system and the Milky Way galaxy.
The survey will also help researchers examine dark matter by studying the distorted light of distant background galaxies.
Bob Blum, director of the Rubin Observatory at NSF NOIRLab, said the project follows more than two decades of sustained engineering and scientific effort.
"Rubin Observatory is for everyone; the LSST will change how we do astronomy and astrophysics," Blum said.
Phil Marshall, deputy director of Rubin Operations for SLAC, noted that millions of alerts generated in recent months already demonstrate the system functioning as a genuine discovery machine.
Once complete, the final dataset will contain billions of astronomical objects and trillions of individual measurements, according to the observatory.
This data will be released regularly, marking the first time such a comprehensive astronomical archive becomes publicly accessible to researchers and the public alike.
“Rubin is bringing the universe to life, illuminating a treasure trove of discoveries: pulsating stars, supernova explosions, the fossil record of galaxies, clues to the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter, and entirely new phenomena never seen before,” the observatory team said.
A new NYT Connections puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Connections hints and answers for Thursday, July 9 (game #1124).
Good morning! Let's play Connections, the NYT's clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.
What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc's Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.
NYT Connections today (game #1125) - today's words(Image credit: New York Times)Today's NYT Connections words are…
What are some clues for today's NYT Connections groups?
Need more clues?
We're firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today's NYT Connections puzzles…
NYT Connections today (game #1125) - hint #2 - group answersWhat are the answers for today's NYT Connections groups?
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.
NYT Connections today (game #1125) - the answers(Image credit: New York Times)The answers to today's Connections, game #1125, are…
There were a number of fashion links among today's tiles: A LA MODE, of course, STRIKE A POSE — which features in Madonna’s Vogue — BALL GOWN, and DEPECHE MODE, which was the name of a French fashion magazine.
What caught me out, however, was the SMARTPHONE SETTINGS, as I originally included SAFE MODE instead of DO NOT DISTURB.
Today’s game also featured my two favorite bands — PET SHOP BOYS and NEW ORDER, both of whom joined forces in the 1990s with Electronic and who still tour together occasionally.
Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Thursday, July 9, 2026, game #1124)NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.
On the plus side, you don't technically need to solve the final one, as you'll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What's more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.
It's a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.
It's playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.
A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Thursday, July 9 (game #858).
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 #859) - hint #1 - today's themeWhat is the theme of today's NYT Strands?• Today's NYT Strands theme is… I think…
NYT Strands today (game #859) - hint #2 - clue wordsPlay any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.
• Spangram has 11 letters
NYT Strands today (game #859) - hint #4 - spangram positionWhat are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?• First side: left, 1st row
• Last side: right, 6th row
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.
NYT Strands today (game #859) - the answers(Image credit: New York Times)The answers to today's Strands, game #859, are…
Is it possible to look at today’s theme and not say to yourself “... therefore I am”? Apparently it is, because the words that complete “I think…” here were instead the more seemingly everyday “we can make it”.
Thinking that I was missing out on some cultural reference point I googled all of today’s game words, along with the spangram, and the AI result claimed that all the words feature in the 17th-century Irish Jacobite love song, Mo Ghile Mear (My Gallant Hero). And there was me thinking it was from Ted Lasso or a Taylor Swift song I’d not heard of.
Despite my ignorance I was able to navigate the game without using any hints.
Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Thursday, July 9, game #858)Strands is the NYT's not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable that has been running for a year and which 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.
A new Quordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Thursday's puzzle instead then click here: Quordle hints and answers for Thursday, July 9 (game #1627).
Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.
Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.
Quordle today (game #1628) — hint #1 — VowelsHow many different vowels are in Quordle today?• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 3*.
* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).
Quordle today (game #1628) — hint #2 — repeated lettersDo any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 1.
Quordle today (game #1628) — hint #3 — uncommon lettersDo the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.
Quordle today (game #1628) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 0.
If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:
Quordle today (game #1628) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?• G
• S
• D
• H
Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.
Quordle today (game #1628) — the answers(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)The answers to today's Quordle, game #1628, are…
It took me a while to realize that my final word must have two letter Es.
But after getting that right I made the error of believing it had a rare letter too.
Fortunately I had enough lines left to survive my impulsiveness.
Daily Sequence today (game #1628) — the answers(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1628, are…