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Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for July 2.

• Report finds business AI adoption is exploding, but most companies are skipping the hard work of preparation
• Leadership teams are failing to align on AI priorities, leaving strategies fractured and confused
• AI is only as good as the data behind it, and most data strategies are missing

The surge in artificial intelligence adoption has sparked comparisons to the cloud boom of the past decade, but while usage is growing rapidly, understanding remains shallow, new research has claimed.

A Hostinger report found almost 80% of companies now use or plan to use AI, but a seperate Adecco Group report claims only 10% of C-suite leaders believe their organizations are fully ready for the disruption AI brings.

Among the estimated 359 million companies worldwide, about 280 million now integrate AI into at least one function.

AI adoption accelerates, but strategy and structure lag behind

A growing number of small businesses are turning to the best AI tools to handle tasks like writing emails, analyzing data, or generating content.

Larger companies may build out full teams for implementation, but smaller firms are quietly transforming operations using lean, sometimes improvised, approaches.

Still, readiness doesn’t follow adoption, and there is a worrying gap in strategy, as although 60% of leaders expect workers to update their skills, 34% of companies have no formal AI policy.

Adecco found over half of CEOs admit their teams struggle to align on priorities, and only a third of businesses are investing in data infrastructure that would help close these gaps.

However, a small group of “future-ready” companies is building more responsive strategies by supporting continuous learning and relying on enterprise-wide insight to shape their AI direction.

Adecco’s CEO, Denis Machuel, puts it plainly: “AI-driven transformation must be human-centric.”

Many companies rush into AI adoption without understanding what differentiates them, resulting in scattered or redundant projects.

“Without enterprise-wide insight, AI efforts become siloed and misaligned. Enterprise Architecture can help focus AI initiatives on what truly sets a company apart,” Stendera explains.

By mapping their unique strengths and workflows, organizations can guide AI deployments that reinforce strategic priorities rather than dilute them.

AI depends not just on investment, but on introspection, and it is not a magic fix - and if companies do not understand what they need from AI, they won’t know how to use it, and the result will be catastrophic.

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California is leading 20 state attorneys general in a lawsuit seeking to block health officials from further sharing Medicaid data and DHS from using it for immigration enforcement.

(Image credit: Jeff Chiu)

With a shaky truce between Israel and Iran holding, activists say the Iranian government is hunting for people it suspects of collaborating with Israel. Iranian state media reports hundreds have been taken into custody in the last two weeks and some are fleeing into neighboring countries, including Turkey. We hear from some.

And, during the air war with Israel, one young Iranian woman turned to Chat GPT for information and comfort.

An MIT study found that using gen AI to write an essay kind of defeated the purpose of writing an essay.

A new study looks at lives saved by USAID in the past and what the future without the agency will look like.

(Image credit: Michel Lunanga)

Kohberger had originally pleaded not guilty, and his attorneys have suggested they wanted try to pursue explore the idea of "alternate perpetrators" during the trial.

(Image credit: Kai Eiselein)

Tennessee's new laws on immigration already face court challenges. Other states are changing gun laws or imposing new restrictions on transgender people.

(Image credit: George Walker IV)

Planes equipped with Starlink now get enough internet speed for online gaming, videoconferencing and 4K video streaming.

• Streams 4K video, backs up your phone, and still skips cloud storage entirely
• The TerraMaster F4 SSD promises home privacy, but may offload all maintenance responsibility onto the user
• Up to 32TB of SSD speed sounds impressive, but your router might bottleneck it

As local storage continues to evolve, some brands now offer compact network-attached systems that emphasize privacy, speed, and media versatility.

The TerraMaster F4 SSD provides support for up to 32TB of SSD storage using four 8TB SSDs, and supports file systems such as EXT4, BTRFS, exFAT, and NTFS.

It bypasses the need for cloud-based platforms by incorporating hardware-level encryption and data segregation for over 20 user accounts.

Performance metrics meet household use cases

The device is powered by a quad-core ARM-based Rockchip RK3568 processor clocked at up to 2.0GHz, with hardware decoding support for H.264 and H.265 codecs and resolutions up to 4K@60fps.

It also features 8GB of DDR4 RAM, expandable to 32GB using two SODIMM slots.

Network capabilities include a 2.5GbE port and a 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C interface, while HDMI 2.0 offers 4K display output.

TerraMaster F4 SSD can also stream to TVs and tablets using standard protocols like uPnP and DLNA, and support for media servers such as Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby suggests it will be compatible with the majority of home setups.

The F4 SSD is built around a 5G Ethernet port, reportedly offering speeds up to five times faster than standard Gigabit connections, supporting high-throughput scenarios.

However, in practical terms, users will likely be limited by the speed of their broader home network, not just the NAS hardware.

Software features include backup tools (including cloud sync and snapshot), AI photo management, VPN server, and remote access via TNAS.online, which enables downloads and uploads through the cloud.

Security features include TRAID, a flexible array system that optimizes space while providing redundancy.

It also supports RAID 0/1/5/6/10, JBOD, and includes tools such as S.M.A.R.T., bad block scan, SSD trim, and hot spare management.

TerraMaster’s SPC control system is another layer that restricts app access based on verified permissions.

The F4 SSD also allows bi-directional syncing with cloud platforms like Google Drive and Dropbox.

This hybrid capability, while useful, may seem counterintuitive in a product designed to replace cloud reliance.

The NAS also features tool-free SSD installation with a drawer-style enclosure, making drive upgrades accessible to beginners.

Cooling is handled by a quiet convection fan system, reportedly keeping standby noise around 19dB, like the TerraMaster D4 SSD. Such silence may be beneficial in noise-sensitive environments like home studios or bedrooms.

The system operates on TOS 6.0 and supports up to 128 user accounts, 128 user groups, and 8 shared folder sync tasks.

This makes it suitable for advanced home users or small studios needing high-speed, private data access.

The TerraMaster F4 SSD is ambitious in scope, but its value will depend on whether users make full use of its features.

Via TechPowerUp

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Tuesday night's aurora is expected to be stronger than Wednesday's.

The company is also upgrading its entire fleet with a new generative AI model.

• Experts warn emails sent with sensitive data are still getting delivered unencrypted, and no one gets notified
• Microsoft 365 sends email in plain text when encryption fails, without alerting the user at all
• Google Workspace still uses insecure TLS 1.0 and 1.1 without warning senders or rejecting messages

Most users assume that emails sent through cloud services are encrypted and secure by default, but this might not always be the case, new research has claimed.

A report from Paubox found Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace both mishandle these failures in ways that leave messages exposed, without notifying the sender or logging the failure.

“Using obsolete encryption provides a false sense of security because it seems as though sensitive data is protected, even though it really is not,” Paubox said.

Default settings quietly undermine encryption

The problem isn’t just a technical edge case; it stems from how these platforms are designed to operate under common conditions.

Google Workspace, the report found, will fall back to delivering messages using TLS 1.0 or 1.1 if the receiving server only supports those outdated protocols.

Microsoft 365 refuses to use deprecated TLS, but instead of bouncing the email or alerting the sender, it sends the message in plain text.

In both cases, the email is delivered, and no warning is issued.

These behaviors pose serious compliance risks, as in 2024, Microsoft 365 accounted for 43% of healthcare-related email breaches.

Meanwhile, 31.1% of breached healthcare entities had TLS misconfigurations, despite many of these organizations using “force TLS” settings to meet compliance requirements.

But as Paubox notes, forcing TLS does not guarantee encryption using secure versions like TLS 1.2 or 1.3, and fails silently when those conditions are not met.

The consequences of silent encryption failures are far-reaching - healthcare providers routinely send Protected Health Information (PHI) over email, assuming tools like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace offer strong protections.

In reality, neither platform enforces modern encryption when failures occur, and both risk violating HIPAA safeguards without detection.

Federal guidelines, including those from the NSA in the US, have long warned against TLS 1.0 and 1.1 due to vulnerabilities and downgrade risks.

Yet Google still allows delivery over those protocols, while Microsoft sends unencrypted emails without flagging the issue.

Both paths lead to invisible compliance failures - in one documented breach, Solara Medical Supplies paid more than $12 million after unencrypted emails exposed over 114,000 patient records.

Cases like this show why even the best FWAAS or ZTNA solution must work in concert with visible, enforceable encryption policies across all communication channels.

“Confidence without clarity is what gets organizations breached,” Paubox concluded.

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• China-backed "LapDogs" hackers hijacked hundreds of devices

The game is in desperate need of new shake-ups, and two fan-favorite heroes alongside some quality-of-life changes might just do the trick.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for July 2, No. 1,474.

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