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Here are hints and the answers for today’s NYT Connections puzzle No. 1,196 for Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026.

If you're looking for a quick upgrade to your home office setup, TP-Link's Archer AX21 is a good budget entry point into Wi-Fi 6, and it's discounted at Amazon as part of early Prime Day deals.

• Best for: Remote workers and families replacing an aging router with Wi-Fi 6 speeds without paying premium-router prices.

• The deal: The TP-Link Archer AX21 Wi-Fi 6 router is now $60 (was $90) at Amazon.

• Why it matters: This has long been a popular budget home networking upgrade, a dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router with four high-gain antennas and beamforming for stronger coverage, four Gigabit LAN ports for wired devices, and OneMesh compatibility if you want to add a range extender later.

AX1800 WiFi 6 Router: was $89.99 now $59.98
Key specs. Dual-band Wi-Fi 6 router capable of up to 1.8Gbps combined, four Gigabit Ethernet ports, OFDMA and MU-MIMO for handling multiple devices, OneMesh support for extending coverage, and WPA3 security.View Deal

Why we recommend it

The Archer AX21 has been one of the more consistently recommended budget Wi-Fi 6 routers for a few years now, and the appeal hasn't really changed. It brings the efficiency gains of Wi-Fi 6 (better performance in homes with lots of connected devices, not just faster top-line speeds) at a price that undercuts most other AX1800-class routers. Four Gigabit ports is generous for this price tier if you have wired devices like a games console or a NAS.

Price Context & Historical Value

At $59.98, this is $30 off the $89.99 list price, a roughly 33 percent discount as part of Amazon's early Prime Day deals. It isn't the router's all-time low, which has dipped closer to $47 during a previous sale, but it's a strong price if you need a router now and don't want to wait on a deeper cut.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the TP-Link Archer AX21 Wi-Fi 6 Router if...

You have several devices competing for bandwidth at once, or you want wired Gigabit ports for a console or NAS alongside decent wireless coverage.

❌ Skip the TP-Link Archer AX21 Wi-Fi 6 Router if...

You demand Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 for a faster 6GHz band.

• Check out more network deals at Amazon

Most phone batteries degrade faster than we want them to.

• America has finally admitted that its weapons are already operating in orbit
• Orbital jammers remain one possible explanation for America's undisclosed systems
• Kinetic weapons could create dangerous debris across already crowded orbital regions

The US has publicly acknowledged for the first time that it operates weapons in orbit, a declaration made during a defense conference near Washington.

No detail was offered about the systems' design, deployment date, testing record, or intended battlefield use.

That silence has left analysts to speculate about what the weapons actually are and how they might function.

No details provided

“We are not going to talk about the specifics of what we're doing, whether we've tested it, not tested it, or anything else,” said Troy Meink, Secretary of the Air Force.

The statement confirmed weapons exist in orbit while withholding almost every operational detail that would clarify their real capability.

“I would just say that the space environment is critical for military and economic security, and we need to make sure that the US can operate freely there,” Meink added.

The disclosure functioned more as a signal meant to unsettle rivals than as a genuine accounting of what the United States has actually built or deployed.

Space control, in military terms, spans a wide range of tools, including jammers, spoofers, lasers, and kinetic hardware.

Victoria Samson, chief director of space security at the Secure World Foundation, suggested orbital jammers likely match whatever system was referenced.

Kinetic weapons remain a less probable candidate given how much debris such an attack would generate for everyone in orbit.

That debris risk explains why American officials have long favoured non-destructive counterspace tools over ones capable of shattering a satellite outright.

Why Washington chose this moment

Russian and Chinese counterspace activity, much of it tied directly to ongoing conflicts, appears to have driven the timing of this admission.

Russian hackers disabled tens of thousands of modems tied to the Viasat network hours after the conflict in Ukraine started in 2022, crippling communications across parts of Europe.

Reports from February 2026 indicated two Russian satellites had likely intercepted signals from at least a dozen European spacecraft since that conflict began.

China's fleet exceeded 1,060 operational satellites by mid-2025, with hundreds dedicated to intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance work supporting its military planning.

A separate US assessment noted Russia launched a satellite in 2024 positioned near an American reconnaissance spacecraft, widely interpreted as counterspace testing.

With Russia and China, known rivals of the U.S., making strides, it is expected that the US will flex its muscles as a deterrent.

However, experts argue that the announcement does not carry enough weight to serve as warning to its rivals.

“It is too vague to have a meaningful deterrent value,” said Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project.

Effective deterrence, Swope argued, usually depends on adversaries understanding how and when a weapon might actually be used against them.

Neither Moscow nor Beijing has issued an immediate public response following the American disclosure.

Via Ars Technica

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max may be the first phones to go on sale under new Apple CEO John Ternus, but today’s launch hinted at even more hardware launches to come.

Ink tank printers are some of our favorites to test thanks to cheaper, easy-to-refill bottled ink. And that's what HP's Smart Tank 5003 offers, swapping pricey ink cartridges for refillable tanks, and it's currently discounted on Amazon with several years of ink already in the box.

• Best for: Families, students, or remote workers that print often and want to cut the long-term cost of ink.

• The deal: The HP Smart Tank 5003 wireless all-in-one ink tank printer is $170 (was $190) at Amazon

• Why we like it: There's a lot to like here. For the price, you get cartridge-free, refillable ink tank printer with up to 3 years' free in inside the box. On top of that, it's a three-in-one model that lets you print, copy, and scan, with wireless connectivity, and AI-capable features that help format and clean up documents printed from the web.

Smart Tank 5003: was $189.99 now $169.99
This is HP's 'best-for-home' ink tank printer, an all-in-one that lets you print, scan and copy, with high-capacity refillable tanks designed to undercut cartridge printers on long-term cost per page. We like the 3 years' free ink in the box as a bonus. View Deal

Why we recommend it

HP's Smart Tank line has consistently been one of the more dependable ways into cartridge-free printing, and the pitch is straightforward: pay more upfront for the printer, then spend far less refilling ink over its lifetime than you would replacing cartridges. The bundled multi-year ink supply removes one of the biggest early costs of switching to a tank printer, and having scan and copy built in makes this a genuine all-in-one rather than a print-only device. We haven't tested this exact model ourselves, but it shares its core tank design with other Smart Tank printers we've found reliable for everyday home use.

For more options, see our guide to the best home printers and best ink tank printers we've tested.

Price Context & Historical Value

At $169.99, this is $20 off the $189.99 list price, and it matches the best price we've tracked for this printer at Amazon rather than a temporary dip. It's a solid time to buy if you were already considering a tank printer for the household, home office, or dorm room.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the HP Smart Tank 5003 Wireless All-in-One Printer if...

You print often enough that ink cartridges are getting expensive, and you want scan and copy built into an affordable all-in-one.

❌ Skip the HP Smart Tank 5003 Wireless All-in-One Printer if...

You only print occasionally and cartridge cost isn't a real pain point, you need faster print speeds for high-volume office use.

• See more printer deals at Amazon.

Creality's K2 Combo pairs its fast, fully enclosed K2 3D printer with a Creality Filament System unit for automatic multicolor printing, and it's currently discounted at Amazon.

• Best for: Makers who want multicolor 3D printing without manually swapping filament spools mid-print.

• The deal: The Creality K2 Combo 3D printer is now $585 (was $649) at Amazon.

• Why it matters: One included CFS unit unlocks up to 16-color printing (expandable to four units), print speeds up to 600mm/s with 20,000mm/s² acceleration, a 300°C hardened steel nozzle for engineering filaments, smart auto-leveling, and an AI chamber camera for failure detection.

K2 Combo 3D Printer: was $649 now $584.09
The K2 Combo is a CoreXY-style enclosed 3D printer with direct drive extrusion, Wi-Fi connectivity, and a 260 x 260 x 260mm build volume, bundled with one Creality Filament System unit for multicolor printing out of the box.View Deal

Why we recommend it

Creality's K2 line has built a strong reputation in our tests, combining speed with genuine print quality rather than trading one for the other. We also like the enclosed frame makes it a safer bet than open-frame printers for ABS and other warping-prone filaments. The multicolor CFS system is the real selling point: it automates spool switching that would otherwise require pausing a print and manually feeding new filament, which saves meaningful time on detailed or multi-part models.

For more options, see our guide to the best 3D printers we've tested.

Price Context & Historical Value

At $584, this is $65 off the $649 list price, a modest but real discount rather than an inflated anchor. It's not the lowest we've tracked for the K2 Combo, which has dipped closer to $549 in past retailer promotions, so it's worth watching if you're not in a rush to buy.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the Creality K2 Combo 3D Printer if... you want multicolor printing without manual filament swaps, you're upgrading from an open-frame printer and want an enclosed chamber for tougher materials, or you value fast CoreXY print speeds for detailed or multi-part jobs.

❌ Skip the Creality K2 Combo 3D Printer if... you only print single-color models and don't need the CFS unit, you're tight on desk space (this is a large, enclosed machine), or you'd rather wait for a deeper discount given we haven't tested this exact SKU ourselves and it has dipped lower before.

• See other 3D printer deals at Amazon.

The president chalked the ban up to what he called unfavorable coverage, and he threatened that bans on other media companies could be coming.

(Image credit: Alex Brandon)

Here are hints and the answer for today’s NYT Wordle puzzle No. 1,918 for Saturday, Sept. 19, 2026.

Mundane world activities dilute the signature X-Files delight of Control, but when it hits, it hits.

The EU Kids Act would accelerate age verification plans and ban social media use for those under 13.

A Microsoft executive called OpenAI’s use of publishers’ material “the largest theft of labor in human history.”

• Zimperium zLabs discovered RedHat, a Chinese‑origin Android banking trojan with AI assistant
• AI interprets screen layouts in real‑time, enabling credential theft and bypassing app redesigns
• Distributed via third‑party stores, social media, malvertising, and SMS; persistence blocks uninstall attempts

There is an Android malware out there that comes with an AI assistant that tells it what to do. The assistant seems to be independent of the malware’s operator, allowing the tool to work without requiring the operators to be present in real-time.

The malware in question is called RedHat. It was discovered by security researchers Zimperium zLabs, who believe it is of Chinese origin. It is currently being distributed via third-party app stores, social media, malvertising, and SMS spam, and requires Android’s Accessibility permissions to work.

The malware itself is a typical banking trojan - it creates an invisible overlay every time the victim brings up a banking app, capturing login credentials and one-time passwords, and thus giving attackers direct control over people’s banking accounts.

AI-powered eyes

But what makes RedHat stand out from a sea of Android banking trojans is its AI-powered component. The model serves as a kind of remote “eyes and hands” for controlling the victim’s phone.

Usually, when criminals develop banking trojans, they need to code exact coordinates of the layout for it to work. They need to code where the password is entered, or where the login button is. If the banking app gets redesigned and changes its layout, the malware breaks.

With AI, that is no longer a problem. RedHat gets a picture of what’s on the screen, sends it to the AI assistant, which then instructs the malware on how to proceed.

"RatHat uses AI to intelligently navigate and control the device interface in real-time, making its operations more adaptable and harder for security software to detect than traditional, scripted automation," Zimperium explained.

The tool also has a few advanced persistence mechanisms, being capable of reinstalling deleted components, and intercepting the uninstall process to cancel it while displaying a fake error message to the victim.

So far, there is no word on who the targets are, or how many people might have been compromised.

Via BleepingComputer

An informal network of dialogues at think tanks and universities is bringing together experts from the U.S. and China to talk about the shared perils of AI — and possible paths forward.

New reporting finds the abduction of journalist Austin Tice was planned by the Syrian government for weeks.

I'm always on the look-out for the best home office gear and desk gadgets. And with Amazon launching its Early Prime Deals ahead of Prime Day on October 6-7, I've been digging through the sale to find the more interesting upgrades for home and office workspaces. Sure, we all want a nice wireless mouse, a mechanical keyboard, and a comfortable office chair. But I wanted to find the hidden gems that go beyond the basics, to create an office setup that's more tailored, efficient, and, dare I say it, a lot cooler.

Ugreen Uno 65W 3-Port USB-C Charger

Vivo Under Desk Keyboard Tray

ProtoArc Ergonomic Mouse Pad with Wrist Rest

Hoto 25-Piece Electric Screwdriver Kit

Elgato Stream Deck Neo with 8 Custom Keys

Lamicall 6 Pack Rotating Magnetic Cable Organizer

Wolfbox MF200 Compressed Air Duster

Brother P-Touch Handheld Bluetooth Label Maker

Ninja Single Serve Coffee Maker Combo Machine

Livho Blue Light Blocking Computer Glasses

InnoView 18.5in Dual Portable Monitor

Iniu Mini Portable Charger 10KmAH

• See all Early Prime Day deals at Amazon.

We found the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x a glorious ultra-portable, with this deal shaving $550 off a Snapdragon laptop equipped with 32GB of memory and literal all-day battery life.

• Best for: Professionals and students who want a tablet-thin, lightweight laptop that doesn't sacrifice day-to-day performance.

• The deal: The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is now $1550 (was $2100) at Lenovo.

• Why we like it: We scored the Yoga Slim 7x 4 stars in our review, praising its impressively thin design, performance that easily handled everything from basic productivity to 4K streaming, and battery, which lasted just under 24 hours in our tests.

Snapdragon X2 Elite X2E-80-100 | 32GB RAM | 1TB SSD | 14-inch OLED

Loaded with Windows 11 Home, the Yoga Slim 7x is ideal for remote workers, commuting professionals and students who need a premium-quality laptop that's remarkably thin. View Deal

Why we recommend it

This might just be the thinnest laptop we've ever tested - and the build quality is, and I quote, "exquisite." We awarded the Yoga Slim 7x 4 stars in our review, and found Lenovo's ultra-portable excelled at day-to-day tasks like running office software, multi-tab browsing, and streaming movies. We even managed to play Cyberpunk 2077 on low settings, although it's best-suited to productivity with casual gaming on the side. For content creation, I'd stick to design and photo editing over full-scale video production, with the 14-inch Full HD OLED hitting 100% DCI-P3.

For more options, see my guide to the best business laptops.

Value verdict

Good. Most Snapdragon-powered laptops cost around $1100 to $1300, but those base configurations are usually capped at 16GB of memory and 512GB storage. Here, you're doubling both specs with 32GB LPDDR5 RAM and 1TB Gen4 SSD for smoother performance, justifying the $1550 price tag.

Should you buy it?

✅ Buy the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x if...

You want a backpack-friendly ultraportable for work and study. It measures 0.55 x 12.28 x 8.70 inches, and 2.58lbs in weight.

❌ Skip the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x if...

You need a laptop for dedicated graphics workloads like video editing, 3D rendering, or gaming.

FutureFutureFutureFutureFuture

• Shop all doorbuster deals at Lenovo

• Seagate study finds 99% of firms expect AI to increase their storage requirements within three years
• Only 38% of organizations consider themselves fully prepared for future demands
• Storage infrastructure ranks among the biggest obstacles facing AI deployment

New data from Seagate has claimed AI is increasing the business importance of stored information while exposing weaknesses in infrastructure readiness.

The company's research found 99% of respondents expect AI workloads to increase their storage requirements in the next three years.

Yet only 38% describe their organizations as completely prepared, while 43% identify storage infrastructure among the leading obstacles to wider AI deployment.

AI is raising the stakes for storage planning

The survey gathered responses from more than 2,700 technology decision-makers and found that 86% reported moderate or significant returns from AI investments.

Among those respondents, 33% said their organizations were already seeing substantial measurable financial or operational benefits from AI initiatives.

Those returns increase the importance of retaining information that can support future models, applications and decisions across changing business requirements.

Nearly 7 in 10 respondents expect storage requirements to increase by at least 26%, including 32% anticipating growth exceeding 50%.

Furthermore, 98% of respondents regard storage as strategic infrastructure rather than simply an administrative technology function.

The survey nevertheless shows that preparedness remains incomplete, with data quality and readiness identified by 53% as another major deployment difficulty.

Storage therefore ranks ahead of compute availability, cited by 27%, and energy constraints, which were identified by 24% of respondents.

The figures indicate that adding computing capacity alone does not resolve the infrastructure limitations organizations encounter when deploying increasingly data-intensive AI systems.

Sustainability is becoming part of the storage equation

Infrastructure expansion is also encountering sustainability concerns, with 77% of respondents reporting delays or changes to planned growth.

Within that figure, 36% said investments had undergone major changes, while another 41% experienced smaller postponements linked to sustainability considerations.

Power consumption was the most frequently considered environmental factor for storage hardware, cited by 62% of respondents.

Equipment lifespan followed at 55%, while respondents broadly connected longer hardware service periods with improved sustainability across data center operations.

Current confidence remains below future expectations, with 39% describing their storage operations as highly sustainable under present conditions, according to survey responses.

That proportion rises to 61% when respondents assess where their organizations expect storage sustainability to stand five years from now.

Funding levels also influence those expectations, with 70% of organizations holding sustainability budgets above $100 million expecting highly sustainable operations within five years.

By comparison, 48% of organizations with annual sustainability budgets below $1 million anticipate reaching that same level during the period.

Training material, active datasets, model checkpoints and retained outputs can impose substantially different infrastructure requirements throughout an AI system’s lifecycle.

For organizations expanding AI operations, those differences make storage architecture, equipment lifespan, energy consumption and capacity planning increasingly interconnected decisions.

The survey does not establish that every organization will face identical costs, although its findings indicate that storage growth is widely anticipated.

• AMD is rumored to be hiking prices for its chips
• Industry insiders in the supply chain indicate that a rise of around 10% will be applied across AMD's "entire chip line"
• This means GPUs and processors, as well as motherboards, and the hike is expected in Q4, so it could happen next month

AMD's processors and graphics cards could soon get more expensive in the latest blow from the RAM crisis rumor mill.

Wccftech spotted that leaker Harukaze5719 highlighted a post from ChannelGate (the Board Channels over in Asia) that cites sources in the supply chain who claim that TSMC has informed its customers of a 10% price rise.

The post observes that most of AMD's chips are manufactured by TSMC, and that Team Red has in turn notified its customers of a 10% "price adjustment" across its "entire chip product line".

That means everything, so on the consumer front, we can expect AMD's GPUs and Ryzen processors to be hit with price increases — and motherboard chipsets are also affected, so the price of those AMD boards will climb, too.

It's worth noting that processors aren't referred to explicitly in the post on the Board Channels, but given the mention of the entirety of AMD's chips, I think we can take that as real (as the leaker Harukaze5719 indicates).

The sources believe that AMD will enforce this new policy in Q4, so it could happen next month, in theory (although all of this remains a rumor).

In other RAM crisis bleakness, the Steam Frame arrived earlier this week with a much-inflated price tag compared to what Valve first envisioned for the VR headset. It starts at $1,059 / £889 / AU$1,609, which is a few hundred more dollars than what Valve was thinking originally.

As PC Gamer reports, a hardware engineer at Valve, Joy Lyons, said, "We set out to design [the Steam Frame] with one particular price in mind, but we've made choices to make sure that we're making a product that is choiceful, that people can purchase. They can upgrade with different features later. But we wanted to make sure we had a base product with really great performance. Then that price target shifted due to the ongoing RAM crisis around the world."

Analysis: a believable enough prediction

(Image credit: Future / John Loeffler)

Sadly, the AMD rumor is another worrying doom nugget from what seems to be a never-ending supply of bad news in the past couple of months. Just this week, we've had a report that shows DDR5 RAM is somehow getting even more expensive, blowing past the levels I'd expected — not to mention the laptop price hikes.

The RAM crisis was forecast to worsen as 2026 rolled on, and that appears to be unfolding just as predicted — and there's very possibly worse to come in 2027, going by rumors elsewhere. If the pundits, analysts and insiders were right about this year, there's a fair chance they'll be right about next year, too.

Okay, so that's not a foregone conclusion, and some kind of more positive developments could yet happen — we can hope. This particular rumor must also be treated with some caution, as a Board Channels post may not have everything right (by any means), but the problem is that given the current climate, it's believable enough that AMD has price hikes in the works. Team Red already warned us earlier this year about pricing pain for the second half of 2026, after all.

From portable radars in shipping containers to orbital cameras, I asked scientists how the space-junk tracking industry plans to avoid catastrophic crashes.