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A fringe candidate who's never been to Alaska and is currently in federal prison in New York is set to appear on the general election ballot for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat, after a judge’s ruling.

(Image credit: Mark Thiessen)

Meta has admitted it used Facebook and Instagram publicposts for Australian users to train its Artificial Intelligence models, and has scraped information from as far back as 2007.

An Australian Parliamentary committee has heard that whilst European users can opt out thanks to GDPR laws, Australian customers are not given that choice.

Meta has denied using the information of anyone under 18, but did confirm it had used over a decade’s worth of data. The firm could not answer whether it has scraped the photos of children who are now adults (i.e. those who created their accounts as a child, but have since turned 18).

A turning tide

The process of ‘scraping’ is essential for the development of AI and is basically data harvesting from websites, extracting the information and feeding it back to a Large Language Models (LLMs) which learns from the data. This means that GDPR regulations are becoming troublesome for more and more LLMs such as ChatGPT, which collects data from all over the internet without consent from the original source.

Meta’s global privacy director Melinda Claybaugh sat before the inquiry and admitted that the company was forced to pause the launch of AI products in Europe due to a lack of certainty, and it has had to give European users an opt-out due to more robust privacy laws. Senator Shoebridge grilled the Meta representative,

“The truth of the matter is that, unless you consciously had set those posts to private, since 2007, Meta has just decided you will scrape all of the photos and all of the text from every public post on Instagram or Facebook that Australians have shared since 2007, unless there was a conscious decision to set them on private. But that’s actually the reality, isn’t it?”

Claybaugh replied, “Correct”. She added that users can set their posts to private now to prevent future scraping, but this would have no effect on the data already taken.

The realization seems to be creeping in for the public and for tech companies that training AI models requires such vast amounts of data that it is ‘impossible’ to do so without using copyrighted materials. Considering millions of user's posts have been used without their consent, it looks like tech giants might face much stricter regulations in future.

Via The Guardian

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Here are some hints — and the answers — for Connections No. 459 for Sept. 12.

Here are some hints, and the answers, for the Sept. 12 Strands puzzle, No. 193.

Here are some hints and the answer for Wordle No. 1,181 for Sept. 12.

After a beta period earlier this year, Steam's new family sharing system and parental controls hub is now available for everyone. Steam Families is replacing both Family Sharing and Family View, creating a nucleus for all your game-sharing needs. 

A Steam Family can comprise up to six members (including yourself), and the full libraries of all the users will be available to the 'family' unit, except for games where developers have opted out of sharing for whatever reason. No longer will you need to feel bad if you're watching your big brother play a game that you want – you can share the title across devices, just not at the same time.

The most important upgrade to Steam's game-sharing update is the ability for you and your family to play games from your library at the same time. For example, your wife can play your copy of Cyberpunk 2077 while you play Warzone concurrently with no issues. And while playing one copy at the same time is still a no-go, if there are two copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 within your family's shared library, you and your brother can play together.

With Steam Families, each user will have their own save files, earn Steam achievements, access workshop files and more. That's a lot of freedom for a child to have on Steam – which is why parental control are also key additions.

Improved Parental Controls, but it's not all bad, kids

There are two member (or 'role') options within Steam Families – adult and child. Adults can manage member invites and apply account restrictions, while children are subject to controls put in place by the adults, and have no managerial power. 

As an adult, you control what games children have access to, can restrict their access to the Steam Store, Friends Chat and Community, set playtime limits and recover your child's account if they lose their password.

Purchasing games for kids is also easier thanks to Steam Families. Usually buying a game for a child requires an adult to complete a gift purchase or let them borrow your card. Now, children have the ability to add games to their cart, and then request an adult to pay for it. Through their email or mobile device, the adult can then approve or deny the request.

Out with the old, in with the new

Steam Families is an exciting improvement to Steam's family-sharing. For too long little brothers and sisters have had to watch along while their older sibling hogs the PC to themselves. Too often dad's have been booted from their account in the middle of a run because their child opened up Terraria, but that will no longer be the case.

Steam clarifies that the old Family Sharing feature "will eventually be retired". While this won't be an issue for most users, but it might affect some others. For example, the older game-sharing feature allowed two (or more) people in different locations to share libraries, but that might no longer be possible.

Steam doesn't directly say that Steam Families will be limited to one ISP, though terminology like "This information is available from wherever you access Steam, including your mobile device when you are away from home" lends us to believe, like Netflix, that it will be limited to one household. 

Nevertheless, this is a massive Steam update that will make many people happy, although we suspect there will be others who will want a better game-sharing setup from Valve.

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Alberto Fujimori, whose decade-long presidency began with righting Peru’s economy and defeating a brutal insurgency only to end in a disgrace, has died. He was 86.

(Image credit: Martin Mejia)

Finding fast internet in the Last Frontier is a challenge. But CNET rounded up the top picks in Alaska to help you decide which provider to choose.

Shared exclusively with WIRED, this Image Playground creation is the first that Apple has released outside of marketing materials.

Cameron Lewellen of Georgia headed into Tuesday's debate one of the small but potentially key slice of voters who are undecided about the presidential election. After, his vote is in sharper focus.

(Image credit: Matthew Pearson)

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now nearly 1,000 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 Wordle today, NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles.

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 #962) - hint #1 - Vowels How 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 #962) - hint #2 - repeated letters Do any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 3.

Quordle today (game #962) - hint #3 - uncommon letters Do 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 #962) - 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 #962) - hint #5 - starting letters (2) What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• A

• S

• L

• G

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

Quordle today (game #962) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #962, are…

• ARBOR
• STARK
• LEAVE
• GOOFY

I needed all nine guesses to solve today's Quordle, with both LEAVE and GOOFY causing me some problems. Both contain repeated letters, and both relatively uncommon letters – not really uncommon, as with X, Z, Q and J – but the next tier above that. In fact, GOOFY has two; F and G both appear fairly often in specific places within words, but they aren't common overall. V, meanwhile, is the fifth least common letter of all. With ARBOR being a relatively uncommon word too (and containing its own repeated letter), there were simply a lot of complications to work around today.

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.

Daily Sequence today (game #962) - the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #962, are…

• VOCAL
• CLEAT
• MANOR
• PLAIT

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #961, Wednesday 11 September: ROUGH, CACTI, SAVOY, ODDER
• Quordle #960, Tuesday 10 September: PLUMB, SEIZE, EARLY, ASSET
• Quordle #959, Monday 9 September: CHIRP, BEADY, THETA, MINUS
• Quordle #958, Sunday 8 September: TEASE, AGATE, PRIDE, PLATE
• Quordle #957, Saturday 7 September: LASSO, TILDE, BUNCH, PRONG
• Quordle #956, Friday 6 September: FARCE, WOOLY, LOCAL, NIGHT
• Quordle #955, Thursday 5 September: SNIDE, EGRET, AMONG, SHINY
• Quordle #954, Wednesday 4 September: POINT, WITTY, GAFFE, ABUSE
• Quordle #953, Tuesday 3 September: ATOLL, ANGER, OCEAN, SWEEP
• Quordle #952, Monday 2 September: HABIT, LODGE, PLAIN, DRIFT
• Quordle #951, Sunday 1 September: RABBI, CRAWL, GUPPY, BRAND
• Quordle #950, Saturday 31 August: AWOKE, TIBIA, ITCHY, SNACK
• Quordle #949, Friday 30 August: ARISE, OLDER, ISSUE, ERUPT
• Quordle #948, Thursday 29 August: DECAY, DRUID, AVOID, KNEED
• Quordle #947, Wednesday 28 August: VIOLA, GONER, CAVIL, SHARE
• Quordle #946, Tuesday 27 August: ABYSS, DAILY, AGONY, MUSKY
• Quordle #945, Monday 26 August: NEVER, CHUNK, AUNTY, CROUP
• Quordle #944, Sunday 25 August: APTLY, LEVER, STORK, WIDOW
• Quordle #943, Saturday 24 August: EVENT, APNEA, SWATH, IRONY
• Quordle #942, Friday 23 August: LAUGH, SATYR, CACHE, CLONE

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 Wordle today, NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games.

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 #193) - hint #1 - today's theme What is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… This should be right up your alley

NYT Strands today (game #193) - hint #2 - clue words

Play any of these words to unlock the in-game hints system.

• WHAT
• DATA
• LAND
• FARE
• ROAST
• HEAR

NYT Strands today (game #193) - hint #3 - spangram What is a hint for today's spangram?

• Walk this way

NYT Strands today (game #193) - hint #4 - spangram position What are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

First: top, 3rd column

Last: bottom, 6th column

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Strands today (game #193) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #193, are…

• LANE
• STREET
• ROAD
• AVENUE
• HIGHWAY
• BOULEVARD
• SPANGRAM: THOROUGHFARE

• My rating: Moderate
• My score: 3 hints

I can't work out whether today's Strands is difficult or not. I found it tough – but that might just be me. After all, the concept – names for THOROUGHFAREs, as the spangram would have it – is simple, but on the flip side the spangram itself is really difficult. I mean, when was the last time you used that word to refer to a STREET or ROAD or LANE?

Beyond that, I just couldn't think of any roads beyond the three obvious ones mentioned above. BOULEVARD is not a common term in the UK, where I am, and HIGHWAY is very rarely used here – so that didn't help. But I should have found AVENUE, and ultimately I think this was more about my failings than the puzzle's absolute difficulty.

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Wednesday 11 September, game #192)

• PUZZLE
• TRUCK
• SLIME
• DOLL
• PUPPET
• BLOCKS
• TRICYCLE
• SPANGRAM: TOYSTORE

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT's new word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now out of beta so is a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable and 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.

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 clues.

What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Wordle hints and answers, Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too.

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 #459) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• SAKE
• SAVE
• PEPSI
• MOCHI
• CURRY
• FETA
• BIRD
• BIOTA
• LIKE
• MAGIC
• ADVANTAGE
• КОВЕ
• FAVORITE
• INTEREST
• BOOKMARK
• BENEFIT

NYT Connections today (game #459) - hint #1 - group hints

What are some clues for today's NYT Connections groups?

• Yellow: Keep on the internet
• Green: For your gain
• Blue: Hoop dreams
• Purple: Finishes with letters from another alphabet

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 #459) - hint #2 - group answers

What are the answers for today's NYT Connections groups?

• YELLOW: MARK ONLINE FOR LATER
• GREEN: BEHALF
• BLUE: NBA LEGENDS, FAMILIARLY
• PURPLE: ENDING WITH GREEK LETTERS

Right, the answers are below, so DO NOT SCROLL ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM.

NYT Connections today (game #459) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #459, are…

• YELLOW: MARK ONLINE FOR LATER BOOKMARK, FAVORITE, LIKE, SAVE
• GREEN: BEHALF ADVANTAGE, BENEFIT, INTEREST, SAKE
• BLUE: NBA LEGENDS, FAMILIARLY BIRD, CURRY, KOBE, MAGIC
• PURPLE: ENDING WITH GREEK LETTERS BIOTA, FETA, MOCHI, PEPSI

• My rating: Easy
• My score: 1 mistake

This is a fairly simple Connections puzzle – there are three easy ones, meaning that the final (purple) group could be solved by default, which is great because that one was super-hard.

Blue almost seemed too easy – KOBE couldn't really refer to anything other than the basketball star or the Japanese city, and with CURRY, BIRD and MAGIC also on the board, it was clear that it was the former rather than the latter. Or at least that was the case for me. If you know nothing at all about the NBA, you may have struggled with that one too.

As for purple… well, the ENDING WITH GREEK LETTERS aspect was a clever one, but verging on too difficult, I'd suggest. I'm glad I didn't need to work out that one!

How did you do today? Send me an email and let me know.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Wednesday, 11 September, game #458)

• YELLOW: LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY BUNDLE, FORTUNE, MINT, PILE
• GREEN: BITS OF WISDOM KERNEL, NUGGET, PEARL, TIDBIT
• BLUE: FEATURED IN “JURASSIC PARK” AMBER, DINOSAUR, MOSQUITO, PALEONTOLOGIST
• PURPLE: THINGS THAT ARE PURPLE AMETHYST, EGGPLANT, GRIMACE, LAVENDER

What is NYT Connections?

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.

Here's what time new episodes of the crime drama drop.

Trump still claims he won in 2020 and repeated the debunked narratives that migrants are "eating pets" and that Democrats want to "execute" babies. Taylor Swift is having none of it.

Apple released a deluge of information hyping up Apple Intelligence this week, promising an AI transformation of your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Even after all of the announcements, there are plenty of questions left unanswered by Apple. But, while I'm mostly skeptical about how much of Apple Intelligence is just playing catch up to Google and OpenAI, that doesn't mean there were no interesting ideas or fun innovations on display. Here are five ways the 'Glowtime' event brightened my opinion of Apple Intelligence.

1. Giving Siri a brain

Yes, the Siri upgrade Apple bragged about has been way too long in coming, but that doesn't make it unexciting. I've long since stopped using Siri for anything but the most basic weather and timer tasks. A native voice assistant that can actually converse and act better or better than its rivals might well change how I and a lot of other Apple device owners interact with the original voice assistant.

Even just being able to keep up with the speed I speak and remember the context between tasks would matter a lot. The link to written prompts so you can switch between voice and text is also a nice improvement. The glow-up of the visual look for Siri (hence the Glowtime event title) puts a bow on the whole thing. It reminds me of when Apple Maps decoupled from Google's data and was a complete mess for a while before finally becoming useful again. Sometimes innovation just means being able to meet the moment. Let's hope the next big upgrade doesn't take nearly two decades.

2. AI Eyes

A particularly underrated aspect of Apple Intelligence is how it allows your device to define better what the camera captures. The new Visual Intelligence and Camera Control features use AI to answer questions and explain objects and places around you, including contextual information like geographic location and time. It will even link with ChatGPT or Google to explain what it sees. Sure, it's a lot like Google Lens, and maybe it's just a nice way to speed up searching for information on what's happening near you. Still, if you are visually impaired, this is the kind of accessibility feature that could really boost independence. It was this feature that convinced a friend of mine with impaired vision that they should get the iPhone 16.

3. AI Writing Right Now

ChatGPT and its many rivals and imitators have all centered the composition and editing of text as their main feature, so Apple showing off the new AI Writing Tools was, on some levels, just saying, "We can do it too." But incorporating text summarization, proofreading, and related tasks directly into Mail, Notes, Pages, and other apps removes a small but very real bit of friction that has always slightly annoyed me. The new tools mean you won't have to take that extra step of copying text into a different app or relying on an API that may or may not perform as well as the app if you want to apply AI editing or summarization to it. Again, upping accessibility to people who might not be power users is a good thing in my book. 

4. Keeping your AI private

This is one where Apple could boast about how AI fits well with its product culture, which has always made privacy a key selling point. Apple Intelligence simply extends that way of thinking by processing most of your AI requests either right on your device or through its Private Cloud Compute when the task requires more computational power. That's no small matter, considering how much of the AI debate revolves around who can snap up people's data and employ it for training AI models or related goals. Apple claims to have hit the sweet spot of AI flexibility and data privacy, which is a way of thinking about AI that is honestly refreshing.

5. Genmoji Giants

I saved arguably the most unique part of Apple Intelligence for last because, frankly, there's no real comparison among other AI developers to Genmoji.

The ability to create custom emojis is a fun take on AI image-makers, but being able to insert Genmojis into messages, emails, and other communications as if they were traditional emojis is where Apple scores a clear win even over what Google Gemini and Android can do at the moment. It's not a life-changing upgrade, but like the rest of Apple Intelligence's features, it adds to the other reasons people might want to buy an iPhone, iPad, or Mac. (inset Genmoji of a T-Rex looking at an iPhone while surfing a wave).

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Miami Vice colors blast back onto the scene as the iPhone 16 brightens up its color choices.

If you're a side sleeper looking for a softer pillow-top option, you'll want to see what our team thinks about this plush Helix sleep bed.

Vice President Kamala Harris was dominant during Tuesday's presidential debate in Philadelphia. Former President Donald Trump struggled to stay on topic and a times sounded incoherent. With the race to the White House neck and neck will this debate make a difference?

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

(Image credit: Saul Loeb)

Life away from the city has its advantages, but home internet isn't one of them. Look to these internet providers for the best broadband in rural areas.