Techy Teacher

If you're reading this, you're looking for a little help playing Strands , the New York Times ' elevated word-search game. Strands requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There's always a theme linking every solution, along with the "spangram," a special, word or phrase that sums up that day's theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically. SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections . If you're feeling stuck or just don't have 10 or more minutes to figure out today's puzzle,...

Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that effectively put a freeze on most foreign aid. One lesser-known effect of this 90-day freeze? Funding has been halted for the State Department's Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy (CDP), a fairly new bureau that utilizes diplomacy to create technological partnerships and tackle emerging cyber threats. SEE ALSO: Will Oracle take over TikTok? Trump says he'll make a decision in 30 days According to a new report by The Record , the freeze on foreign aid has effectively brought the bureau, which has tens of millions of dollars in funding, to a "standstill." The report notes some of the projects that the CDP has worked on such as deploying a "cyber incident response team" in Costa Rica, training with the Vietnamese government on nefarious cyber activity from North Korea, and landing a subsea telecommunications cable in Tuvalu. In addition to the halt in funding, the ...

According to the report from One Foot Tsunami's Paul Kafasis, when asked "Who won Super Bowl?" for each number from 1 through 60, Siri correctly provided the winner for only 20 out of the 58 Super Bowls that have been played so far. That translates to a success rate of just 34%. Read Entire Article from TechSpot https://ift.tt/7gEcHpw via

Inheritance filmmaker Neil Burger reveals all the ways filming with an iPhone gave them access to locations and shots they otherwise would not have been able to achieve. Inheritance is now in theaters. from Mashable https://ift.tt/RbuskaV https://ift.tt/LTBI2Mr

Social platform X is "barely breaking even," owner Elon Musk emailed employees, the Wall Street Journal reported. "Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we're barely breaking even," Musk reportedly said. In a story about banks preparing to sell billions of dollars in debt borrowed by X , WSJ printed other parts of the email: "Over the last few months, we've witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes...We are also seeing other platforms begin to adopt our commitment to free speech and unbiased truth." SEE ALSO: DOGE officially announced. How the Elon Musk-led department will work The latter sentence refers to Meta, which is removing fact-checks in favor of community notes, which X already has. Elon Musk has denied writing this to staff, posting on X, "This report is false. I sent no such email. WSJ is lying." Since his takeover of then-Twitter in 2022 , Mashable has reported...

Meta platforms Instagram and Facebook blocked and hid posts by abortion pill providers , the New York Times reported. The company confirmed to the Times that it blurred some posts and suspended some providers' accounts. The actions have reportedly ramped up this week following Trump's inauguration . SEE ALSO: Report: Meta's fact checking program failed to spot most disinformation This month, before the inauguration, Meta made several major changes to its platforms, including removing fact-checks and relaxing hate speech policies . A Meta spokesperson told the Times that the post-blocking and account suspensions aren't related to the moderation changes and attributed some of the incidents to the "overenforcement" of rules prohibiting pharmaceutical drug sales without proper certification. Aid Access, Women Help Women, Just the Pill, and Hey Jane are abortion pill providers impacted by these actions, the Times reported. In recent weeks, Instagram...

The vulnerability was first noticed by Tavis Ormandy, a security researcher at Google's Project Zero. Ormandy spotted a reference to the flaw in the release notes of an Asus beta BIOS update for one of its gaming motherboards. "It looks like an OEM leaked the patch for a major upcoming... Read Entire Article from TechSpot https://ift.tt/fkZxCVQ via

Seagate started shipping hard drives with HAMR tech in December 2024, turning a long-awaited technological advancement into a commercial reality. Now, the storage specialist is announcing that even more advanced HAMR drives, with capacities of up to 36 terabytes, are on the way. Read Entire Article from TechSpot https://ift.tt/r2n0OcE via

Recent FCC filings give us a sneak peek into what could be Sony's next-gen XM6 headset. Drawings suggest a slightly tweaked physical design from the current XM5 model. Read Entire Article from TechSpot https://ift.tt/jq7YJ0B via

As of writing, shares of EA are trading for $115.80. Ahead of the announcement, the stock was changing hands at $142.35. Read Entire Article from TechSpot https://ift.tt/9ZDisGW via

Doom was originally released for DOS in December 1993, but work on the project began in November 1992. As with many modern projects, id Software developers faced delays, and the game's code still wasn't ready for release. Read Entire Article from TechSpot https://ift.tt/WH2bFVr via

It turns out the way to get me interested in a new Assassin's Creed (well, more interested than I already was) is to include features from the AC games I played 10 to 15 years ago. To be a little more specific, Ubisoft's latest open-world stabbing simulator Assassin's Creed Shadows builds on the recent RPG-ish entries like Valhalla by incorporating mechanics and design philosophies from older entries like Brotherhood and Syndicate . From Valhalla , it borrows the idea of training and deploying subordinate assassins on helpless, unsuspecting doofus guards in your time of need. From the older games, it takes and (from what I can tell) heavily improves on the two-protagonist setup, with one representing stealth and the other combat. Crucially, it's also got the goods from the newer games, like a very pretty and naturalistic feudal Japan setting, and consequential dialogue choices. After playing Shadows for about three hours at a preview event, I came away fairly i...

At CES 2025, Asus shared that its new Zenbook A14 with Ceraluminum chassis weighted under 980 grams (2.16 pounds). Ceraluminum is a combination of ceramic and aluminum, and is said to be both lightweight and durable. Read Entire Article from TechSpot https://ift.tt/oyXQajN via

Android users who use assistive devices can anticipate in a new era of connection and control, right on their phone. New to the Samsung Galaxy S25 and harnessing its wireless audio LE Audio tech, Android will be adding next generation Bluetooth connectivity compatible with GN Hearing and Oticon Intent hearing aid devices. According to the company, this enables users of such devices to more efficiently access controls like hands-free calling, settings presets, and lower latency Bluetooth connections. SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2025 live blog: Galaxy S25 series, AI tools, and more Bluetooth LE Audio technology is a relatively new standard in hearing aid tech, with lower latency connection significantly reducing the delay between sources of audio and the hearing aid itself. The update was announced as part of Samsung's annual Unpacked event, and will also be available to Google Pixel 9 users who opt-in to the Android 16 beta. It will be added to the Galaxy S24 with...

If you don't know it, it's about time you learn it... plus a few more Read Entire Article from TechSpot https://ift.tt/W2aLRPi via

Various pages about LGBTQ rights and lives in the U.S. have been wiped from the official White House site, LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD has reported . Whitehouse.gov received a makeover on Inauguration Day , and not only in looks. Information shared by the Biden administration has been deleted and replaced with profiles on Trump administration officials and his day one actions. The deleted information includes pages about the LGBTQ community. Various search terms, like "lesbian," "gay," and "bisexual," only contain a single result: a rollback of Biden-era executive orders , including "Advancing Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Individuals" from 2022. SEE ALSO: Is Instagram blocking the #Democrat hashtag? "Transgender" turns up two results, the aforementioned and Trump's new executive order stating, among other things, that there are only two genders. "LGBTQ" turns...

Energizer, one of the world's largest battery brands, will soon add a line of portable computers to its livery called "EnergyBook Classic." French company Avenir Telecom recently announced the new devices at CES, explaining that it wants to bring an accessible, affordable, yet durable PC system to a broad range... Read Entire Article from TechSpot https://ift.tt/cQzKIq3 via

Donald Trump is officially the 47th President as of Inauguration Day . In a 30-minute speech, Trump proclaimed that "the golden age of America begins right now," and promised many changes. Here are a few of them below, along with how viewers on social media reacted to it: Declaring a national emergency at the southern border Trump ran on an anti-immigration stance, discussing ending birthright citizenship and planning sweeping deportations during his campaign. On Monday, Trump mentioned that he would declare a national emergency at the southern border of the U.S., halting immigration. Trump used the term "criminal aliens," which was stated several times in Project 2025 (the conservative policy wishlist for Trump's second term). Following the speech, the Trump administration shut down CBP One , an app for migrants to legally enter the U.S. The effects were instant: Tweet may have been deleted 'Rescinding' the Green New Deal The " Green New...

A new leak has seemingly revealed the hotly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S25 will see a major Galaxy AI upgrade. The new leak comes from veteran smartphone leaker Evan Blass, who published what seems to be a marketing video showing off some of the new features coming to Samsung’s Galaxy AI suite of features. These features are expected to launch alongside the Samsung Galaxy S25 series , which will likely be unveiled at Samsung’s latest Galaxy Unpacked event , set to take place on Wednesday, January 22.  Galaxy AI brings agentic AI features to the Galaxy S25 series The leaked video starts with a user being woken up by the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra’s alarm, after which a feature called Insights delivers information like the weather, sleep scores, and other data that the user might want to see when they first wake – all in a single scrollable screen. The video then cuts to another user who asks Google’s Gemini assistant to “find a pet-friendly Italian restaurant with outdoor seati...

Nvidia has released a critical GPU driver update to address eight security flaws that could allow attackers with local access to execute malicious code. The vulnerabilities affect consumer GeForce GPUs as well as Nvidia RTX, Quadro , NVS, and Tesla products. The latest driver updates resolve all of these issues, any updates version 553.62 or newer, or 539.19 and above are good to go, depending on the driver branch you are using. Read Entire Article from TechSpot https://ift.tt/RF5iNZD via