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Today's NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for July 17, #767

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles. Today's NYT Connections puzzle is a bit of a weird one. I thought the green category was loopy like the purple one always is. Read on for clues and today's Connections answers. The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receiv

Today's NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for July 17, #297

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today's Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles. My blue group hint for today's Connections: Sports Edition is geared toward Saturday Night Live fans, but if you know your basketball, you should be fine. I think the green group is even easier than the yellow group, but that might depend on how much time you've spent on the water. Read on for

Google finds custom backdoor being installed on SonicWall network devices

Researchers from the Google Threat Intelligence Group said that hackers are compromising SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) appliances, which sit at the edge of enterprise networks and manage and secure access by mobile devices. The targeted devices are end of life, meaning they no longer receive regular updates for stability and security. Despite the status, many organizations continue to rely on them. That has left them prime targets by UNC6148, the name Google has given to the unknown hack

The Download: Veo 3’s subtitles problem, and the future of our planet’s resources

Google’s generative video model Veo 3 has a subtitles problem As soon as Google launched its latest video-generating AI model at the end of May, creatives rushed to put it through its paces. Released just months after its predecessor, Veo 3 allows users to generate sounds and dialogue for the first time. It sparked a flurry of hyperrealistic eight-second clips stitched together into ads, ASMR videos, imagined film trailers, and humorous street interviews. But others quickly found that in som

Show HN: Timep – a next-gen profiler and flamegraph-generator for bash code

timep timep is an efficient and state-of-the-art trap-based time profiler for bash code. timep generates a per-command execution time profile for the bash code being profiled. As it generates this profile, timep logs command runtimes+metadata hierarchically based on both function and subshell nesting depth, mapping and recreating the complete full call-stack tree for the bash code being profiled. BUILTIN FLAMEGRAPH GENERATOR: One standout feature of timep is that, in addition to the time profi

John Malkovich Won’t Appear in ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

We’re sure to see a lot of awesome stuff when The Fantastic Four: First Steps hits theaters later this month, but one thing we won’t see is John Malkovich. The legendary star of Being John Malkovich, Con Air, Rounders, Red, and more was cast in the film and shot all his scenes. But, it turns out, those scenes have now been cut. Speaking to Variety, Fantastic Four director Matt Shakman revealed that Malkovich was cast to play the Red Ghost in the film, one of the group’s oldest adversaries. He w

Galaxy Watch users might want to stay away from testing QPR1 betas

Ryan Haines / Android Authority TL;DR Galaxy Watch owners are reporting problems when using Samsung’s wearables with Android 16 QPR1 beta releases. Issues include failure to pair, connections dropping, and Samsung apps repeatedly crashing. For the moment, the only permanent solution seems to be going back to Android 16 stable. Getting early access to in-development software can be a lot of fun. Plenty of us participate in testing programs for some of our favorite apps, both in the interest o

Signs of Autism Could Be Encoded in the Way You Walk

Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects how people's brains develop and function, impacting behaviour, communication and socialising. It can also involve differences in the way you move and walk – known as your gait. Having an "odd gait" is now listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a supporting diagnostic feature of autism. What does this look like? The most noticeable gait differences among autistic people are: toe-walking, walking on the balls

A Rust Shaped Hole

A Rust shaped hole By a process of elimination, I've arrived at a conclusion that I should write Rust, or at least give it a rigorous try. Let us say I want to write a "native" program. This train of thought started with wanting to write a program, an xfdesktop replacement, that can serve as my desktop background, slowly meandering though a pastel game of life, or floating through a Mandelbrot set. But the specifics are not relevant, because I find myself on the same train when thinking of ot

Introducing the Ars Technica Posting Guidelines version 3.0

Ars Technica's community is—in our biased opinion—second to none online. For more than 26 years, readers have enabled and inspired our work, creating a community with an amazing signal-to-noise ratio. To aid these efforts, we're updating our Posting Guidelines to make them more accessible to new readers—and more straightforward and more transparent for everyone. The substance of the guidelines isn't changing. Most provisions are just common-sense items meant to foster genuine discussion, such a

Show HN: An MCP server that gives LLMs temporal awareness and time calculation

"Passage of Time" Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server 🕐 An MCP server that gives language models temporal awareness and time calculation abilities. Teaching LLMs the significance of the passage of time through collaborative tool development. 📖 The Story This project emerged from a philosophical question: "Can AI perceive the passage of time?" What started as an exploration of machine consciousness became a practical solution to a real problem - LLMs can't reliably calculate time differences.

'Gentle Parenting' My Smartphone Addiction

On a recent weekday, I sent an Instagram message to a friend of mine, an art adviser in New York named Stephen Truax, to gossip about an exhibition. Instead of messaging me back in the app, he texted me to say that he’d blocked Instagram on his smartphone during daytime working hours. Impressed, I asked him how he was accomplishing such a feat. Truax said he was using Opal, an app that makes your smartphone a little more like a so-called dumbphone, without requiring you to trade in your device a

Topics: app new opal said time

How I lost my backpack with passports and laptop

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.” I hadn’t lost everything — just my backpack with two passports and my laptop — so I became only a little freer. This story happened three months ago. It is an embarrassing story. It is embarrassing and difficult to tell — but that's exactly why I'm telling it to you. *** Sunday morning. I woke up at a small table in the entrance hall of some house in London — no idea which one, but definitely not mine. The last thing I re

Pgactive: Postgres active-active replication extension

Active-active Replication Extension for PostgreSQL (pgactive) pgactive is a PostgreSQL replication extension for creating an active-active database. Overview Database replication is a method that copies changes between databases instances, and is a key component for use cases like high availability, reducing latency between an application and its source data, moving data between systems such as production and test, infrastructure migration, and others. Relational databases such as PostgreSQL

YouTuber faces jail time for showing off Android-based gaming handhelds

There are countless Android-powered gaming handhelds, but they go beyond the usual slate of Android games by offering console emulation support. The problem is the game ROMs on these devices, which are not entirely legal. Italian YouTuber Once Were Nerd is learning how seriously some rightsholders are taking game piracy after agents from the country's Guardia di Finanza showed up to confiscate his consoles. He now says the investigation could lead to criminal charges and the end of his channel.

How I Lost My Backpack with Passports and Laptop

“It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.” I hadn’t lost everything — just my backpack with two passports and my laptop — so I became only a little freer. This story happened three months ago. It is an embarrassing story. It is embarrassing and difficult to tell — but that's exactly why I'm telling it to you. *** Sunday morning. I woke up at a small table in the entrance hall of some house in London — no idea which one, but definitely not mine. The last thing I re

A Mile-Long Gateway to Hell Opens Up in Iceland

A volcanic eruption in Southwestern Iceland forced the evacuation of a nearby town and the world-famous Blue Lagoon geothermal spa on Wednesday, July 16. Media images captured huge plumes of smoke and glowing lava flows spewing from an enormous crack in Earth’s surface roughly 30 miles (18.6 miles) southwest of Reykjavík. This marks the twelfth eruption since volcanic activity reawakened in this region in 2021. The eruption began on the Reykjanes Peninsula’s Sundhnúkur crater row around 4 a.m.

Struggling With Hair Loss? This First-Ever Prescription Gummy May Help

You've tried the serums, the vitamins and the topical solutions? How about a prescription gummy for hair loss? Hers, a telehealth company that provides online healthcare services and products for women, announced the launch of its Biotin-plus-Minoxidil Gummy, the first-of-its-kind prescription gummy formulated to support hair regrowth. Available through forhers.com, this gummy combines prescription-strength minoxidil, the only FDA-approved ingredient for female hair loss, with biotin, a popular

Insta360 now offers lens filters and a larger battery for its 360-degree action cam

is a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2006, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid. It’s been less than three months since Insta360 released its X5 360-degree action camera, but the company is already introducing new accessories and a major firmware update. Improvements include a new AdaptiveTone feature delivering “better color and detail in both bright and dark areas” when filming with both lenses, and a larger battery you can

ASML shares drop 11% after the chip giant says it can't confirm that it will grow in 2026

ASML on Wednesday warned of the possibility of no growth in 2026, even as it beat top and bottom line expectations for the second quarter. ASML's guidance for the current quarter missed expectations while it narrowed its own forecast for the rest of the year. Shares of the firm ended the day 11.4% lower. Like many companies in the semiconductor industry, ASML has been grappling with uncertainty created by U.S. tariff policy. The company forecast third-quarter revenue of between 7.4 billion eu

Leading AI Models Are Completely Flunking the Three Laws of Robotics

In his genre-defining 1950 collection of science fiction short stories "I, Robot," author Isaac Asimov laid out the Three Laws of Robotics: 1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Ever since, the elegant

Altermagnets: The first new type of magnet in nearly a century

Researchers have found the first new type of magnet in nearly a century. Now, these strange "altermagnets" could help us build an entirely new type of computer Bekologic Libor Šmejkal has a fondness for the artwork of M. C. Escher, whose work was often inspired by mathematics. One of Šmejkal’s favourite pieces is Horseman, a striking picture that features an elaborate, tessellating series of mounted figures. Strangely enough, it was this piece that inspired him to predict the existence of an e

Show HN: I gave Claude a sundial and it built a calendar

"Passage of Time" Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server 🕐 An MCP server that gives language models temporal awareness and time calculation abilities. Teaching LLMs the significance of the passage of time through collaborative tool development. 📖 The Story This project emerged from a philosophical question: "Can AI perceive the passage of time?" What started as an exploration of machine consciousness became a practical solution to a real problem - LLMs can't reliably calculate time differences.

CERN Physicists Find Key Piece of the Matter-Antimatter Puzzle

All matter in our universe has an evil twin: antimatter. Cosmological models suggest that the Big Bang should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter that cancel each other out. But for reasons physicists still aren’t completely sure about, that didn’t happen. As a result, our universe today hosts slightly more matter than antimatter—our very existence being clear, physical proof. Now, we might be one step closer to explaining why there’s an imbalance between matter and antimatter,

Transit software startup Via confidentially files for an IPO

Via, the transit software startup that garnered attention for its consumer-facing on-demand shuttle service, said it has filed confidentially for an initial public offering. Via has been batting around plans for an IPO for years. The company filed confidentially for an IPO in 2021, but never took the next official and regulatory steps to enter the public markets. Now, the company says it’s ready. Its status as a confidential filing, however, leaves lots of missing details, including the number

Ex-Waymo engineers launch Bedrock Robotics with $80M to automate construction

Bedrock Robotics, an autonomous vehicle technology startup founded by veterans of Waymo and Segment, has been operating quietly for more than a year. Now, it’s breaking cover with an $80 million funding round from investors Eclipse and 8VC. Bedrock Robotics is focused on developing a self-driving kit that can be retrofitted to construction and other worksite vehicles, according to the company. The announcement confirms some of TechCrunch’s reporting in May. Bedrock is “upgrading existing fleets

What Actually Happens When Programmers Use AI Is Hilarious, According to a New Study

AI has taken the programming world by storm, with a flurry of speculation about the tech replacing human coders, and Google's CEO recently claiming that 25 percent of the company's code is now AI-generated. But it's possible that in practice, AI is actually hindering efficient software development. As flagged by Ars Technica, a new study from the nonprofit Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR) found that in practice, programmers are actually slower when using AI assistance tools than maki

Europol disrupts pro-Russian NoName057(16) DDoS hacktivist group

An international law enforcement operation dubbed "Operation Eastwood" has targeted the infrastructure and members of the pro-Russian hacktivist group NoName057(16), responsible for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks across Europe, Israel, and Ukraine. Operation Eastwood was led by Europol and Eurojust with support from 12 countries. It took place on July 15, 2025, and targeted the systems and individuals behind the group's activities. NoName057(16) is a pro-Russian hacking group tha