Blogroll

Amazon might be the most popular online storefront, but it's far from perfect. Knock-off products are frustratingly common, especially when ordering one particular product: SD cards.

Do you waste the first 10 minutes of every work session figuring out what you need to do? Does Alt+Tabbing between apps leave you feeling mentally scattered? These were common problems in my workflow until I started using widgets and transformed my desktop into a productivity dashboard.

Are you wanting to play retro games on a tiny computer? The bad news is that the classic choice, Raspberry Pi devices, have been going up in price lately (again). The good news is there's a cheaper alternative: RISC-V.

The compact SUV segment has long been dominated by familiar imports, with models like the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V leading sales year after year. But in 2025, one American SUV is closing the gap fast, attracting buyers with a compelling mix of practicality, value, and everyday usability. Its improved refinement and broad appeal suggest it could soon rival those segment heavyweights in total sales.

Do you have multiple Linux PCs that you work with? Do you ever find yourself annoyed by switching between keyboards and mice? You're in luck thanks to this free and open source app.

You may think that when you buy an SSD, the only two specs to be mindful of are its read/write speeds and its capacity. However, there's one more spec that plays a big part in how your SSD will perform. It can be the factor between your new SSD being a waste of money and a sound investment.

I love GitHub, and have used it for many, many years. GitHub isn’t always the best choice for code revisioning though. When I started building some private apps, I decided to look into alternatives and ended up self-hosting my own private git-based server instead.

Bust out your best flat caps and leather jackets, because the Peaky Blinders are back, baby ... well, almost. After six insanely successful seasons, the epic Netflix Original gangster saga from creator Steven Knight is set to wrap up its story of the Shelby clan with a highly anticipated movie.

Comedy, thriller, mystery and a spot of the supernatural combine in the trailer for How to Get to Heaven From Belfast, the new Netflix series from Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee.

The show follows three childhood friends, Saoirse (Roísín Gallagher), Robyn (Sinéad Keenan), and Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne), after the death of a fourth friend sends them on a mysterious adventure that begins at her wake and journeys into the past.

Tom Basden, Art Campion, Michelle Fairley, Josh Finan, Bronagh Gallagher, Booker Darragh Hand, Ardal O’Hanlon, Natasha O’Keeffe and Emmett J. Scanlan also star.

How to Get to Heaven From Belfast is streaming on Netflix from February 2026.

I’ve got a handful of wireless remotes for my small, Home Assistant-powered smart home, and I’m constantly coming up with more ways to use them. Designing a smart home that anticipates your next move is the ultimate goal, but sometimes the best solution to a problem is to just hit a button.

Tea, the platform designed for women to discuss the men they date and potential "red flags," is relaunching today — but it won't be on the App Store.

Tea is part of an online ecosystem of whisper networks for women to find information ("tea") on potential suitors, similar to Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. Last July, Tea made headlines when two hacks exposed thousands of user images (including selfies and photos of ID cards like drivers' licenses) as well as personal chats and phone numbers. Then, in October, Apple removed Tea from the App Store (as well as its rival app for men, TeaOnHer) for not meeting its content moderation and user privacy requirements.

SEE ALSO: Google reverses key parental control policy

Now, Tea is back as a website: app.teaforwomen.com. 

Asked about how Tea intends on protecting users following the 2025 leaks, Tea's vice president of trust and safety, Jessica Dees, told Mashable, "We have taken meaningful steps to strengthen the platform's safety and security posture, including enhancing internal safeguards, reinforcing access controls, and implementing additional review and monitoring processes designed to protect sensitive information and support responsible participation."

Credit: Tea

Dees went on to say that the relaunch "reflects a deliberate focus on strengthening and expanding access to Tea's safety and verification tools while reinforcing accountability across the platform." Following the incidents, Tea began working with third-party security teams to understand how they occurred and implemented additional security controls.

Screenshots of the website experience shared with Mashable make the website appear Instagram-like, featuring images of men alongside captions about women's (usually negative) experiences with them, complete with comments from other users. You can even react with green or red flags.

As for Android users, Tea remained on Google Play despite the App Store removal and is still available to download. Tea also announced today that the Android app is getting new community features: an "elevated" forum experience with interactive spaces like a virtual speakeasy and an in-app AI dating coach. According to images shared with Mashable, the AI dating coach chats are "private and secure," and an upcoming feature is the ability to use the AI to analyze the vibes of a dating app conversation (like "playful" and "casual").

Credit: Tea Credit: Tea

Online whisper networks, often led by women, have emerged in the dating app era as users encounter bad actors, ranging from scammers to assaulters. They're unlikely to go away, but whether women will come back to Tea following what happened last year remains to be seen.

At a glance

• Many real-world business problems can benefit from optimization, but translating decisions, constraints, and goals from natural language into optimization algorithms is slow.
• OptiMind is a small language model designed to convert business problems described in natural language into the mathematical formulations needed by optimization software.
• OptiMind is trained on a carefully curated, expert-aligned dataset and applies domain-specific hints and self-checks at inference time, improving its accuracy.
• OptiMind matches or exceeds the performance of much larger systems, can run locally to protect sensitive data, produces more reliable formulations, and reduces the time and expertise needed to prepare optimization models.

Enterprises across industries, from energy to finance, use optimization models to plan complex operations like supply chains and logistics. These models work by defining three elements: the choices that can be made (such as production quantities or delivery routes), the rules and limits those choices must follow, and the goal, whether that’s minimizing costs, meeting customer demand, or improving efficiency.

Over the past few decades, many businesses have shifted from judgment-based decision-making to data-driven approaches, leading to major efficiency gains and cost savings. Advances in AI promise to accelerate this shift even further, potentially cutting decision times from days to minutes while delivering better results.

In practice, however, turning real-world business problems into a form that optimization software can understand is challenging. This translation process requires expressing decisions, constraints, and objectives in mathematical terms. The work demands specialized expertise, and it can take anywhere from one day to several weeks to solve complex problems. 

To address this challenge, we’re introducing OptiMind, a small language model designed to convert problems described in plain language into the mathematical formulations that optimization software needs. Built on a 20-billion parameter model, OptiMind is compact by today’s standards yet matches the performance of larger, more complex systems. Its modest size means it can run locally on users’ devices, enabling fast iteration while keeping sensitive business data on users’ devices rather than transmitting it to external servers.

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Watch on-demand Opens in a new tab How it works

OptiMind incorporates knowledge from optimization experts both during training and when it’s being used to improve formulation accuracy at scale. Three stages enable this: domain-specific hints improve training data quality, the model undergoes fine-tuning, and expert reasoning guides the model as it works.

Figure 1. From problem description to solution 

One of the central challenges in developing OptiMind was the poor quality of existing public datasets for optimization problems. Many examples were incomplete or contained incorrect solutions. To address this, we developed a systematic approach that combines automation with expert review. It organizes problems into well-known categories, such as scheduling or routing, and identifies common error patterns within each. Using these insights, we generated expert-verified “hints” to guide the process, enabling the system to regenerate higher-quality solutions and filter out unsolvable examples (Figure 2). The result is a training dataset that more accurately reflects how optimization experts structure problems.

Figure 2. Process for correcting training data

Using this refined dataset, we applied supervised fine-tuning to the base model. Rather than simply generating code, we trained OptiMind to produce structured mathematical formulations alongside intermediate reasoning steps, helping it avoid the common mistakes found in earlier datasets.

When in use, the model’s reliability further improves. When given a new problem, OptiMind first classifies it into a category, such as scheduling or network design. It then applies expert hints relevant to that type of problem, which act as reminders to check for errors before generating a solution. For particularly challenging problems, the system generates multiple solutions and either selects the most frequently occurring one or uses feedback to refine its response. This approach increases accuracy without requiring a larger model, as illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3. OptiMind’s inference process Evaluation

To test the system, we turned to three widely used public benchmarks that represent some of the most complex formulation tasks in the field. On closer inspection, we discovered that 30 to 50 percent of the original test data was flawed. After manually correcting the issues, OptiMind improved accuracy by approximately 10 percent over the base model. Figure 4 and Table 1 show detailed comparisons: OptiMind outperformed other open-source models under 32 billion parameters and, when combined with expert hints and correction strategies, matched or exceeded the performance of current leading models.

Figure 4. Average accuracy percentages over all models. Table 1. Performance of all models on corrected benchmark datasets

OptiMind is more reliable than other models because it learns from higher-quality, domain-aligned data. And by correcting errors and inconsistencies in standard datasets, we significantly reduced the model’s tendency to hallucinate relative to the base and comparison models.

Looking forward

While supervised fine-tuning has provided a strong foundation, we are exploring reinforcement learning to further refine OptiMind’s reasoning capabilities. We’re also investigating automated frameworks that would allow LLMs to generate their own expert hints, enabling continuous autonomous improvement. Additionally, we are working with Microsoft product teams and industry collaborators to expand OptiMind’s utility, adding support for more programming languages and a variety of input formats, including Excel and other widely used tools.

We’re releasing OptiMind as an experimental model to gather community feedback and inform future development. The model is available through Microsoft Foundry (opens in new tab) and Hugging Face (opens in new tab), and we’ve open-sourced the benchmarks and data-processing procedures on GitHub (opens in new tab) to support more reliable evaluation across the field. We welcome feedback through GitHub (opens in new tab), and invite those interested in shaping the future of optimization to apply for one of our open roles.

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The post OptiMind: A small language model with optimization expertise appeared first on Microsoft Research.

Apple's iPhone 17e might be getting a big display upgrade.

The original "e" iPhone — the iPhone 16e, which launched in February 2025 — was an affordable iPhone variant with a powerful chip, but with no MagSafe and a display that featured an old-school cutout instead of Apple's Dynamic Island.

The iPhone 17e, which is rumored to arrive in the next couple of months, will have a significantly upgraded display. According to leaker Digital Chat Station's Weibo post, it will have a 6.1-inch, 60Hz LTPS OLED display with the Dynamic Island. Other improvements include the new A19 chip, and Face ID facial recognition.

SEE ALSO: iOS 26 bug is turning Android photos red in iPhone camera app

Yes, at 60Hz it won't match the displays on the iPhone 17 series, all of which feature a 120Hz display, but at least it will have a similar design and the added convenience of getting notifications and other info via the Dynamic Island.

The same leaker account also posted some predictions about Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 series of phones. According to the report, the screen sizes on the iPhone 18, iPhone Air 2, iPhone 18 Pro, and iPhone 18 Pro Max, will be exactly the same as on their predecessors.

The iPhone 18 will thus reportedly have a 6.27-inch display; iPhone Air will come with a 6.55-inch display, the iPhone 18 Pro will have a 6.27-inch display, and the iPhone 18 Pro Max will have a 6.86-inch display.

Featured Video For You Samsung first look: Go up close with Galaxy Z TriFold, the futuristic foldable only available in Korea

The displays of the Pro models might come with one key difference. The leaker claims that the iPhone 18 and the iPhone Air 2 will have the Dynamic Island display, while the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max will have an under-display camera "with new area."

We've heard several rumors about this before, including one that says the Dynamic Island will be completely gone from these devices.

This is one of the wildest stories about the making of a Hollywood film EVER and many of you have probably never heard it before.

In 1984, film librarian Merle Ray Harlin was charged with stealing 419 films. One scrap found in his vast collection was a missing scene from the 1954 film A Star Is Born starring Judy Garland. So many films that could have been lost to history… and so many more that we don’t even know are lost! Unfortunately, that loss still includes 7 minutes of A Star Is Born.

If you try to watch the entire originally screened cut of A Star Is Born now, it’s a pretty odd experience. About 41 minutes into the film, it briefly ceases to be a “motion” picture, instead suddenly consisting of still images like some avant-garde thing your Brooklyn boyfriend would drag you to see. It’s odd.

Only 4 missing minutes from A Star Is Born were recovered from Merle Harlin…there are still 7 minutes of the full cut of the movie that are presumably lost to time forever, resulting in a somewhat incomplete film. So, who stole those last seven minutes? And why does it matter?

A Star is Born (1954) is now streaming.

Spotify Premium is about to become more expensive.

The company announced the change in a blog post Thursday, saying it's updating the price of Spotify Premium in the U.S., Estonia, and Latvia. And when Spotify updates prices, it's typically upwards.

The change, which is going live in February, will soon be announced to Premium subscribers via email.

In short, you'll have to pay one dollar more for Premium in the U.S. Starting in February, the price for Individual Premium plans will go up from $11.99 per month to $12.99 per month, while Student plans are going up from $5.99 to $6.99.

Things won't be anything better for Duo subscribers, as the price of that plan is going up $2, from $16.99 to $18.99, while Family plan is going up from $19.99 to $21.99.

SEE ALSO: Spotify is no longer running ICE recruitment ads

The company didn't list too many reasons for the change, claiming merely it's updating its pricing to "keep delivering a great experience."

Spotify prices have gone up steadily over the past couple of years. Most recently, the company lifted prices in June 2024 in the U.S., which was the second such hike in a year.

We all know the standard copy-paste, but pressing Ctrl+V in Excel often carries lots of baggage—leading to workbook lag and broken data. By mastering Paste as Values, you're activating the safety switch that freezes your results and secures your data. Here's why it's the most important tool you're ignoring.

The NYT Connections puzzle today is not too difficult to solve if you have a green thumb.

Connections is the one of the most popular New York Times word games that's captured the public's attention. The game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for today's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable What is Connections?

The NYT's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

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Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer.

If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

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Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

SEE ALSO: NYT Pips hints, answers for January 15, 2026 Here's a hint for today's Connections categories

Want a hint about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Landscaping instruments

• Green: Fixed

• Blue: Small units

• Purple: Male titles

Here are today's Connections categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Gardening tools

• Green: Unmoving

• Blue: Things that come in flakes

• Purple: Words formed by two men's names

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to today's Connections #949 is...

What is the answer to Connections today

• Gardening tools: HOSE, RAKE, SHOVEL, SPADE

• Unmoving: FROZEN, STATIC, STATIONARY, STILL

• Things that come in flakes: CEREAL, DANDRUFF, SALT, SNOW

• Words formed by two men's names: JACKAL, LEVITATE, MELTED, PATRON

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for January 15, 2026

Are you also playing NYT Strands? Get all the Strands hints you need for today's puzzle.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Connections.

Today's NYT Strands hints are easy if you have great hearing.

Strands, the New York Times' elevated word-search game, 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, we've got all the NYT Strands hints for today's puzzle you need to progress at your preferred pace.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for January 15, 2026 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for January 15, 2026 NYT Strands hint for today’s theme: The ears have it!

The words are related to a body part.

Today’s NYT Strands theme plainly explained

These words describe parts of your hearing aids.

NYT Strands spangram hint: Is it vertical or horizontal?

Today's NYT Strands spangram is vertical.

NYT Strands spangram answer today

Today's spangram is Hear Hear.

NYT Strands word list for January 15

• Stirruo

• Cartilage

• Lobe

• Hammber

• Anvil

• Hear Hear

• Drum

• Canal

Looking for other daily online games? Mashable's Games page has more hints, and if you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now!

Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Strands.

Today's Wordle answer should be easy to solve if you love geology.

If you just want to be told today's word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for today's Wordle solution revealed. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for January 15, 2026 Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

What's the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles was originally available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it, but it was later taken down, with the website's creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times. However, the New York Times then rolled out its own Wordle Archive, available only to NYT Games subscribers.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn't any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle's Hard Mode if you're after more of a challenge, though.

SEE ALSO: NYT Pips hints, answers for January 15, 2026 Here's a subtle hint for today's Wordle answer:

A gorge.

Does today's Wordle answer have a double letter?

There are no recurring letters.

Today's Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with...

Today's Wordle starts with the letter C.

SEE ALSO: Wordle-obsessed? These are the best word games to play IRL. The Wordle answer today is...

Get your last guesses in now, because it's your final chance to solve today's Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to today's Wordle is...

CHASM

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for January 15, 2026

Reporting by Chance Townsend, Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Wordle.

NASA's SpaceX Crew-11 has safely returned to Earth in an unprecedented ISS medical evacuation, splashing down off the Californian coast on Thursday morning.

Landing in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego at 3:41 a.m. ET / 12:41 a.m. PT, a Dragon capsule saw four astronauts safely returned from the International Space Station after a 167-day mission. NASA's Commander Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan's Kimiya Yui, and Russia's Oleg Platonov landed right on time, according to NASA, and were retrieved by a SpaceX recovery crew waiting nearby.

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You can watch the splashdown on NASA's YouTube livestream (around the 1:30:00 mark).

As the capsule waited for the SpaceX recovery crew, a few cheeky dolphins popped up right beside it:

Cute! Credit: NASA / YouTube

The crew's landing date was brought forward due to medical concerns with one of the crew, the name of whom NASA has kept confidential during all press statements. Mashable space reporter Elisha Sauers took a detailed look at NASA's first medical evacuation from the ISS. According to NASA, the crew member "remains stable," and stated in a press release, "Due to medical privacy, it is not appropriate for NASA to share more details about the crew member."

SEE ALSO: NASA preparing for its first crewed Moon mission in 50 years

After being brought aboard the SpaceX recovery ship, all four astronauts exited the capsule with help from the crew, then were transported immediately to a medical tent on board. According to NASA, they're set to be assessed in a local hospital overnight and then taken to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston for further evaluation.

NASA Commander Zena Cardman emerging from the landed Dragon capsule. Credit: NASA / YouTube

Crew-11 left Earth on Aug. 1, 2025, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and have since conducted research and experiments designed to prepare for future human exploration of Mars and the moon.