Mashable

An advertiser paid for editorial consideration of this deal. Our editorial experts vetted the deal based on our independent expertise. Because we determined that the deal will save money for the consumer, we wrote the content.

TL;DR: For a limited time, T-Mobile is offering your first month of 5G Home Internet included, plus up to $200 back via a virtual prepaid Mastercard when you sign up. Speeds vary by plan, with download speeds of 498 Mbps on the Amplified and All-In plans.

Opens in a new window Credit: T-Mobile T-Mobile 5G Home Internet Get your first month of T-Mobile 5G Home Internet included, plus up to $200 back. Shop Now

For a limited time, T-Mobile has a new offer on 5G Home Internet worth checking out. This is a good time to compare T-Mobile's offering with what you're currently paying. Here's what's included:

• Your first month of service on T-Mobile (via bill credit; plus tax)

• Up to $200 back, delivered via virtual prepaid Mastercard (allow seven weeks from rebate submission)

• T-Mobile will buy out your current internet contract, covering early termination fees up to $750, paid via virtual prepaid card (requires 60 days of service before validation)

What plans are included?

T-Mobile 5G Home Internet comes in three tiers, with evergreen pricing when bundled with a voice line and AutoPay:

• Rely Plan — $35/month, plus taxes and fees. Download speeds up to 354 Mbps, upload speeds up to 55 Mbps.

• Amplified Plan — $45/month, plus taxes and fees. Download speeds of 498 Mbps, upload speeds up to 55 Mbps.

• All-In Plan — $55/month, plus taxes and fees. Download speeds of 498 Mbps, upload speeds up to 55 Mbps. Also includes the TechEdge Suite (gateway upgrade, advanced cyber security, and 24/7 tech support), plus Hulu and Paramount+ Essential.

Speeds are delivered via 5G cellular network, so actual speeds may vary depending on factors affecting cellular networks. Beyond this, T-Mobile offers a five-year price guarantee on its Home Internet plans (exclusions such as taxes and fees apply), so you'll know what you're paying well into the future.

This deal is only available for a limited time, so don't sit on it too long. Explore T-Mobile's 5G Home Internet plans to find your fit.

The best meal kit delivery deals to shop: Best overall meal kit deal Home Chef $4.99/serving on your first box (for 6-8 meals/week plans), free shipping on box 1, plus a free dessert item on every box Shop Now Best plant-based meal kit Purple Carrot $100 off first 4 weeks Shop Now Best meal kit deal for early risers HelloFresh 10 free meals on your first box, plus a free breakfast item for life while subscribed. Shop Now Best budget meal kit Dinnerly Meals start at $6.30 per person Shop Now Best deal for variety Marley Spoon Save up to 40% across your first 5 boxes, plus free shipping on box 1. Shop Now

The hardest part of cooking usually isn't the cooking itself — it's figuring out what to make. Between work, errands, and everything else going on, deciding on meals for the week can feel like its own chore, especially when you're staring at the same handful of go-to dishes on repeat.

Meal kits exist to take that decision away from you entirely. The menu's already planned, the ingredients are pre-portioned, and all that's left to do is cook (or in some cases, just heat and eat). Pair that with a solid discount, and you're saving time and skipping the nightly "what's for dinner" debate entirely.

We dug through the best live deals so you don't have to — here's what's worth grabbing.

Best overall meal kit deal Opens in a new window Credit: Home Chef Home Chef Get your first Home Chef box for $4.99/serving with free shipping, then 17% off your next four boxes and 35% off the two after that — plus a free dessert with every box. Get Deal Why we like it

Home Chef's meal kit deal is hard to beat on value alone: your first box comes out to $4.99 a serving with free shipping, then the discount keeps rolling — 17% off your next four boxes, and 35% off the two after that. That's seven boxes of savings, not just one.

And it doesn't stop there. You also get a free dessert with every box for as long as you stay subscribed, so the perks don't disappear once the promo pricing ends. Add in up to 30 weekly recipe choices and zero commitment — skip or cancel whenever — and it's easy to see why this is our top overall pick for meal kit deals right now.

Best meal kit deal for early risers Opens in a new window Credit: HelloFresh HelloFresh Get 10 free meals on your first HelloFresh box, plus a free breakfast item on every box for as long as you stay subscribed. Get Deal Why we like it

HelloFresh's offer front-loads real savings — 10 free meals applied to your first box (based on a 4-person, 5-recipe plan; bigger plans get even more free meals). But the real hook is what comes after: a free breakfast item on every single box, for as long as your subscription stays active. It's not a one-time discount that fades after a few weeks — it's a standing perk that keeps paying off.

Just know that shipping kicks in after the first box, and if you ever cancel, the free breakfast perk is gone for good, even if you resubscribe later.

Best meal kit deal for variety Opens in a new window Credit: Marley Spoon Marley Spoon Get 40% off your first Marley Spoon box, plus free shipping — with discounts up to 20% continuing through box 5. Get Deal Why we like it

Marley Spoon's discount doesn't stop after box one — it's 40% off plus free shipping on your first order (bringing a two-person, three-meal week down to $43.16 from $82.93), then 35% off box two, and smaller discounts through box five. That's five discounted boxes total, not just a one-time promo.

The menu holds up its end too: 100+ recipes weekly across meat, fish, vegetarian, vegan, low-carb, and gluten-free, plus Saver recipes if you want to trim the per-serving cost even further. And since you can skip, pause, or cancel at any time, there's no risk in trying it out.

More meal delivery kit deals

• EveryPlate — Meals from $2.99/serving on your first box (two-person, three-recipe plan), plus 10% off boxes 2-5. Pause or cancel anytime. New customers only; shipping fee applies to all deliveries.

• Green Chef — 50% off your first box, 15% off boxes 2-9, plus a free Staub 2-piece mixing bowl set (a $79.99 value) with your third box.

• Gobble — Get your first six meals (three recipes, serves two) for $36, plus free shipping, with code RMNSHIP. New subscriptions only; applies to standard dinner kits only, first week only.

• The Cumin Club — 20% off your first order, plus free shipping, for a limited time. Use code WELCOME20.

• CookUnity — 50% off your first week of chef-crafted, ready-to-eat meals. Never frozen, ready to eat in two minutes.

• Tovala — Free Smart Oven when you order meals six times in your first six months. Scan a QR code, and dinner's ready in 20 minutes with minimal prep.

• Daily Harvest — Up to 25% off smoothie, oat bowl, and snack multipacks (no membership/promo code required, pricing varies by pack size).

• Modify Health — 25% off your first order, plus free shipping, using code THRIVE25 (National Wellness Month offer).

• Factor — 50% off your first box, 20% off boxes 2-5, plus a free breakfast item on every box for a year while your subscription is active. New customers only.

Try one, try a few — most of these let you cancel anytime, so there's little risk in seeing which one actually fits your week.

TL;DR: Unblock ePorner for free with a VPN. The best service for unblocking porn sites is ExpressVPN.

More than a third of U.S. states have introduced restrictions for online adult content. After the introduction of these age verification laws, some porn sites blocked users from those locations. The same situation is now taking place in other parts of the world.

So where does that leave frustrated users? Desperately seeking a solution, that's where. Fortunately, you can still access all your favorite porn sites in just a few simple steps. There's a quick and easy hack that can secure access to restricted content from any location or network. You don't need to be a skilled hacker. Anyone can follow this simple solution.

If you want to unblock porn sites like ePorner for free from anywhere in the world, we have all the information you need.

How to unblock ePorner for free

VPNs can hide your real IP address and connect you to a secure server in another location. This simple process tricks porn sites into providing you with access even if there is a block in place over your network.

Unblock ePorner from anywhere in the world by following this simple process:

1. Sign up for a VPN (like ExpressVPN)

2. Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)

3. Open up the app and connect to a server in a location that supports access to ePorner

4. Connect to ePorner from anywhere in the world

Opens in a new window Credit: ExpressVPN ExpressVPN (1-Month Plan) $12.99 only at ExpressVPN (with money-back guarantee) Get Deal

The best VPNs for unblocking porn sites are not free, but most leading services do offer free trials or money-back guarantees. By leveraging these offers, you can unblock porn sites like ePorner without actually spending anything. This obviously isn't a long-term solution, but it means you can temporarily unblock porn sites like ePorner and then recover your investment.

What is the best VPN for ePorner?

ExpressVPN is the top choice for unblocking porn sites like ePorner, for a number of reasons:

• Servers in 105 countries and all 50 U.S. states

• Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more

• Strict no-logging policy so your data is always secure

• Fast streaming speeds free from throttling

• Up to 10 simultaneous connections

• 30-day money-back guarantee

A two-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $68.40 and includes an extra four months for free — 81% off for a limited time. This plan includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. Alternatively, you can get a one-month plan for just $12.99 (with money-back guarantee).

Unblock ePorner for free with ExpressVPN.

After nights of almost complete darkness, the Moon is well and truly back in the sky. Each night it will appear more illuminated to us on Earth, signalling its current phase of the lunar cycle, Waxing Crescent.

What is today’s Moon phase?

As of Tuesday, Aug. 18, NASA's Daily Moon Guide tracker tells us the Moon phase is in Waxing Crescent phase, with 33% of its surface visible.

Without any visual aids, tonight you can see the Mares Crisium and Fecunditatis. With binoculars you'll also be able to see the Endymion Crater. A telescope will also help you spot the Apollo 17 landing spot, the final Moon landing in the Apollo program.

When is the next Full Moon?

The next Full Moon will take place on August 28.

What are Moon phases?

The Moon goes through a series of phases that cause its appearance to change as seen from Earth. As the Moon orbits Earth, it goes through a lunar cycle that takes about 29.5 days to complete, according to NASA. The positions of the Sun, Earth, and Moon determine how much of the Moon’s illuminated side is visible from Earth, creating its different phases. Throughout the cycle, the Moon changes from a thin crescent to a half Moon, then a Full Moon, before repeating the cycle once more.

The eight phases are:

New Moon - The Moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it's invisible to the eye).

Waxing Crescent - A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).

First Quarter - Half of the Moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-Moon.

Waxing Gibbous - More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.

Full Moon - The whole face of the Moon is illuminated and fully visible.

Waning Gibbous - The Moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)

Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) - Another half-Moon, but now the left side is lit.

Waning Crescent - A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.

Today's Connections: Sports Edition will be easier if you've ever watched baseball.

As we've shared in previous hints stories, this is a version of the popular New York Times word game that seeks to test the knowledge of sports fans.

Like the original Connections, 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 the latest 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: Sports Edition?

The NYT's latest daily word game has launched in association with The Athletic, the New York Times property that provides the publication's sports coverage. The sports Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Each puzzle features 16 words, and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise 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 before the game ends.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

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: Wordle-obsessed? These are the best word games to play IRL. Here's a hint for today's Connections: Sports Edition categories

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

• Yellow: L

• Green: Money spent for and at the game

• Blue: US gymnasts

• Purple: Sounds like Knicks

Here are today's Connections: Sports Edition categories

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

• Yellow: Not Winning

• Green: Purchases at a Game

• Blue: Members of the "Magnificent Seven"

• Purple: Ends in a Homophone for Knicks

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: Sports Edition #694 is...

What is the answer to Connections: Sports Edition today?

• Not Winning: BEHIND, DOWN, LOSING, TRAILING

• Purchases at a Game: CONCESSIONS, PARKING, PROGRAM, TICKET

• Members of the "Magnificent Seven": CHOW, DANIELS, MILLER, STRUG

• Ends in a Homophone for Knicks: BEATNIKS, FINICKS, PENIX, PICNICS

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new sports Connections 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.

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.

Welcome to your guide to Pips, the latest game in the New York Times catalogue.

Released in August 2025, Pips puts a unique spin on dominoes, creating a fun single-player experience that could become your next daily gaming habit.

Currently, if you're stuck, the game only offers to reveal the entire puzzle, forcing you to move on to the next difficulty level and start over. However, we have you covered! Below are piecemeal answers that will serve as hints so that you can find your way through each difficulty level.

How to play Pips

If you've ever played dominoes, you'll have a passing familiarity with how Pips is played. As we've shared in our previous hints stories for Pips, the tiles, like dominoes, are placed vertically or horizontally and connect with each other. The main difference between a traditional game of dominoes and Pips is the color-coded conditions you have to address. The touching tiles don't necessarily have to match.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for August 18, 2026

The conditions you have to meet are specific to the color-coded spaces. For example, if it provides a single number, every side of a tile in that space must add up to the number provided. It is possible — and common — for only half a tile to be within a color-coded space.

Here are common examples you'll run into across the difficulty levels:

• Number: All the pips in this space must add up to the number.

• Equal: Every domino half in this space must be the same number of pips.

• Not Equal: Every domino half in this space must have a completely different number of pips.

• Less than: Every domino half in this space must add up to less than the number.

• Greater than: Every domino half in this space must add up to more than the number.

If an area does not have any color coding, it means there are no conditions on the portions of dominoes within those spaces.

SEE ALSO: NYT Strands hints, answers for August 18, 2026 Easy difficulty hints, answers for August 18 Pips

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-1, placed horizontally.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-1, placed horizontally; 0-0, placed vertically.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-0, placed vertically.

Number (2): Everything in this space must add up to 2. The answer is 2-0, placed horizontally.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-0, placed vertically; 2-0, placed horizontally; 1-6, placed horizontally.

Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 1-6 placed horizontally.

Medium difficulty hints, answers for August 18 Pips

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 5-5, placed vertically.

Less Than (2): Everything in this space must be less than 2. The answer is 4-0, placed horizontally.

Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 5-5, placed vertically; 1-3, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (5): Everything in this space must be greater than 5. The answer is 6-1, placed horizontally.

Number (6): Everything in this space must add up to 6. The answer is 1-3, placed horizontally; 3-6, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (5): Everything in this space must be greater than 5. The answer is 6-1, placed horizontally.

Equal (1): Everything in this space must be equal to 1. The answer is 6-1, placed horizontally; 1-1, placed horizontally.

Equal (4): Everything in this space must be equal to 4. The answer is 4-5, placed vertically; 4-1, placed horizontally.

Number (5): Everything in this space must add up to 5. The answer is 4-5, placed vertically.

Hard difficulty hints, answers for August 18 Pips

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-4, placed vertically.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-5, placed vertically.

Number (11): Everything in this space must add up to 11. The answer is 1-4, placed vertically; 2-2, placed vertically; 1-5, placed vertically.

Greater Than (1): Everything in this space must be greater than 1. The answer is 2-2, placed vertically.

Greater Than (11): Everything in this space must be greater than 11. The answer is 6-6, placed horizontally.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-1, placed vertically.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-1, placed vertically.

Number (11): Everything in this space must add up to 11. The answer is 1-6, placed horizontally; 0-5, placed vertically.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 1-6, placed horizontally; 0-0, placed vertically.

Equal (5): Everything in this space must be equal to 5. The answer is 5-5, placed vertically.

Greater Than (1): Everything in this space must be greater than 1. The answer is 0-3, placed horizontally.

Equal (0): Everything in this space must be equal to 0. The answer is 0-3, placed horizontally; 0-4, placed vertically.

Greater Than (1): Everything in this space must be greater than 1. The answer is 5-3, placed horizontally.

Number (11): Everything in this space must add up to 11. The answer is 0-4, placed vertically; 5-3, placed horizontally; 2-0, placed vertically.

Equal (0): Everything in this space must be equal to 0. The answer is 2-0, placed vertically; 0-1, placed horizontally.

Number (1): Everything in this space must add up to 1. The answer is 0-1, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (1): Everything in this space must be greater than 1. The answer is 6-2, placed horizontally.

Greater Than (11): Everything in this space must be greater than 11. The answer is 6-0, placed vertically.

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

The NYT Connections puzzle today is not too difficult if you're familiar with the theater.

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.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

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.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

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 August 17, 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: Premiere

• Green: Not pajamas

• Blue: Orange but not the fruit

• Purple: Courageously persistent

Want more tech and digital culture news delivered to your inbox daily or sent straight to your device? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter or get Mashable push alerts today.

Here are today's Connections categories

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

• Yellow: Seen at a Movie Premiere

• Green: PJs

• Blue: Things That Are Orange

• Purple: Things That Are Gritty

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 #1164 is...

What is the answer to Connections today

• Seen at a Movie Premiere: LIMOUSINE, PAPARAZZI, RED CARPET, VELVET ROPE

• PJs: PETROLEUM JELLY, POETIC JUSTICE, PRACTICAL JOKE, PRIVATE JET

• Things That Are Orange: BASKETBALL, ORAGUTAN, SWEET POTATO, TRAFFIC CONE

• Things That Are Gritty: COWBOY COFFEE, FILM NOIR, FLYERS MASCOT, SANDPAPER

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for August 13, 2026

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

Meet The Mashable 101: Our list of the content creators shaping the internet today

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 Wordle answer should be easy to solve if you steal things.

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 August 17, 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 August 18, 2026 Here's a subtle hint for today's Wordle answer:

Removal of clothing.

Does today's Wordle answer have a double letter?

There are no recurring letters.

Want more tech and digital culture news delivered to your inbox daily or sent straight to your device? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter or get Mashable push alerts today.

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

Today's Wordle starts with the letter S.

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...

STRIP

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.

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

Meet The Mashable 101: Our list of the content creators shaping the internet today

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.

Today's NYT Strands hints are easy if you know a bit of trivia.

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 August 18, 2026 NYT Strands hint for today’s theme: Fool me once...

The words are related to being treated like a fool.

Today’s NYT Strands theme plainly explained

These words describe being at the end of a prank or joke.

NYT Strands spangram hint: Is it vertical or horizontal?

Today's NYT Strands spangram is vertical.

Want more tech and digital culture news delivered to your inbox daily or sent straight to your device? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter or get Mashable push alerts today.

NYT Strands spangram answer today

Today's spangram is Charlatan.

NYT Strands word list for August 18

• Bamboozle

• Dupe

• Hoodwink

• Mislead

• Bilk

• Deceive

Meet The Mashable 101: Our list of the content creators shaping the internet today

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.

True-crime fandom no longer wants to watch from the sidelines; it increasingly wants in on the case.

Consider the recent lineup: TikTok helped pull the Menendez brothers back into the national conversation decades after their convictions. Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s defamation trial became daily social media programming. Luigi Mangione developed an intense internet fandom before his case even reached trial. Increasingly, audiences aren’t satisfied with following a case. They want to investigate it, influence it, and sometimes insert themselves into it.

Most of this activity unfolds outside the courtroom, where it shapes public opinion without becoming part of the official case. But that boundary is now being tested in the trial of Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother charged with murdering her three young children in Jan. 2023.

Clancy’s defense acknowledges that she killed them but argues that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis and was not criminally responsible for her actions. Online, however, some viewers have rejected both sides' accounts and begun conducting their own parallel investigation.

But it wasn’t one of their conspiracy theories that found its way into the legal proceedings. Instead, Clancy’s attorneys became interested in a video from Emily Thorndike that has amassed over 5 million views.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The licensed independent clinical social worker had spent more than seven years working on the same short-term McLean Hospital unit where Clancy was later treated. Thorndike left McLean roughly a year before Clancy’s stay and had no firsthand knowledge of her treatment. After watching the trial, however, she posted a video challenging how prosecutors portrayed the hospital’s staffing, resources, and available care — particularly during weekends and holidays. She accused witnesses of spreading "lies and misrepresentations" about McLean.

On Aug. 11, Clancy’s defense asked the judge to add Thorndike to its witness list. The request flipped the familiar courtroom-to-TikTok pipeline on its head.

'I hardly know what TikTok is'

Veteran defense attorney Kevin Reddington did not discover Thorndike while scrolling himself. According to his account during the Aug. 11 hearing, someone active in the trial’s TikTok community emailed him her video and urged him to watch it. "I hardly know what TikTok is," Reddington acknowledged.

After watching the nine-minute, 58-second video, Reddington believed Thorndike’s experience could challenge the prosecution’s claim that Clancy had access to extensive treatment at McLean but chose not to fully participate in it.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

First, Reddington had to find Thorndike. Because her account did not use her full name, his office initially struggled to identify her. His private investigator, Bob Jones, called and left messages, then waited outside her home after she did not respond for three days. Thorndike later explained that she had assumed the outreach was fake: "I thought you guys were all AI!"

Once they connected, Reddington said that Thorndike agreed to testify about the staffing and programs she had observed during her time at McLean, including as a supervisor. But that experience came with a major limitation: She left in Dec. 2021 and could not speak to the conditions Clancy personally encountered a year later.

Prosecutors objected to the late notice, noting that Thorndike was not an expert witness and had watched the trial while publicly criticizing testimony. Assistant District Attorney Shanan Buckingham argued that her broader criticism of McLean might belong in the "court of public opinion," but not "inside the walls of this courtroom."

Judge William Sullivan agreed that Thorndike could not simply give jurors her personal rating of the hospital. "This is not TripAdvisor," he said. Still, he called the narrower question of McLean’s holiday staffing and programming a "closer call." He suggested that hospital records or someone who worked there during Clancy’s stay could provide the same information, and took the motion under advisement.

Whether or not Thorndike testifies, the episode makes one thing clear: Lawyers are no longer merely the subjects of true-crime TikTok...they’re watching it, too.

The Lindsay Clancy trial has become 'forensic fandom'

Clancy, now 36, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan. Prosecutors argue that she deliberately sent her ex-husband, Patrick Clancy, out of the house before carrying out a premeditated plan. Her defense says she was experiencing postpartum psychosis after being improperly treated with a rapidly changing combination of psychiatric medications.

On Aug. 17, prosecutors rested their case after calling dozens of witnesses over nearly four weeks. The defense then began presenting testimony about Clancy’s worsening mental health in the months before the killings.

Meanwhile, TikTok users have been conducting their own parallel trial. They have dissected courtroom footage, analyzed a disputed hot-mic moment, and even made thirst-trap edits of Reddington.

Others have promoted unsupported theories that Patrick killed the children and framed his then-wife.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Videos have dissected his clothing, body language, and purported inconsistencies in his testimony, while creators have treated his subsequent remarriage and move to New York as suspicious. Some have even claimed that a body double appeared at CVS in his place or suggested that he deliberately created conditions that would make Lindsay appear psychotic. None of those theories is supported by investigators’ evidence. Patrick has not been charged, and prosecutors have not indicated that he played any role in the killings. CVS surveillance footage and phone records corroborate his account that he was at the store when the killings occurred.

Katy Coduto, an assistant professor of media science at Boston University, calls this sort of online behavior "forensic fandom": People become so invested in a case that following it is no longer enough — they begin to believe they can solve it.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

That feeling is encouraged by the sheer amount of material available. Court livestreams provide hours of footage to parse, while TikTok rewards creators for finding the supposedly overlooked clue or inconsistency that will transform the entire story.

What can true-crime fandom actually change?

Thorndike’s potential entry into the Clancy trial may be unusual, but she is hardly the first online figure to approach the boundary between following a case and becoming part of it. Just look at the Karen Read trials.

Aidan Kearney, the blogger known as Turtleboy, spent years arguing that Read had been framed in the death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe. By 2026, he had published more than 550 blog posts in his "Canton Cover-Up" series, along with hundreds of livestreams accusing witnesses and law enforcement officials of participating in a conspiracy. His coverage and "Free Karen Read" rallies helped turn Read’s claim of innocence into a grassroots movement that spread across Massachusetts and beyond.

Kearney was then charged with witness intimidation over his alleged treatment of people connected to the investigation — charges he denied. A judge required him to leave the courtroom during testimony from certain witnesses. Prosecutors later received permission to examine his communications with Read as possible evidence. Kearney was also placed on a potential witness list and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when questioned before Read’s second trial.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Read was ultimately acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter in June 2025, though she was convicted of drunken driving. There’s no way to know how much the online movement influenced that outcome. But it undeniably changed everything surrounding the trial — including Kearney’s place in it.

High-profile trials have always been spectacles

Most creators don’t get quite that close to the action. More often, they act as an unofficial press corps for audiences following cases from their phones. During Sean "Diddy" Combs’ federal criminal trial, cameras were prohibited inside the courtroom, so TikTokers, YouTubers, and livestreamers stationed outside the courthouse stepped in with daily recaps of testimony and legal arguments. Some, including credentialed journalist Mona Kosar Abdi, reported directly from the courtroom and attracted millions of views. Their videos weren’t evidence, but for viewers following through social media, they became their version of the trial.

Online participation can sometimes produce something investigators can actually use. During the search for Gabby Petito in 2021, travel vloggers Jenn and Kyle Bethune reviewed footage from their road trip after seeing calls for information and spotted Petito’s van near Grand Teton National Park. They sent the footage to the FBI, helping investigators narrow the search area where her remains were found.

But online speculation can just as easily outrun the facts. After the remains of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez were discovered in a Tesla parked in Los Angeles and registered to musician D4vd, whose legal name is David Burke, internet users combed through his digital history. They circulated photographs, purported social media posts, song lyrics, and images of a tattoo that appeared to connect Burke and Rivas, although much of the material had not been independently verified at the time.

Credit: TikTok’s “Top” results for a search of “D4vd”

Some of the material raised legitimate questions about their relationship; other users treated rumors and coincidences as proof. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell later criticized some of the theories as wildly removed from investigators’ evidence. Burke was arrested in April 2026 and pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and related charges. By then, though, online sleuths had already spent months shaping the public’s perception of his guilt and surfacing what appeared to be legitimate leads — and they continue to do so.

Sometimes, the target isn’t even a suspect. During the University of Idaho murder investigation, TikTok creator Ashley Guillard used tarot readings to accuse professor Rebecca Scofield of orchestrating the killings. Scofield had no connection to the crimes, but Guillard repeated the allegations across more than 100 videos, even after police cleared the professor and she received cease-and-desist letters. Scofield sued for defamation, and a jury awarded her $10 million in 2026 — years after the false claims had reached Guillard’s followers.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Of course, renewed attention does not always work against a defendant. The Menendez brothers were already experiencing a TikTok revival when Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and a companion documentary brought the case back into the mainstream in fall 2024. The releases sent viewers searching for old trial clips and had some reconsidering whether the brothers’ sexual abuse allegations had been taken seriously in the 1990s. TikTok and Netflix did not legally reopen the case — their attorneys had filed a habeas petition based on purported new evidence in 2023 — but they gave that effort an enormous new audience.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

High-profile trials have always been spectacles — the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, Charles Manson, O.J. Simpson. What has changed is how easily the people watching can become active participants.

As Harvard Law professor Ron Sullivan warned in 2025, constant coverage gives jurors more opportunities to encounter inadmissible evidence and arguments. But the influence runs both ways: Attorneys can find witnesses through TikTok, prosecutors can subpoena creators’ messages as evidence, and online movements can pressure officials to reopen cases — even as unfounded theories harm victims, their families, and witnesses.

Courts still decide what becomes evidence, but they can no longer pretend the parallel proceedings unfolding online don’t affect them. Reddington may barely know what TikTok is, but the legal system no longer has that luxury.

SAVE 10%: As of Aug. 17, you can get the Dreame L60 Ultra robot vacuum and mop for $1,169.99, down from $1,299.99, at Amazon. That's a 10% discount, or $130 in savings.

Dreame L60 Ultra Robot Vacuum and Mop With Dock $1,169.99 at Amazon
$1,299.99 Save $130   Get Deal at Amazon

Not to sound too cringey, but I'm a Dreame superfan. My floor-cleaning arsenal (aka the Dreame Team) includes the Dreame L60 Pro Ultra, Dreame N20 Steam Portable Carpet Cleaner, and the Aero Pro Steam. Each one is phenomenal in its own way, so whenever there's a sale, I'm definitely the first one to let people know.

SEE ALSO: Dreame's newest vacuum mop basically pressure-washes your floors

As of Aug. 17, you can get the Dreame L60 Ultra robot vacuum and mop for $1,169.99, down from $1,299.99, at Amazon. That's a 10% discount, or $130 in savings. That may not sound like much, but I can tell you from experience that these little robot vacuum-mops are worth every penny.

Although I have the upgraded version, the L60 Ultra still has some pretty impressive stats. You'll get 35,000Pa of suction, a detangling brush (great for pet parents), and an all-in-one PowerDock that auto-empties the dustbin (you'll get up to 100 days' worth of debris in one bag) and washes the mop pads with 212-degree hot water.

You can control everything through the app, and other than emptying the dirty water bin every now and again, this is a hands-off cleaning machine. (I've had my Ultra Pro for over two months and still haven't had to replace the bag.)

TL;DR: Pay $14.99 for the Borderlands 2 GOTY Steam key, including the base game, nine add-ons, six Vault Hunters, and 100+ hours of content.

Opens in a new window Credit: Steam Borderlands 2 Game of the Year Edition (Steam Key) $14.99
$39.99 Save $25   Get Deal

Borderlands 2 Game of the Year Edition sends players to Pandora for revenge, treasure, and a frankly unreasonable number of procedurally generated weapons. The Steam key is $14.99 instead of $39.99 for a limited time.

The story follows six playable Vault Hunters — Axton, Maya, Salvador, Zer0, Gaige, and Krieg — as they take on Handsome Jack and Hyperion. Each character has unique abilities and three skill trees, allowing players to shape different combat styles and experiment with new builds.

Mashable Deals Be the first to know! Get editor selected deals texted right to your phone! Get editor selected deals texted right to your phone! Loading... Sign Me Up By signing up, you agree to receive recurring automated SMS marketing messages from Mashable Deals at the number provided. Msg and data rates may apply. Up to 2 messages/day. Reply STOP to opt out, HELP for help. Consent is not a condition of purchase. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Thanks for signing up!

Weapons come in millions of possible combinations, with different manufacturers, parts, statistics, and elemental effects. Loadouts also include shields, grenade mods, relics, and class mods. Incendiary, corrosive, shock, slag, and explosive damage provide tactical options against different enemy defenses.

Pandora spans frozen tundras, deserts, grasslands, corrosive caverns, and other environments populated by robots, bandits, Stalkers, Bullymongs, and Hyperion forces.

The campaign can be played solo or through four-player online co-op with drop-in and drop-out support. LAN multiplayer is also included, and character progress and equipment remain available between sessions. Local split-screen works on supported systems.

This Game of the Year Edition adds nine content packs to the base game. That includes four campaign expansions, Gaige and Krieg, the Ultimate Vault Hunter Upgrade Pack, Creature Slaughter Dome, and Collector’s Edition bonus content.

Across the main story, expansions, side quests, and higher-difficulty playthroughs, it offers more than 100 hours of gameplay. Steam Workshop support adds community-created mods, while official updates provide patches, fixes, and balance improvements.

Get the Borderlands 2 Game of the Year Edition Steam key for $14.99 (reg. $39.99).

Check out the other gaming codes and offers available.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

On Aug. 4, a Nike customization trailer pulled up outside Gamma Phi Beta at the University of Alabama. Inside were sneakers, fleeces, and other gear that members could personalize with sorority details. Outside, three videographers waited to capture the results.

The event brought 150 women through the trailer, according to Campus Launch, the sorority-marketing agency that organized it. Soon, clips of members showing off their new Nike outfits began circulating online — including on my own For You Page.

Nike’s Alabama activation is just one of many examples of how brands are capitalizing on RushTok, one of the best times of the year for TikTok. In 2026, bands are more deeply embedded in the Greek spectacle than ever. The arrangement is mutually beneficial: Brands gain visibility among young consumers and the chronically online, while members receive free products and experiences, and chapters get the status boost of landing a major corporate partner.

SEE ALSO: TikTok shoppers spent $50 billion in six months on the platform

At 'Bama, that status can help a sorority compete for attention before recruitment formally begins. The university has called its recruitment the largest Panhellenic recruitment in the country, and more than 2,500 women registered in 2026 to consider 19 chapters through a mutual selection process.

Potential new members are trying to impress sororities, but the chapters are also making a case for why those women should want to join them. A Nike trailer parked outside the house with free, customized merch certainly helps make that case.

RushTok has become appointment viewing

Sorority recruitment had circulated on social media before 2021, but that year’s University of Alabama videos turned it into a national fixation. Potential new members posted outfit breakdowns, explained each stage of the process, and updated viewers as they advanced through recruitment. Strangers picked favorites, debated dresses, and waited for Bid Day reveals.

It was reality television produced by college students and released one short video at a time. Before long, the commercial value of that attention became difficult to miss.

Credit: Mashable/ TikTok / Ellette, sockbunstudio, kylan_darnell

At first, brands often benefited by accident. A woman would mention where she bought her dress or earrings, viewers would search for the item, and the retailer would suddenly find itself at the center of an unofficial campaign. Pants Store, a Tuscaloosa retailer frequently mentioned in early Bama Rush videos, said its online and local sales increased by more than 200 percent after RushTok took off in 2021.

Companies soon stopped leaving that exposure to chance. In 2022, Tarte sent mascara and lip balm to 30,000 prospective members at eight universities after reaching out to more than 90 sororities — sales through its student-discount program jumped 1,300 percent afterward. Hair coloring company Hally Hair brought a branded bus to the University of Alabama during 2023 recruitment and invited sorority members to help launch a product. The 2024 trip generated 500,000 impressions and boosted applications to its ambassador program by 200 percent within 12 hours.

That same year, Bubble Skincare used its Bubble on Campus ambassador program to partner with 25 chapters across 15 universities, distributing more than 5,000 products to 10 Alabama sororities alone.

RushTok can promote the women in the videos just as much as the products they’re selling. Take Kylan Darnell, who became one of the phenomenon’s biggest breakout stars after posting an outfit video on the first day of Alabama recruitment in 2022. The video racked up 6 million views by the end of the day, and Darnell went on to amass 1.3 million TikTok followers and build a six-figure influencer career, working with more than 50 brands over four years.

Blythe Beardsley, a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University of Arizona, is another example. After a viral video of her dancing with her sorority sisters attracted more than 38 million TikTok views, Beardsley started receiving offers from fashion companies. Within weeks, Showpo paid for her and her mother to attend New York Fashion Week and supplied her with clothing in exchange for social media content.

"I felt imposter syndrome at first," she told the Arizona Sonoran News in 2025. "I’ve never had a big social media presence. I used to delete the apps to protect my mental health." The video now has over 45 millions views.

Most women who appear on RushTok won't turn a viral video into a trip to Fashion Week, let alone a six-figure career. Still, those success stories reveal another reason brands are eager to get inside sorority houses: The women promoting a campaign today could become the influencers companies pay tomorrow.

Meeting Gen Z 'where they are'

As competition for attention has intensified, handing out free products no longer cuts it. Recruitment dances — like the one that launched Beardsley onto millions of screens — have become one of RushTok’s most favorited formats. Members perform choreographed routines in coordinated outfits, often racking up thousands or even millions of views on their chapters’ accounts.

Nike has started sponsoring those performances, too. "Shoutout to Nike for helping us strut into this recruitment season," Arizona State University's Delta Zeta chapter captioned one video. Within a week, two videos from the partnership, also brokered by Campus Launch, had each pulled in over 2 million views.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

ASU Delta Zeta also partnered with Love Island USA Season 8 contestant Kayda Bosse, where she posed with members, sampled Poppi, and became the chapter’s honorary "bombshell for the day." Bosse brought an Instagram audience of 2 million with her. Delta Zeta declared it the "best day ever" and thanked Poppi for arranging the visit.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Other companies have found their own ways into RushTok. Energy drink brand Gorgie used drones to drop cans into the backyard of Oklahoma Pi Beta Phi. The Coconut Cult developed a Princess Cake yogurt flavor for rush and dispatched two trucks to distribute it to sorority houses nationwide. Khloé Kardashian’s protein snack brand Khloud appeared in Alpha Delta Pi’s candy-colored "Life Is Sweet" campaign at Alabama. Dunkin’ distributed samples of its new drinks in holographic cups at Alabama’s Delta Gamma house. Fashion retailer Edikted supplied Gamma Phi Beta members with clothing for recruitment.

Sephora at Kohl’s has also capitalized on sorority rush. Last year, they launched beauty pop-ups on three campuses during recruitment. Students could get their hair and makeup done, sample products, and collect discounts. Thousands attended, demonstrating what Kohl’s chief marketing officer Christie Raymond described as an opportunity to meet Gen Z "where they’re already engaging."

This year, the company partnership returned this year with a traveling "Beauty Bodega" featuring free touch-ups, product giveaways, sweets, and a fragrance fridge. The pop-up supplies students with genuinely useful services during recruitment, when many are spending hours outside and changing their appearance between events.

Sorority rush has always required a certain amount of theater. At the University of Michigan, where I participated in sorority rush back in 2017, we had costumes, choreography, rehearsals, and enough synchronized clapping to qualify as an endurance sport. TikTok did not invent the performance; but it did place it in front of millions of spectators.

Now brands are the ones supplying the wardrobe, building the set, and waiting for the cameras to roll.

Your YouTube videos are about to get a lot more views. At least, that's what it'll appear like on the YouTube video view count.

On Monday, YouTube announced that it was changing how it counts video views on the platform. According to YouTube, starting on Aug. 24, the platform will start counting a view on a video from the moment it starts to play – or as YouTube puts it, "from the very first frame."

The company says the change will bring the way it counts views on long-form videos in line with its method for YouTube Shorts. Since March 2025, YouTube has counted a Shorts view from the moment the video begins playing. (YouTube Shorts are videos up to three minutes long that use a vertical or square format.)

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

This is a big change from how YouTube previously counted a view on a long-form video. 

Until Aug. 24, a view on long-form content will be counted only if a viewer watches at least 30 seconds of the video. Viewers who watch less than that won't be included in the video's view counter. That threshold, however, has provided creators with useful data about how many people were actually watching their videos.

While the view count change will mean videos will look like they're receiving more views from before, YouTube appears to recognize that its previous metric remains useful to creators. The company announced it will continue counting the original view metric as "Engaged views" in creators' YouTube Analytics under Advanced Mode.

YouTube was the last of the major tech platforms to quantify video views as a viewer actually consuming a substantial amount of the content. Typically, platforms better known for short-form content like TikTok or Elon Musk's X all count views from the moment a video plays, even if the video autoplays and a user immediately scrolls past it or swipes to the next clip.

According to YouTube, this change won't affect the monetization requirements for creators' channels. YouTube just changed the YouTube Partner Program eligibility requirements for YouTubers earlier this month. Those changes will make it more difficult for creators to monetize their channels by requiring more watch hours or YouTube Shorts views than before.

In addition to the new view metric, YouTube says it will now refer to the "valid public Shorts views" and "valid public watch hours" monetization requirements as "qualified Shorts views" and "qualified watch hours," respectively. 

Elon Musk-owned SpaceXAI is set to defend its artificial intelligence bot Grok in federal court, following a scandal that alleges the AI assistant was used to produce child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

In March, three Tennessee teenagers filed a federal lawsuit against the company for its alleged role in producing millions of sexually explicit images of minors, claiming malicious actors used the AI tool to generate inappropriate images of them when they were children. Last month, the lawsuit expanded as two additional plaintiffs joined the case, detailing startling stories of online sexual abuse enabled by Grok's image-generating features.

The lawsuit also added a second defendant: Stability AI, the makers of the popular text-to-image model Stable Diffusion.

SEE ALSO: D23 2026: Every movie and series announced and shown at this year's fan event

"Limitless access to these tools is spreading so quickly. It is taking everyday life and turning it into child sexual abuse," said one of the two new plaintiffs. She is referred to in the case as Jane Doe 4.

Under U.S. law, companies are required to report suspected cases of child sexual exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). In 2025, Meta, Amazon AI Services, TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, X.AI, Grindr, and Roblox submitted a combined 17 million tips to NCMEC, which accounted for 80 percent of all tips. But, according to NCMEC, many of these reports left out key information, including disclosures regarding the presence of child sex abuse material (CSAM) in AI training data and specific details that could aid law enforcement in locating suspects.

According to information submitted as part of the expanded lawsuit, X sent in only one tip regarding Jane Doe 4's case and failed to provide additional information to law enforcement when asked. The perpetrator used Grok to produce more than 7,000 sexually explicit images and videos of Jane Dane 4 using a single childhood photo, police records show.

In addition to its alleged role in producing CSAM, the plaintiffs also argue SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) benefited from sex trafficking ventures via Grok's AI features. The case also argues the company has created a public nuisance through its "negligence" and "defective product design."

Annika Martin, the plaintiffs' attorney, told NPR that Grok is a "scourge on society."

If you have had intimate images shared without your consent, call the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative’s 24/7 hotline at 844-878-2274 for free, confidential support. The CCRI website also includes helpful information as well as a list of international resources.

SAVE $400: The Antigravity A1 360 drone bundle is on sale at Amazon for $1,199, down from the normal price of $1,599. That's a 25% discount and the lowest price we've ever seen at Amazon.

Opens in a new window Credit: Antigravity Antigravity A1 360 drone standard bundle $1,199 at Amazon
$1,599 Save $400   Get Deal

For so many reasons, owning a top-tier drone and being proficient in flying it is a great skill. Checking out the neighborhood, getting real-estate footage, or content for TikTok are just a few of the reasons why someone would want a drone. If you've been shopping for a drone other than a DJI, check out this Amazon deal.

As of Aug. 17, the Antigravity A1 360 drone bundle is on sale at Amazon for $1,199, down from the normal price of $1,599. That's a 25% discount and the lowest price we've ever seen at Amazon.

You know you're in good hands with an Antigravity drone since the brand is an offshoot of Insta360, one of the premier 360-degree camera companies. Adam Doud reviewed the Antigravity A1 drone for Mashable and noted the high price point as one of the only negatives. Otherwise, he wrote, "While most drones are cameras that you can fly, the Antigravity A1 is a 360-degree camera that you can fly."

Doud also mentions the immersive googles are a big benefit with this Antigravity model, as is the remote control. Unlike most drones, the Antigravity eliminates the need to both fly the drone and point the camera in the direction of the footage you'd like to capture. Since the Antigravity A1 films in 360-degrees, you get to pick your content later.

SEE ALSO: Best Buy is turning 60: Celebrate with massive weeklong deals on iPads, laptops, and TVs

On that note, Doud explained, "As a content creator, all you have to focus on is putting the drone near the event you want to capture, and it takes care of the rest."

Since it's sitting at the lowest price we've seen at Amazon, now might be a great time to upgrade to the Antigravity A1 360 drone bundle. There's still plenty of nice fall weather to spend becoming an expert on this drone.

SAVE 24%: As of Aug. 17, you can get the DJI Mini 3 for $319, down from $419, at Amazon. That's a 24% discount, or $100 in savings.

DJI Mini 3 $319 at Amazon
$419 Save $100   Get Deal at Amazon Get Deal at Best Buy

Becoming a drone enthusiast is an admirable, albeit expensive, hobby. But that doesn't mean you should put your dream of piloting on the shelf. Sometimes, you can find a really good deal on drones at Amazon (granted, you have to be careful about who you buy from — beware of third-party sellers!).

SEE ALSO: The FCC banned foreign routers, drones, robots: What it means for you

Right now, DJI has its Mini 3 drone on sale for $319, down from $419, at Amazon. That's a 24% discount, or $100 in savings. It's not the lowest we've seen for this model, but we can't really expect holiday-level prices in August. So, this is the best deal you're going to get on this drone right now.

The DJI Mini 3 is ideal for first-time fliers. It's so light (under 249 grams) that you don't have to register it with the FAA or use a Remote ID if you're just flying it for recreational purposes. It also has a 3-axis gimbal, captures 4K HDR video, and offers 38 minutes of battery life. Add in its Level 5 wind resistance and up to 10km of HD video transmission, and this little guy is ready to go on just about any adventure you have planned.

In the battle of the giant Halloween animatronics, Lowe's comes out on top this year.

The home improvement retailer's 2026 Halloween collection includes a new $429 Talking Lighted Skeleton Watcher hoisting its skull 15 feet in the air, complete with LED eyes, side-to-side movements, and spooky voice lines. It's the biggest Halloween prop on the market this season, standing even taller than "Skelly," the Home Depot's viral 12-foot skeleton. (The Home Depot previously sold a 15-foot Worricrow and Galli-Crow for $399 each, but didn't revive them for 2026.)

As of Aug. 17, the Lowe's full Halloween collection of animatronics, inflatables, and decorations is now live. A company rep told Mashable that most of the collection will be available both in stores and online. Each item's product page shows its availability based on the shopper's location, they said.

Shop Lowe's 2026 Halloween collection: Haunted Living 15-ft Talking Lighted Skeleton Watcher Motion Activated Animatronic $429 Shop Now Haunted Living 7-ft Lighted Reaper Band Singer Motion Activated Animatronic $299 Shop Now Haunted Living 6-ft Motion Activated Ice Scream Skeleton Animatronic $269 Shop Now Haunted Living 6-ft Motion Activated Talking Lighted Witch Animatronic $129 Shop Now Haunted Living 5.9-ft Lighted Motion Activated Rotton Candy Girl Halloween Animatronic $299 Shop Now Haunted Living 5.7-ft Motion Activated Bluetooth DJ Lighted Skeleton Animatronic $299 Shop Now Haunted Living 4-ft Motion Activated Howling Lighted Dragon Halloween Animatronic $199 Shop Now Disney 4-ft Motion Activated Minnie Mouse Mummy Halloween Animatronic $199 Shop Now Disney 3-ft The Haunted Mansion Big Jake Dog Blow Mold Tombstone $69.98 Shop Now Bluey 3-ft Lighted Bluey Witch Halloween Inflatable $34.98 Shop Now

Other additions to this year's Lowe's Halloween lineup include a Bluey Witch inflatable, a 5.7-foot skeleton DJ, a rockin'-out reaper band, a four-foot Howling Lighted Dragon, and several creepy clowns. There's also a new Disney collection featuring talking animatronics of movie characters, like Monsters, Inc.'s Mike Wazowski, plus replicas of tombstones from Disneyland's Haunted Mansion ride. Prices start around $30.

Like the Home Depot's rivaling props, Lowe's Halloween offerings will probably sell out quickly. At the time of writing, only 111 Watchers were left in stock for shipping. One Haunted Mansion tombstone, a nine-foot Gaslight Ghoul animatronic, and a three-foot Growling Lighted Werewolf animatronic were already out of stock online.

For its part, Home Depot launched its own Halloween collection in mid-July. Summer Halloween drops might sound premature, but research shows that consumers have a healthy appetite for early shopping. According to the National Retail Federation's 2025 Halloween spending survey, almost half of Halloween shoppers began buying décor and costumes before October last year. Respondents cited their excitement for fall, love of the holiday, FOMO, and desire "to avoid the stress of last-minute shopping" as the reasons for their proactivity, said the NRF.

People aren’t exactly thrilled about Flock’s growing surveillance network. Communities are canceling contracts, protesters are taking down cameras in increasingly creative ways, and activists have built a crowdsourced map showing where the devices are hiding in plain sight. Even Flock has announced new privacy restrictions as the backlash grows.

Now, drivers can search some of those records for themselves.

A website called Have I Been Flocked? lets you enter your license plate number and check whether it appears in publicly released records of searches conducted through Flock Safety’s system. As of Aug. 17, the website had compiled nearly 242 million searches involving more than 4.6 million plates.

The need for that kind of transparency isn’t hypothetical. A recent Washington Post investigation found that at least 50 law enforcement officers had been charged with or accused of misusing license plate readers, including to stalk women without their knowledge or consent.

The concerns extend beyond individual officers. Public records reviewed by 404 Media documented more than 4,000 Flock searches conducted by local and state police at the request of federal officials, as informal favors, or for potentially immigration-related purposes. Flock says ICE cannot directly access its system, but the records show how local agencies can search the network on the federal government’s behalf.

Have I Been Flocked? won’t reveal everything Flock knows about your car, and finding a match doesn’t necessarily mean you were investigated. Nevertheless, here's how to run a search — and understand what the results actually mean.

How to check whether your license plate was searched

Go to HaveIBeenFlocked.com, enter your license plate number in the search box, and click “Search.”

If your plate appears in the database, the results may include when it was searched, the agency associated with the query, the person who conducted it, and the reason provided for looking up the plate. Some of that information may be incomplete or redacted.

The website is part of Footnote4a, an independent editorial project focused on mass surveillance and government contracts. Its database is built from Flock audit logs released by local governments through transparency portals or obtained through public records requests.

Those audit logs document searches made within Flock’s system. According to the website's FAQ, the license plate and stated reason shown in the results are information that a Flock operator manually entered.

What does it mean if your plate appears?

A match means a Flock user queried the company’s database for that license plate. It does not necessarily mean that your car was stopped, that you were suspected of committing a crime, or that you were formally investigated.

The person conducting the search may have been a police officer, but the website notes that not every Flock user is a member of law enforcement. Businesses, schools, homeowners associations, and other private organizations also use Flock’s technology.

The reason listed alongside a result may provide more context. An operator could say the search was related to a stolen vehicle, traffic stop, missing person, or another investigation. However, because users supply those explanations themselves, they should not be treated as an independent account of what happened.

The website also does not show whether the search produced a match inside Flock’s system or reveal exactly what the operator saw.

No result doesn’t mean you haven’t been searched

Have I Been Flocked? has collected hundreds of millions of records, but its database is still incomplete.

The project depends on public records released by individual government agencies, and relatively few make their complete Flock audit logs easily available. The records that are released can also be heavily redacted or out of date.

"There can be a significant delay — months or even years — between when a search occurs and when it appears on this website," the project explains on its site.

That means an empty result does not prove that nobody has ever searched for your plate; it only means the number does not appear in the website's current records.

Operator names can also be incomplete. Flock’s audit logs often shorten an operator’s name to a first initial and the first three letters of a surname — turning a name such as Kevin Zachary into "K. Zac" (an example provided by HaveIBeenFlocked.com). That can make it difficult to determine exactly who performed a search. The website compares these partial names with public police rosters and employment records to identify a likely match, but warns that the results are not definitive.

Have I Been Flocked? also attempts to match those partial names with public employment records, but warns that its identifications are probabilistic and should be independently verified.

If you find a search that concerns you, the project recommends filing a public records request with the agency linked to it. It also advises anyone who believes they were subjected to improper surveillance to speak with an attorney.

The plate lookup is only one part of the website — visitors can also browse searches by agency and explore reports involving immigration enforcement, First Amendment activity, low-level offenses, noncriminal activity, and searches apparently intended to "develop probable cause." After years of drivers being kept in the dark, the website makes at least some of Flock’s surveillance visible.

Want to learn more about getting the best out of your tech? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories and Deals newsletters or get Mashable push alerts today.

Things are heating up on Furious as the FBI is closer than ever before to Catherine (Lola Petticrew). In episode 6, agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) is in the same shelter as the serial killer, and her colleagues have taken Catherine's fiancé Alden (Steve Way) in for questioning. And amid life-or-death stakes and a nerve-shredding police corruption subplot, it's Way who makes this episode consistently laugh-out-loud funny.

Far from being intimidated by FBI agent Frank Choi (Rob Yang), Alden taunts him repeatedly. He makes jokes about his mobility issues to fluster the agent. He uses his wheelchair for physical comedy that makes Choi the punchline, and he flagrantly chants, "Fuck the police," while NYPD detective Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy) looks on. 

SEE ALSO: How 'Furious' delves into a world of sex and violence without being exploitative

Fans of Ramy will recognize Way. But it wasn't his work on that comedy series that caught the eye of Furious creator Elizabeth Meriwether, who also co-created the critically praised tragicomedy series Dying for Sex. In an interview with Mashable, she shared how she first met Way, and how that shaped Furious in a major way. 

Steve Way's role on Furious was written with him in mind.  Steve Way plays Alden on "Furious." Credit: Hulu

Sitting down with Mashable Entertainment Editor Kristy Puchko, Meriwether said, "So, Dying for Sex was coming out as I was in the writers' room for Furious. And we were research[ing] female serials as caretakers. Catherine kind of became a nurse, and then [I] was like, 'Okay, who is she nursing?' And we were going through a lot of different ideas. [Then, because of Dying For Sex,] I did a panel about showing caretaking in TV. And Steve was on the panel."

The panel, titled "Storytelling About Gender, Work, Family, and Care in Uncertain Times," was held by the SAG-AFTRA foundation on May 5, 2025. It is available on YouTube. 

"The entire panel," Meriwether recalled, "I was just cracking up; he was so funny.  His running bit in the panel was that he needed work for health insurance. And I was  just like, 'He needs work. I need this character.' The next day, I walked into the writers' room, and I was like, 'It's this guy, Steve Way. We're building this whole character around him.'" 

She continued, "I felt so privileged to get to work with him and collaborate with him. I learned so much. We would do the table read, and then he would like stay after and talk to me for like an hour at a time, and just go through and add specifics. He's doing great physical comedy [in the show], and a lot of that came from his specific ideas about how his wheelchair moved, and like what people don't know about wheelchairs and things like that."

Meriwether noted the humor Way brings is "an important part of the show," adding that he creates a release to help balance "a lot of heavy subjects" that Furious tackles. 

Way also becomes an unexpected source of wisdom, delivering a message about love that speaks to the show as a whole. 

Did Catherine kill Alden's mom?   Scoot McNairy, Rob Yang, and Steve Way co-star in "Furious." Credit: Hulu

In a separate interview with Petticrew, Puchko asked about a big episode 6 moment, in which Danny tries to get information about Catherine out of Alden by arguing the love between them isn't real. 

First, Danny points out that Catherine went by Vanessa when she worked with Alden. "You two are in love, and you don't even know her name?" Danny pushes.

 "Oh, that's the best love," Alden counters, noting that whatever her name, she sees him as he is, and not his wheelchair. "She doesn't pity me."

"You don't think she fucking used you?" Danny presses. 

"I don't fucking care. I don't care. My entire life I've been told I'm never going find someone. I'm not worthy of love. And the one time I find it, you want to take it from me," Alden argues, adding, "You think love is only when people do everything you want them to do. That's fucked up." 

Finally, Danny tries one more time to turn Alden, by suggesting that Catherine killed Alden's mom, then used her fentanyl to kill others. To this, Alden replies, "No one's perfect."

Lola Petticrew is Catherine/Vanessa in 'Furious.' Credit: Hulu

Petticrew has previously shared their thoughts on why Catherine killed Becky but spared Mira. So, do they believe their character murdered Alden's mom before kicking off her vengeance-seeking killing spree? 

"I don't think she did," Petticrew said, "I mean, just me, as a viewer… I think I would watch it and think that she didn't. I don't think that she would have a reason to. I think she has a pretty clear ethical/moral code." 

But for Petticrew, whether Catherine killed Alden's mom is not as important as his response to the possibility of it. 

Petticrew said of Alden's response, "I think it's a very wonderful Liz Meriwether way of getting to the heart of the entire piece. So often, we are forced into presenting perfect victims. It happens in film and TV, and certainly in life, and when people seek justice for things, you have to play the role of a perfect victim. You're not allowed to be in any way gray or complicated. And that is just not life, and that is just not true [to life].

"These women in this show," Petticrew continued, "are allowed to be gray and hard and difficult and complicated, because everybody is. And if you have to be a perfect victim in order to deserve any pity or justice or help, what you're saying is there are some people who deserve this to happen to them, and I certainly don't believe that that's true." 

Asked what it was like working with Way, Petticrew gushed, "Steve is phenomenal. Getting him as a scene partner for those moments was just unreal. Getting to go in and work with him every day, he constantly surprised me and pulled things out of Catherine. I think that relationship is so important in the show. I think that Alden is someone that — while, in a way, he's almost completely reliant on her — he actually doesn't expect anything from her at all, or want anything from her at all. And I think that that is really beautiful. And I think that she really appreciates that and feels safe. To have a space in this world, in this show, where she feels that was just like a sigh of relief. And I think casting Steve was one of the best decisions they made in the show, because he just has an ability to break your heart and make you laugh side by side. And he's also an awesome human being who it was a delight to go to work with every day. So, how lucky am I?"

Furious is now streaming on Hulu, with new episodes every Monday through Aug. 31.