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Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle No. 1143 for July 28.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 877 for Tuesday, July 28.

Sen. Rand Paul has released a tranche of Dr. Anthony Fauci's diary entries from the COVID-19 pandemic. Fauci is set to appear before a Senate committee Wednesday on the origins of the coronavirus.

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla)

• Ukraine's State Border Guard Service says its Phoenix unit destroyed a Russian Buk-M3 launcher with a single low-cost drone
• The strike is one of many rather than a first, with Ukraine claiming dozens of Buk systems of this type have been damaged or destroyed
• Drones are increasingly being used to take out high-value military targets for a fraction of the cost

Ukraine's decision to use drones as part of its key asymmetrical war doctrine against Russia continues to deliver dividends for the country on multiple fronts, with its recent success on the battlefield centering around a Russian Buk-M3 launcher that, based on independent estimates, costs between $40 and $50 million.

This is not the first, and probably not the last, Russian Buk-M3 launcher that Ukraine has targeted of late, with Oryx, an open-source intelligence blog, putting the number at over 40 confirmed Buk kills since the conflict began.

Despite being relatively routine, Buk-M3 systems are relatively expensive to replace, and Ukraine claims to have done so with an FPV drone that cost them "only several thousand dollars."

An increasingly tough conflict for expensive military equipment

Ukraine and Russia's turn toward drones has produced one rather obvious casualty: expensive military equipment costing millions of dollars to build, and the Buk-M3 launcher is no exception.

The Buk-M3, also known as Viking in its export form and designated SA-27 by NATO, is Russia's newest medium-range surface-to-air missile system. It was adopted into Russian service in 2016 as the successor to the Buk-M2, and occupies the medium tier of Russia's layered air defense, sitting above short-range systems such as Pantsir and Tor and below the long-range S-300 and S-400.

The M3 fires the 9M317M, a single-stage solid-fuel missile with a more powerful dual-mode motor than the M2's round. That gives it roughly 70 km of range, a ceiling around 35 km, and a top speed near 1,550 m/s. The launcher carries six missiles, compared to four on the M1 and M2, and upgraded electronics are credited with reducing the time to bring the system to readiness.

That makes it a valuable target for Ukrainian drone operators, and an ironic one, since the Buk-M3 is built partly to shoot down aerial threats. Its minimum effective engagement range is roughly 2.5 km, however, so a small drone that closes inside that distance is beneath the floor of what the system's own missiles can engage.

Ukraine has developed a range of methods for reaching Russian airfields, armor, and artillery positions, among them Operation Spiderweb, which Ukraine's security service assessed as having destroyed some $7 billion in Russian military hardware, including aircraft no longer in production.

The Ukrainian Border Guard says this system was struck in transit, moving toward the front and unconcealed. That detail matters more than it appears. Air defense vehicles are at their most vulnerable during relocation, since they cannot engage effectively on the move and their protective screen is degraded, making the transit window a predictable target rather than a lucky one.

The aim behind Ukraine's systematic degradation of Russian medium-range air defense is to open corridors through radar coverage for long-range strike drones and manned aviation, which is why the tempo has increased and why strikes now reach deep into Russian territory.

A Buk-M3 lost to an FPV drone is the kind of incident that illustrates the wider problem Russia faces against a maturing Ukrainian drone industry, in a war that has settled into attrition across multiple fronts.

Let’s get this straight. AI is a disruptor, not a savior. It is not a cure for the world’s ills. When I walk through the streets of New York, I see homeless people, and I know that they don’t have enough. When I look at the statistics and I see 1/7 of the world is living in poverty, I know that there’s no simple or easy solution. Unquestionably, AI is changing everyone’s lives, is changing the world, is changing industry and business. Heck, it’s changing my own work, but it does not have the power to transform how people get goods and services, and the fundamentals of resources and energy.

We do not have unlimited resources. We do not have an unlimited supply of energy. What we’re learning, instead, is that the world is a carpet, and AI is the vacuum, potentially sucking up vast quantities of electricity and water. What we're learning, instead, is that AI sucks an enormous amount of power and resources from the world.

I’m sorry if I sound a little riled up. You can blame Elon Musk, who predicted a world of abundance within 10 years. We won’t need money in 2036. AI will be smarter than us, and so it will usher in an age of abundance. As for how it will do this, well, it’ll ignore the basic rules of economics, the basic rules of resources, and even physics, so somehow, we’ll have unlimited energy. All this, in Musk’s vision, will be thanks to AI and robotic automation, and, I guess, AI’s ability to solve problems and magically produce or protect limited resources like water, energy, and precious metals.

No, the robots won't save us

Speaking of precious metals. You can’t mine them without extreme resources, cost, and labor. Unless Musk believes that the robots that haltingly try to empty a dishwasher and fold clothes will somehow be able to not just dig out the precious metals but properly sort them, and then I’ll shuttle them all the way from mine to the factory and ultimately your phones.

I’m not saying that world can never exist, but even if it does, even if robots are doing that level of work, the fundamentals of our global economy won’t change that easily (if at all). None of this is going to drag people out of poverty and into a world of abundance; that simply is not going to happen thanks to AI. If anything, AI’s rapid use of water and energy could make those resources scarce and more expensive, thereby pushing more people over the poverty line.

Now I do have a thought in between all this. If occasional trillionaire Elon Musk wants to help people with resources and poverty, then maybe he could take some of those billions that he has now and donate them. Musk already has a charitable foundation, but according to some reports, it has zero employees and, for the most part, donates funds to a narrow set of insiders.

I'm not buying what he's selling

So, what exactly is going on here? What is Elon Musk selling? Promising an age of abundance through AI and robots, of course, benefits him and his now publicly traded massive SpaceXAI company, which combines the space company with X and XAI, and Tesla, which is trying to build all those bloodless humanoids. The more people believe that AI is the answer, that robotics is the solution, the more money he will make, and the bigger his company will grow, but scale does not equal a solution.

Look, it’s clear that we are at a tipping point. No one really understands the true power and potential of AI, especially as it relates to what might happen with artificial general intelligence. I mean, we have hints, and they’re not the most positive ones.

Perhaps you’ve heard about OpenAI and Hugging Face and how, when OpenAI was testing a new powerful model, the model basically jumped the fence (it left the sandbox and went online) and went into the Hugging Face system because it knew that it could find the solution for its task there. Then Hugging Face didn’t even have a good US model to combat it, so it used some open Chinese models. It was, to say the least, a terrifying mess.

My point is we expect change, and we expected it to be rapid. What happens next will be unpredictable and unsettling, but it is not going to eliminate the need for goods, services, hard work, creation, and the money to support billions of people in their daily lives with the proper resources like food, water, energy, and housing.

The Age of Abundance is a fantasy sold by an AI charlatan, one who tells the best story to serve his own ends. The cost of labor and resources to build will not magically drop to zero. Water and food shortages won’t suddenly, or even in a decade’s time, be solved. Musk’s vision wishes away the basic laws of commerce, physics, and human need to build an AI/robot utopia.

That world may be possible, but only if the AI and robots truly take over and eradicate us. I sure hope that isn’t the world Musk is envisioning.

Postscript:

Without mentioning Elon's name, I asked Gemini whether AI and robots could possibly bring about a cash-free age of abundance. It shared my skepticism.

"When roughly 10% of the world’s population (over 800 million people) still lives in extreme poverty today, and real-world resources like water, arable land, and rare-earth metals are under intense strain, the concept of a moneyless, AI-driven utopia sounds less like an economic plan and more like a science-fiction fairy tale....The leap from 'AI can write essays' to 'AI can eliminate physical scarcity' ignores the fundamental laws of physics and human nature."

The EV maker says a Supreme Court ruling striking down “Liberation Day” tariffs isn’t enough — it wants a guaranteed refund with interest.

• Off-planet mobility company Lunar Outpost with use the Nvidia Jetson platform and Nvidia CUDA-X libraries for future lunar missions
• Nvidia Jetson modules will manage the command and control of the Lunar Voyage 2 rover's LiDAR system, set for launch later in 2026
• This follows Lunar Outpost’s successful bid to design and deliver the Pegasus Lunar Terrain Vehicle for NASA

Nvidia is collaborating with space economy infrastructure company Lunar Outpost to deliver edge AI for future missions to the Moon and beyond. Powering the first generation of AI space computing, Nvidia’s Jetson platform and Nvidia CUDA-X libraries are expected to underpin the Lunar Outpost’s growing mission manifest.

Everything from processing to mapping and communications will be handled by Nvidia’s edge AI provision, which is seen as the solution to Lunar Outpost’s contributions to the NASA Artemis program of modern space exploration.

Later in 2026, the Reiner Gamma exploration – the “lunar swirl” geographical feature on the Moon’s surface – will launch, with the Lunar Voyage 2 expected to be the first Lunar Outpost hardware to be deployed with Nvidia Jetson tech.

Nvidia in space

(Image credit: Lunar Outpost)

Lunar Outpost is no stranger to space exploration, having assisted NASA and MIT on the MOXIE project, generating oxygen on the surface of Mars on a project running 2021 to 2023. Its collaboration continues with the Reiner Gamma exploration, working with General Motors and Goodyear on its lunar rover.

“Lunar missions require intelligent systems that can process data and make decisions in real time," noted Chen Su, Head of edge AI product marketing at NVIDIA.

"Lunar Outpost is using NVIDIA Jetson and CUDA-X libraries to give its rovers the onboard AI computing needed for terrain mapping, autonomous navigation, mission data processing and scientific discovery.”

Human-robot exploration

Set for dispatch to the lunar surface at some point in the second half of 2026 via SpaceX Falcon 9, Lunar Outpost’s Lunar Voyage 2 will be overseen from Earth, while the Nvidia AI technology handles advanced autonomy and communications, as well as lunar mapping and onboard data processing.

Justin Cyrus, Founder and CEO of Lunar Outpost, said “NVIDIA has set the standard for advanced AI computing, and we're proud to work alongside them as we bring increasingly intelligent capabilities to the lunar surface and build towards a Moon Base.”

Partnering with Nvidia for edge AI support appears to be the first stage of some pioneering missions. The future of Lunar Outpost’s off-world activities includes Lunar Voyage 3 and Lunar Voyage 5 missions, where the first human-robot exploration of another world is planned. For this, the Nvidia Space-1 Vera Rubin Module will be deployed, managing real-time data, mapping, and real-time video streaming from the Moon to Lunar Outpost’s mission control.

Lunar Outpost is contracted to a further nine lunar and cislunar (the area between the Earth and Moon) missions before 2030, with Nvidia Jetson and the CUDA-X libraries expected to play a part in all 10.

The company is working to reassure people that the glasses won’t be used to record them surreptitiously.

Looking for a different day?

A new Quordle puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Monday's puzzle instead then click here: Quordle hints and answers for Monday, July 27 (game #1645).

Quordle was one of the original Wordle alternatives and is still going strong now more than 1,500 games later. It offers a genuine challenge, though, so read on if you need some Quordle hints today — or scroll down further for the answers.

Enjoy playing word games? You can also check out my NYT Connections today and NYT Strands today pages for hints and answers for those puzzles, while Marc's Wordle today column covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

Quordle today (game #1646) — hint #1 — VowelsHow many different vowels are in Quordle today?

• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 5*.

* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).

Quordle today (game #1646) — hint #2 — repeated lettersDo any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?

• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 1.

Quordle today (game #1646) — hint #3 — uncommon lettersDo the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?

• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.

Quordle today (game #1646) — hint #4 — starting letters (1)Do any of today's Quordle puzzles start with the same letter?

• The number of today's Quordle answers starting with the same letter is 2.

If you just want to know the answers at this stage, simply scroll down. If you're not ready yet then here's one more clue to make things a lot easier:

Quordle today (game #1646) — hint #5 — starting letters (2)What letters do today's Quordle answers start with?

• S

• R

• R

• G

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

Quordle today (game #1646) — the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle, game #1646, are…

• SMITE
• ROACH
• RUDDY
• GLOBE

Another close shave after two wrong guesses took me to the edge.

In reality it wasn’t quite as perilous as I thought, as words beginning with S and ending I-T-E are few, but it felt perilous at the time.

Daily Sequence today (game #1646) — the answers

(Image credit: Merriam-Webster)

The answers to today's Quordle Daily Sequence, game #1646, are…

• CURSE
• FEIGN
• EXTOL
• POESY

Quordle answers: The past 20

• Quordle #1645, Monday, 27 July: TAFFY, FIGHT, GUILD, WAGER
• Quordle #1644, Sunday, 26 July: STOMP, LIMIT, FUNKY, STEAD
• Quordle #1643, Saturday, 25 July: SALON, SHEEN, BURST, GOURD
• Quordle #1642, Friday, 24 July: DOLLY, EDIFY, LAGER, PRANK
• Quordle #1641, Thursday, 23 July: LADEN, EVICT, WOVEN, SHIRE
• Quordle #1640, Wednesday, 22 July: COYLY, SINGE, AWASH, AWOKE
• Quordle #1639, Tuesday, 21 July: TRUSS, AXIAL, SWINE, THING
• Quordle #1638, Monday, 20 July: ICING, SLICK, GAILY, RISEN
• Quordle #1637, Sunday, 19 July: SPURT, ACRID, THRUM, BLEEP
• Quordle #1636, Saturday, 18 July: KNAVE, TIGHT, BLEAT, CHAOS
• Quordle #1635, Friday, 17 July: CUMIN, PALER, GRASS, INBOX
• Quordle #1634, Thursday, 16 July: IGLOO, PLAIT, YEAST, AROMA
• Quordle #1633, Wednesday, 15 July: PROXY, BRICK, BROTH, SURGE
• Quordle #1632, Tuesday, 14 July: EBONY, AVOID, RODEO, CUTIE
• Quordle #1631, Monday, 13 July: VOICE, BISON, BURNT, BUILT
• Quordle #1630, Sunday, 12 July: STAIN, BINGO, LARVA, DICEY
• Quordle #1629, Saturday, 11 July: WORTH, PRONG, DINGO, DRUID
• Quordle #1628, Friday, 10 July: GREET, STEAK, DUSKY, HAUTE
• Quordle #1627, Thursday, 9 July: CRUMP, PHONE, SHINY, STONY
• Quordle #1626, Wednesday, 8 July: GHOST, TREND, EXALT, ALONG

Looking for a different day?

A new NYT Connections puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Monday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Connections hints and answers for Monday, July 27 (game #1142).

Good morning! Let's play Connections, the NYT's clever word game that challenges you to group answers in various categories. It can be tough, so read on if you need Connections hints.

What should you do once you've finished? Why, play some more word games of course. I've also got daily Strands hints and answers and Quordle hints and answers articles if you need help for those too, while Marc's Wordle today page covers the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Connections today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Connections today (game #1143) - today's words

(Image credit: New York Times)

Today's NYT Connections words are…

• CAPTAIN
• CLARKS
• OTTOMAN
• EMPIRE
• ANNAPOLIS
• BOBSLED
• CAMPER
• DIRECT
• EVEREST
• FUJI
• GALA
• HEAD
• CONVERSE
• LEAD
• HONEYCRISP
• CROCS

NYT Connections today (game #1143) - hint #1 - group hints

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

• YELLOW: Take charge
• GREEN: Varieties of a type of fruit
• BLUE: Footwear
• PURPLE: The same backward and forward

Need more clues?

We're firmly in spoiler territory now, but read on if you want to know what the four theme answers are for today's NYT Connections puzzles…

NYT Connections today (game #1143) - hint #2 - group answers

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

• YELLOW: COMMAND
• GREEN: HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES
• BLUE: SHOE BRANDS STARTING WITH "C"
• PURPLE: STARTING WITH PALINDROMIC NAMES

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

NYT Connections today (game #1143) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Connections, game #1143, are…

• YELLOW: COMMAND: CAPTAIN, DIRECT, HEAD, LEAD
• GREEN: HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES: EMPIRE, FUJI, GALA, HONEYCRISP
• BLUE: SHOE BRANDS STARTING WITH "C": CAMPER, CLARKS, CONVERSE, CROCS
• PURPLE: STARTING WITH PALINDROMIC NAMES: ANNAPOLIS, BOBSLED, EVEREST, OTTOMAN

• My rating: Hard
• My score: 1 mistake

I knew that HONEYCRISP and GALA were apple varieties, but I struggled to find the other pair and made a mistake picking CAPTAIN instead of FUJI.

In my defence these are unavailable in the UK, where I am based, where we are all about the Granny Smith and the Golden Delicious. HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES? Very much, actually.

After munching my way through this troublesome quartet the remaining three groups came together relatively easy, with the SHOE BRANDS STARTING WITH "C" appearing ahead of COMMAND — both of which remind me of the Clarks Commandos shoes I coveted as a small child, largely because they came with a compass in the sole; very useful for a six-year-old.

Yesterday's NYT Connections answers (Monday, July 27, 2026, game #1142)

• YELLOW: GYMNASTICS APPARATUS: BEAM, HORSE, RINGS, VAULT
• GREEN: LONG TAPERED THINGS: CARROT, ICICLE, KNITTING NEEDLE, STALACTITE
• BLUE: KINDS OF SHIFTS: DOPPLER, GRAVEYARD, PARADIGM, STICK
• PURPLE: ICONS ON A SHOPPING SITE: BELL, CART, HEART, MAGNIFYING GLASS

What is NYT Connections?

NYT Connections is one of several increasingly popular word games made by the New York Times. It challenges you to find groups of four items that share something in common, and each group has a different difficulty level: green is easy, yellow a little harder, blue often quite tough and purple usually very difficult.

On the plus side, you don't technically need to solve the final one, as you'll be able to answer that one by a process of elimination. What's more, you can make up to four mistakes, which gives you a little bit of breathing room.

It's a little more involved than something like Wordle, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for the game to trip you up with tricks. For instance, watch out for homophones and other word games that could disguise the answers.

It's playable for free via the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

Looking for a different day?

A new NYT Strands puzzle appears at midnight each day for your time zone – which means that some people are always playing 'today's game' while others are playing 'yesterday's'. If you're looking for Monday's puzzle instead then click here: NYT Strands hints and answers for Monday, July 27 (game #876).

Strands is the NYT's latest word game after the likes of Wordle, Spelling Bee and Connections – and it's great fun. It can be difficult, though, so read on for my Strands hints.

Want more word-based fun? Then check out my NYT Connections today and Quordle today pages for hints and answers for those games, and Marc's Wordle today page for the original viral word game.

SPOILER WARNING: Information about NYT Strands today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.

NYT Strands today (game #877) - hint #1 - today's themeWhat is the theme of today's NYT Strands?

• Today's NYT Strands theme is… Leave nothing out

NYT Strands today (game #877) - hint #2 - clue words

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

• DIALER
• NOTES
• UNDER
• DIVER
• UNITE
• SALT

NYT Strands today (game #877) - hint #3 - spangram lettersHow many letters are in today's spangram?

• Spangram has 11 letters

NYT Strands today (game #877) - hint #4 - spangram positionWhat are two sides of the board that today's spangram touches?

• First side: left, 4th row

• Last side: right, 5th row

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

NYT Strands today (game #877) - the answers

(Image credit: New York Times)

The answers to today's Strands, game #877, are…

• COMPLETE
• UNDEVIDED
• FULL
• TOTAL
• WHOLE
• ENTIRE
• SPANGRAM: ITSALLTHERE

• My rating: Easy
• My score: Perfect

This was a speedy one.

Without any difficult words, twisting connections or multiple possibilities I managed to find all of the game words quickly, leaving just the spangram to complete the board.

Adding to the ease, it was also a great game for non-game words.

All in all like shooting fish in a bucket. Except with words.

Yesterday's NYT Strands answers (Monday, July 27, game #876)

• PLATFORM
• TRACK
• TICKET
• COUNTER
• KIOSK
• BENCH
• SPANGRAM: TRAINSTATION

What is NYT Strands?

Strands is the NYT's not-so-new-any-more word game, following Wordle and Connections. It's now a fully fledged member of the NYT's games stable that has been running for a year and which can be played on the NYT Games site on desktop or mobile.

I've got a full guide to how to play NYT Strands, complete with tips for solving it, so check that out if you're struggling to beat it each day.

The analog resurgence has been one of the biggest tech trends of 2026 after making a slow comeback last year.

Whether you’ve made the switch from a smartwatch to a Casio or you’re taking a trip down memory lane with your old iPod, more users are reverting to analog devices to escape brain-rotting algorithms and indulge in nostalgia. The same goes for the best compact cameras — and Lola is one of the next emerging brands to embrace this simplicity.

In October 2024, Lola launched its flagship $109/ £79/ AU$159 camera, a compact device that leans into early Y2K digital photography but with smartphone connectivity features. The camera was a response to the rising lo-fi tech craze, gaining exponential traction among Gen-Z users, and I grew increasingly curious.

Retro tech has become quite a prominent theme in my life at the moment. Recently I ditched Spotify and spent some time with the Miko cassette player by Gadhouse, but coming across the Lola camera online unlocked memories of my childhood I’d completely forgotten about.

I haven’t used a digital camera for the best part of 15 years, so it was time for a reunion.

A tiny camera, but a big first impression

(Image credit: Future)

For the past few weeks, the Lola camera has lived inside my everyday bag, and I used it at every opportunity I could — but I will never forget how I felt when I first took it out of the box.

First of all, the camera is absolutely tiny with dimensions of 3.75" x 0.75" x 2.25" and a weight of 0.5lbs (approximately 225 grams). I can’t remember if that’s always been the standard size for a digital camera, but I felt like a giant holding it in my hands. That said, it’s a handy pocket-sized device with a simple design to go with it.

(Image credit: Future)

Just like your average point-and-shoot camera, Lola has a built-in flash, supports SD cards, and packs an array of 19 fun effects, as well as 9 scene modes including Party, Beach, Night, & Portrait. One of the biggest differences is its USB-C charging port, which also comes in handy for transferring images to your smartphone.

Lola has numerous editions of its digital camera, including a cute Betty Boop-themed version and one in a clear shell finish that lets you see the inner workings of the camera. I quite like the stripped-back standard silver version because it’s minimal, but can still turn heads.

Then it was time to put the pedal to the metal.

Classic, but with a twist

(Image credit: Future)

Overall, Lola is a camera that’s bound to satisfy casual users who want to revert to a compact smartphone alternative for snapping images and creating memories. It’s great for taking photos to fill up a scrapbook or for your next Instagram photo dump, but it’s not one for established photographers who want crisp results. If anything, it’s for those who want to embrace imperfection.

Going into it, I knew that it wasn’t going to give picture-perfect results like professional cameras, but I developed a quick admiration for it as a beginner-friendly device. While its 8MP resolution is low by modern standards, it’s more than enough in this case, producing clear-looking images with a soft lo-fi finish that looks more authentic than a retro smartphone app filter — particularly for outdoor shots.

FutureFuture

I found taking photos outside much easier than taking photos indoors, and for the most part, the camera adapts very well to natural environments. In some cases, however, it can be quite sensitive to sunlight, resulting in harsh, overexposed spills in the images.

This can be fixed with a few minor tweaks in the settings, and they don’t require a lot of photography knowledge. All I did was bring the exposure down to -1, increase the ISO to 100, and enable the Daylight preset in the White Balance setting. You can see the difference it made in the images below.

FutureFuture

While these amendments made a big difference, it does mean that some parts of your image will appear darker than others in order to balance out the harshness of the light. In the second image, you can see the footpath and trees are slightly darker, but the grass patch in the background isn’t as overexposed, so for me it’s not too much of a setback.

But another feature that caught my eye was Lola’s surprising x20 digital zoom, which goes further than you think. Of course, the further you zoom in, the more crunchy your image will turn out, but zooming roughly halfway to two-thirds in is great for spotlighting the finer details of architecture and infrastructure, or for framing subjects in an entirely different way.

FutureFutureFutureFutureFuture

Lola takes everything you loved about your 2006 digital camera and puts it back into a refreshed device, but this is the 2020s, and the company is fully aware of your social media-posting intentions. This is where the SD card adapter comes in handy.

One of the biggest pain points I found with digital cameras 15 years ago was the importing process, which usually required a laptop or computer to transfer your images, since smartphones weren't as advanced as they are now. Admittedly, I was probably just too lazy to do this.

With the Lola camera, all you have to do is insert the SD card into the adapter, which goes into your phone’s charging port. You can then select the images you want to import right from your camera roll, and they’re imported in seconds, making it a lot easier to share them with your friends. For me, this was the icing on the cake.

(Image credit: Future)Digital photography is timeless

There’s a handful of elements with the Lola camera that could do with some improvement (mainly its sensitivity), but for a $100 digital camera I think it has solid value for casual users. But beyond that, reverting to a digital camera removed the obsession with the finer details, evoking a deeper appreciation for being in the moment.

Sure, you can add effects and filters on the camera, but you can’t fine-tune individual settings such as saturation, contrast, shadows, and highlights on the device itself. That way, you have no choice but to embrace the realness and humanity of capturing what's before you.

I recently attended a bridal fitting for one of my closest friends, and instead of using my phone, I captured everything with Lola (I haven’t shared the images for obvious reasons). Though these photos have since been imported to my iPhone gallery, they stand out differently because I know how they were taken, and I look back at them filled with the same feelings of excitement from that day.

Simple, effective, and raw at its core, I’m going forward with a new attitude to memory-making. For some reason, somehow you remember the joy of each moment more vividly.

• Plans to triple application fees and apply a price-per-foot on coastal cable installations have been announced by Oregon
• Oregon state planners believe the new structure could raise $1 million per new cable laid
• Protecting the coastline has become a political priority in recent years

Oregon has announced plans to introduce a payment structure for service providers laying undersea cables off the coast of the Pacific state.

Currently, the low-tax and zoning incentives on offer make Oregon a particularly attractive location for tech companies including Microsoft and Amazon, and with major data centers (such as Google’s Dalles installation) demanding increasing data infrastructure, state officials believe a new pricing arrangement is overdue.

Oregon Department of State Lands is making the proposal, which seeks to completely restructure the pricing around undersea cables, which has been fixed at $5,000 since 2001.

Price per foot levy

Even by tripling application fees, Oregon will still be a more affordable alternative for service providers upgrading or adding undersea cables than both California and Washington.

The payment structure under consideration covers fees for applications and compensation “for undersea infrastructure located on submerged and submersible land within Oregon’s territorial sea.”

Currently, new application fees are $5,000, with the proposed new fee set at $15,000. Renewal applications are set to increase from $5,000 to $7,500, with a new encroachment application fee, also set at $7,500 (this describes any building or development on any state-owned land that restricts its usual purpose).

Cables up to three inches in diameter have been assigned a $3-per-foot basic annual fee, with conduits charged at $7.

But how might these fees be applied to any new cable installations? Some calculations based on the Amazon Bitfrost cable project, which determined that a total of $1,450,380 was due for two decades, which would be funneled into Oregon’s Common School Fund.

These fees are a revision of an earlier, more expensive set of proposals, and while the Amazon Bitfrost project example may seem high, it is a literal drop in the ocean compared with the budgets required to lay cables across the Pacific – somewhere in the region of $400 million.

Corporate responsibility

Oregon is also proposing new rules that govern how much information companies submit in applications. This covers everything from decommissioning outdated cabling to outlining responses to earthquakes (such as an anticipated Cascadia Subduction Zone event, which is believed to be overdue).

Various challenges to how companies operate off the coast of Oregon have arisen in recent years, such as a Meta subsidiary attempting to install new cabling at Tierra Del Mar in 2020. This abandoned project resulted in a pollution incident with 6,500 gallons of drill fluid dumped in the ocean and a pair of sinkholes appearing the following year.

The fees are expected to be introduced in January 2027.

Social media has been a big part of our lives for the best part of two decades, with the platforms we use shifting how we behave – and the way we behave, in turn, reshaping how the platforms are built. There have long been efforts to understand this phenomenon and the way that policymakers can respond.

The genie's out the bottle

The former US president had been studying social media for months before giving an address at Stanford University on the topic of how the digital sphere is challenging our democratic norms.

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This speech came in the context of several worrying developments domestically and abroad, including the war in Ukraine, the Capitol Hill riots, as well as widespread anti-vax conspiracy and disinformation during COVID-19.

His comments refer to the largely unregulated digital realm that we all plug into, where it's easy for false information to spread like wildfire, driven primarily by our basest instincts and emotions. This, the former president said, was the consequence of billions of people plugging into an instant, 24/7 global information stream.

The first social media president

For Obama to be making these remarks is significant given he's widely known as the first social media president due to his rampantly successful 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

The politician skilfully wielded social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to spread his message of hope and change at the time.

Arguably, however, the social media landscape was very different at the time. Having just emerged, both users and the tech companies running these platforms indulged in the inherent optimism of the new capabilities that humankind had access to for the first time. But Obama's speech highlighted how different things are today, with that initial wave of optimism giving way to, in some cases, very dark forces.

• AMD EPYC 9006 "Venice" offers mammoth 256-core, 512-thread configuration that incorporates up to 1GB of L3 cache and PCI-E 6.0 and 16 DDR5 memory channels under the hood
• It's the first time AMD's EPYC lineup sees high core count CPUs push past the 5GHz barrier
• AMD is claiming a win by stating that its newest EPYC CPU offers the "most agents per watt, per dollar, per rack"

AMD's newly-announced 6th Gen EPYC 9006 "Venice" seems to be a genuine silicon milestone (the first x86 server CPU on a 2nm-class node, up to 256 cores and 512 threads) which sees the company aim to secure its position in the AI data center CPU market.

The launch comes at a time when AMD has caught Intel on the back foot but finds its position threatened in turn by Nvidia's Vera CPU, which it touts as a faster, more efficient alternative to traditional x86 offerings, including AMD's own EPYC lineup.

With a staggered launch in place for the four CPUs AMD showcased at the AAI event, the stack is expected to be fully available to consumers sometime in 2027, even as its beefy 256-core CPU targets a Q4 2026 launch.

A massive upgrade on multiple fronts

AMD's Venice is a serious generational step. It is built on TSMC's N2 process, the foundry's first move from FinFET to gate-all-around nanosheet transistors, and Team Red says the family is the first high-performance computing product in the industry to reach volume production on the node.

AMD's recently announced flagship model, the 256-core, 512-thread EPYC 9996, features its new SP7 socket, offering 16-channel DDR5 memory, PCIe 6.0 support, and boost clocks that push past 5GHz.

This effectively doubles what is currently on offer for AMD's current-gen EPYC CPUs: memory moves to 16 channels of DDR5-8000, or MRDIMM at 12,800 MT/s, for roughly 1.6 TB/s per socket.

AMD goes one step further with the 9006X lineup (expected 2H 2027), which replaces the cores it cuts down on with a much larger L3 cache per core, a design that it touts makes it much better than rivals at workflows including HPC, technical computing, and data-intensive workloads, which benefit from the larger cache (and memory bandwidth) on offer.

“6th Gen AMD EPYC delivers workload-optimized compute for the full spectrum of modern data center needs; from running more agents and feeding GPUs across rack-scale AI infrastructure to powering the business-critical applications and services organizations rely on every day," noted SVP & GM of Compute and Enterprise AI at AMD, Dan McNamara.

AMD argues that the shape of the data center is changing into a three-tier agentic architecture, with each tier creating distinct CPU demand, which results in workflows centering around agent sandbox execution, AI host nodes, and general-purpose servers, all of which its EPYC CPUs are designed to handle.

The EPYC 9006 series also powers AMD's rack-scale Helios, as it aims to take on Nvidia's Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale offering with its own solution.

With AMD also offering a more mainstream 9006 SP8 and the EYPC 9006 LP as an AI host node CPU that uses LPDDR memory, it is aiming to capture all ends of the AI data center CPU market and cement its current lead in a segment that is sure to be increasingly competitive in the days to come.

Democrats have a new candidate for U.S. Senate in Maine: Troy Jackson. In one of the country's most closely-watched races, he'll have less than 100 days to make his case.

Some say the $3,100 per title payout is small compensation for what they view as big, ongoing threats from the makers of generative AI models.

(Image credit: RICCARDO MILANI/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)

The literary world is celebrating Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with authors. But AI firms may still train models on legally purchased books. What does that mean?

The agentic MAI-Cyber-1-Flash model, with some help, outscores Claude Mythos 5 on CyberGym.

One of the most notable ways AI is changing the world is through software coding: vast swathes of code are now written by AI, and while there's still a debate over just how beneficial this shift is, there's no doubt it's happening at a large scale.

Besides giving professional software developers a new tool to work with, 'vibe coding' also means anyone can put together their own programs, with no coding experience required. While you can't exactly knock together a Word clone in an afternoon, you can create simple tools and apps relatively easily.

And that's what I've been doing with the help of Claude: I've created a couple of small Chrome extensions that customize the browser in a way that wasn't really offered by any existing utilities I could find. Here's how it's done, and how you can do it too.

How it works

Claude getting to grips with an extension coding challenge (Image credit: Anthropic / Future)

If you're completely new to coding in an AI chatbot, it's not difficult to get started. All of the major players offer dedicated tools for coders, but if you're just creating a few simple projects, then you can work right inside the conversation window — describing what you want and seeing the results in your browser.

I've been using Claude for these personal extensions, though you can just as easily use something like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot. As usual, you'll get access to better models and higher usage rights if you're on a paid plan, but it's not essential for coding.

You can get started with a prompt as straightforward as "I'd like to build a Chrome extension to..." and then describe what you want. The AI will ask for the details and clarifications it needs, tell you about any limitations or potential issues, and get busy putting together the extension. You can use follow-up prompts to make tweaks and customizations as needed

For installing the extension on your computer, your AI of choice will advise you on this as well. You need to head to "chrome://extensions" in a new tab, enable the Developer mode toggle switch in the top right corner, then choose Load unpacked to pick your extension files. Extensions can be refreshed and removed from the same page as needed.

Project 1: A new tab page

A new tab page to my specifications (Image credit: Anthropic / Future)

There are many different ways you can customize the new tab page in Chrome (that shows on a blank type), and a multitude of options in the Chrome Web Store to pick from. However, I wanted something completely bespoke, with exactly what I wanted—I spend a lot of time looking at this page after all.

Not only was Claude able to code me a page, it answered all my questions: about how to pull in BBC headlines, the weather forecast, and all the other elements that I wanted on the page. Without the help of the AI, this would've taken me hours of research and coding, but it was done in minutes. I also added a scratchpad for taking notes, and a continually updated list of the five sites I've visited the most in the past week.

The weather forecast is a good example of how personalized you can make these extensions. I've got the weather for now, the weather in two hours' time, and the weather in four hours' time, all represented as simple icons that offer an at-a-glance update. I know instantly what the weather's going to do in the short term.

I was also able to take full control over the look and feel of the new tab page as well. So many of the options I've seen online try to pack too much in and are overly showy — my custom version is easy on the eye and minimalist. And any time I want to add a new feature or take one away, all it takes is a few lines in a Claude conversation.

Project 2: A history analyzer

You can do more with your Chrome history than you may have realized (Image credit: Anthropic / Future)

Something else I've been wanting for a long time in Chrome is to get a bit more out of the history page (it's "chrome://history" in a new tab). By default, it's just a standard list of websites in reverse chronological order, but I wondered if an extension could analyze this and produce a few insights: like most visited sites and browsing patterns, for example.

I'd like to create a Chrome extension just for myself that does a bit more with the Chrome history page. I'd like to include a pie chart showing the sites I've visited most in the last week. What other insights could we glean from this history page? What about average time between one link and the next?

Sample Claude starter prompt

I was able to get started on this extension in Claude without knowing exactly what I was after. I asked what was possible and the kind of queries that could be tried, and together with the AI formulated a plan to show the sites I visited the most often, the hours of the day I open most new pages, and most common ways I tend to visit sites (by loading bookmarks, typing URLs, following links, or whatever).

That last panel in the dashboard wouldn't have been there without Claude: the AI told me that Chrome's history page made this data available, and that it could be tapped into, otherwise I wouldn't have known. It also had ideas for more panels as well, and I'm going to keep tweaking it as well. It's now a much more useful screen of information than the long list of links that Chrome serves up as standard.

Both of these extensions were coded in minutes rather than hours, and show just how capable AI now is — for small-scale personal projects at least. If there's a browser feature you've always wanted but haven't been able to find a way to implement, there's a good chance you'll be able to get an AI chatbot to build it for you, to your exact specifications.