Mission Everywhere

Did The New York Times just ruin Wordle? Thankfully, no. When the popular puzzle game was purchased by the news media company in January for a low seven-figure sum, the deal came with promises that there would be “no changes” to Wordle’s gameplay after the move. But that appeared to be no longer be true this week when a number of Wordle addicts discovered they were getting different solutions than others who were playing the same day’s puzzle as they were. If that’s the case, this could have destroyed one of Wordle’s key selling points. After all, the joy in Wordle isn’t just guessing the five-letter word in under six tries — it’s sharing your results on social media and comparing how well you did with others. Spoilers below for Wordle puzzle 284 on Wednesday, March 30, 2022. On Wednesday, however, many Wordle players discovered the solution to their puzzle was different than others who played the same game, Wordle No. 284. For some, the winning word was “stove” but for others, i...

Alex Heath / The Verge : Internal report: a “massive ranking failure” at Facebook elevated harmful content for the past six months, spiking views by as much as 30% before a March 11 fix   —  A group of Facebook engineers identified a “massive ranking failure” that exposed as much as half of all News Feed views to … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/4Oy6AV8

Ukrainian army soldiers ride in a vehicle on a road in Irpin, March 4, 2022, in Irpin, Ukraine. Photo By Diego Herrera/Europa Press via Getty Images Russian forces have started to withdraw from the Chernobyl plant on Thursday. Ukraine's nuclear agency said troops reportedly suffered from "significant doses of radiation." The agency confirmed on Telegram that Russian forces dug trenches in the highly radioactive Red Forest. Russian forces have begun to withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear plant after reportedly suffering from "a significant doses of radiation," Ukraine's state nuclear agency said on Thursday. Energoatom confirmed in a Telegram notice that Russian troops dug trenches in the highly radioactive Red Forest — within Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone — where they fell ill and decided to retreat to the Belarusian border.  A small number of Russian troops will remain at the plant for now, Energoatom said.   Earlier on Thursday, a US defense...

Central Bank of Russia Hank5/Getty Images Russia avoided a default as one of its dollar-denominated eurobond payments went through on Thursday.  JPMorgan processed the payments, as the bank is listed as a paying agent for Russia's 2030 debt.  Last week, Clearstream blocked Russia from the National Settlement Depository, which receives foreign bond payments.  Russia reportedly avoided a bond default Thursday after roughly $447 million in payments for dollar-denominated debt went through.  The US bank giant, which is listed as a paying agent for Russia's 2030 eurobonds, processed an $87.5 million coupon payment and a $359 million principal payment, sources told Bloomberg . Last week, Luxembourg-based clearinghouse bank Clearstream blocked the account for the National Settlement Depository, which receives payments from the Russian government for foreign bonds for distribution. Earlier this month, Clearstream said it would no longer settle domestic trades in ...

Amazon is introducing a new Alexa feature that will notify you if an item on your wishlist or in your shopping cart is about to go on sale, the company announced on Thursday. Alexa will now notify users up to 24 hours in advance of a deal going live and then order it on your behalf if you ask it to do so. The feature will also work with items that were marked “saved for later” on the platform. The new feature is now available for Amazon Prime customers in the United States across all newer generation Echo smart speakers. You can enable the feature in the Alexa app by navigating to the “Amazon shopping” section from your notifications settings and selecting “shopping recommendations.” When the feature is enabled, your Amazon Echo ring will turn yellow when an item goes on sale. You can ask Alexa to remind you about the deal when it goes live. You can also say “Alexa, buy it for me” if you want to purchase it. Alexa will then use the default payment and delivery address in your Amazon...

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg : Sources: Apple is planning to expand its financial services by adding payment processing, lending risk assessment, credit checks, fraud analysis, and more   —  Apple Inc. is developing its own payment processing technology and infrastructure for future financial products … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/NmP0xaX

Paresh Dave / Reuters : Google says its BERT language model has helped cut explicit Search results by 30% in the past year for terms related to ethnicity, sexual preference, and gender   —  When U.S. actress Natalie Morales carried out a Google search for “Latina teen” in 2019, she described in a tweet that all she encountered was pornography. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/LAJ1niI

Philadelphia Proud Boys leader Zachary Rehl, left, and Washington State Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean attend the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Carolyn Kaster/AP A growing "Free the Patriots" movement is fueling anti-government extremism, watchdogs say.  The movement centers on a small number of jailed defendants in the DOJ's Jan. 6 insurrection probe. Long pretrial jail stays and slow-moving prosecutions are reinforcing themes of a tyrannical government. To federal prosecutors, Zachary Rehl is a dangerous radical, a Proud Boys leader who helped mastermind the hate group's barrier-toppling, window-busting breach of the US Capitol and afterward bragged he was "proud as fuck." But to a robust and growing "Free the Patriots" movement, Rehl and other jailed "January Sixers" are something else entirely. They are American heroes, ripped by a tyrannical government from their ho...

Security researchers Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek shook the automotive industry in 2015 by remotely hacking a Jeep Cherokee driven by Wired reporter , and willing participant, Andy Greenberg. The notorious hack caused Fiat Chrysler, Jeep’s parent company, to recall 1.4 million vehicles and pay $105 million in fines to the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. The warning might have been a wake-up call to the industry, but it didn’t slow the rise of the connected car.  Today, the “connected car” is commonplace and delivers a long list of services to the driver and passengers, from internet connectivity and vehicle monitoring to safety warnings and the ability to buy goods and services while on the go. And it has crept beyond the passenger vehicle into the emerging autonomous vehicle industry, too.  Perhaps it’s not surprising then that automotive cyberattacks have grown in frequency — up more than 225% in 2021 , compared to 2018. It’s a trend that ha...

There were already several hints that YouTube was getting more serious about podcasts, after reports indicated the company hired a podcast executive , Kai Chuk, to lead its efforts in the space and had even begun offering cash to popular podcasters to film their shows. Now, a leaked document has unveiled more about YouTube’s plans in this area, pointing to a future podcasts homepage on YouTube.com and other monetization features. The details were published by Podnews , which recently got its hands on an 84-page presentation where YouTube described its podcasts roadmap. Here, the company says it will improve podcast ingestion by piloting the ability to pull in podcast RSS feeds. It also noted it plans to centralize podcasts on a new homepage at YouTube.com/podcasts. The URL doesn’t yet work; but it also doesn’t automatically redirect to the YouTube homepage — which is what it does if you put other random words after the slash. Not surprisingly, Google sees podcasts as a way to expand...

It’s not a coincidence that TechCrunch has covered more African startups in the last year than any period in our history. Many of those companies are Nigerian, and when we look at venture capital data, we can see why. The country had an incredible 2021 as the most active venture capital scene in Africa, collecting more than $1.8 billion, or 34% of the $5 billion raised across the continent, according to Partech , a pan-African VC firm that also tracks investments. The country has posted steady progress in the last three years as the leading African startup market. In 2019, startups based in Nigeria attracted $747 million, or 37% of Africa’s total VC investment. Those numbers decreased to $307 million, or 21% of the continent’s total, the following year, though 2020 was a venture capital year much impacted by outside forces. YC W22 batch nets 24 African startups, including 18 from Nigeria Thanks in part to a global boom in venture capital activity last year, Nigeria became the f...

Plastic bags are bad. Ban them from supermarkets, and the problem is solved, right? Right? Right? Turns out, as is often the case, there may be a little bit more to that story. Researchers at the University of Georgia suggest that banning the sale of plastic bags may come with a side-dish of unintended consequences. The new analysis suggests that plastic bag ban policies — while well-intentioned — may end up having the opposite effect. The issue that comes up is that grocery bags are viewed as single-use items, but they often get a (brief) second lease on life as liners for small trash cans. Without the shopping bags available, people look for alternatives — which the researchers suggest means they buy small plastic garbage bags. “We know there is a demand for using plastic bags, and we know, if these policies go into effect, some bags will disappear or will become more costly to get,” said Yu-Kai Huang, a postdoctoral researcher at the UGA Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Res...

Shannon Liao / Washington Post : Judge approves an $18M settlement between Activision Blizzard and the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ending the federal sexual harassment lawsuit   —  A judge approved an $18 million settlement between Activision Blizzard and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Tuesday … from Techmeme https://ift.tt/Ts4rjid

A shopper at a Washington Target on January 9, 2022. REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger Inflation is affecting the entire country, but Democrats and Republicans have starkly different outlooks. Where 79% of Republicans have "a great deal" of worry, just 35% of Democrats feel the same. A quarter of Democrats were "only a little" worried. Only 5% of Republicans were so relaxed. Inflation is hitting red and blue states alike, but some political affiliations are much more worried than others. As prices surge at the fastest pace in 40 years , Democrats are generally far less concerned than their conservative and independent peers, according to a Gallup poll  published Tuesday. About 79% of Republicans said they have "a great deal" of worry about inflation, more than doubling the 35% of Democrats who feel the same. Conversely, a quarter of Democrats said they were "only a little" worried about the historic price growth. Yet just 5% of Republicans held t...

Nearly half of Uber and Lyft drivers in the U.S. have quit or are driving less due to high gas prices caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, despite temporary fuel surcharges added to fares by those ride-hailing companies, according to a survey shared with TechCrunch. “Forty-three percent of Uber and Lyft drivers still say they’re driving less or have quit completely despite the new fuel surcharges,” Harry Campbell, founder and CEO of The Rideshare Guy (RSG), a blog and podcast dedicated to helping rideshare drivers earn more money and stay on top of industry news, told TechCrunch. “This compares to 53% of drivers who said the same before the fuel surcharges were announced.” The Rideshare Guy originally polled drivers on how they felt about the rising gas prices, collecting 325 responses from Uber and Lyft drivers between March 7 and March 11 via email and social media. When the surcharges were announced in mid-March — a fee of $0.45 to $0.55 per ride for Uber customers, and $0.55 for ...

April Roach / Bloomberg : Meta halts plans to build a large data center in the Netherlands, amid rising opposition from the government over environmental concerns   —  Meta Platforms Inc. has paused plans to build a large data center in the Netherlands after the tech giant faced increasing opposition from the government. from Techmeme https://ift.tt/y7ucQi0