​Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I found 7-Across tricky. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.. If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.. Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword. Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.. The completed NYT Mini Crossword puzzle for March 12, 2026. NYT/Screenshot by CNET. Mini across clues and answers. 1A clue: Like jerk chicken and chicken vindaloo. Answer: SPICY. 6A clue: Capital of Vietnam. Answer: HANOI. 7A clue: “Well, would ya look at that!”. Answer: ILLBE. 8A clue: Gem in an oyster. Answer: PEARL. 9A clue: Thick roll of cash. Answer: WAD. Mini down clues and answers. 1D clue: Part of a naval fleet. Answer: SHIP. 2D clue: The “P” in I.P.A.. Answer: PALE. 3D clue: Relative by marriage. Answer: INLAW. 4D clue: King ___ (venomous snake). Answer: COBRA. 5D clue: Sign obeyed by merging traffic. Answer: YIELD  

​”Do you remember the world before cellphones?”. The question comes early in Your Attention Please, a documentary premiering this week at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. And it hit me harder than I expected. As a 27-year-old tech reporter, I realized I don’t have too many clear memories of life before smartphones. My adolescence unfolded alongside the rise of smartphones, social media, push notifications and the routine of endless scrolling. Like many people my age, I’ve spent most of my life inside the attention economy — without ever really stepping outside it.. That’s the uneasy territory the documentary explores.. CNET was given exclusive early access to the film’s trailer, embedded below.. Exploring how tech shapes our behavior. Director Sara Robin said she originally set out to make something smaller: a documentary about people trying to reclaim their attention by breaking unhealthy phone habits. In an interview with CNET, Robin described the idea as a personal story about focus and self-control in an age of constant distraction.. As Robin interviewed researchers, technologists and families affected by social media and cyberbullying, the film’s scope widened. What started as a question about individual habits quickly became a larger investigation into how modern technology systems are designed to shape human behavior. The story stretches from the rise of social media to the emerging influence of AI.. Along the way, Robin and her collaborators kept hearing the same observation from different corners of the digital world: Social media didn’t just change how people communicate; it quietly rewired what we value. Experiences that were once private or emotional — friendship, affection, belonging — began to acquire numerical equivalents. Followers, likes, comments, views and shares began to be how we saw our own self-worth. In the architecture of social platforms, those numbers function as a kind of social currency.. Trisha Prabhu, a digital-safety advocate and inventor of the anti-cyberbullying technology ReThink, argues that social platforms did more than create new online spaces. She says they fundamentally reshaped how social validation works. The metrics that define popularity often reward attention-seeking behavior and amplify conflict, while genuine connection is now harder to quantify and, therefore, easier to overlook.. Prabhu warns that the same dynamics already driving problems like cyberbullying could accelerate as automated systems become more capable. AI tools can generate abusive messages at scale, produce convincing impersonations or create deepfakes that spread rapidly online. In some cases, the technology may even blur the line between human interaction and machine-generated communication, which could deepen loneliness or encourage harmful behavior.. “There’s AI exacerbating existing harms [like automating cyberbullying], but then I also think that there’s AI creating completely new harms,” Prabhu told CNET. “There are rep  

​Austin is known for its barbecue, live music and vibrant, lively atmosphere. It’s also known for its ideas, which are as tempting to me as the brisket I’m hoping to devour.. I’m heading to SXSW this week for the first time. I imagine there’ll be a distinct pulse to the city, a palpable electricity that everyone who visits can feel, especially when a massive global event is underway. And between the premieres and panels, and concerts and crowds, I’m hoping to stumble on the next big innovation that will shape our world.. AI will likely be a focal point, but I’m also expecting to see a true intersection of human connection, art and technology. SXSW has always been a melting pot: directors and actors sharing sidewalks with tech founders, musicians hauling guitars past venture capitalists and comedians, and journalists like me trying to keep up with everything. (And believe me, I’ll try my very best to keep up.). That collision is the true magic of SXSW.. I’m especially ready to hear about the path of creative storytelling and emerging tech in 2026. How are artists and innovators finessing the AI evolution? How are they trying to reshape how these tools will be used, rather than letting the tools reshape them?. I’m also jittery for discovery. Which documentary will break open a viral discussion? Which celebrity guest is going to generate the most buzz? What offhand comment in a panel is going to shape headlines for the next few days?. SXSW has more to see and do than I can reasonably aim to cover in just a few days. I’m told it’s chaotic, overwhelming, exhausting, exhilarating and energizing. And that’s exactly where I need to be. I can’t wait.  

​Meta said Wednesday that it’s launching a new suite of tools to tackle today’s social media scams on WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger. These tools will be tackling fraud problems plaguing social platforms, such as the alarming number of people falling for fake celeb-bait profiles. Meta says it removed over 159 million scam ads in 2025.. A Meta representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.. The latest scams use plenty of AI-generated content to create fake profiles and even fake websites, so it’s no surprise Meta is employing its own AI tools to protect people.. WhatsApp warnings. WhatsApp’s new protections add popups. Meta. First up is the global chat app WhatsApp, which is a frequent target of scammers thanks to its mobile device linking features, which allow for quick linking of external devices to an account. Once scammers gain access to an account, they can carry out a range of harmful activities, including impersonating the user to deceive friends and family. Last year, Meta deleted nearly 7 million accounts used by scammers in these ways.. Scammers may first pose as relatives, sellers, service providers or content creators, asking for phone numbers to share device linking codes and QR codes that some people may activate without thinking.. Meta’s WhatsApp feature will watch for danger signs from unlinked accounts, such as a request from a different country you haven’t communicated with before. It then displays an additional pop-up warning to make sure you want to connect with a stranger, ideally giving you a moment to consider whether that might be a dumb idea.. Facebook and Messenger red flags. Facebook points out red flags in scam accounts, like those that were just created. Meta. Facebook is also adding new scam protections, notably warnings about adding or communicating with a suspicious account. Meta hasn’t revealed all the signs it uses to determine whether an account is suspect, but like WhatsApp, it looks for unusual, out-of-country locations.. Another red flag is an account you or your friends have never interacted with before. Facebook will include explanations alongside its warning pop-ups, such as noting that an account was created only several days ago, before you confirm your choice.. The Messenger app is introducing a similar feature that monitors account activity for patterns indicative of scam behavior. Meta specifically called out job-related scams, in which scammers offer impossible or high-paying jobs as a way to steal personal information or to direct people to a phishing website.. AI scans to spot fake content. Messenger now includes AI scans to watch for scam signs, but we don’t know how much it’s watching. Meta. Speaking of phishing websites, they’re on the rise and look more authentic than ever, fooling even those experienced in phishing dangers. And yes, a prime example of generative AI is the ability to easily whip up a scam web page and mimic real brand logos.. Meta reports that it’s using it  

​Part of what makes us human is the unique ways we think and solve problems. But using large language models like ChatGPT might be eroding this uniqueness and leading humans to think and communicate the same way, according to a group of scientists and psychologists who have co-authored a new opinion paper.. “Individuals differ in how they write, reason, and view the world,” Zhivar Sourati, a computer scientist of the University of Southern California and first author for the paper, said in a statement.. “When these differences are mediated by the same LLMs, their distinct linguistic style, perspective and reasoning strategies become homogenized, producing standardized expressions and thoughts across users,” Sourati continued.. The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, examines how hundreds of millions of people worldwide use the same handful of chatbots and what that means for our individuality.. Thinking inside the box. Pew Research found that one-third of all Americans used ChatGPT last year, double the 2023 figure. And chatbot use is much more common among teens: Two-thirds say they use chatbots, and almost a third use them daily.. Businesses are also going all in on artificial intelligence. Stanford found that 78% of organizations reported using AI in 2024, up from 55% in 2023.. So we’re using AI a lot. But the danger is that we could lose the diversity in the ways we think. The team points out that LLMs generate writing that varies less than what people come up with on their own.. Part of the reason LLMs may be pushing homogenized thought, according to the paper’s authors, is the data used to train them.. “Because LLMs are trained to capture and reproduce statistical regularities in their training data, which often overrepresent dominant languages and ideologies, their outputs often mirror a narrow and skewed slice of human experience,” Sourati says.. Why diverse thinking matters. There’s a good reason why the authors warn against this trend. Homogenized thought reduces pluralism, which is essentially the idea that multiple perspectives are good for society as a whole.. “This value of pluralism is rooted in the long-held principle that sound judgment requires exposure to varied thought,” the authors write in the paper. “Unchecked, this homogenization risks flattening the cognitive landscapes that drive collective intelligence and adaptability,”. So we use different ways of thinking to figure out more solutions to a problem. If we lose the ability to think and communicate differently, it could affect how we adapt to new situations.. “The concern is not just that LLMs shape how people write or speak, but that they subtly redefine what counts as credible speech, correct perspective, or even good reasoning,” Sourati says.. The authors also say that this trend even impacts people who don’t use chatbots.. “If a lot of people around me are thinking and speaking in a certain way, and I do things differently, I would