Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 266, for June 16.

The tournament gets underway at Hard Rock Stadium with the Egyptians taking on Lionel Messi and company.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 15.

The Resident Evil 9 trailer shows off a new character, but not the much-rumored return of Leon.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 6.

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for June 5.

The Nintendo Switch's best games include Pokemon, Zelda, Mario and Metroid games, alongside indie hits and multiplayer party games.

Are you a Louisville resident looking for a new internet service provider? Look no further! CNET has uncovered the best internet deals for high-speed and reliable connections.

Are you ready to head back to 1987 and one last trip to the Upside Down?

You may even snag store credit when you trade in your old tech at certain retailers.

Make The Bear your business this month.

Several Unitree G1 robots remotely operated by human beings punched, kicked and kneed one another in a fight to the top.

Elden Ring and its DLC Shadow of the Erdtree have been phenomenal successes for FromSoftware, which enabled the studio to grow beyond its devoted but niche following to explode into the mainstream. Its spinoff, Elden Ring Nightreign, takes a different approach with a co-op multiplayer focus and repeatable run-based gameplay.Nightreign is a bold direction for the studio, which had found success with dark fantasy single-player adventures like Bloodborne and the Dark Souls series of games. Most of its hits were directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creator of the Souls formula of tough third-person combat games. The new multiplayer game, Nightreign, builds on Elden Ring's success by remixing its elements into a new gameplay format of fast-paced action. Fitting this new direction, Nightreign is the directing debut of Junya Ishizaki, who had worked on many earlier FromSoftware titles and been the combat director on Elden Ring. Over video chat, CNET got to talk with Ishizaki about his thoughts on Nightreign and many other topics. In part one of our interview, we discussed how things changed over the course of the game's development, from dropping fall damage to collapsing multiple maps into the final one we see today. And, yes, how he solo'd every boss in the game.In part two below, we chat about Ishizaki's favorite Nightfarer class to play and least favorite boss, as well as DLC info and what FromSoftware learned that it'll carry into future games (like, potentially, the Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive The Duskbloods coming next year). Of course, we also had to ask the poison swamp question. Woods infested with scarlet rot are the closest you'll get to a poison swamp in Nightreign. Screenshot by David Lumb/CNETDavid Lumb: I feel like I need to ask about the absence of another element that's been present in many other FromSoftware games: Where's Nightreign's poison swamp?Junya Ishizaki: I think the main reason is that this is not a Miyazaki title so that could be one explanation. Jokes aside, I think it's just a serendipitous factor of game development and what goes into the idea process and what comes out. So who knows what could happen in the future with Nightreign?DL: Considering Elden Ring, Bloodborne and two of the three Dark Souls titles are Miyazaki games, what makes Nightreign an Ishizaki game?JI: I think one of the aspects that not necessarily sets me apart from Miyazaki, but that I like to think of as my specialty, is that I like to prioritize the "game feel" more than a lot of things -- these detailed and fine-tuned things, like what happens when a player falls from a height and hits the ground? How is this supposed to feel? And how does this translate into good-feeling gameplay and into player comfort?So as you know, Nightreign doesn't feature any fall damage but there are ways the characters behave when they hit the floor from various heights and what you can do to counteract that. So these are areas that I like to look at -- the relationship between player and controls and how that translates to game feel.  Hidetaka Miyazaki, director of Elden Ring and other FromSoftware games, at CNET's 2024 interview alongside the release of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. David Lumb/CNETDL: This is a question I asked Miyazaki-san last year when the Elden Ring DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree, came out: Of all the FromSoftware games you've worked on, which is your favorite child? JI: That's a tough question. I've worked on Dark Souls 1, 3, Bloodborne and Elden Ring, of course. I think I'd say the project I have the most memories with is the original Dark Souls. This is the first project I was involved in at FromSoftware and it was my first foray i

I've wanted to rewatch the sci-fi thriller Strange Days for a long time, but I kept forgetting because, honestly, I couldn't remember the title. I finally came across it on Hulu and checked it out, and I can't stop thinking about it.Though Strange Days was released back in 1995, it looks and feels like it could've come out yesterday. It's one of those rare old movies that imagined the technology of virtual reality, or VR, without turning it into a gimmick. Strange Days takes place in 1999 Los Angeles during the last 48 hours of the millennium. Lenny Nero, played by Ralph Fiennes, is a former cop who now peddles an illegal virtual reality experience called Playback. Nero's friend and bodyguard, Mace (Angela Basset), tries to keep him rooted in reality and away from trouble. Together, they work to track down a brutal rapist and murderer -- a man who uses VR Playback discs to record his crimes from his own point of view.The movie wasted no time dropping me into its jarring setting: The opening scene is an armed robbery filmed in first-person perspective, with the robber running from cops and jumping from one rooftop to another. A couple of scenes later, I saw tanks on the streets of LA and heard radio callers declaring that the world would end at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 2000. Strange Days reminds me of the best Black Mirror episodes -- both deeply disturbing and uncomfortably close to home. Director Kathryn Bigelow was influenced by the 1992 LA riots and incorporated those elements of racial tension and police violence into her work. The result is a movie that's sometimes difficult to watch but impossible to look away from. At the same time, Strange Days is grounded by emotion. Nero (Fiennes) spends a good portion of the movie reliving memories of his failed relationship with the singer Faith (played by actress-turned-rocker Juliette Lewis). Lying in bed while he plays back footage of happier days, he can trick himself into believing he's roller skating with Faith again -- until the disc stops spinning and he opens his eyes, back in the lonely present day."This is not 'like TV only better,'" says Nero, as he introduces the VR Playback tech to one of his clients. "This is life."But Bassett's character, Mace, believes otherwise, at one point confronting Nero over his attachment to his "used emotions." "This is your life!" says Mace. "Right here! Right now! It's real time, you hear me? Real time, time to get real, not Playback!" As I watched Strange Days in 2025, I couldn't help thinking of the virtual reality devices that exist today. VR headsets like the Meta Quest 3 and Google's upcoming AR glasses are bringing us closer than ever to the Playback tech in the film. And the immersive spatial videos for the Apple Vision Pro can make you feel like you're really reliving a three-dimensional recorded memory. As I considered the similarities between our current tech and Strange Days' Playback discs, I wondered if the future wants to be haunted by the past.Despite being 30 years old, Strange Days' special effects hold up incredibly well. Where other 1995 sci-fi flicks like Hackers and Johnny Mnemonic experimented with early computer-generated imagery, Strange Days went for a more practical approach: Characters shift in and out of the Playback footage with a simple analog distortion effect, just like you'd find while watching home videos on VHS tapes. The point-of-view shots were carefully choreographed, and the resulting footage looks like you're viewing it through the recorder's eyes.Strange Days also features standout musical acts. Juliette Lewis, in character as Faith, belts out two PJ Harvey tracks in on-screen performances that recall the best of '90s grunge. Rapper Jeriko One (played by Glenn Plummer) delivers biting social commentary in his music video. And contemporary artists Aphex Twin, Deee-Lite and Skunk Anansie perform during the movie's bombastic final act, a New Year's Eve rave in downtown LA. (It was a real-life concert with 10,000 attendees.)Strange Days is both a thrilling action movie and a mind-bending exploration of technology and memory. I'm surprised it was a box-office flop in 1995, and I wish it had received the recognition it deserved then. Still, I'm glad this sci-fi masterpiece is available to stream today. Though Strange Days isn't the easiest title to remember, the movie itself is unforgettable.

Chances are, you've heard of the term "large language models," or LLMs, when people are talking about generative AI. But they aren't quite synonymous with the brand-name chatbots like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI and Anthropic's Claude.These AI chatbots can produce impressive results, but they don't actually understand the meaning of words the way we do. Instead, they're the interface we use to interact with large language models. These underlying technologies are trained to recognize how words are used and which words frequently appear together, so they can predict future words, sentences or paragraphs. Understanding how LLMs work is key to understanding how AI works. And as AI becomes increasingly common in our daily online experiences, that's something you ought to know.This is everything you need to know about LLMs and what they have to do with AI.What is a language model?You can think of a language model as a soothsayer for words."A language model is something that tries to predict what language looks like that humans produce," said Mark Riedl, professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing and associate director of the Georgia Tech Machine Learning Center. "What makes something a language model is whether it can predict future words given previous words."This is the basis of autocomplete functionality when you're texting, as well as of AI chatbots.What is a large language model?A large language model contains vast amounts of words from a wide array of sources. These models are measured in what is known as "parameters."So, what's a parameter?Well, LLMs use neural networks, which are machine learning models that take an input and perform mathematical calculations to produce an output. The number of variables in these computations are parameters. A large language model can have 1 billion parameters or more."We know that they're large when they produce a full paragraph of coherent fluid text," Riedl said.How do large language models learn?LLMs learn via a core AI process called deep learning."It's a lot like when you teach a child -- you show a lot of examples," said Jason Alan Snyder, global CTO of ad agency Momentum Worldwide.In other words, you feed the LLM a library of content (what's known as training data) such as books, articles, code and social media posts to help it understand how words are used in different contexts, and even the more subtle nuances of language. The data collection and training practices of AI companies are the subject of some controversy and some lawsuits. Publishers like The New York Times, artists and other content catalog owners are alleging tech companies have used their copyrighted material without the necessary permissions.(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET's parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed on Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)AI models digest far more than a person could ever read in their lifetime -- something on the order of trillions of tokens. Tokens help AI models break down and process text. You can think of an AI model as a reader who needs help. The model breaks down a sentence into smaller pieces, or tokens -- which are equivalent to four characters in English, or about three-quarters of a word -- so it can understand each piece and then the overall meaning.From there, the LLM can analyze how words connect and determine which words often appear together."It's like building this giant map of word relationships," Snyder said. "And then it starts to be able to do this really fun, cool thing, and it predicts what the next word is … and it compares the prediction to the actual word in the data and adjusts the internal map based on its accuracy."This prediction and adjustment happens billions of times, so the LLM is constantly refining its understanding of language and getting better at identifying patterns and predicting future words. It can even learn concepts and facts from the data to answer questions, generate creative text formats and translate languages. But they don't understand the meaning of words like we do -- all they know are the statistical relationships.LLMs also learn to improve their responses through reinforcement learning from human feedback."You get a judgment or a preference from humans on which response was better given the input that it was given," said Maarten Sap, assistant professor at the Language Technologies Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. "And then you can teach the model to improve its responses." LLMs are good at handling some tasks but not others.

Hints and answers for Connections for June 1, #721.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle, No. 1443, for June 1.

Luis Enrique's men battle it out against the Serie A giants in Munich.

One of the biggest advantages of today's home security cameras and systems is the ability to watch over your home when you're not there or asleep. But that leads to an important question: When are burglars and break-ins most likely to happen? Do they really prefer the dead of night?CNET took a look at the research and expert opinions and arrived at some interesting conclusions. Burglars don't always strike when you think they would, and having a reliably armed security system may be even more important than you think to stop them. I've rounded it up into three times when thieves are most likely to strike at homes and why that helps you plan for better security.Read more: What Burglars Look for When Choosing Homes to Break Into1. The middle of the day (especially early afternoon) Thieves have a lot to gain by acting in the middle of the day. Getty ImagesIf you want to know when burglars try to break in to homes, it's a good idea to ask them. KGW8 out of Portland, Oregon, did just that, interviewing more than 80 (caught) burglars to find out how and when they struck. The answer? Most chose the middle of the day, the hours before or after noon: Homeowners are most likely to be gone at work in the day, thieves have great visibility when exploring a new yard or house, and it's easier to pretend to be a lost friend or family member if they get caught in broad daylight.Burglars commonly strike in the early afternoon -- one specifically said between "12:30pm and 2:30 p.m."  People who go home for lunch or errands have most likely finished and are back to work during these hours, so there's a greater chance the home will be empty. Others KGW8 interviewed preferred the morning when there's also a guarantee people will be at work. That's similar to other studies that report burglaries are most likely to occur between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. Curious about what burglars are after? Most hunt down cash, jewelry, medications and items that can easily sell for money -- notably guns and small electronics. Any signs that these items exist in a house may attract watchful thieves. They also reported that security systems and big dogs were big deterrents (although we don't suggest getting a dog for security purposes).2. During the summer (between June and August) Burglars are caught trying to break in far more often in summer than winter. ArloBurglaries are lowest at the height of winter, and highest during the hottest summer months. Since burglary is often a crime of opportunity and requires quickly casing residential neighborhoods, it makes sense that thieves would prefer longer, warmer days. It's also a lot harder to break into homes if there's ice or snow everywhere. That's why research from places like Arizona State University shows that burglaries reach their height in August, and are generally on the rise between June and August when the weather is warmest.3. At midnight Amazon's Blink Wired Floodlight cam in action. BlinkWe know, we just said that burglaries are most common during the warmest, brightest times of day. But not everything is so simple. Research from companies like Vivint has shown that burglaries also spike around midnight, with data showing around 6% of burglaries occurring at 12 a.m.This is an interesting spike because late evening and early morning hours are the least likely times for burglaries. There's just something about midnight that makes some burglars think it's a good time to strike. They may also believe that homeowners are asleep at this time, or that it's easier to hide in the dark. Read more: The Best Tips to Prevent Burglars and Break-InsWith this info now in your brain, you're ready to make great decisions about when to arm your security system or when to make sure your smart lights and security camera floodlights are ready to work. It's also a good idea to make sure your smart locks are locked during these times because -- you guessed it -- most burglars start by simply trying the front door. To become a master of your home security, check out our guide on the best places to put security cameras, common home security myths you should stop believing, and what to do if someone you're living with is the one stealing. 

Starting your backyard birding journey? These simple tips can make all the difference. Here's everything you should know, according to an urban wildlife coordinator.