Amazon’s bet on “Project Hail Mary” has paid off handsomely, with the film recently surpassing “Creed III” to become the company’s highest grossing movie ever.

And it was a big bet, with a reported budget of around $200 million. That’s a big price tag for any film, but especially one that’s not a sequel or part of an existing franchise. Instead, it’s based on a bestselling science fiction novel by Andy Weir, whose book “The Martian” was adapted into a successful film a decade ago. 

And that’s not the only thing that makes “Project Hail Mary” feel unconventional. For long stretches of the film, Ryan Gosling is the only human actor on screen, as the scientist he plays works with a rock-like alien to solve the mystery of of why multiple stars — including our own — seem to be dimming.

But after 10 days in theaters, “Project Hail Mary” has brought in an estimated $164.3 million in North America, as well as $136.2 million overseas, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Domestically, it only fell 32% in its second weekend, to $54.5 million, so its final box office numbers should be significantly higher when it leaves theaters.

That makes “Project Hail Mary” the biggest hit of 2026 (so far), as well as one of the most successful non-franchise, non-sequel films of the past decade. 

And it’s good news for what’s now known as Amazon MGM Studios. The company’s cinematic ambitions have evolved over time, from distributing smaller, critically acclaimed titles like “The Big Sick” and “Manchester by the Sea” to more recently acquiring movie studio MGM (leading to a battle for control of the James Bond franchise) and declaring its intention to bring 14 movies into theaters every year.

Until “Hail Mary,” those movies — including “After the Hunt,” “Mercy,” and the controversial “Melania” documentary — seemed to be falling flat with audiences.

Amazon’s head of film Courtenay Valenti told The New York Times that “Project Hail Mary”‘s big opening weekend validated the company’s strategy of making “big, bold entertaining commercial films.” And it has more movies coming to theaters soon, including “The Sheep Detectives” starring Hugh Jackman in May, then a “Masters of the Universe” reboot in June.

Smart glasses were already under fire for privacy concerns. But now, there’s a new problem brewing. Cheating. And it’s surprisingly easy.

A recent report by Rest of World highlights how AI-powered smart glasses are being used to scan exam questions and display answers directly on the lens, essentially turning them into a real-time cheating tool. In some cases, students are even renting these glasses for as little as $6 a day, using them not just for navigation or translation, but specifically to gain an unfair advantage in exams.

How does this even work?

It’s a mix of hardware and AI catching up. Modern smart glasses come equipped with cameras, microphones, and AI assistants that can analyze what you’re looking at and respond in real time. That means a question on paper can be scanned, processed by an AI model, and fed back as an answer. All without pulling out a phone. And because these devices look like regular glasses, they’re much harder to detect compared to traditional cheating methods.

Adding fuel to the fire, devices like the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have already sparked concerns around covert recording and privacy, with critics pointing out how easy it is to capture photos or videos without people noticing. Now, with cheating entering the picture, the concerns aren’t just about being watched but also about fairness, trust, and how institutions even enforce rules anymore.

When smart gets… a little too smart

This goes way beyond just exam cheating; it challenges the entire system. Experts warn that devices like AI-powered smart glasses could break traditional ways of detecting misconduct, since they’re subtle, always-on, and hard to track. Some regions have already started taking drastic steps, like temporarily disabling AI tools during exams, just to stay ahead.

At the same time, we’re stepping into an era of “invisible tech,” where these devices are genuinely useful but also easy to misuse. And that’s the real dilemma: when technology becomes this seamless, the line between helping and cheating starts to disappear.

Sky TV has now been a broadcasting powerhouse in the UK for nearly 40 years, offering a premium alternative to the country’s traditional channels and delivering some of the best dramas, films, sport, comedy and factual TV of the past four decades.

While Sky has been the go-to destination for prestige television such as Game of Thrones, Succession and The Last of Us, and biggest film releases on its Sky Cinema suite, it’s the provider’s domination of the live sport landscape that has sustained its success. Sky Sports is almost a byword for Premier League soccer coverage, and has carried dozens of the biggest tournaments and events across tennis, golf, cricket, NFL, rugby, boxing, darts and more.

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.

I’m unfamiliar with “wax apples,” so 2-Down was a mystery to me until the other answers filled in. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? 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.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: 1975 Spielberg film that’s considered the first summer blockbuster
Answer: JAWS

5A clue: “Oh okay, gotcha”
Answer: ISEE

6A clue: Athlete from New York (in one sport) or San Francisco (in another)
Answer: GIANT

8A clue: Declare publicly
Answer: AVOW

9A clue: Emperor who didn’t actually fiddle while Rome burned
Answer: NERO

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: “The ___ is up!”
Answer: JIG

2D clue: Like lotus root and wax apples
Answer: ASIAN

3D clue: Drive dangerously in traffic
Answer: WEAVE

4D clue: Spanish title
Answer: SENOR

7D clue: Scrabble value of D or G
Answer: TWO

The Samsung Galaxy A57 is a distinctly mid-range smartphone – and I don’t mean that as an insult. 

The Galaxy A57 separates itself from much of the mid-range competition with a particularly premium glass and aluminium build that’s both thinner and lighter this year, along with Samsung’s polished One UI 8.5 software, a smattering of new AI features and a much longer OS upgrade promise, making the £529 price tag for the entry-level 256GB model much easier to swallow.

However, it’s not exactly the perfect phone – the focus on a premium build has meant sacrifices in other areas. 

The 6.7-inch Super AMOLED screen, for example, has slimmer bezels, but they’re still not symmetrical like those on the cheaper Honor 400, while the camera setup leaves much to be desired. 

The 50MP main camera is fairly well-specced for the price, but the accompanying 12MP ultrawide and 5MP macro lenses have all but been outshone by the competition, particularly the Nothing Phone 4a Pro, which is both cheaper and boasts higher-res, more advanced lenses. Really, you’d expect to find those secondary lenses on something in the sub-£300 market from any other brand.

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It’s also not exactly a performance beast, featuring Samsung’s distinctly mid-range Exynos 1680 chipset and 8GB of RAM. It’s fine for day-to-day use in early testing, but it can’t hold a candle to the flagship-level A19 chipset in the iPhone 17e, nor to the Snapdragon 8 Elite in the Poco F8 Pro. 

But, again, at £529, you can kind of accept those shortcomings. It’s not a full-fat flagship, after all, and most mid-rangers have a particular ‘focus’, be it camera hardware, design or performance, where other areas take a hit to get to the price point.

However, that metric changes completely when you look at the 512GB/12GB model, which rather inexplicably, costs £699. 

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That’s £170 more, for 4GB more RAM and an additional 256GB of storage, the former of which you probably won’t notice all that often in everyday use. £699 isn’t mid-range – that’s premium,  almost flagship-level money, and the A57’s shortcomings are much harder to forgive at that price point. What I’m trying to say is, avoid that model at all costs.  

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Much better options available at the price

For £699, there are plenty of more capable phones than the Galaxy A57 available to you – case in point, Samsung’s own Galaxy S25 FE. The phone comes in at £649, and while you don’t get the same 512GB of storage as the A57, you do get much more bang for your buck in other areas.

The phone has a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with an LTPO-enabled 120Hz refresh rate and those all-important symmetrical bezels, along with better performance from the Exynos 2400 chipset and nice extras like wireless charging – all for £50 less than the A57.

It’s even harder to vouch for the Galaxy A57 once you look beyond Camp Samsung at the price point. That’ll net you a phone like the £649 OnePlus 15R with its bigger, faster 6.8-inch 165Hz AMOLED screen, a much more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor, a frankly massive 7400mAh battery and similarly rapid 80W charging.

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There’s also the £699 Motorola Edge 70, and while it doesn’t offer much of an uptick in the performance department, it’s impressively thin and light at 6mm and 159g, making it one of the slimmest options on the market – and complete with a relatively big 4800mAh battery and a gorgeous 6.7-inch 120Hz AMOLED screen.

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Xiaomi’s 15T Pro is another solid alternative, coming in at £649. It packs not only the flagship-level Dimensity 9400+ chipset but also a premium camera setup comprising a 50MP main with a large 1/1.3-inch sensor, a 50MP 5x periscope, and a 12MP ultrawide, along with a 6.8-inch 144Hz AMOLED display that’ll give some of the best around a run for its money. 

In fact, you can even get proper flagship-level phones for the price. The Nothing Phone 3 cost £799 at release in late 2025, but at the time of writing, it’s available for just £559 at Amazon with 256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM – and you’re getting a much more capable phone than the Galaxy A57, with change to spare.

You’re getting oodles of power in the form of the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, along with a proper high-end 6.6-inch screen with an LTPO-enabled 120Hz refresh rate and a peak brightness of 4500nits, a solid camera combination comprised of triple 50MP main, ultrawide and 3x periscope lenses, and to top it all off, Nothing’s stylish Nothing OS experience. 

And that’s not even mentioning the design, with the Phone 3 offering one of the most unique looks of any smartphone around right now. 

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Frankly, the Galaxy A57 pales in comparison to any of these phones, and you’d be much better off with those than the overly expensive 512GB model. 

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It’s likely down to the spiralling cost of RAM

But why is the 512GB Galaxy A57 so much more expensive than the 256GB model? While Samsung hasn’t confirmed it outright, I’d expect that it all comes down to the rapidly increasing cost of components, particularly storage and RAM. 

Since the price of RAM skyrocketed in the second half of 2025, driven mainly by AI data centres hoovering up as much RAM as possible, reports and leaks have suggested that mobile manufacturers would essentially pass that cost on to consumers. And that’s what’s starting to happen. It’s not the first phone we’ve seen with a notable price jump compared to its 2025 equivalent – though the other example is, once again, from Samsung. 

The Samsung Galaxy S26 has jumped to £879, an £80 increase on last year’s Galaxy S25, while the S26 Plus comes in at £1099, a £100 difference compared to the S25 Plus – and with very few upgrades to speak of. The only model that didn’t really see much of a price hike was the already-premium Galaxy S26 Ultra, which costs a similar £1,279 to last year’s S25 Ultra.

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Samsung knows that the S26 Ultra would no doubt be the most popular in the range, so making it more expensive wasn’t really an option. Instead, the less popular models would cover much of that hit, especially for the larger storage options. The 512GB Galaxy S26, for example, costs £1049 – £170 more. 

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It’s pretty much the same story here: Samsung has tried its best to keep the entry-level 256GB A57 model as affordable as possible and is trying to recoup additional cash from the 512GB/12GB model to offset any potential losses.

That makes sense for Samsung, but honestly, it makes zero sense for consumers to opt for it at such an inflated price – especially when more capable phones are available at the same price. 

Apple’s AI strategy might be taking a very familiar turn, one that made the iPhone what it is today. As per Bloomberg’s recent report, Apple is working on a new “Extensions” system in iOS 27 that would allow third-party AI assistants to plug directly into Siri, including services like Google Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude.

More importantly, this won’t just be a hidden setting. Instead, Apple is reportedly planning a dedicated section inside the App Store for these AI integrations, effectively creating a marketplace for AI tools, very similar to how apps are distributed today.

What does this actually mean for Siri?

It’s a pretty massive shift. Instead of trying to build one perfect AI, Apple seems to be turning Siri into a hub or “router” for multiple AI models, letting users choose which assistant handles their queries. That means Siri could act as the front-end, while different AIs handle different tasks, one for writing, another for coding, another for research. It’s less “Siri vs ChatGPT” and more “Siri + everything.”

As things stand, Apple is reportedly pursuing a two-pronged strategy: building its own in-house AI (Apple Intelligence), while also opening the door to third-party services. This lets Apple stay competitive without relying on just one model. It also keeps users from jumping ship to Android.

There’s also a business angle here. By turning AI tools into something users can install via the App Store, Apple could take a cut of subscriptions, just like it does with apps today.

So… is Siri becoming the new App Store?

This could completely change how AI works on phones. Instead of relying on one assistant to do everything, Apple seems to be moving toward a modular setup where users can mix and match different AI tools based on what they need. And if this vision plays out, Siri won’t just be an assistant anymore, but a platform.

In times like these, it’s refreshing to hear new music from a band that still delivers exactly what made them worth following in the first place. That’s the case with Our Best Place, the recent album from Japan’s long running all female power pop punk outfit, Shonen Knife.

First released in 2023, the album earned strong praise from fans and critics alike. Now, ahead of a 2025 to 2026 U.S. tour with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Men at Work, the band is issuing an expanded edition featuring additional content and an alternate cover design.

“Our Best Place which was released in 2023 became a representative album of Shonen Knife,” says Naoko, founding member and lead vocalist. “It includes many of our punk pop songs. The 2025 vinyl version has fabulous embroidered artwork and will [be] a collector’s item for our fans! “Not only that, I hope this vinyl release will be a good opportunity for other people to know our music!”

While I can’t claim to have been following every step of the band’s career — I became a fan when I purchased their brilliant holiday 45 RPM single “Space Christmas” around the time of its release in the early 1990s (and I still have it and play it each year!) — every Shonen Knife album I’ve picked up randomly over the years has been great fun.

For those of you not familiar with Shonen Knife’s sound, this group effectively bridges the gap between The Ramones and The Ronettes via Osaka, Japan.

A quick look at the track list reveals one of the running themes in Shonen Knife’s universe: food. “Spicy Veggie Curry” might be the best vegetarian punk rock song you didn’t know you needed. “Afternoon Tea” is not the Something Else by The Kinks cut, but you get the sense Ray Davies would appreciate the spirit. “The Story of Baumkuchen” dives into the German “tree cake” that found a second home in Japan, delivered with a quirky charm that oddly recalls Guided By Voices. And then there’s “Vamos Taquitos,” where acoustic strumming collides with a wall of fuzzy, overdriven electric guitars, and somehow it all works.

But its not all food puns here. “Just A Smile” is a great power pop cover tune, originally recorded by Scotland’s Pilot (of the hit “Magic” fame).

Our Best Place now includes four additional songs: “Nice Day (‘60s Mix),” “The Story of Baumkuchen (Japanese Version),” “Girls Rock (2023 Japanese Version)” and “Green Tea (2025 Naoko Vocal Version).” 

The bonus 60’s mix of “Nice Day” is a hysterical concept which audiophiles of a certain vintage will appreciate as it places all vocals in one channel and the whole band backing track is in the other — ultra extreme early stereo! 

Our Best Place comes pressed on crystal clear vinyl that is well centered and happily very quiet. You can order the CD version with the original cover design for $19.99 at Amazon. It is also available at their Bandcamp page for about $15.95. 

As far as getting your hands on the vinyl, as far as I can tell it is presently only available at their concerts but some online sources indicate it will be made available online later in the year after the tour. I have inquired with the band’s PR team and if/when we get additional information I’ll be sure to update this section accordingly. 

That said, what are you waiting for? Go see Shonen Knife live and grab the album at the merch table while you’re there. Here’s their current tour itinerary. And yes… let’s knife.

Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc. You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.

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Avatar fans, this one’s been a long time coming, and it finally has a release date. Announced in a new trailer at the Evo Awards on Saturday, Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game officially drops on July 2, 2026.

The game is coming to pretty much everything, including PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch (including Switch 2), and PC. It’ll launch with 12 playable characters, alongside multiple modes like Story, Arcade, Training, and full online multiplayer with ranked and casual play. As for what kind of game it is, think classic 2D fighter… but with bending.

Why does Avatar Legends look so promising?

Avatar Legends is a 1v1 fighting game built around elemental combat, letting players control fan-favorite characters from both Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. It features hand-drawn 2D animation, which honestly looks straight out of the show, and a unique “Flow System” that focuses on movement, positioning, and expressive combat rather than just button mashing. There’s also a support character system, meaning fights aren’t just about your main pick. You can even tweak your playstyle with assist abilities and special moves.

However, the best part about this game is that it’s not just coasting on nostalgia. The devs are clearly targeting both casual players and fighting game enthusiasts, with features like rollback netcode and full cross-play, which are huge for competitive longevity. Add to that an original story mode and a planned roster expansion via DLC, and it feels like this could stick around for a while.

So… is this the Avatar game we’ve been waiting for?

Avatar Legends looks like it actually gets what makes the series click: fluid movement, expressive combat, and that signature bending chaos. Add in hand-drawn visuals, a solid 1v1 fighting system, and mechanics like the Flow System and support assists, and it’s shaping up to be more than just another licensed fighter.

And that’s the big deal here. This isn’t trying to reinvent the genre. Instead, it’s trying to belong in it, while staying true to Avatar’s identity. If everything clicks, this could easily become the go-to fighter for fans… and maybe even pull in players who’ve never watched the show.