Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one, and themed to Valentine’s Day. It’s not too tough, but if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story. 

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: XOXOXO

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Check today’s calendar!

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

• SNUG, GUNS, KISS, SAND, MEEK, CHECK

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

• SNUGGLE, PECK, SMACK, EMBRACE, CUDDLE, SMOOCH

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is HUGSANDKISSES. To find it, start with the H that’s five letters to the right on the very top row, and wind down.

Toughest Strands puzzles

Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest.

#1: Dated slang. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.

#2: Thar she blows! I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT. 

#3: Off the hook. Again, it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK.

Throughout, there’s a Virtual Assistant chatbot if you need to ask questions or get help, which gives me extra peace of mind. Plus, it’s included with the DIY service, which saves me a bunch of money, rather than going with one of the options that includes a real tax expert to look over things.

H&R Block’s service asks lots of questions related to potential tax breaks, looking for savings that can come, for example, from cash and noncash charitable donations, and H&R Block was able to find more tax breaks to maximize my refund.

Health-y Questions

The biggest difference I noticed was in a section about health care, which was filled with helpful information about coverage and its effect on taxes. Most of the other tax services I’ve tested didn’t include health care questions, and didn’t explain this clearly with helpful FAQs.

I had to answer questions about household health insurance statuses in 2025. H&R Block is very thorough in asking questions and providing information about the types of insurance that qualify for tax benefits, and even whether Medicaid coverage for Covid-19 testing and services counts as health insurance. If health-related expenses play a prominent role in your personal finances, I’d opt for H&R Block’s tax service over competitors.

Pro tip: The early bird gets the worm, and it’s the same with taxes. Generally speaking, the earlier you file, the better price you’ll get for these online filing services. Like H&R Block, most services have a tier system with different plans, and the same goes for when you choose to file. The end of January is the cheapest time to file, and early February is the second cheapest, with prices increasing the closer you get to that April 15 deadline. Oftentimes, H&R Block holds a Presidents’ Day Sale for a week or so, so if you’re planning to go with this already super-affordable service, I’d keep an eye out for sales during that period.

Overall, I found H&R Block’s DIY online self-service to be easy and pretty seamless. The supplemental information helped me understand the process, and the file upload options saved me tons of time. Plus, I loved having the Al Tax Assist for extra help with questions, and Live Tax Pro Support on the ready to give my forms a second look.

Photograph: Molly Higgins

Other Services Available

As mentioned, there are several different options available for filing, as well as expert support provided (if you opt in to this service) tailored to unique tax situations to ensure you’re getting the most money back. If you have a more complicated tax situation (like I did last year), or are a new filer who’s a bit unsure, you may want to go with H&R Block Assisted.

With this service, you can get done with filing in as little as one hour. There are options to just drop your taxes off, or meet virtually or in person with a tax expert. H&R Block has more than 60,000 tax professionals and 9,000 offices, with locations in every state, within 5 miles of most Americans.

from the the-almond-bothers dept

Back in 2023, we talked about a strange trademark dispute out of the UK concerning oat-based milk products. Specifically, Oatly, a large producer of oat milk, applied for a trademark in the UK for its slogan, “Post Milk Generation.” Dairy UK, a lobbying organization representing dairy farmers in the country, opposed the trademark in the application stage, arguing that a UK regulation prevented any company from using the word “milk” in conjunction with “products that are not mammary secretions.” Oatly successfully argued that its slogan did not run afoul of the regulation because it was both not suggesting that its product was milk and was instead describing the consumers of Oatly’s product, or the generation that was moving beyond milk. In other words, there was no association being made with milk here; in fact, the opposite was the messaging.

That should have been the end of this nonsense. Instead, Dairy UK appealed that decision and the London Court of Appeal reversed the lower court’s decision. Suddenly, Oatly could not trademark the slogan, nor use it on its products, ostensibly.

Oatly stated that the reversing of the decision was absurd and clearly a ploy by Dairy UK to limit competition with its members. The company appealed up to the UK Supreme Court which, amazingly, affirmed that Oatly cannot have its slogan trademarked.

The UK Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that Oatly cannot use its “Post Milk Generation” trademark on oat-based food and drink, handing a landmark victory to the dairy industry, as it contends with record-low farm numbers, falling retail volumes, and collapsing wholesale prices.

The judgment arrives at a precarious moment for British dairy. The number of British dairy farms has fallen to a record low of 7,010 — an 85% decline from an estimated 46,000 in 1980, according to industry estimates and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB). 

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It’s hard to see this as anything other than a national-level court falling all over itself to protect a domestic industry from foreign competition. The explanation the court offered for its decision is equally confusing. For one, while Oatly pointed out again that its use of the word “milk” in the slogan is not describing the product, but the consumer, the court said that doesn’t matter at all. The word instead simply suffers from a blanket ban on any marketing or trade dress if it doesn’t come from a nipple.

Then, when Oatly also points out that its use obliquely informs the public that the product does not contain milk — hence the “post milk generation” language –, the court points out that because Oatly has stated that the slogan doesn’t describe the product, any insinuation about the product itself doesn’t count as it’s not direct and clear enough.

The second: even if the word “milk” is caught, is Oatly saved by an exception that allows protected terms when they “clearly” describe a quality of the product, such as being milk-free? Again, the court said no. Lords Hamblen and Burrows, writing for the unanimous panel of five justices, held that the slogan describes a type of consumer — younger people turning away from dairy — rather than anything about the product itself.

Even if it could be read as referencing a milk-free quality, it does so in an “oblique and obscure way” that fails to clarify whether the product is entirely milk-free or merely low in dairy content.

This is the court acknowledging explicitly that Oatly’s slogan is not describing the product, but the consumer. It also claims that a slogan that describes a consumer that has moved beyond milk isn’t clear enough as to whether the product is sufficiently non-milk. What?

All the court has demonstrated is that Oatly is definitely not trying to call its product milk and is not trying to confuse anyone with its slogan. For that, Oatly doesn’t get its trademark.

Again, the lobbying efforts here are quite clear. And they appear to have influenced the court’s decision. In fact, what Dairy UK is trying to restrict goes well beyond the word “milk” to the point of absurdity.

The Supreme Court has emerged from years of lobbying action. An investigation by Greenpeace’s Unearthed, based on documents obtained through disclosure, revealed that Dairy UK had been lobbying for tighter enforcement of dairy term protections since at least 2017. 

Committee meeting notes showed the association presented “the issue of misuse of protected dairy terms” to a Business Experts Group panel and was subsequently tasked by Defra with developing a briefing paper for the Food Standards Information Focus Group (FSIG).

Dairy UK submitted a position paper to Defra in November 2022, backing FSIG draft proposals that would have gone significantly further — banning descriptors such as “yoghurt-style,” homophones like “mylk,” and even phrases like “not milk.” Forty-four plant-based companies and NGOs, including Alpro, Oatly, Quorn, and the Good Food Institute, co-signed an open letter opposing the restrictions.

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If we’ve reached the point in which someone who doesn’t produce milk can’t point out on its trade dress that their product is “not milk”, then we’ve crossed the Rubicon into a land of dumb.

Was the court solely looking to protect suffering UK dairy farmers in its decision? I can’t say so for sure. But what is very clear is that nothing in its decision has anything to do with protecting the public from deception, which is the entire point of trademark law to begin with.

Filed Under: oat milk, post milk generation, trademark, uk

Companies: dairy uk, oatly

Humax has announced the Aura EZ 4K TV Recorder, its latest device to support the Freely streaming platform. Available to pre‑order now for £249, the Aura EZ combines traditional TV recording with the latest streaming apps.

Following on from the previous Aura, setup is fairly simple as users can plug in the Aura EZ and start watching within minutes. When connected to an aerial, the recorder can capture up to four channels at once while playing a fifth live. A 2TB hard drive stores up to 1,000 hours of recordings, giving families plenty of space for shows and movies.

Equipped with Dolby Digital Plus audio, this TV recorder supports 4K resolution and HDR programming. There’s a dedicated button for accessing Freely, while scheduling recordings is straightforward with a press of the menu button revealing a seven‑day EPG TV guide with forward and backward navigation.

While all of these features are relatively common for modern TV recorders, their integration with Freely is the headline feature. When connected to Wi-Fi, users gain access to more than 60 live channels and over 75,000 hours of on‑demand content.

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Services include BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, Channel 5, U, WATCH FREE UK, and PBS America. Exclusive 4 channels (4Homes, 4Life, and 4Reality) add further variety. No aerial or dish is required, and most importantly, there are no in-app subscription fees for the above.

The Freely Mini‑Guide makes switching between live and on‑demand seamless, while features like pause, restart, and “My List” add flexibility.

Humax also plans to release the Aura EZ app, allowing users to schedule and manage recordings remotely. This ensures favourite shows are always ready to watch, even when away from home.

With its blend of recording power and streaming convenience, the Aura EZ positions Humax firmly in the Freely ecosystem. At £249, it offers a premium yet accessible way to modernise existing TVs without replacing them.

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South Korea has fined luxury fashion brands Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior Couture, and Tiffany $25 million for failing to implement adequate security measures, which facilitated unauthorized access and the exposure of data belonging to more than 5.5 million customers.

All three brands are part of the Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) group and suffered data breaches [1, 2, 3] after hackers gained access to their cloud-based customer management service.

The Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) in South Korea says that in the case of Louis Vuitton, an employee’s device was infected with malware, which led to compromising their software-as-a-service (SaaS) and leaking of data for 3.6 million customers.

Although the product isn’t named, Google researchers linked the campaigns to the ShinyHunters gang, who targeted Salesforce platforms. The threat actor later claimed the breach of LVMH systems.

The breaches at the three regional brands last year exposed sensitive customer data, including names, phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses, and purchase histories.

PIPC says that Louis Vuitton had been operating the SaaS tool since 2013, but “did not restrict access rights to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, etc., and did not apply secure authentication methods when personal information handlers accessed the service from outside.”

For failing to adequately secure access to customer data, the South Korean data protection agency imposed a $16.4 million fine on Louis Vuitton and ordered the company to announce the penalty on its business website.

At Dior, the breach occurred via a phishing attack on a customer service employee, who was tricked into granting the hacker access to the SaaS system, exposing data for 1.95 million customers.

Dior had been using the system since 2020, but didn’t implement allow-lists, didn’t place bulk data download restrictions, and failed to inspect access logs, delaying the discovery of the breach for over three months.

Additionally, Dior South Korea disclosed the breach to PIPC five days after learning about it. Under PIPA, organizations are required to notify the data protection agency within 72 hours from the time of becoming aware of a personal information leak.

Due to these violations, PIPC announced a $9.4 million financial penalty for Dior South Korea.

Tiffany was breached in a similar way, with attackers using voice phishing to trick a customer service employee into giving them access to the SaaS system. However, the impact was far lower in this case, with 4,600 clients exposed.

Similar to the other two cases, Tiffany also neglected to implement IP-based access controls and bulk data download restrictions and did not notify impacted individuals within the legally specified time frame. The brand received a $1.85 million fine.

PIPC emphasized that SaaS solutions do not exempt companies from their responsibility to securely manage client data, nor does it transfer that responsibility to the vendors of these solutions.

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Airbnb has taken its time to launch AI features within the app, but CEO Brian Chesky on Friday said the company is now planning to bake in features powered by large language models that would help users search for listings, plan their trips, and aid hosts in managing their properties.

Speaking at the company’s fourth-quarter conference call, Chesky said the company wants to increase its use of large language models for customer discovery, support and engineering.

“We are building an AI-native experience where the app does not just search for you. It knows you. It will help guests plan their entire trip, help hosts better run their businesses, and help the company operate more efficiently at scale,” he said.

The company separately said it is testing a new feature that lets users search and ask questions about properties and locations using natural language queries.

Currently, Airbnb offers an LLM-powered customer service bot, for some personalization, and communications. The new AI search feature is expected to “evolve into a more comprehensive and intuitive search experience that extends through the trip.”

Questioned by analyst whether Airbnb would roll out sponsored property slots within AI search, Chesky said the company wants to get the design and user experience right first.

“AI search is live to a very small percentage of traffic right now. We are doing a lot of experimentation. Over time, we are gonna be experimenting with making AI search more conversational, integrating it into more than the trip, and, eventually, we will be looking at sponsor listings as a result of that,” Chesky said, adding that Airbnb would consider designing an ad unit that fits the conversational search flow.

Chesky said Airbnb plans to tap the AI expertise of its new CTO, Ahmad Al-Dahle (he worked on Meta’s Llama models previously), to use its trove of identity and review data to make the app more useful.

Airbnb claimed its AI-powered customer support bot, launched in North America last year, now handles a third of customer problems without needing any human intervention. Chesky noted there are plans to enable customers to call the AI bot for support, and expand language coverage to customer support as well.

“A year from now, if we are successful, significantly more than 30% of tickets will be handled by a custom service agent, in many more languages, in all the languages where we have live agents. AI customer service will not only be chat, it will be voice,” he said.

The company is also thinking about increasing AI usage internally. Airbnb said 80% of its engineers use AI tools, but the goal is to get to 100%.

Airbnb reported better-than-expected revenue of $2.78 billion in the fourth quarter, up 12% from a year earlier.

Folks over at Android Authority have pieced together an animation from an early build of One UI 9, Samsung’s version of Android 17, and it gives us the new form factor and the design of the purported Wide Fold.

The outlet has shared what appears to be an introductory device animation, depicting a swipe-up gesture on the cover screen that reveals a list-type content, then the handset unfolds, and the content expands on the main screen.

A familiar animation, but an unfamiliar shape

What other details does the animation reveal? First, the Wide Fold’s cover screen could come with a punch-hole camera located in the center. It would carry a rather boxy profile, rather than the rounded edges we’re used to seeing on non-foldable smartphones.

As the phone unfolds, we can also see a punch-hole camera on the main screen (top center of the right half). However, it is the phone’s shape and size, and how unusual it looks, that strike me the most.

So far, Samsung’s foldables have had a rather tall external screen and a broad, book-style inner screen.

While it provides more than enough screen estate for multitasking and productivity, it doesn’t have the most user-friendly aspect ratio for modern-day content (both on YouTube and on OTT platforms).

A major shift in Samsung’s foldable philosophy

The cover screen, as shown in the animation, appears dramatically shorter and wider than the tall, narrow exterior displays on existing Galaxy Z Fold models.

Based on the proportions depicted, the outer display appears closer to a 16:10 (height-to-width) aspect ratio in portrait orientation than to the elongated 20:9-style screens Samsung typically uses.

Meanwhile, the inner display appears very close to 3:4 (height-to-width), only slightly narrower, giving it a distinctly tablet-like feel when unfolded. Unlike the Fold 7’s inner screen, the Wide Fold’s isn’t in the shape of a square.

What does that mean for users?

Well, the exterior screen should feel more like a normal phone and provide a wider keyboard (which means fewer typos).

The inner screen, on the other hand, should provide a better content-viewing experience (without the horizontal bars at the top and the bottom).

Given that the Wide Fold’s animation is buried deep in the One UI 9 test build, it’s safe to conclude that Samsung is planning to launch the handset alongside the Fold 8 and the Flip 8 at the Galaxy Unpacked event in the third quarter of the year (likely in July or August 2026).

Scale Ireland also found that 35.4pc of respondents to its annual survey were unaware of the landmark EU AI Act.

Irish founders have pointed fingers at funding as their biggest concern for the fifth year in a row, finds the latest annual Scale Ireland State of Start-up Survey, published today (13 February).

Scale Ireland surveyed 209 founders and CEOs of tech companies from Ireland. Nearly 75pc of them told surveyors that attracting private capital is “difficult” or “very difficult”.

Similar numbers found it hard to attract private capital back in 2022 – when the report was first launched – as in 2025, when Scale Ireland reported 80pc of respondents were finding it hard to attract capital.

This finding is in line with a 2025 Government report which found that Irish scale-up enterprises would face a €1.1bn gap in equity financing over the next three to five years.

“While funding remains the biggest issue for start-ups and scaling companies, there are also considerable and persistent problems with enterprise supports. They are far too complicated,” said the not-for-profit Scale Ireland’s CEO Martina Fitzgerald.

Compared to that earliest 2022 report, which found that one in four business leaders said recruiting and retaining staff was their biggest challenge, in 2026 only 9.1pc said the same.

The large majority of businesses surveyed (88.5pc) for 2026 said they did not use the Key Employment Engagement Programme (KEEP) to recruit and retain staff. 45pc believed the scheme needs to be reformed.

More than 60pc of the surveyed founders said that government supports – such as the KEEP scheme – are the “most critical” to successfully scaling a business.

However, there is a strong indication that founders don’t find the available supports for start-ups and scale-ups enough. More than 66pc of the survey respondents are not confident that Ireland is moving in the right direction in this instance, while 30.6pc are “confident” or “very confident” about this.

Meanwhile, more than 94pc of founders have already deployed or are prepping to deploy AI in their companies, the latest survey has found. 85% believe AI will add value to their company’s performance.

Other reports suggest that AI’s effects on the bottom line in Ireland are still expected to be lukewarm. According to PwC’s AI Agent Survey, 53pc of Irish participants see clear productivity boosts from AI agents, but only 38pc experience real cost reductions.

On top of that, Scale Ireland found that 35.4pc of its respondents were unaware of the landmark EU AI Act, while around 36pc said that they don’t know what impact the law will have on their business. Fitzgerald said that this needs to be “addressed urgently”.

The EU AI Act is arguably the most robust and detailed form of AI regulation in the world. The act is meant to regulate AI technology through a risk-based approach – the riskier an AI application is, the more rules apply to it.

“The survey demonstrates that, while progress has been made in areas such as the R&D tax credit, other challenges for the sector are very persistent,” said Scale Ireland chair Brian Caulfield.

“Start-up and scaling companies remain hugely undercapitalised relative to US peers. Greater incentives are required to encourage private investment by angels and to mobilise pension fund savings to invest in indigenous enterprises.”

Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

It was promised as a new age for businesses. Virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality – in whatever shape it took, this was going to be the 21st century game-changer. No more staring at screens or using a mouse. That’s ancient, 20th century thinking, that is.

This new reality would see the advent of true hands-free computing and unparalleled remote experiences, wherever in the world professionals were based. From prototyping to healthcare diagnoses, it heralded a new age. And, like those stuck in Casablanca, we waited. And waited. And waited.

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