Amazon isn’t just buying Globalstar — it’s inheriting Apple’s satellite roadmap.

The Seattle-based company’s agreement to acquire the satellite operator behind Apple’s iPhone Emergency SOS feature promises to give it a new constellation of operating satellites, a key slice of mobile spectrum, and Apple as a flagship partner.

The cash-and-stock deal, announced Tuesday, will help the Amazon Leo satellite broadband business press fast-forward in its attempt to catch up with Elon Musk’s Starlink.

Amazon told GeekWire the transaction was valued at approximately $10.8 billion as of April 9, when the exchange ratio was fixed. This differs from the slightly higher figure reported by multiple news outlets Tuesday. The value will fluctuate with Amazon’s share price until closing, capped at $90 worth of Amazon stock per Globalstar share.

Apple is already Globalstar’s biggest customer. In 2024, it committed about $1.5 billion to the company — a combination of prepayments for satellite services and a 20% equity stake in a Globalstar subsidiary — in exchange for the right to most of its network capacity.

Under a separate long-term agreement announced along with the deal, Amazon Leo will power satellite features on future iPhone and Apple Watch models, including Emergency SOS, messaging, Find My location sharing, and roadside assistance. Amazon will also continue supporting the Apple devices that already rely on Globalstar’s existing network.

Amazon renamed its satellite venture from Project Kuiper to Amazon Leo in November, a move the company framed at the time as a key step toward commercial service. 

On Monday, a day before the Globalstar announcement, Amazon Leo unveiled a new aviation antenna capable of delivering gigabit download speeds to aircraft, part of the build-out for its Delta and JetBlue in-flight Wi-Fi deals.

The acquisition agreement values Globalstar at $90 per share in cash or stock and is expected to close in 2027, pending regulatory approval. Thermo Funding, which controls 57.6% of Globalstar, has already agreed to the deal, according to an SEC filing, meaning no shareholder vote is required.

Globalstar, based in Covington, La., currently operates about two dozen satellites in low Earth orbit. It is in the middle of a major expansion, backed by Apple, that will grow the fleet to 54 satellites. It also holds licensed mobile-satellite spectrum — a scarce and tightly regulated asset that is difficult for newer entrants like Amazon to acquire.

Starlink operates about 10,000 satellites and serves more than 9 million subscribers. Amazon has launched about 200 satellites and has yet to begin consumer service. 

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Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

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Today’s Connections: Sports Edition includes some fun categories. There’s a certain Olympic sport that pops up in the purple category, and if you just watched the Winter Games, you may do well. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

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Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Baseball abbreviations.

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Green group hint: Not lions.

Blue group hint: Hollywood hoops.

Purple group hint: Winter Olympics sport.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: MLB teams, on scoreboards.

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Green group: Tigers.

Blue group: Members of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Purple group: Curling terms.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

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What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is MLB teams, on scoreboards. The four answers are CIN, MIL, PIT and STL.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is tigers. The four answers are Clemson, Detroit, LSU and Memphis.

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The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is members of the Los Angeles Lakers. The four answers are Doncic, James, Smart and Vanderbilt.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is curling terms. The four answers are bonspiel, end, house and stone.

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Microsoft has introduced new Windows protections to defend against phishing attacks that abuse Remote Desktop connection (.rdp) files, adding warnings and disabling risky shared resources by default.

RDP files are commonly used in enterprise environments to connect to remote systems because admins can preconfigure them to automatically redirect local resources to the remote host.

Threat actors have increasingly abused this functionality in phishing campaigns. The Russian state-sponsored APT29 hacking group has previously used rogue RDP files to remotely steal data and credentials from victims.

When opened, these files can connect to attacker-controlled systems and redirect local drives to the connected device, allowing the attacker-controlled device to steal files and credentials stored on disk.

They can also capture clipboard data, such as passwords or sensitive text, or redirect authentication mechanisms like smart cards or Windows Hello to impersonate users

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New RDP protections roll out

As part of the April 2026 cumulative updates for Windows 10 (KB5082200) and Windows 11 (KB5083769 and KB5082052), Microsoft has now released new protections to prevent malicious RDP connection files from being used on devices.

“Malicious actors misuse this capability by sending RDP files through phishing emails,” warns Microsoft.

“When a victim opens the file, their device silently connects to a server controlled by the attacker and shares local resources, giving the attacker access to files, credentials, and more.”

After installing this update, when users open an RDP file for the first time, a one-time educational prompt is shown that explains what RDP files are and warns about their risks. Windows users will then be prompted to acknowledge that they understand the risks and press OK, which will prevent the alert from being shown again.

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Future attempts to open RDP files will now display a security dialog before any connection is made.

This dialog shows whether the RDP file is signed by a verified publisher, the remote system’s address, and lists all local resource redirections, such as drives, clipboard, or devices, with every option disabled by default.

If a file is not digitally signed, Windows displays a “Caution: Unknown remote connection” warning and labels the publisher as unknown, indicating there is no way to verify who created the file.

If the RDP file is digitally signed, Windows will display the publisher, but still warn you to verify their legitimacy before connecting.

It should be noted that these new protections apply only to connections initiated by opening RDP files, not to those made through the Windows Remote Desktop client.

Microsoft says that Administrators can temporarily disable these protections by going to the HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows NT\Terminal Services\Client Registry key and modifying the RedirectionWarningDialogVersion value so it is set to 1.

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However, as RDP files have historically been abused in attacks, it is strongly recommended to keep these protections enabled.

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If you have ever typed the same AI prompt into Gemini multiple times across different tabs, you know how tedious that gets. Google has now solved that problem by launching a new feature called Skills in Chrome. It lets you save your most useful Gemini prompts and run them again instantly with a single click.

So what can I do with Skills in Chrome?

Skills can turn your Gemini prompts into reusable one-click tools. Once saved, a Skill stays available across all your desktop devices signed into the same Google account.

Early testers have used them to calculate protein macros from recipe pages, generate side-by-side product spec comparisons across multiple tabs, and scan lengthy documents to summarize information.

Google is also launching a pre-built Skills library with ready-to-use prompts for common tasks. You can use them as-is or customize them to fit your needs. Skills also come with privacy guardrails. Before taking sensitive actions such as sending an email or adding a calendar event, it will ask for your confirmation first.

How to use Skills in Google Chrome

Skills are rolling out to desktop Chrome users with their language set to English-US. To save a Skill, open Gemini in Chrome and type a prompt you want to reuse. Once the conversation is in your chat history, you will see the option to save it directly as a Skill from there.

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To run it, type a forward slash ( / ) in the Gemini chat box and select your saved Skill. You can also use the plus sign ( + ) button to access Skills. To manage or edit them, type forward slash ( / ) and click the compass icon. To browse the pre-built library, look for it inside the same menu.

It is worth noting that Google is also testing a Projects feature for Gemini that lets you organize AI chats into folders, similar to ChatGPT. However, the feature is currently available to a small group of users and is not fully functional yet.

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Longtime Seattle investor and entrepreneur Chris DeVore is managing partner of Founders’ Co-op.

I have a confession to make. I’m a Democrat. And a capitalist. Both, at the same time.

This didn’t used to be a position that needed defending. But over the course of my adult life these two ideas have moved farther and farther apart. The bond is now at the breaking point, and if it snaps, the party I grew up in will abdicate its once-legitimate claim to the best of the American idea. 

The belief in free markets is actually shared by the vast majority of Americans, and while it may anger the populist fringe, embracing capitalism would be a rallying cry to centrists from both parties who despair for our future and are hungry for a message that makes sense.

Today, the party that has labored to defend and perfect the American experiment — with opportunity, justice and equal treatment under the law for all — has either lost its mind, or its memory, for the motive force that makes those ideals possible.

Take away the promise of a better life (immigration), the means to achieve it (capitalism), and the certainty that the fruits of your labor won’t be arbitrarily confiscated (rule of law), and the engine that has made America the richest, most powerful and most admired country in the world grinds to a halt, and the whole grand experiment comes to an end.

One can acknowledge all the historical errors that mar the American project — the displacement and murder of indigenous people, slavery and Jim Crow, the creeping capture of government by corporations, rich people, old people, the list goes on — and not lose sight of the three essential ingredients that make our strange and complicated country possible: capitalism, the rule of law, and a welcome embrace of all who wish to make America their home.

But if you listen to Democrats at both the state and national level today, capitalism is the enemy. Billionaires and their current avatars, AI and data centers, have become the bogeymen that electeds and party leaders invoke to stir outrage in the base. 

What’s offered as an alternative isn’t economically coherent (“tax the rich,” when the top 10% of earners already pay ~75% of all federal income taxes; “ban data centers,” industrial-scale NIMBYism that simply pushes development elsewhere), but the message behind the slogans is clear: American prosperity is not something to be conserved, much less promoted; it is a natural resource that we somehow lucked into and can harvest at will, an overflowing fountain of wealth that will never run dry.

How did we get here? How has capitalism, the incontrovertible powerplant of democracy, become anathema to the Democratic party? 

Today’s apparent loss of faith is actually rooted in capitalism’s undefeated record of success, coupled with the fitful but now accelerating failure of our democratic machinery.

It’s strange that the centrality of capitalism to our national project requires explanation, but that’s actually the best evidence of its truth: we have been so rich for so long, so embarrassed with our abundance of material and experiential choices, that we have come to take it for granted. We blithely assume that the neighborhood business owners and global corporations that make abundance possible, depositing bi-weekly paychecks in the bank accounts of their millions of workers and filling store shelves with the bewildering array of goods and services we enjoy every day, have simply always been there, will always be there, like the air we breathe. 

This is a tragic mistake.

I have made a career, or more truly, I have found a calling, in supporting entrepreneurs from their moment of inception. Every business that exists, from the most humble corner cafe up to and including General Motors and Amazon, only does so because a small number of unreasonable people overcame extraordinary obstacles over many years to create something from nothing. 

Every paying job, every charitable gift, every nickel of tax revenue that finances the safe and convenient world we all enjoy, springs from that improbable act of creation. The machinery of capitalism works so well, allowing one person’s vision to be transformed into millions of jobs and billions of dollars of tax revenue, that we have simply forgotten how extraordinary it is, how dramatic a break it represents from thousands of years of autocracy, feudalism, injustice and inequality.

The engine of capitalism is so efficient that it also conceals the deepest truth of all organic systems: companies, just like people, are born, live a short time, and then decline and die. This is hidden by the irrepressible generative energy of well-regulated self-interest: new companies arise to fill the gaps and address the shortcomings of current incumbents, fueling an endlessly diverse and creative process of regeneration. Every company that falters is replaced by two more, eager to serve the customers no longer satisfied by the prior wave’s lackluster efforts. 

To paint a picture of this cycle of renewal, of the top 100 most valuable companies in America today, 15 were founded in just the past 10 years, 30 didn’t exist 25 years ago, 45 didn’t exist 50 years ago, and less than a third (30 of 100) have been around for 100 years or more. Great companies can seem like they’ve always been here, but in fact they are dying and being born every day. New companies have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the solar energy of the capitalist biosphere: entrepreneurship.

If capitalism, and its essential generative act of entrepreneurship, are so great, how could we possibly have turned against them? 

The answer is both democracy’s greatest failure, and its most obvious path to redemption.

For at least the past century, Democrats and Republicans have divided themselves by their views on the role of the state. Democrats see government as an essential partner in the national project: providing critical infrastructure like roads and airports, securing the national defense, providing basic education and health services, and ensuring that the rule of law is applied fairly and equally, both to the companies that help our economy thrive as well as to its individual citizens. Republicans share many of these same views, but where Democrats push for more, Republicans have generally wanted less: lower taxes, fewer regulations, and a generally less-generous redistribution of national income to those lower on the economic ladder.

But to obtain the levers of power needed to advance their respective goals, both parties have relied on the obvious carrot of legislative giveaways to secure blocs of electoral support: farmers, labor unions, business owners, real estate developers, the list is as endless and varied as the economy itself. The result is a regulatory and tax system so stuffed with incentives, tax breaks and special protections that any citizen, even and especially those favored by one set of legislated advantages, can point to those in another group and cry “unfair!”, “undemocratic!”, “corrupt!”

It is this general stench of favoritism and corruption, slowly accreted over 250 years of electoral back-scratching on both sides of the aisle, that has brought us to our present crisis. Each party is so captured by its crazy quilt of protected electoral blocs and aggrieved parties, and so credibly able to point to the injustices perpetrated by the other side, that it becomes plausible to question the entire free-market edifice. 

Great wealth now has the taint of theft, with no fine distinctions between entrepreneurial success and a systematic looting of the Treasury.

Things tend to continue as they began. So the most likely, and most depressing, scenario is that we are witnessing the final throes of the American idea. Two centuries of bipartisan regulatory capture have so encrusted our legislative and fiscal infrastructure that equal treatment under the law is now a bitter punchline, not the proud aspiration that once bound us together as a nation. Each party is now fully captive to its donor base, its electoral security purchased with gifts of regulatory ledgermain and dollars siphoned from public coffers, that there is precious little oxygen left for the promises on which the nation was built.

But to use this bipartisan failure of democracy to make a villain of capitalism, to paint as enemies of the state the few founders who have reaped extraordinary gains from their entrepreneurial ventures, when the vast majority are lucky to keep their employees paid and the lights of their modest establishments lit, is to eat out the very heart of the American project. 

This is already playing out in miniature at the state level. Traditionally Democratic states like Washington, Oregon and California are pursuing confiscatory tax policies that villainize entrepreneurial wealth. The net result is not the hoped-for increase in state tax revenue, but a highly visible and accelerating flight of entrepreneurial wealth and energy to more capitalist-friendly domiciles like Florida, Texas and Wyoming.

This is not to argue that the unexampled boon of living in a society where one can both earn and keep great wealth does not come with serious civic obligations. By all means use regulation to ensure fair and safe business operations and prevent abuse. Levy the taxes necessary to nurture our remarkable civic infrastructure, allowing entrepreneurs to build new companies from scratch without fear of expropriation, whether by criminals or the state itself. Unquestionably demand that corporations be positive civic actors, as if they were citizens themselves, with all the rights and obligations that entails.

But as a lifelong Democrat, and a passionate believer in the fundamental goodness of the American idea, I have one simple request for the party I still believe is most likely to carry our national experiment forward: recognize capitalist entrepreneurship as the motive force that has made our extraordinary success possible, and restore capitalism as one of the central pillars of our national promise. 

By continuing to take our unprecedented prosperity for granted, you misunderstand both its source and its chances of survival. Worse yet, by demonizing the engine of our shared prosperity, you are sowing the seeds of our collective destruction. 

Stop now, before it’s too late.

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Pragmata is drawing positive early reviews thanks to its inventive mix of third-person shooting and real-time hacking mechanics alongside striking futuristic visuals. The dynamic between its lead characters and the game’s strategic combat depth stand out as key strengths.

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Sony just joined the ultra-fast gaming monitor party, and though it was a bit late, it could potentially turn a lot of heads there. On April 14, the company announced the INZONE M10S II, a 27-inch QHD OLED gaming monitor featuring a tandem OLED panel sourced from LG. 

Like other ultra-fast gaming monitors, the Sony gaming monitor pulls double duty between two modes: 540Hz at QHD, and a staggering 720Hz at HD. Developed in collaboration with esports powerhouse Fnatic, the monitor is a successor of the M10S.

Sony has priced the M10S II gaming monitor at $1,099.99. Availability, however, is expected later this year.  

But what does 720Hz actually do for you?

For everyday users, the monitor should offer razor-sharp visuals in QHD resolution at a 540Hz refresh rate with virtually no motion blur and the visual richness of an OLED panel. At this setting, the monitor offers 0.02 ms response time, which is exceptionally good. 

However, the 720Hz HD mode is reserved for hardcore, professional, competitive gamers, who’d rather sacrifice the resolution for pure speed. While I personally don’t know anyone who can make use of such speed, tournament-level FPS gamers, whose fate is determined at the last possible millisecond, could surely put it to good use. 

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The monitor also features a new Motion Blur Reduction algorithm that unlocks extra brightness during frames. So, instead of going dark, fast on-screen movements remain vivid. 

What else did Sony launch with the monitor?

Sony didn’t stop at the INZONE MS10S II monitor; the company also launched INZONE H6 Air, an open-back wired gaming headphone, which is priced at $199.99, inspired by the studio-grade MDR-MV1 headphones and weighing just 199 grams. 

Rounding up the launch are new Fnatic Edition accessories, which include Mouse-A, Mat-F, and Mat-D, along with a new translucent Glass Purple finish of the INZONE Buds wireless earbuds, which are all available now. 

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