from the nice-try dept

The World Baseball Classic is currently going on and I absolutely adore it. Essentially a World Cup for baseball, 20 nations are playing against one another in a banger of a tune-up for the Major League Baseball season. It’s a flamboyant delight, with cultural celebrations such as the Italian team doing a shot of espresso after they hit home runs in the dugout.

The American team is managed by former major leaguer Mark DeRosa. While I won’t bore you with too many gory details, DeRosa royally fucked up during the tail end of pool play. Through a complicated series of winning scenarios and tie-breaker rules, the American team headed into its game with Italy needing to win to secure its place in the playoffs. DeRosa, it appears, was under an entirely different impression. These were his comments before the game with Italy.

After the game, he mentioned that some of his players were “dragging” on the field and he essentially put in a lineup that didn’t include many of the normal starting players. If you don’t know professional baseball culture, there’s a reason for the dragging. With nothing at stake, it’s pretty clear DeRosa thought the playoffs were already secured… and told his players to go out and celebrate that night. They likely did, late into the night and with the help of plenty of alcohol. Then they lost to Italy, which meant they needed Italy to win or to get into tie-breaking scenarios against their next game with Mexico. They got lucky in that Italy did beat Mexico in the next game, but the fuck up took things out of the hands of Team USA, leaving it up to their rivals.

You may not care about any of the above, but baseball fans do. DeRosa, in his day job, is also an employee of MLB, serving as a commentator on the MLB channel. MLB itself took down the original video of DeRosa’s comments and put up a version in which you don’t hear DeRosa’s mistake nor his admitting later that he screwed up.

Also, this reporting from The Athletic doesn’t actually make things look better for DeRosa and Team USA:

“The league appears to have taken down video that included DeRosa’s mistaken comments from MLB.com, with attempts by The Athletic to access it yielding error messages early Wednesday morning. A version of the interview that remained on MLB Network’s Facebook page appeared to be condensed and did not include the now-scrutinized remarks.”

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I really don’t know what MLB was thinking here. American baseball fans would somehow forget what they heard DeRosa say? A screw up that could have bounced the American team from the WBC entirely would somehow fly under the radar?

Regardless, the Streisand Effect took over and now then the reporting on all of this went into wide circulation. In discussing MLB’s attempt at the hidden ball trick, reporting on DeRosa’s fuck up went through another, and larger, round of reporting. By trying to hide what DeRosa did, MLB made it public all the more.

This is classic Streisand Effect stuff at work and I can barely believe that Major League Baseball thought this isn’t exactly what would occur.

Filed Under: baseball, mark derosa, streisand effect, wbc

Companies: mlb

Google is working on a behind-the-scenes change to Android that could make phones feel noticeably quicker – without requiring new hardware.

The company is introducing a new optimisation technique for the Android kernel. This could improve app launches, system performance and even battery efficiency.

The update centres on the Android kernel, the core part of the operating system. The kernel is responsible for managing communication between apps, the processor and the phone’s hardware. According to Google, the kernel accounts for roughly 40% of total CPU activity on Android devices. This means even small improvements here can have a meaningful impact on day-to-day performance.

When is a quiet week in tech not a quiet week in tech? How about right now. Because while this week lacked the huge launches of the previous one, it was still packed with big stories and impressive new tech.

For starters, we delivered our expert verdicts on the Apple devices that were revealed last week, and the MacBook Neo in particular blew us away. We also sat down for a long chat with Sonos‘ CEO as the audio giant launched two new speakers, and delivered our Google Pixel 10a review.

Meta is killing end-to-end encryption in Instagram DMs. The feature will “no longer be supported after May 8, 2026,” the company wrote in an update on its support page. Unlike WhatsApp, Meta never made encryption available to all Instagram users and it was never a default setting. Instead, users in “some areas” had the ability to opt-in to encryption on a per-chat basis.

In a statement, a Meta spokesperson said the feature was being retired due to low adoption. “Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we’re removing this option from Instagram in the coming months,” the spokesperson said. “Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp.”

Interestingly, Meta’s statement doesn’t mention the status of encryption on Messenger. The company began turning on end-to-end encryption as a default setting in 2023 after years of work on the feature. A support page for Messenger currently states that the company “is in the process of securing personal messages with end-to-end encryption by default.”

Meta’s approach to encrypted messaging has changed several times over the years. It started encrypting WhatsApp chats in 2016. In 2019, Mark Zuckerberg outlined a “privacy-focused” revamp of the company’s apps, saying at the time that “implementing end-to-end encryption for all private communications is the right thing to do.” In 2021, the company’s head of safety said that Meta was delaying its encryption work until 2023 in order to create stronger safety features.

Meta’s use of encryption has been repeatedly criticized by law enforcement and some child safety organizations that say the feature makes it harder to catch predators who target children on social media. Recently, the topic has been raised numerous times during a trial in New Mexico over child safety. Internal documents that have surfaced as part of the trial show Meta executives and researchers debating the trade-offs between safety and privacy as it relates to encryption.

In testimony that was broadcast during the trial, Zuckerberg said that safety issues were “a large part of the reason why it took so long” to bring encryption to Messenger. “There’s been debate about this, but I think the majority of folks, from people who use our products to people who are involved in security overall, believe that strong encryption is positive,” he said.

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? It’s the extra-long Saturday version, and a few of the clues are 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.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Book parts: Abbr.
Answer: PGS

4A clue: Silicon Valley company that operates a fleet of robotaxis
Answer: WAYMO

6A clue: To a much greater degree
Answer: WAYMORE

8A clue: Contents of a scuba diver’s tank
Answer: AIR

9A clue: South Korean automaker
Answer: KIA

10A clue: Stop on a train route
Answer: STATION

12A clue: Actress Merman of “Anything Goes”
Answer: ETHEL

13A clue: Find another purpose for
Answer: REUSE

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Employee’s hourly calculation
Answer: PAYRATE

2D clue: Workout spot
Answer: GYM

3D clue: “Great” mountains of Tennessee, familiarly
Answer: SMOKIES

4D clue: One giving you the dish?
Answer: WAITER

5D clue: Baltimore M.L.B. player
Answer: ORIOLE

6D clue: Used to be
Answer: WAS

7D clue: Suffix with Caesar or Euclid
Answer: EAN

11D clue: Night that NBC once aired “30 Rock” and “The Office”: Abbr.
Answer: THU

I used to be of the opinion that MacBooks are relatively safer than other laptops, but I have been proven wrong. Embarrassingly and demonstrably wrong. A new report from Sophos X-Ops has spared no effort in rubbing my nose in it. 

Researchers at the firm tracked three separate attack campaigns between November 2025 and February 2026, all of which targeted macOS users with something called the MacSync infostealer. For those catching up — it’s a type of malware that quietly rifles through your passwords and saved credentials, acting like a digital pickpocket. 

So, how does it actually work?

The malware used a delivery method called ClickFix, which requires minimal technical effort. It just needs the victims to copy and paste a command into their Mac’s Terminal (designed to run and execute text-based commands) and press enter on the keyboard.

First, bad actors used fake OpenAI download pages, which were circulated via sponsored ads on Google (sitting right above the legitimate link). Then, they got even more creative: attackers started sharing rear ChatGPT shared conversations disguised as “helpful Mac guides.”

These guides routed users into fake GitHub pages, which contained carefully created software installation instructions, but in reality, they asked users to copy a terminal command, allowing the ManSync infostealer to work in the background. That’s it; that’s the whole attack. 

How bad did it get?

Sophos has found out that by December 2025 alone, bad actors had routed more than 50,000 clicks on such malicious domains. A “click” means that someone copied the malicious terminal command, but not necessarily that the malware successfully installed; the actual infection count could be lower. 

The developers put another spin on their attacking method in February 2026, allowing it to run silently in the background, bypassing the competent macOS security tools such as Gatekeeper and XProtect. It can, in a very real way, patch your ledger crypto wallet’s 24-word master key. 

The firm reports that infection clusters were active in key markets, including parts of North and South America and India, as recently as weeks before they published the article (by the end of the beginning of March, possibly). 

Moreover, the notion that “Macs are safe,” is at least, for the time being, not true. As AI platforms grow in popularity, and, more importantly, gain the trust of millions of users, bad actors are coming up with new ways to use the LLMs-driven tools to their advantage. For now, I’d advise you to not paste any text-based command into your Mac’s Terminal.

We’ve all heard the saying: “screens before bed are bad,.” Yet somehow, I’ve been watching screens to go to sleep after a day of working with the screens for around eight to 10 hours. Well, I might consider switching to Samsung’s micro RGB TVs for both my work and leisure requirements, as they’ve recently got an eye- and sleep-friendly certification. 

In a press release, the Korean tech giant has announced that its Micro RGB TV (the R95H model) has received two certifications from VDE (which is a German testing body). 

What certifications has the Samsung TV received?

The Samsung TV has received the Safety for Eyes certification and the Circadian Rhythm Display (CRD) certification. Without making things too technical for you, the R95H model has been officially tested to not wreck your eyes or sleep, especially during the hours after sunset, when too much blue light consumption can disturb your sleep cycle. 

Here’s how it works. The first certification, Safety for Eyes, takes care of the blue light emissions — the wavelength which is associated the most with eye strain and disturbed sleep — confirming that the television meets the safe thresholds for prolonged viewing sessions. 

The second one, Circadian Rhythm Display (CRD) verification goes a step further by confirming that the TV actually mimics the pattern of natural light. The television leans toward producing cooler tones during the day, warmer tones in the evening, and, most importantly, dials down blue light at night. 

How do the compatible TVs pull this off?

Basically, it doesn’t force your brain into thinking that it’s noon by producing cool light, when it’s midnight, so that viewing the television doesn’t disrupt your sleep cycle. But how does the TV manage all this?

Well, it’s Samsung’s micro RGB LED architecture that allows the display to make the fine-grained adjustments in the overall brightness and color profile of the screen, with an enhanced level of precision that isn’t present on other models. 

While the Safety for Eyes certification is available across the company’s 2026 TV lineup, Circadian Rhythm Display (CRD) is currently available on the premium models.