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 will help if you’re a basketball fan, at least for the answer to 1-Down. 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: Any mentee of Yoda
Answer: JEDI

5A clue: Plow pullers
Answer: OXEN

6A clue: Animal in the family Mephitidae, which comes from the Latin for “stink”
Answer: SKUNK

7A clue: Scotsman’s wear
Answer: KILT

8A clue: Sections of a play
Answer: ACTS

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Nikola ___, three-time N.B.A. M.V.P. (2021, 2022 and 2024)
Answer: JOKIC

2D clue: Jump for joy
Answer: EXULT

3D clue: Auto body issues
Answer: DENTS

4D clue: Tattoos, informally
Answer: INK

6D clue: Music similar to reggae
Answer: SKA

The multinational Dutch paint company AkzoNobel has confirmed to BleepingComputer that hackers breached the network of one of its U.S. sites.

Following a data leak from the Anubis ransomware gang, a company spokesperson said that the intrusion has been contained and that the impact is limited.

“AkzoNobel has identified a security incident at one of our sites in the United States. The incident was limited to the respective site and was already contained,” the company told BleepingComputer.

“The impact is limited, and we are taking the appropriate steps to notify and support impacted parties, and will work closely with relevant authorities.”

AkzoNobel is a major paints and coatings company with 35,000 employees. It has an annual revenue exceeding $12 billion and active operations in over 150 countries. Brands under its corporate umbrella include Dulux, Sikkens, International, and Interpon.

Anubis ransomware claims to have stolen from AkzoNobel 170GB of data, almost 170,000 files, and leaked on its leak site samples that include screenshots of select documents and a list of the stolen files.

The published data contains confidential agreements with high-profile clients, email addresses and phone numbers, private email correspondence, passport scans, material testing documents, and internal technical specification sheets.

At the time of writing, the Anubis leak is only partial. AkzoNobel did not share with BleepingComputer any information on whether it engaged with the threat actor.

Anubis is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation that launched in December 2024, offering affiliates 80% of the paid ransoms.

In February 2025, the operators launched an affiliate program on the RAMP forum, boosting its activity and influence in the cybercrime space.

In June the same year, Anubis added to its arsenal a data wiper that destroys the victim’s files to make recovery impossible.

Malware is getting smarter. The Red Report 2026 reveals how new threats use math to detect sandboxes and hide in plain sight.

Download our analysis of 1.1 million malicious samples to uncover the top 10 techniques and see if your security stack is blinded.

Download The Report

from the get-abolished,-you-bastards dept

The administration has burnt the “presumption of regularity” to a crispness normally reserved for conquered bridges succumbing to heat death. It is now well known that the Trump administration will do whatever it wants to do, whether or not it’s supported by law. And when the courts push back, the administration responds with implicit “fuck you’s” or explicit verbal attacks on the judiciary.

The administration isn’t playing with a full deck, albeit not in the way that phrase is normally understood. Normally, it would mean the administration is batshit crazy. And it is! But its insanity isn’t of the pro-se-complainant-arguing-flag-fringe-merits variety. It’s the other thing: the refusal to respect court rulings it disagrees with. Ever.

The courts are sick of this refusal to respect a co-equal government branch. Hundreds of cases handled by dozens of judges have resulted in adverse rulings against the Trump administration. And yet, the administration refuses to stop doing the things hundreds of rulings have stated it can’t do.

It’s never been a regional thing (Fifth Circuit explicitly excluded). These are not the efforts of judges in “liberal” states who have been appointed by Democratic Party presidents. This is universal.

West Virginia, a state where Trump secured 70% of the votes in the last presidential election, is now poised to hand his masked ICE goons a significant loss. In one of thousands of similar habeas corpus cases filed around the nation following Trump’s racist anti-brown people surge, a federal judge has said he’s seen enough to move forward with contempt hearings and possible fines for government officials. (h/t Kyle Cheney)

The plaintiff is a Honduras native who was arrested by ICE and immediately sent to a detention facility one state over. This is something ICE does regularly, for the obvious reason of making it more difficult for detainees to challenge their detention. Since cases need to be filed wherever the person is detained, keeping arrestees in a state of perpetual motion makes this almost impossible.

But Miguel Izaguirre managed to get his case to court before he was moved again. That kept ICE from sending him to another detention center in another, possibly ICE-friendlier state (I’m glaring at you, Fifth Circuit).

Izaguirre’s allegations resemble those of most ICE detainees: he was denied his due process rights despite being arrested for a mere civil violation. The government has refused (probably because it doesn’t have it) to provide anything supporting it’s claim that Izaguirre must remain incarcerated while his civil case plays out in court.

From the opinion [PDF]:

[T[he Government stated that it had “carefully reviewed the pending petition and determined that the same or substantially similar issues arise in the case at bar.” [ECF No. 16- 1, at 2]. The Government further confirmed that it would not offer evidence beyond the documents attached to its response, nor would it offer any witnesses.

Since the government doesn’t actually have anything to offer in support of violating this detainee’s due process rights, the court gets right to the point:

For the reasons explained and analyzed in previous cases before this court and this district, I will once again FIND: First, the court has jurisdiction. Petitioner does not challenge an immigration proceeding or decision that would bar this court’s jurisdiction. Second, Petitioner is not “seeking admission” into the country, and the discretionary detention of 8 U.S.C. § 1226 applies to him. Third, Petitioner’s due process rights have been violated. Despite facing no criminal charge, Petitioner sits in the local jail with no hearing to determine his custody. There is no evidence in the record that Petitioner is a danger to the community or a flight risk, and there is sufficient evidence that he has community ties. Still, he has been afforded no hearing. This violates his due process rights.

Immediate release is the only appropriate remedy. Where detention has been found unlawful and no constitutionally adequate bond hearing has been provided, continued custody cannot stand.

Simply stated, but with some spite. The court makes it clear this is symptomatic of Trump’s anti-migrant efforts — something familiar enough that the court knows it needs to go further than just simply ordering the release of yet another migrant whose rights have been violated.

It’s something this court has seen multiple times in one week.

This case is one of 17 immigration habeas petitions assigned to the court this week. According to the Government, the detention of these Petitioners is “mandatory” under 8 U.S.C. §1225, and regardless of the constitutional defects, the federal district courts lack jurisdiction over these claims—an argument unanimously rejected in this district.

A flood of cases alleging similar violations of rights would be irritating enough. But the government absolutely refuses to abide by rulings issued in several similar cases. (Emphasis in the original.)

In 15 of the cases, Petitioners challenge their continued unlawful detention resulting from an arrest occurring on or after February 12, 2026.

The court then cites three previous rulings on similar cases, in which federal judges not only ruled they had jurisdiction to handle these cases, but that this mandatory detention violated detainees’ due process rights. All of those occurred prior to February 12. Judge Joseph Goodwin is sick of it.

But on February 12, 14, 17, 18, 21, and 22, 2026, the Government arrested noncitizens already in the interior of the United States. Today, the Government continues to wrongfully detain those petitioners without due process. Even now the Government incredulously asserts that the federal district courts do not have jurisdiction, that petitioners cannot raise due process violations, and that the Government has authority to mandatorily and indefinitely detain noncitizens in the local jail.

The Government is wrong. Judges in this district have said that over and over and over again. I have said it myself.

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And that’s where Judge Goodwin invites the government to fuck around and find out, including the subservient local boys who are far too anxious to help ICE violate people’s rights:

This Memorandum Opinion and Order serves as explicit notice to all officials—state and federal—involved in the detention of individuals whose cases come before this court.

Continued detention without individualized custody determinations, after this court’s repeated holdings that such detention violates the Fifth Amendment, will result in legal consequences. For state jail officials, those consequences include personal civil liability without qualified immunity protection. For federal officials, those consequences include exercise of this court’s full inherent authority to enforce constitutional compliance including contempt.

Officials who believe this court has erred in its constitutional analysis may seek stay of this court’s orders pending appeal or pursue appellate review. What they may not do is continue systematic constitutional violations while preserving appellate objections and expecting this court to grant relief in case after case without enforcing its rulings.

Judge Goodwin signs off with this statement, which should be self-evident:

This court will enforce the Constitution.

Let’s hope he does it. Let’s hope jail officials cut people loose rather than start coughing up part of their paychecks. Let’s hope some ICE officials get to spend a few days in the cooler for refusing to comply with court orders. And let’s hope that courts across the nation generate the sort of collective and concerted pressure that will force the Supreme Court to set precedent that vastly undermines this administration’s bigoted efforts to scrub this country of people who aren’t white enough to be considered human beings by the racist goons infesting the White House.

Filed Under: dhs, ice, mass deportation, rights violations, trump administration, west virginia

Alibaba’s Qwen team of AI researchers have been among the most prolific and well-regarded by international machine learning community — shipping dozens of powerful generalized and specialized generative models starting last summer, most of them entirely open source and free.

But now, just 24 hours after shipping the open source Qwen3.5 small model series—a release that drew public praise from Elon Musk for its “impressive intelligence density”—the project’s technical architect and several other Qwen team members have exited the company under unclear circumstances, raising questions and concerns from around the world about the future direction of the Qwen team and its focus on open source.

The departure of Junyang “Justin” Lin, the technical lead who steered Qwen from a nascent lab project to a global powerhouse with over 600 million downloads, alongside two fellow colleagues — staff research scientist Binyuan Hui and intern Kaixin Li — marks a volatile inflection point for Alibaba Cloud and its role as an international open source AI leader.

These three Qwen Team members announced their departures on X today, though they did not share the reasons or whether or not it they were voluntary. VentureBeat reached out to sources at Alibaba for more information and will update when we obtain it. Lin himself signed off with a simple post: “me stepping down. bye my beloved qwen.”

While the company celebrates a technical triumph, the sudden exit of its core leadership suggests a deepening rift between the researchers who built the models and a corporate hierarchy now pivoting toward aggressive monetization.

The departing researchers’ final gift: pocket-sized intelligence

The Qwen3.5 small model series (ranging from 0.8B to 9B parameters) represents a final masterstroke in “intelligence density” from the founding team.

The models employ a Gated DeltaNet hybrid architecture that allows a 9B-parameter model to rival the reasoning capabilities of much larger systems.

By utilizing a 3:1 ratio of linear attention to full attention, the models maintain a massive 262,000-token context window while remaining efficient enough to run natively on standard laptops and smartphones — even in web browsers.

Lin, a PKU humanities graduate and polyglot, has long advocated for this “algorithm-hardware co-design” to bypass compute constraints—a philosophy he detailed at the January 2026 Tsinghua AI Summit.

For the developer community, Qwen3.5 wasn’t just another update; it was a blueprint for the “Agentic Inflection,” where models shift from being chatbots to autonomous “all-in-one AI workers” capable of navigating UIs and executing complex code.

The enterprise dilemma

For the 90,000+ enterprises currently deploying Qwen via DingTalk or Alibaba Cloud, the leadership vacuum creates a crisis of confidence.

Many companies migrated to Qwen because it offered a “third way”: the performance of a proprietary US model with the transparency of open weights.

Alibaba has recently consolidated its AI efforts into the “Qwen C-end Business Group,” merging its model labs with consumer hardware teams. The goal is clear: transition Qwen from a research project into the operating system for a new era of AI-integrated glasses and rings.

However, the reported appointment of Hao Zhou, a veteran of Google DeepMind’s Gemini team, to lead the Qwen team indicates a shift from “research-first” to “metric-driven” leadership.

Industry analysts, including those cited by InfoWorld, warn that as Alibaba pushes to meet investor demands for revenue growth, the “open” in Qwen’s open-weight models may become a secondary priority — similar to what we saw with Meta after the disappointing release of its Llama 4 AI model last spring, and subsequent reorganization of its AI division, seeing the hiring of Scale AI co-founder and CEO Alexandr Wang and following departure of preeminent researcher Yann LeCun.

Enterprises relying on the Apache 2.0-licensed Qwen models now face the possibility that future flagships —such as the rumored Qwen3.5-Max—will be locked behind paid, proprietary APIs to drive Cloud DAU (Daily Active User) metrics.

The takeaway? If you value Qwen’s open source efforts, download and preserve the models now, while you still can.

The “Gemini-fication” of Qwen?

The internal friction at Alibaba mirrors the tensions seen at OpenAI and Google: the “soul” of the machine is often at odds with the “scale” of the business. Xinyu Yang, a researcher at rival Chinese AI lab DeepSeek, captured this sentiment in a stark post on X: “Replace the excellent leader with a non-core people from Google Gemini, driven by DAU metrics. If you judge foundation model teams like consumer apps, don’t be surprised when the innovation curve flattens.”

This “Gemini-fication”—the shift toward a highly regulated, product-centric culture—threatens the very agility that allowed Qwen to surpass Meta’s Llama in derivative model creation. For the global AI community, the loss of Junyang Lin is symbolic.

He was the primary bridge between China’s deep engineering talent and the Western open-source ecosystem. Without his advocacy, there are fears that the project will retreat into a “walled garden” strategy similar to its Western rivals.

‘Leaving wasn’t your choice’

The technical brilliance of the Qwen3.5 release has been overshadowed by the heartbreak of its creators. On social media, the sentiment among the team members who built the model is one of mourning rather than celebration:

Chen Cheng, a Qwen contributor, explicitly alluded to a forced departure, writing in a post on X: “I’m truly heartbroken. I know leaving wasn’t your choice… I honestly can’t imagine Qwen without you.”

Li suggested the exit signaled the end of broader ambitions, such as a planned Singapore-based research hub: “Qwen could have had a Singapore base, all thanks to Junyang. But now that he’s gone, there’s no reason left to stay here.”

What happens to Qwen’s open source AI efforts from here on out?

The known facts are simple: Qwen has never been technically stronger, yet its founding core has been dismantled. As Alibaba prepares to face investors for its fiscal Q3 earnings report on March 5, the narrative will likely focus on “efficiency” and “commercial scale.”

For the enterprises currently excited about the 60% cost reductions promised by Qwen3.5, the immediate future is bright.

But for the larger AI community, the cost of that efficiency may be the loss of the most vibrant open-source lab in the East.

As Hao Zhou takes the reins, the world is watching to see if Qwen remains a “model for the world” or becomes merely a component in Alibaba’s corporate bottom line.

Looking for the most recent 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, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is kind of tough. I thought the purple category was creative and fun, but I didn’t guess it. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

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

Yellow group hint: Chase after.

Green group hint: Don’t be a sore loser.

Blue group hint: Santa’s list.

Purple group hint: Not boy.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Pursue.

Green group: Sportsmanlike.

Blue group: Classic kid gifts.

Purple group: “____ Girl” titles.

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

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is pursue. The four answers are hound, shadow, trail and track.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is sportsmanlike. The four answers are fair, honest, sporting and square.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is classic kid gifts. The four answers are bike, book, toy and video game.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is “____ Girl” titles. The four answers are Gone, Gossip, New and Working.

Even after all these years, the Sennheiser HD 600, priced at $269 (was $500), remains one of the best audiophile headphones available today. They have been around since the late 1990s and continue to receive high appreciation from both music fans and professionals. A lot of newer designs have come out since then, but the HD 600 has managed to stay current for a variety of reasons, including a great sound balance and top-notch build quality.

The engineers at Sennheiser originally built the HD 600 with the purpose of producing a highly accurate sound. They did an excellent job, as the drivers feature a particular diaphragm that helps to eliminate undesired resonances and prevents distortion or artificial boosting in the sound. They have a remarkably good range of 12 Hz to over 39,000 Hz, which covers almost the whole human hearing range and then some. Plus, the total harmonic distortion does not exceed 0.1 percent.

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The HD 600 shines brightest in the midrange. Voices and instruments sound realistic; the guitars have substance, the pianos seem authentic, and the vocals are not over-processed with excessive colouring. Listeners frequently comment that the singers appear to be right in front of them, as if they were sitting in the room. This quality is what makes the HD 600 so popular among serious listeners and music producers, where accuracy is important.

The bass is now nicely managed, in the sense that it is not overbearing, but rather well defined. Low notes arrive without the loud ‘boom’ that might be a problem with other headphones, allowing you to hear what’s going on in a music. You may not receive the same deep low-end rumble as some other headphones, but you will get crisp separation and no muddiness. The treble isn’t harsh, the cymbals glisten, and the intricacies emerge without wearing you out after a long listening session.

Build quality is also excellent, since the design is simple and plain, but built to last, with plastic and metal parts that are easy to swap out if necessary. The design allows for quick replacement of cables, earpads, and other components, while the velour earpads feel pleasant against the skin, The open-back design gives you a nice breezy feeling as if you’re sitting in a room listening to music rather than having it stuffed inside your ears.

Comfort is also excellent, since the clamp tension is just right so that you are not squeezed yet the headphones remain in place, and the lightweight frame will not put strain on your head. Even after hours of listening to music, most people report that it does not become uncomfortable. The detachable cord has a standard 1/4 inch connection, making it simple to attach to any device, and it also includes a handy 3.5mm adaptor.

Katherine Leenhouts discusses her work in the data and AI space and offers her advice to professionals looking to emulate her career.

Katherine Leenhouts is director of data at PwC Ireland, but she didn’t initially plan for her career to go in that direction. “My path started at university. I started off considering a degree in something like Greek literature,” she told SiliconRepublic.com. 

“Instead, I got hooked on business after working for two small businesses during summer jobs. I switched majors and surprise, I loved my programming classes. They had the right mix of tangible results, challenge and creativity. 

“I interned at PwC, thanks to the guidance of one of my professors, and accepted a full-time role with one of their early data analytics teams. More than 15 years later, I’m happy to say my job has never been boring.”

In addition to AI, data and analytical skills, what abilities empower your work day to day?

Communication is a huge part of my day-to-day life. Whether I’m engaging with senior leaders from other organisations, collaborating with our own leadership or guiding interns or graduates on my team, the ability to adapt is key. I find you need to be quick on your feet. You need to be able to shift from understanding and digesting key information about a client project to explaining key changes in the data and AI space. That communication comes in many forms, whether through presentations, written proposals, requirement documents, or visual reports. My favourite is communicating through visual formats such as dashboards, slides, reports or other graphics. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing a complex idea land and give someone the insight they need to make a quality decision.

Do you use any skills that you didn’t expect to use at the beginning of your career?

Detective skills. I like a good set of requirements. When I started, I thought people would know exactly what they needed. What I discovered is that the initial task is just the starting point. I once had a client ask for a dashboard to track the status of her company’s internal audit projects worldwide. Through asking questions and getting deeper into requirements, I found she had a problem with long-running audits that went past their deadlines. These were then sometimes followed by long remediations. She didn’t want the status of internal audit projects, she wanted a dashboard that gave her a summary of where projects were stuck so she could unblock them.

We defined categories for delayed projects. She (and we) wanted data from the actual system auditors used to do their work, not from a manually updated spreadsheet. We delivered a dashboard that updated regularly, required no out-of-system updates, and gave her the information needed to take prompt, regular action to keep the business focused on improvements. The ability to question deeper and fully understand is one that is far more important than I realised at the start of my career.

How crucial are workplace AI, data and analytical skills, in the AI era?

AI fluency is now a basic requirement. Effective use of AI raises the standard of our work. Tools like coding assistants enable us to iterate more quickly. AI agents, LLMs [large language models] and others can bring the standard of work up several levels. It’s crucial that individuals know how to use AI to enhance and refine their own ideas. Without personal guidance, LLMs provide reams of good-quality but generic output. We expect an individual’s perspective and skill to shine through. When we interview individuals, we’re looking for people who think creatively, ask insightful questions, and excel at solving problems. Candidates that embrace the AI era with a mindset that values curiosity and innovation stand out.

What is exciting about a current role in AI and are there many challenges?

The field of AI is being created and refined daily. It reminds me of a child’s earliest years. One day they can’t crawl at all, the next they’re all over the house. AI is a lot like that. Every week the landscape changes. When you’re working in the field, you’re part of the story. That’s exciting. There are many challenges. For many organisations, data modernisation was a nice-to-have instead of a must-have. As a result, it can be challenging to apply advanced AI techniques. Organisations can be risk-averse. It takes compelling use cases to prompt changes to policies so that they balance the risks inherent in the use of novel technologies with the benefits and reduction of risk in current processes. On a personal level, adapting to new ways of working is a constant effort. What I like about our team is that this adaptation is often fun and engaging. 

What career routes are available to people skilled in AI, data and analytics?

There are two ways I see that people can be skilled in AI, data and analytics. In the first instance people have foundational technical skills, like programming in Python or SQL, working with data in cloud environments, creating and analysing insights or analysing the impact of AI on security. In that case, at PwC you’ll find a place in our tech, data plus AI team or in our cyber practice. In the second instance, if people are data-literate, know how to ask good questions and use AI tools to accelerate their work. 

AI has transformed workplace skills expectations, how can a strong leader encourage their teams?

Strong leaders set an example. They create spaces for teams to share knowledge and highlight best practices. Change is difficult, especially given the rapid changes in the AI space over the past three years. At PwC we help teams navigate these changes by embedding AI champions across the business to make it easier to adopt new habits. Our interns and graduates go through training on the tools available, ethical use and our ways-of-working.

Have you any predictions for how the year ahead may unfold in terms of AI and automation trends?

I think this is the year there’s a demand to start to see tangible returns from AI investments. We may see the first IPO of an AI company. I expect we’ll see more LLMs geared towards specific use cases, like supporting consumer health queries. We’ve already started to see more insights into what people “search” with LLMs – I hope we see more of this. We might begin to notice a clear distinction between companies that adopt AI to solve business problems and those that continue business as usual. Overall, I expect this field to continue to evolve at pace and keep pushing us to be innovative, think creatively and keep moving.

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