Technologies

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Drops Long-Awaited Update One Day Early

You can now decorate guest rooms at a new resort hotel, buy Lego items and add characters from The Legend of Zelda and Splatoon games.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons villagers, it might be time to dust off that Nintendo Switch and head back to the island. On Wednesday, Nintendo dropped its long-awaited 3.0 free content update a day early.

The free version 3.0 update includes a new resort hotel, run by the family of Kapp’n, the sea turtle who takes players on boat tours. You can decorate guest rooms at the hotel, purchase new furniture and clothing and dress mannequins.

You can tidy up your island with the character Resetti’s Reset Service as well as upgrade your home storage to stash up to 9,000 items, which also includes the ability to keep plants and flowers in your storage. Some new items are also available, including some classic Nintendo game consoles. Those come as a perk for Nintendo Switch Online members, who can actually play select classic Nintendo games online when you interact with those consoles. Other new additions include Lego items along with characters and items from The Legend of Zelda and Splatoon games.

If you’ve got a Nintendo Switch Online membership, you can try out a new addition to the game called Slumber Island, where you design and save up to three new islands and play online with friends. You can build and design the islands collaboratively with your friends and invite residents from your home island to visit your new creations.

To install the update, turn on your Nintendo Switch and follow the prompts, and the new update will be installed fairly automatically. Just a warning that if, like me, you haven’t played in a while, your character will need to shake the sleep out of their hair, stomp all the cockroaches that have infiltrated their home and deal with your villagers pointedly asking where the heck you’ve been for a year.

The company announced the update back in October, but it was not scheduled to arrive until Thursday. It’s an extra treat because back in 2021, the company announced that the version 2.0 update, which was released in November of that year, would be the final major free content update.

Thankfully, Nintendo rethought that decision, though some of us are still eagerly awaiting eventual news of an entirely new Animal Crossing game. (With the Nintendo Switch 2 now out, there’s no way Nintendo is getting off the AC gravy train, right?) A representative for Nintendo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Technologies

ChatGPT Has a New Language Translation Option for You

It’s like Google Translate, but ChatGPT.

OpenAI is putting Google Translate on notice: It now has a dedicated ChatGPT Translate webpage that can convert writing in 50 languages. At first glance it looks like a basic text-to-text translator that resembles Google Translate and other simple language translation tools on the web. But scrolling down the page reveals more about OpenAI’s ambitions for Translate.

You’ll come across a line that mentions adding voice or an image (for instance, a photo of a sign) to get a translation, although the page doesn’t indicate when those capabilities will become available.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

OpenAI’s breakout of Translate comes as its chief competitor, Google, is aggressively deploying AI to support features like live translations using headphones and new language learning tools. In 2024, Google added 110 languages to its translations.

Language translation is a hot field for artificial intelligence in general. At CES 2026 last week, for instance, CNET’s Macy Meyer tried out a phone-sized device and companion headphones that let her carry on a live conversation with a Polish speaker even though she doesn’t speak Polish herself.

The skills that ChatGPT Translate currently provides are things you can already do in the chatbot itself. In fact, once you translate text on the webpage, ChatGPT offers a set of sample prompts as one-click buttons for what you can do with that text, such as «translate this and make it sound more fluent» or «translate this as if you’re explaining it to a child.»

Selecting one of those prompts takes you to a ChatGPT conversation where options like image uploads are readily available.

OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in April filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Technologies

Don’t Miss the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 While It’s $400 Off

A Galaxy Z Fold 7 is $50 cheaper on Amazon than at Samsung right now.

Who knew that foldable phones would be so popular again? If you’re looking for a foldable iPhone, you’re gonna need to wait until later this year. If you’re on the hunt for the best foldable phone you can get your hands on right now, you need to take a look at the Galaxy Z Fold 7. Normally $2,000, right now at both Amazon and Samsung, you can get a decent amount off that hefty price tag.

Amazon is dropping the silver version of Samsung’s foldable phone to $1,600. That’s an impressive $400 discount. If you prefer to shop at Samsung directly, you’ll end up paying $50 more as all colors of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 are down to $1,650. Neither of these are record-low prices, but Amazon is close enough at just $43 more.

Samsung’s unique foldable phones had an awkward adolescence, but after getting her hands on the new lineup, CNET reviewer Abrar Al-Heet confirms that the latest Z Fold 7 «just feels right.» For one, it’s incredibly sleek at just 8.9mm thick when closed or 4.2mm thick when open, which is so thin you may even forget that it’s foldable.

Despite weighing just 215 grams, this foldable features some serious hardware. It has a 6.5-inch cover screen and an 8-inch interior display with a fluid 120Hz refresh rate. It’s equipped with a cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Elite processor and 12GB of RAM to support tons of helpful AI features and functions, and comes with Android 16 and Samsung One UI 8 right out of the box.

The camera system is also pretty impressive, boasting a 200-megapixel rear camera, 12-megapixel ultrawide shooting and a 10-megapixel front camera on both the cover and interior screens. Plus, it’s equipped with a 4,400-mAh battery for all-day use.

MOBILE DEALS OF THE WEEK

iPhone 17 Pro on Us With Any Condition Trade-in and Qualifying Plan
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Google Pixel 9 128GB Unlocked Phone (Obsidian):

$499 (save $300)

Deals are selected by the CNET Group commerce team, and may be unrelated to this article.

Why this deal matters

With an unbelievably sleek design and cutting-edge hardware, the impressive Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is our favorite foldable phone on the market. But it also comes with a staggering $2,000 price tag, and if you’re hoping to get your hands on one, this $400 discount is a way to save and help cushion the blow of its considerable cost. Just be sure to get your order in soon, as we doubt this deal will remain live for long.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Jan. 15, #949

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Jan. 15, #949

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 has a fun purple category that expects you to find two words hidden in four separate clue words. It’s tricky, but intriguing. 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: For planting things.

Green group hint: Not going anywhere.

Blue group hint: Little pieces of something.

Purple group hint: Combine two names.