Technologies

Amazon sees scattered Black Friday protests

Climate activists block some distribution centers, and a group calls for Amazon workers to go on strike.

Amazon endured some disruptions at scattered facilities on Black Friday amid the year’s busiest shopping period. Activists were calling for better pay and workplace improvements, and for the company to be more proactive on issues such as the climate crisis.

On Friday, the environmental group Extinction Rebellion blocked the entrances to 13 Amazon distribution centers in the UK (including its largest one in the Scottish town of Dunfermline) and one each in Germany and the Netherlands, the BBC and Reuters reported. Police arrested five people at a protests in Dartford and 17 in Tilbury, towns that are east of London.

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Separately, Make Amazon Pay, a coalition of workers and labor organizations, had called for a labor strike by Amazon employees across the company’s operations, such as data centers, factories and warehouses. It was aiming for a work stoppage for Black Friday in 20 countries including India, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the US. Amazon’s UK warehouses aren’t unionized, the BBC noted, so workers there can’t legally strike.

«The pandemic has exposed how Amazon places profits ahead of workers, society, and our planet,» the coalition said in its demands document. «Amazon takes too much and gives back too little. It is time to Make Amazon Pay.»

The group’s demands are split into five categories: workplace improvements, job security, respect for workers’ rights, sustainable operations and paying back society. Workplace improvements include boosting pay, adding hazard pay, providing adequate break time, extending paid sick leave and disclosing COVID-19 protocols.

For job security, the group wants the end of forms of casual employment and contractors while reinstating employees fired for organizing protests. Respecting workers’ rights focuses primarily on allowing employees to form a union and for Amazon to not conduct union-busting tactics. The group also calls for the retail giant to acknowledge climate change, to reduce emissions to zero and to pay its taxes.

Amazon says it’s already made headway on these demands.

«These groups represent a variety of interests, and while we are not perfect in any area, if you objectively look at what Amazon is doing in each one of these areas you’ll see that we do take our role and our impact very seriously,» Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement Wednesday.

There was a similar call for a workers’ strike on Black Friday last year, after Amazon’s sales rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic. In April, Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, voted against forming a union at that facility.

Extinction Rebellion didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for April 28, #421

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 421 for April 28.

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 has a very strange, long spangram, but the answers themselves are short and pretty easy to solve. 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: My bad!

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Uh-oh!

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:

NUMB, TOLE, POLE, POLES, SPIT, PITS, SOPPY, BREW, TALE, DUMB, DUMBS, ALTER, LETS, BALE, BALES.

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’ve got 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:

SLIP, SPILL, FALTER, TOPPLE, BLUNDER, STUMBLE.

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is WHOOPSIEDAISY.To find it, start with the W that’s four letters down on the far right row, and wind across, and then down.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for April 28, #687

Hints and answers for Connections for April 28, #687.

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.

As an ’80s girl, I immediately spotted the four words in the yellow category of today’s Connections puzzle. I definitely had at least three of those products in my college apartment, so that was an easy solve. And since I read a lot of Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie, the blue category came along pretty easily, too. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now 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 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: Bought at Ulta, maybe.

Green group hint: Not fancy.

Blue group hint: Nancy Drew would spot these.

Purple group hint: Yawn.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Hair products.

Green group: Austere.

Blue group: Clues at a crime scene.

Purple group: Weary.

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 hair products. The four answers are gel, mousse, spray and wax.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is austere. The four answers are bare, plain, simple and spare.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is clues at a crime scene. The four answers are fiber, fingerprint, hair and tire mark.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is weary. The four answers are bore, drain, exhaust and tire.

Technologies

Step Out of the Shadows. How to Turn Off Your iPhone’s Incognito Mode

The iPhone’s incognito mode is ideal for sensitive searches and avoiding targeted ads. But there are time when you may want to turn it off.

At a time when privacy and security have become hot topics, it’s smart to look at how you’re using protections built-in your phone. The iPhone’s private browsing, also known as incognito mode, serves as a digital cloak — allowing you to surf the web without leaving traces. Private browsing works on Apple’s Safari browser and some third-party browsers like Chrome.

There are a whole range of reasons to take advantage of incognito mode. You might be using a shared device, researching sensitive topics (maybe a surprise gift idea?) or dialing your privacy precautions up a notch by working to circumvent targeted ads or third-party cookies. This is when incognito mode becomes something of a confidante, and it gives you an added layer of privacy protection.

But once you’ve finished, you might want to step out of incognito mode on your iPhone and allow your browser to remember your steps. For example, maybe you’re logged into your account on a retailer’s website and don’t want to have to log back in every time you visit the page. Let’s proceed with a step-by-step guide on how to exit incognito mode on an iPhone, using Safari and Chrome.

How to exit incognito mode on Safari

1. Open Safari: Launch the Safari browser on your iPhone. You’ll find its icon on the home screen.

2. Look for the Tabs button: At the bottom right corner of the screen, you’ll see a square icon overlapping another square. Tap on it. This button represents your open tabs.

3. View all tabs: Once you tap the Tabs button, you’ll see a screen displaying all your open tabs. These tabs might include regular browsing tabs, any Tab Groups you’ve made and any incognito tabs you’ve opened called Private Browsing.

4. Close incognito tabs: Swipe left on any private or incognito tabs you want to close. After closing all incognito tabs, you’re officially out of incognito mode! You’ll now be browsing in regular mode, and your browsing history will be saved. If you have too many tabs open and prefer not to close every single one, you can simply swipe left in the view all tabs screen from Private/incognito tabs to get back on regular mode.

How to exit Incognito mode on Chrome on your iPhone

If you use Google’s Chrome browser, you’ll follow a familiar process to leave incognito mode.

1. Open Google Chrome: Launch the Chrome browser on your iPhone.

2. Look for the Tabs Button: At the bottom right corner of the screen, you’ll see a square icon with a number on it (if you have open tabs). Tap on it. This button represents your open tabs and the number corresponds with how many tabs you have open.

3. Leave Incognito mode: After tapping on the tabs button, you’ll be able to switch between incognito browsing or regular browsing by tapping the Incognito icon or the regular browsing icon. The Incognito icon is a pair of glasses and a fedora to resemble a secret disguise. To go back to browsing on regular mode, simply tap the square button with the number on it.

How to permanently turn off private browsing on an iPhone

You can also remove the private browsing tab on Safari. In Settings under Screen Time, when you switch Web Content from «Unrestricted» to «Limit Adult Websites,» the iPhone reboots Safari and removes Private Browsing from the Tabs view. To get to the setting you open Settings, tap Screen Time, tap Content & Privacy Restrictions, tap Store, Web, Siri & Game Center Content, select Web Content and tap Limit Adult Websites.

Remember, using incognito mode isn’t foolproof — it won’t hide your activity from your internet service provider or certain extensions. But it’s supposed to offer that extra layer of privacy when needed.