Technologies
Panera Partners With Amazon One for Contactless Payments
If you’re a MyPanera member, you’ll be able to swipe your palm to pay.
If you’re a member of Panera Bread’s loyalty rewards program, you’ll be able to take advantage of another perk. The company announced the rollout of Amazon One for MyPanera members, which identifies loyalty memberships and enables contactless payments. The new technology will be available for customers at select St. Louis cafes and will expand to additional locations in the coming months, according to a press release.
With the swipe of your palm, you can for your food or earn points. Panera guests who are part of the loyalty program can opt in to connect their MyPanera accounts to Amazon One. You can choose to activate contactless payments, receive personalized meal recommendations or link your loyalty membership to redeem rewards. According to both companies, Panera is the first restaurant chain to implement Amazon One for loyalty program access.
Launched by Amazon in 2020, Amazon One’s palm-reading tech allows retailers to accept digital payments or grant entry to cashierless stores or stadiums. It uses biometrics to scan palms as a way to authenticate an individual’s identity. Amazon Go and Whole Foods were among the first brick-and-mortar stores to use Amazon One.
Customers can sign up for Amazon One with or without an Amazon account, but you must enroll with a credit card. Panera customers who are first-time users can sign up for Amazon One online and finish the process at a restaurant or do the entire registration at a local cafe. If you already have MyPanera and Amazon One, you can link your accounts online.
Technologies
Nvidia’s Gaming Announcements at CES 2026 Are All About the Software
DLSS 4.5 brings dynamic multiframe generation to GeForce RTX 50-series cards and improved Super Resolution upscaling for the rest of us.
While the Nvidia keynote at CES 2026 on Monday afternoon brought the usual cavalcade of robots, autonomous driving models and massive commercial hardware for AI, its low-key gaming news didn’t get to join the party. Given there’s no new gaming hardware, it’s understandable. But Nvidia did launch version 4.5 of its DLSS upscaling and optimization technology, bringing dynamic multi-frame generation and an upgraded transformer model for its super-resolution upscaling that optimizes for high frame rate 4K gaming, notably the latest crop of 240Hz 4K displays. The company also introduced new capabilities for its RTX Remix modding platform and launched apps for Linux and Amazon Fire TV.
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Nvidia’s multi-frame generation works within DLSS to extrapolate multiple frames from a single rendered frame, and in conjunction with the upscaling, to raise game frame rates and resolution. (Sadly, it works only on RTX 50 series cards.) In 4.5, it goes from generating up to four frames for each rendered frame to six frames for each, and it can dynamically target the refresh rate of your monitor to adjust the render-to-generated ratio on the fly to maintain consistent speed and latency.
The new model for Super Resolution has fewer temporal artifacts — less ghosting, improved antialiasing and better clarity — and works with any RTX graphics card. On the Blackwell cards, it helps with the multi-frame generation image quality as well.
G-Sync-capable monitors also potentially get a new feature, Ambient Adaptive Technology. (It requires a light sensor on the monitor, which is rare on desktop monitors but pretty common on general-purpose laptops.) As the name implies, it can automatically adjust color temperature and brightness based on environmental conditions.
In addition to AAT, Nvidia announced that the G-Sync Pulsar monitors it launched in September 2024 will soon be available. In case you’ve forgotten, Pulsar improves clarity on fast-moving games played on high refresh-rate monitors.
While the company’s RTX Remix platform for modding games with AI-generated assets isn’t for everyone, Nvidia’s added a new capability, Remix Logic, that sounds awfully cool. In essence, it lets a game make decisions about what assets to use — like specific weather or particle behavior — based on things happening within the game.
Technologies
Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Tuesday, Jan. 6
Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Jan. 6.
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? The Across clues were tricky, but the Down clues helped me fill in the blanks. Read on for 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: When pigs fly
Answer: NEVER
6A clue: Courtroom excuse
Answer: ALIBI
7A clue: «That’s a ___!» («Seems unlikely!»)
Answer: BIGIF
8A clue: Cash register compartment
Answer: TILL
9A clue: She, in French
Answer: ELLE
Mini down clues and answers
1D clue: Catch, as a crook
Answer: NAB
2D clue: Designation for prolific Yelp reviewers
Answer: ELITE
3D clue: Candlelight ___ (solemn observance)
Answer: VIGIL
4D clue: Online invoice
Answer: EBILL
5D clue: Piece of equipment in a Winter Olympics biathlon
Answer: RIFLE
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Technologies
Samsung to Supercharge 800 Million Devices With AI This Year, Report Says
This could exacerbate the global RAM crunch.
Samsung is doubling the number of devices it’ll deliver with Galaxy AI this year to 800 million units, the company’s co-CEO TM Roh told Reuters on Monday.
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«We will apply AI to all products, all functions and all services as quickly as possible,» Roh told Reuters.
Galaxy AI includes features like circle to search, live translate on phone calls, real-time translation, a writing assistant, generative photo editing and generative wallpaper.
The AI features are currently available on the Samsung Galaxy S25 series of phones, the Galaxy S24 series, the Galaxy S23 series; the Galaxy S23 FE, Galaxy S24 FE and Galaxy S25 FE; the Galaxy Z Fold 5, Z Fold 6 and Z Fold 7; the Galaxy Z Flip 5, Z Flip 6 and Z Flip 7; the Galaxy Tab S10 Plus, S10 Ultra and Galaxy Tab S11; and the Galaxy Tab S9 series.
Although Samsung is also a manufacturer of RAM, it is facing supply issues caused by exceedingly high demand resulting from the rise of AI.
«As this situation is unprecedented, no company is immune to its impact,» Roh told Reuters. The co-CEO also didn’t rule out price increases, but said he’s working with partners to find solutions.
A representative for Samsung didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The AI push from Samsung comes during a memory chip crunch fueled by AI data centers, causing the cost of certain electronics to surge. Analysts predict that high demand and low supply will result in price increases across multiple product categories, including phones and cars.
AI systems require more RAM, which is why, for example, the iPhone 16 shipped with 16GB of RAM to power Apple Intelligence. The demand for power from AI data centers that run ChatGPT is so high that US memory manufacturer Micron killed off Crucial, its consumer RAM business, to pivot toward enterprise clients. Crucial had been around since 1996.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI will use up about 40% of DRAM output from South Korean firms Samsung and SK Hynix alone, according to Reuters. DRAM refers to Dynamic Random-Access Memory, the main working memory in computers, phones and servers, and AI relies heavily on it.
This memory crunch has reportedly left Google and Microsoft scrambling to secure supply for 2026, leading to firings and heated exchanges, according to South Korean publication Seoul Economic Daily. As a result, consumers may see devices with less RAM hit the market, reminiscent of products from years ago, such as 4GB smartphones and potentially 8-12GB graphics cards.
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