Western Digital says it’s created an initiative to retrieve rare earth metals from hard drives that are being cycled out of data centers.

The tech company, best known for its digital storage products, says its Advanced Recycling and Rare Earth Material Capture Program has partnered with Microsoft and two other companies to reclaim rare earth metals including neodymium, dysprosium and praseodymium.

Rare earth elements have taken on new significance amid the trade battles between the US and China. In response to President Donald Trump’s imposition of soaring tariffs on products imported from China, Beijing said last week that it has suspended exports of rare earth minerals to the US. Those minerals are critical to the manufacturing of many high-tech products and are found in products like computers, cars and military hardware.

The hard drives in data center servers are often destroyed for security reasons when systems are upgraded, Jackie Jung, Western Digital’s vice president of global strategy, said in a blog post on Thursday. Recovery of rare earth metals hasn’t always been a priority in that process, according to Jung.

«Rare earths are often melted down with steel because many recovery processes involve a highly corrosive process that is not eco-friendly nor economical – and the rare earths are lost. Our department sought a different approach in the quest to increase the recyclability of HDDs and their valuable materials,» Jung said.

In addition to Microsoft, the program also includes Critical Materials Recycling and Microsoft’s recycling partner company Pedal Point Recycling. The latter two were brought in when the initial pilot program achieved reclaim percentages of over 90%, Jung said.

Meta is expanding its age-verification tools by using AI to detect teenaged users and then automatically placing them into more restrictive Teen Account settings even if the user entered an adult birthday.

The company said in a blog post Monday that it will proactively identify accounts it suspects belong to teens and move them into these stricter settings. It acknowledged the system may make mistakes, and users will have the ability to adjust their settings back if needed.

«We’ve been using artificial intelligence to determine age for some time, but leveraging it in this way is a big change,» Meta said. 

This move is part of a broader effort by Meta and other social media platforms to better protect young users amid growing pressure from parents and lawmakers who argue that tech companies aren’t doing enough to safeguard the safety and mental health of teens.

Instagram Teen Accounts, which launched last year, include built-in protections that limit who can contact teens, what content they can see and how long they can spend on the platform. Last year, the company automatically enabled these safety features for all teen users, requiring parental or guardian approval for anyone under 16 to make changes.

The company said about 97% of users under 16 keep these protections in place. It also recently extended the Teen Account experience to Facebook and Messenger.

Meta said it will begin sending notifications to Instagram parents with information about why it’s important to talk with their teens about providing accurate age information online.

«Understanding the age of people online is an industry-wide challenge,» the company said. «We’ll continue our efforts to help ensure teens are placed in age-appropriate online experiences, like Teen Accounts, but the most effective way to understand age is by obtaining parental approval and verifying age on the app store.»

Although some organizations have applauded these types of age verification methods, others like Devorah Heitner, author of Growing Up in Public, call the privacy implications «frightening.»

«For AI to be effective at determining user age, it would have to know more than it should, especially for a newer user with a limited digital footprint,» she said. «We need to see social apps do more to protect all users from invasive algorithms and harassment rather than focus on age-gating.»  

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.

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword threw me off right away with 1-Across, but then I’m no fish expert. The rest of them were pretty simple, so I was lucky to get those letters filled in. 7-Across and 2-Down were especially easy. Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

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Let’s get at those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: What the beaklike teeth of a parrotfish are used to bite
Answer: CORAL

6A clue: On top of
Answer: ABOVE

7A clue: Noodle soup with «tonkotsu» and «shoyu» varieties
Answer: RAMEN

8A clue: Sharp as a tack
Answer: SMART

9A clue: Sharp as a tack
Answer: ANY

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Dealership choices
Answer: CARS

2D clue: His presidential center is being built on Chicago’s South Side
Answer: OBAMA

3D clue: Like Caesar and Cicero
Answer: ROMAN

4D clue: Tex ___, animator who drew Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck
Answer: AVERY

5D clue: Gave for a short time
Answer: LENT

How to play more Mini Crosswords

The New York Times Games section offers a large number of online games, but only some of them are free for all to play. You can play the current day’s Mini Crossword for free, but you’ll need a subscription to the Times Games section to play older puzzles from the archives.