Technologies

Pope Francis’ Funeral: How to Stream Live or Watch the Replay

Here’s how to stream the pope’s funeral very early Saturday, and what you can expect to see during the service.

After a week of global mourning for Pope Francis, who died on Monday at age 88, the pope’s funeral will be celebrated on Saturday . Francis’ funeral will be held Saturday at 10 a.m. local time at St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City (which is very, very early if you’re tuning in from the US or Canada), and he will be laid to rest at the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome.

The Vatican will be livestreaming the papal funeral and procession, though not the burial, on its YouTube channel as it happens. The funeral will also be televised live on CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox, as well as on streaming services like Disney Plus, Hulu, Peacock and Paramount Plus. Due to the time difference, it seems likely that many interested North American viewers will catch it when it’s replayed later on Saturday. Numerous networks will rebroadcast the service later that day.

If you choose to stay up, or get up early, here’s when the live broadcast of the pope’s funeral will air in your time zone in the continental US on April 26:

ET: 4 a.m.
CT: 3 a.m.
MT: 2 a.m.
PT: 1 a.m.

The papacy of Pope Francis was notable for the progressive reforms he brought to the Roman Catholic Church. He appointed more than half of the current College of Cardinals and attempted to foster more positive attitudes toward members of the LGBT community and migrants worldwide.

What to expect from the funeral

The funeral will follow many rituals, though not all traditional protocols will be followed. Most popes are buried in St. Peter’s Basilica or its grottoes, but the AP reports Francis chose the St. Mary Major Basilica to reflect his veneration of an icon of the Virgin Mary that is located there, the Salus Populi Romani (Salvation of the People of Rome).

His funeral will be less elaborate than those of other popes per his own wishes. Francis simplified papal funeral rites last year, permitting his burial outside the Vatican, and emphasizing his role as a bishop rather than as pope (the pope is also the Bishop of Rome).

Previous popes were buried in three coffins: one of cypress, one of lead and one of oak. Francis requested to be buried in a single wooden, zinc-lined coffin and not to be placed in an elevated bier as other popes were.

The coffin will be taken from St Peter’s Basilica and placed on a dais in St Peter’s Square, where Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re will lead the service. After the service, the coffin will return to St Peter’s Basilica before it is carried across the River Tiber and to the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major for burial. The ceremony is estimated to end around 2 p.m. local time, or four hours after it begins.

Pope Francis’ funeral Mass will be the first of nine Masses held daily at St. Peter’s until May 4. This is an ancient tradition of the Catholic Church that observes nine days of consecutive mourning. According to Vatican News, a different group of mourners will participate each day, though the Eucharistic celebrations are open to everyone.

Who will attend Pope Francis’ funeral?

Hundreds of people, including world leaders and royals, are expected to attend Pope Francis’ funeral.

US president Donald Trump confirmed on his Truth Social Platform that he and first lady Melania Trump will be at the funeral. This will be Trump’s first foreign trip in his second term. He is expected to have a seat in the third row, though the Vatican has yet to release an official seating chart. It is tradition for the first row of seats to go to Catholic royalty, and the second row to non-Catholic royals.

Prince William, who is attending on behalf of King Charles, will sit in the second row, which is reserved for non-Catholic royals. Former president Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, devout Catholics, will also attend the funeral.

Conclave: What happens next to choose the new pope

After Pope Francis’ funeral, the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church will vote on his successor in an assembly of cardinals known as a conclave.

There are many matters for the cardinals to settle before the conclave begins, but once it does, it can take days or even weeks to conclude. Two-thirds of the cardinals’ votes are required to elect the next pope. The conclave occurs behind closed doors and the vote tally is never made public.

Read more: Where to Watch Conclave, the Vatican Thriller About Electing a New Pope

Look for the white smoke

The ballots are burned after each round, and chemicals are added to the flames to produce black smoke if there’s no majority. When a new pope has been selected, the chemicals will be added to the flames so they produce white smoke. Crowds gather in St. Peter’s Square to watch for the results.

If you’re fascinated by the process, you can watch a dramatized version of the events in 2024 film Conclave.

In the movie, Ralph Fiennes stars as Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, who spearheads the election of the next pope while investigating rumors about potential candidates. The film is based on the 2016 novel by Robert Harris and is completely fictional — though it does represent some of the events of how actual papal conclaves take place. In March, the film won the Academy Award for best adapted screenplay.

You can stream Conclave on Amazon Prime Video, or rent it for $6 on Apple TV, Fandango at Home, YouTube or Google Play Movies.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for April 26, #685

Hints and answers for Connections for April 26, #685.

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 Connections puzzle features a lot of short words, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. That purple category requires a lot of thinking — probably most people will solve it only by solving the other three and having four words left over. 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: Rainbow.

Green group hint: San Fernando ____.

Blue group hint: Think Robert.

Purple group hint: Mixed-up hue words.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Tint.

Green group: Valley.

Blue group: Bobs.

Purple group: Color anagrams.

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 tint. The four answers are color, hue, shade and tone.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is valley. The four answers are dale, dell, glen and hollow.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is Bobs. The four answers are Dole, Hope, Marley and Ross.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is color anagrams. The four answers are Dre (red), Gary (gray), genre (green) and lube (blue).

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for April 26, #215

Hints and answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 215, for Saturday, April 26.

Looking for the most recent regular 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 and Strands puzzles.

Connections: Sports Edition is tough today. The purple category theme threw me because of one phrase I didn’t know. And let’s hope you’re familiar with college coach surnames. Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

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

Yellow group hint: Try to achieve.

Green group hint: Move through it.

Blue group hint: Sideline bosses.

Purple group hint: Like a carton.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: What one strives for.

Green group: Room to run.

Blue group: College football coaches.

Purple group: Box ____.

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

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is what one strives for. The four answers are aim, goal, objective and target.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is room to run. The four answers are gap, hole, opening and space.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is college football coaches. The four answers are Day, Lanning, Smart and Stoops.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is box ____. The four answers are lacrosse, office, score and seat.

Technologies

Google’s AI Overviews Explain Made-Up Idioms With Confident Nonsense

The latest meme around generative AI’s hallucinations proves you can’t lick a badger twice.

Language can seem almost infinitely complex, with inside jokes and idioms sometimes having meaning for just a small group of people and appearing meaningless to the rest of us. Thanks to generative AI, even the meaningless found meaning this week as the internet blew up like a brook trout over the ability of Google search’s AI Overviews to define phrases never before uttered.

What, you’ve never heard the phrase «blew up like a brook trout»? Sure, I just made it up, but Google’s AI overviews result told me it’s a «colloquial way of saying something exploded or became a sensation quickly,» likely referring to the eye-catching colors and markings of the fish. No, it doesn’t make sense.

The trend may have started on Threads, where the author and screenwriter Meaghan Wilson Anastasios shared what happened when she searched «peanut butter platform heels.» Google returned a result referencing a (not real) scientific experiment in which peanut butter was used to demonstrate the creation of diamonds under high pressure.

It moved to other social media sites, like Bluesky, where people shared Google’s interpretations of phrases like «you can’t lick a badger twice.» The game: Search for a novel, nonsensical phrase with «meaning» at the end.

Things rolled on from there.

This meme is interesting for more reasons than comic relief. It shows how large language models might strain to provide an answer that sounds correct, not one that is correct.

«They are designed to generate fluent, plausible-sounding responses, even when the input is completely nonsensical,» said Yafang Li, assistant professor at the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis. «They are not trained to verify the truth. They are trained to complete the sentence.»

Like glue on pizza

The fake meanings of made-up sayings bring back memories of the all too true stories about Google’s AI Overviews giving incredibly wrong answers to basic questions — like when it suggested putting glue on pizza to help the cheese stick.

This trend seems at least a bit more harmless because it doesn’t center on actionable advice. I mean, I for one hope nobody tries to lick a badger once, much less twice. The problem behind it, however, is the same — a large language model, like Google’s Gemini behind AI Overviews, tries to answer your questions and offer a feasible response. Even if what it gives you is nonsense.

A Google spokesperson said AI Overviews are designed to display information supported by top web results, and that they have an accuracy rate comparable to other search features.

«When people do nonsensical or ‘false premise’ searches, our systems will try to find the most relevant results based on the limited web content available,» the Google spokesperson said. «This is true of search overall, and in some cases, AI Overviews will also trigger in an effort to provide helpful context.»

This particular case is a «data void,» where there isn’t a lot of relevant information available for the search query. The spokesperson said Google is working on limiting when AI Overviews appear on searches without enough information and preventing them from providing misleading, satirical or unhelpful content. Google uses information about queries like these to better understand when AI Overviews should and should not appear.

You won’t always get a made-up definition if you ask for the meaning of a fake phrase. When drafting the heading of this section, I searched «like glue on pizza meaning,» and it didn’t trigger an AI Overview.

The problem doesn’t appear to be universal across LLMs. I asked ChatGPT for the meaning of «you can’t lick a badger twice» and it told me the phrase «isn’t a standard idiom, but it definitely sounds like the kind of quirky, rustic proverb someone might use.» It did, though, try to offer a definition anyway, essentially: «If you do something reckless or provoke danger once, you might not survive to do it again.»

Read more: AI Essentials: 27 Ways to Make Gen AI Work for You, According to Our Experts

Pulling meaning out of nowhere

This phenomenon is an entertaining example of LLMs’ tendency to make stuff up — what the AI world calls «hallucinating.» When a gen AI model hallucinates, it produces information that sounds like it could be plausible or accurate but isn’t rooted in reality.

LLMs are «not fact generators,» Li said, they just predict the next logical bits of language based on their training.

A majority of AI researchers in a recent survey reported they doubt AI’s accuracy and trustworthiness issues would be solved soon.

The fake definitions show not just the inaccuracy but the confident inaccuracy of LLMs. When you ask a person for the meaning of a phrase like «you can’t get a turkey from a Cybertruck,» you probably expect them to say they haven’t heard of it and that it doesn’t make sense. LLMs often react with the same confidence as if you’re asking for the definition of a real idiom.

In this case, Google says the phrase means Tesla’s Cybertruck «is not designed or capable of delivering Thanksgiving turkeys or other similar items» and highlights «its distinct, futuristic design that is not conducive to carrying bulky goods.» Burn.

This humorous trend does have an ominous lesson: Don’t trust everything you see from a chatbot. It might be making stuff up out of thin air, and it won’t necessarily indicate it’s uncertain.

«This is a perfect moment for educators and researchers to use these scenarios to teach people how the meaning is generated and how AI works and why it matters,» Li said. «Users should always stay skeptical and verify claims.»

Be careful what you search for

Since you can’t trust an LLM to be skeptical on your behalf, you need to encourage it to take what you say with a grain of salt.

«When users enter a prompt, the model just assumes it’s valid and then proceeds to generate the most likely accurate answer for that,» Li said.

The solution is to introduce skepticism in your prompt. Don’t ask for the meaning of an unfamiliar phrase or idiom. Ask if it’s real. Li suggested you ask «is this a real idiom?»

«That may help the model to recognize the phrase instead of just guessing,» she said.