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AI facial recognition led to a grandma being wrongly jailed

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Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old grandma from Tennessee, spent more than five months in jail after the AI facial recognition platform Clearview AI falsely matched the grandmother with a suspect of bank fraud more than 1,000 miles away in North Dakota.

Fargo police chief Dave Zibolski admitted to CNN that there were a "couple of errors" in the investigation that led to Lipps' arrest.

A "partner agency’s facial recognition technology” and “additional investigative steps independent of AI to assist in identification” led to a warrant being issued for Lipps, Zibolski said.

The grandma was arrested on July 14 while looking after four children. Authorities in Tennessee held Lipps in county jail for 108 days before she was extradited to Fargo. Lipps says she had never even been to the state of North Dakota before her arrest.

According to her GoFundMe page, Lipps found out that a woman in North Dakota stole tens of thousands of dollars from banks in Fargo using a fake military ID. Clearview AI matched the fake ID image with Lipps in Tennessee.

The case against Lipps fell apart in December when the lawyer she was given in Fargo was able to produce bank records showing Lipps was at a gas station and ordering pizza in Tennessee at the time that authorities claimed she was in North Dakota.

Lipps was released on Christmas Eve, after nearly 5 months in prison. Lipps says she lost her home, income, car, and health insurance as a result of her imprisonment.

What is Clearview AI?

Clearview AI is a tech company that has plenty of charges from critics on its rap sheet already. it has created massive facial-scan databases by scraping photos from social media platforms and other places on the internet, then training its machine learning algorithms on them.

In 2020, Facebook sent Clearview AI a cease and desist over the mass photo scraping. Other tech companies like YouTube, Twitter, and Venmo also requested that Clearview AI stop scraping its platforms. Clearview AI claimed it had a "First Amendment right" to the data.

In 2022, a legal settlement with the ACLU resulted in Clearview AI agreeing to stop selling access to its tool to private businesses. However, it did not bar Clearview AI from working with law enforcement.

While Fargo police have admitted to making mistakes in the investigation, authorities have not yet apologized to Lipps for her ordeal. Lipps' attorneys are currently looking at filing a civil rights claim.

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KitKat heist tracker lets candy lovers check if their KitKat is from the heist

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KitKat bar

The problem with announcing any kind of news on April 1 is that absolutely nobody will believe you.

Case in point: On Wednesday morning, KitKat announced that customers could use a special online tracking tool to figure out if their purchased confectionery goods were part of the massive 12-ton KitKat heist that's gotten the internet's attention over the past few days.

The KitKat heist tracker was advertised on the official KitKat X account, and whoever runs the account is ardently insisting, both in the original post and in the replies, that this is real and not an April Fool's joke.

Taking a look at the tracker itself, it's hard to parse fiction from reality. It appears to be a pretty straightforward tracker with a text input for an 8-digit batch code on the back of each KitKat package. I don't personally have any KitKats on hand to test this out with, but I typed in a random 8-digit number and was told that it wasn't part of the stolen batch.

So, at the very least, the tracker is actually checking for something. It's just impossible to say what would happen if you happened to type in a "correct" batch code.

Whether or not the tracker is a hoax, the heist was very real. More than 400,000 KitKat bars were stolen from a delivery truck going between Italy and Poland, prompting plenty of The Fast and the Furious memes (and some genuine concerns for the public supply of KitKats ahead of the Easter holiday).

For what it's worth, the company, Nestle KitKat, says there is no threat to the chocolatey supply chain at this time.

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The Hisense 55-inch Canvas art TV is down to a new best price ever post-Spring Sale

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Hisense Canvas TV with colorful background

SAVE $400: As of April 1, the Hisense 55-inch Canvas QLED 4K TV is down to only $599.99 at Amazon. That's 40% off its list price and a new best price ever.



Hisense Canvas QLED TV

Credit: Hisense

$599.99
at Amazon

$999.99
Save $400

The Amazon Big Spring Sale delivered plenty of excellent TV deals, but budget-friendly brand Hisense isn't playing by the rules. While the brand (which is one of our favorites, BTW) did drop prices over the last week, it waited until the sale was officially over to give us its best prices ever on several TV models — including the coveted Canvas art TV.

As of April 1, the Hisense 55-inch Canvas QLED 4K TV is down to just $599.99 at Amazon. That's 40% or $400 off its list price and a new lowest price on record. For those curious, the same TV was $87.98 more during the Spring Sale.

The Canvas TV is an alternative to the popular Samsung The Frame TV for budget-conscious shoppers. Like The Frame, it transforms a basic black box into a stylish piece of artwork that hangs on your wall. Its matte finish allows it to blend seamlessly into a gallery wall with other non-tech wall hangings. Unlike The Frame, it uses Google TV's interface, which Mashable's Miller Kern (a Canvas TV owner) says is "way more intuitive and responsive than Samsung's."

Beyond doubling as artwork, the Hisense Canvas is a QLED TV, so it's noticeably brighter and more saturated than a basic LED TV. It'll look brilliant in any lighting conditions. It also features a variable refresh rate up to 144Hz, which is surprisingly good for gaming, real-time adaptive brightness and color temperature, and an ultra-slim wall mount that lies flush against the wall for the true framed art look.

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NYT Strands hints, answers for March 31, 2026

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A game being played on a smartphone.

Today's NYT Strands hints are easy if you believe in magic.

Strands, the New York Times' elevated word-search game, requires the player to perform a twist on the classic word search. Words can be made from linked letters — up, down, left, right, or diagonal, but words can also change direction, resulting in quirky shapes and patterns. Every single letter in the grid will be part of an answer. There's always a theme linking every solution, along with the "spangram," a special, word or phrase that sums up that day's theme, and spans the entire grid horizontally or vertically.

By providing an opaque hint and not providing the word list, Strands creates a brain-teasing game that takes a little longer to play than its other games, like Wordle and Connections.

If you're feeling stuck or just don't have 10 or more minutes to figure out today's puzzle, we've got all the NYT Strands hints for today's puzzle you need to progress at your preferred pace.

NYT Strands hint for today’s theme: While you were sleeping…

The words are related to a mythical creature.

Today’s NYT Strands theme plainly explained

These words describe a children's tradition.

NYT Strands spangram hint: Is it vertical or horizontal?

Today's NYT Strands spangram is horizontal.

NYT Strands spangram answer today

Today's spangram is Tooth Fairy.

NYT Strands word list for March 31

  • Wings

  • Exchange

  • Tutu

  • Wand

  • Coin

  • Note

  • Pillow

  • Tooth Fairy

Looking for other daily online games? Mashable's Games page has more hints, and if you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now!

Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Strands.

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