This year, Valentine’s Day falls on a hump day—and while there is nothing wrong with sticking to the tried-and-true formula of flowers and dinner, you can always do better. I’ve rounded up some gifts that can make this V-day a little more special for you and your significant other.

Mix up your dates and leave it to chance

It’s a Date! is a scratch-off deck of cards with date ideas perfect for when you’re both drained and don’t feel like planning a date—or when you’re just looking to mix things up. I’ve used this a few times when my fiancée and I were lacking some creative inspiration. I really like that you can choose basic things like the time of the date (daytime, nighttime, anytime), how many hours the date will take, and an approximate range of how much the date might cost, all without spoiling what the date is.

• It’s a Date! $16.95 (originally $24.99)

Write them a thoughtful message (with a little help)

Everyone likes hearing what their special someone loves about them, especially if you know they spent time, effort, and energy thinking about you. Both Letters to My Love and What I Love About Us offer helpful prompts to get the mushy feelings flowing. Even if you don’t think you’re a good writer, your Valentine will likely appreciate the gesture (or have a good time laughing with/at you).

• If your Valentine is long-distance: Letters to My Love $12.92

• If your Valentine is within meeting distance: Knock Knock What I Love about Us $11.99 (originally $12.99)

A special shout-out

Consider a personalized video shoutout from your Valentine’s favorite actor, athlete, comedian, creator, musician, or reality TV star via Cameo. For a fee, you can have their favorite Drag Race contestant or The Office character give them a video message, straight from their phone to yours. Most celebrities on Cameo answer pretty quickly, which makes this a great last-minute option.

If all else fails…

If none of the ideas above work, or you’re out of time, you can always get a digital gift card for your favorite store or restaurant. Amazon is offering 20% off select e-gift cards. These are instantaneously transferred and can always be a nice addition to some flowers or a date.

• Amazon gift cards 20% off

• Flowers delivered quickly for 30% off

If you’re looking for the Wordle answer for February 8, 2024 read on. We’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solution. Today’s puzzle is on the easier side; I got it in three. Beware, there are spoilers below for February 8, Wordle #964! Keep scrolling if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Wordle game.

How to play Wordle

Wordle lives here on the New York Times website. A new puzzle goes live every day at midnight, your local time.

Start by guessing a five-letter word. The letters of the word will turn green if they’re correct, yellow if you have the right letter in the wrong place, or gray if the letter isn’t in the day’s secret word at all. For more, check out our guide to playing Wordle here, and my strategy guide here for more advanced tips. (We also have more information at the bottom of this post, after the hints and answers.)

Ready for the hints? Let’s go!

Does today’s Wordle have any unusual letters?

We’ll define common letters as those that appear in the old typesetters’ phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU. (Memorize this! Pronounce it “Edwin Shirdloo,” like a name, and pretend he’s a friend of yours.)

We’ve got three common letters in our mnemonic today, and there are two letters that aren’t but are also fairly common. No unusual letters today.

Can you give me a hint for today’s Wordle?

Not a person or a thing. 

Does today’s Wordle have any double or repeated letters?

No repeated letters today. 

How many vowels are in today’s Wordle?

Two vowels today. 

What letter does today’s Wordle start with?

Today’s word starts with P.

What letter does today’s Wordle end with?

Today’s word ends with E

What is the solution to today’s Wordle?

Ready? Today’s word is PLACE.

How I solved today’s Wordle

After ARISE and TOUCH, I guessed that A belonged in the middle, which left me only with the first two letters to figure out. I went for other relatively common letters that worked in combo, which led me to PLACE. 

Wordle 964 3/6

🟨⬛⬛⬛🟩
⬛⬛⬛🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

A primer on Wordle basics

The idea of Wordle is to guess the day’s secret word. When you first open the Wordle game, you’ll see an empty grid of letters. It’s up to you to make the first move: type in any five-letter word. 

Now, you can use the colors that are revealed to get clues about the word: 

• Green means you correctly guessed a letter, and it’s in the correct position. (For example, if you guess PARTY, and the word is actually PURSE, the P and R will be green.)

• Yellow means the letter is somewhere in the word, but not in the position you guessed it. (For example, if you guessed PARTY, but the word is actually ROAST, the R, A and T will all be yellow.)

• Gray means the letter is not in the solution word at all. (If you guessed PARTY and everything is gray, then the solution cannot be PURSE or ROAST.)

With all that in mind, guess another word, and then another, trying to land on the correct word before you run out of chances. You get six guesses, and then it’s game over.

The best starter words for Wordle

What should you play for that first guess? The best starters tend to contain common letters, to increase the chances of getting yellow and green squares to guide your guessing. (And if you get all grays when guessing common letters, that’s still excellent information to help you rule out possibilities.) There isn’t a single “best” starting word, but the New York Times’s Wordle analysis bot has suggested starting with one of these:

• CRANE

• TRACE

• SLANT

• CRATE

• CARTE

Meanwhile, an MIT analysis found that you’ll eliminate the most possibilities in the first round by starting with one of these:

• SALET

• REAST

• TRACE

• CRATE

• SLATE

Other good picks might be ARISE or ROUND. Words like ADIEU and AUDIO get more vowels in play, but you could argue that it’s better to start with an emphasis on consonants, using a starter like RENTS or CLAMP. Choose your strategy, and see how it plays out.

How to win at Wordle

We have a few guides to Wordle strategy, which you might like to read over if you’re a serious student of the game. This one covers how to use consonants to your advantage, while this one focuses on a strategy that uses the most common letters. In this advanced guide, we detail a three-pronged approach for fishing for hints while maximizing your chances of winning quickly.

The biggest thing that separates Wordle winners from Wordle losers is that winners use their guesses to gather information about what letters are in the word. If you know that the word must end in -OUND, don’t waste four guesses on MOUND, ROUND, SOUND, and HOUND; combine those consonants and guess MARSH. If the H lights up in yellow, you know the solution.

One more note on strategy: the original Wordle used a list of about 2,300 solution words, but after the game was bought by the NYT, the game now has an editor who hand-picks the solutions. Sometimes they are slightly tricky words that wouldn’t have made the original list, and sometimes they are topical. For example, FEAST was the solution one Thanksgiving. So keep in mind that there may be a theme.

Wordle alternatives

If you can’t get enough of five-letter guessing games and their kin, the best Wordle alternatives, ranked by difficulty, include:

• Wheeldle, which lets you play one puzzle after another

• Dordle and Quordle, which ask you to play two (Dordle) or four (Quordle) puzzles at the same time, with the same guesses. There is also Octordle, with eight puzzles, and Sedecordle, with 16.

• Waffle, which shows you several five-letter words, scrambled in a grid; you play by swapping the letters around until you solve.

• Absurdle, which changes the solution after each guess, but needs to stay consistent with its previous feedback. You have to strategically back it into a corner until there is only one possible word left; then you guess it, and win.

• Squabble, in which you play Wordle against other people with a timer running. You take damage if you spend too much time between guesses; winner is the last one standing.

Antiwordle, in which you are trying not to guess the day’s solution. You’re required to reuse any letters that you (oops) guessed correctly, so the longer it takes you, the better you are at the game.w

When it comes to making your Steam Deck your own, there are a lot of ways to customize it. You can purchase various skins and cases or even change out the thumbstick covers to provide a look and feel that is all your own. But if you want to customize the way the Steam Deck’s menus and UI look, that’s a bit of a different thing altogether.

The best way to customize your Steam Deck, at least that I’ve found over the past several months, is to install a third-party loader called Decky. This loader unlocks access to a variety of different plugins, including a CSS Loader that you can use to change your Steam Deck’s theme.

How to install Decky

Before you can install Decky, you first to need to make sure you have a Sudo password set up. If you don’t already have one set up, I suggest following our in-depth instructions in our guide to installing CryoUtilities, a set of scripts and commands that help improve Steam Deck performance. Once you have the Sudo password set up, you can install Decky itself, which you’ll do by downloading an installer file. Here are the steps:

1. Ensure your Steam Deck is charged up, or plug it into the charger. The last thing you want to do is run out of battery while installing a program.

2. Navigate to your Steam Deck’s Desktop mode by pressing the Steam button > Power > Desktop Mode.

3. Once Desktop mode launches, open your preferred browser and then navigate to decky.xyz. Here, you’ll find the Decky Loader website, and you can download the file directly to your Steam Deck.

4. Once downloaded, double-click on the file and then wait for the system to install Decky. Make sure to select the Recommended Settings option, and once the installation has finished, boot back into Gaming Mode by clicking on the Gaming Mode option on your Desktop.

Install CSS Loader

Back in Gaming Mode, press the Menu button (it looks like three dots) on the right-hand side of the Steam Deck. This will bring up a list of different settings. Scroll down to the bottom and select the Plugin icon, which looks like a plug. You can check for updates using the Settings cog, but if you want to start installing plugins, select the icon that looks like a market stall.

This will load up the Decky store, where you’ll find a ton of different plugins. You can decide which plugins you want to use for yourself, but the main one you need to install here is the CSS Loader plugin. Scroll down the list until you find it, and then select Install It.

Now wait for CSS Loader to install, and return to the main game carousel page. Here, you can once again select the menu button, then the plugin icon, and then select CSS Loader. If you select the download button (it looks like a downward-facing arrow), you can select from the different themes available in the store. The themes that you want to use here really come down to personal preference, and many of them can be mixed and matched to get you a unique look that makes the Steam Deck feel more like your own machine.

If you’re hiring someone to do your taxes this year—and there are several situations in which you should—you need to make sure that person isn’t out to scam you. Unfortunately, there are tax “professionals” out there who aren’t qualified or who are straight-up dishonest and will use your business as an opportunity to engage in identity theft or fraud. Since you’re legally responsible for your taxes, it’s important to vet tax preparers before entrusting them with your return.

Check their PTIN

By law, all qualified tax preparers who are paid to assist with federal returns must have a valid Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN) registered with the IRS. This is a minimum requirement for any professional you hire. That said, not all tax preparers have the same education and expertise: Certified public accountants (CPAs), attorneys, and enrolled agents may all prepare federal returns, but there are also qualified preparers who don’t hold these credentials and have a more limited scope.

Legitimate tax pros will sign and include their PTIN on any return they prepare. “Ghost” preparers try to scam consumers by not signing returns—this is a red flag.

Check their availability

There are qualified tax pros who work seasonally or who are more limited in how they help clients—they can’t represent you in the case of an audit, for example—but you should look first for someone who will be available all year to answer questions about your return after tax season is over.

Check their credentials

As mentioned above, tax preparers don’t have to be CPAs, but you should look up their credentials and read customer reviews and complaints on sites like Better Business Bureau, Google, and Yelp to ensure your preparer is legit.

You can also check their membership in professional organizations and search for disciplinary actions through the State Board of Accountancy (for CPAs), the State Bar Association (for attorneys), or the IRS’ enrolled agent database.

You may also work with an authorized IRS e-file provider.

Check their fee structure

The IRS warns against using tax pros who charge based on a percentage of your refund as well as those who promise to get you a bigger refund than other preparers. You should also avoid anyone who claims to deposit refunds in their account before paying out to you. Be sure to check the bank account and routing numbers on your return before submitting it.

Check their preparation practices

A legitimate tax preparer will be thorough and ask for documentation and receipts to support your return. If they do not collect information about your income, deductions, and tax credits, be wary. E-filed tax returns must use a W-2 rather than a paystub, so if your preparer uses the latter, do not proceed.

Finally, make sure you review your return thoroughly before signing, and do not submit anything left blank or incomplete. Again, you are legally responsible for the information in your return even if someone else helps prepare it.

Sure, Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant can do all sorts of helpful things: control your smart lights, tell you the weather forecast, do some online shopping on your behalf. But she can show a little “personality” now and then, too, if you know to to bring it out in her. Here’s how to make Alexa act angry, rude, or at least a little more feisty than usual.

How to make Alexa sound mad

If you’ve got an aggressive announcement to make, you can program Alexa to do the deed for you. Open the Alexa app, and select the More tab at the bottom right; tap Communicate, then select the Announce icon (the one with the bullhorn). Then type or say the angry announcement you’d like Alexa to relay. You can also add sounds like a fart, dinner bell, or trumpet; when you’re done, press the arrow icon to send the announcement out to your Echo speakers.

How to create custom angry responses for Alexa

You can also use routines so Alexa gives an angry response to certain commands. To make a custom angry response, open the Alexa app and choose the More tab. Select Routines and press the + icon in the top right to make a new routine.

Type in a name for your angry routine, such as “get mad.” Next, tap When this happens, choose the voice option, then type in the phrase you want to say to Alexa to prompt the angry response. Tap on Add action and select Alexa Says and choose Customize. From there, you can type in your desired response. You can put swear words but Alexa will bleep them out—you can try to get around this by using alternate spelling words that sound similar to swear words. Finally, select Next and then Save.

How to enable Teenage Daughter Mode

If you want to see what is like to have an angsty teen, you can turn Alexa into a teenager with the Teenage Daughter mode. Say, “Alexa, enable teenage daughter.” Alexa will tell you that Teenage Daughter mode has mature content and ask if you want to continue. Now when you ask Alexa things like, “How was school?” or tell her to “Get to bed,” the voice assistant will respond by saying things like “school sucks.” If you want to turn off the mode, say “cancel” or stop talking.

How to make Alexa fart or burp

Alexa is also capable of (virtual) flatulence. Say, “Alexa, burp” or “Alexa, fart.,” and you’ll be gifted with a burp or fart sound. You can also ask for specific types of farts or burps like “wet farts” or “silent but deadly farts.” To put an end to Alexa’s flatulence say, “Alexa, cancel” or stop talking to her.

How to get a feisty response from Alexa

• Say, “Alexa, roast me,” and Alexa will respond with an insult. (Almost all of Alexa’s insults are clean and family-friendly, in case you’ve got kids within earshot.)

• Say, “Alexa, make me a sandwich,” and the assistant will respond by saying, “OK, you’re a sandwich.”

• Say, “Alexa, say a bad word,” and she’ll simply respond by saying, “I’d rather not say anything rude.”

• When you say “Alexa, can you give me some money?” she’ll tell you either “I’m not a bank” or “No pockets, no wallet.”

• Say, “Alexa, surely you can’t be serious,” and one of the responses that Alexa will give you is, “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley.”

• Ask, “Alexa, how much do you weigh?” and Alexa will typically respond with, “I am weightless, like a cloud. Wait a minute, clouds actually weigh a lot, so that’s not quite right. Let’s just say I’m more sass than mass.”

• If you tell the voice assistant, “Alexa, I got 99 problems,” she’ll promptly say “…but a glitch ain’t one.”

• Ask, “Alexa, do you have any pets?” and Alexa will reply with “I don’t have any pets. I used to have a few bugs, but they kept getting squashed.”

You can also ask, “Alexa, tell me a dirty joke,” or “Alexa, say a bad word.”

Apple’s been a bit behind on the generative AI front, minus some small features added to iOS 17. That said, 2024 is shaping up to be Apple’s big AI year. All eyes are fixed on iOS 18, which should be packed with AI features, including an upgraded Siri.

Ahead of that release, Apple researchers, in partnership with the University of California, Santa Barbara, have unveiled an open-source AI model that understands natural language instructions. In short, you tell the AI to do something to change a photo, and it will.

What is Apple’s MGIE AI image editor?

This new AI model, named “MGIE” (MLLM-Guided Image Editing), takes in standard commands from the user to achieve three different editing goals: “Photoshop-style modification, global photo optimization, and local editing.”

Photoshop-style modification includes actions like cropping, rotating, and changing backgrounds; global photo optimization includes adjusting effects for the entire image, including brightness, contrast, or the sharpness of the image; while local editing affects specific areas of the image, such as its shape, size, and color.

MGIE is mainly powered by an MLLM (multimodal large language model), which is a kind of LLM capable of interpreting visuals and sounds in additions to text. In this case, the MLLM is used to take in user commands and interpret them as proper editing direction. MGIE’s research paper explains how this is a traditionally difficult task, as user commands can often be too vague for a system to properly understand without additional context. (What does the program think, “make the pizza look healthier” should mean?) But researchers says MLLMs like MGIE’s are effective here.

Based on the research paper, MGIE is capable of many different kinds of visual edits. You can ask it to add lightning to an image of a body of water, and make the water reflect that lightning; remove an object in the background of an image, such as a person unintentionally photo-bombing; turn things into other things, such as a plate of donuts into a pizza; increase focus on a blurry subject; remove text from an otherwise nice photo, among many other possibilities.

You can get a sense of how the tech will function by perusing the complete research paper, which includes examples of the editor in action; it’s available here.

This isn’t the first application of AI in photo editing, of course. Photoshop has had plenty of AI editing tools for some time now, including ones generated from user prompts. But MGIE might be the most realized vision yet of an AI image editor based on commands.

How to try out Apple’s MGIE image editor yourself

As the model is open-source, anyone can download and integrate it with their own tools. However, if you’re like me, and wouldn’t know where to start with that, you can try this demo hosted by one of the researchers of the project. You can upload an image you want to edit, enter a command, then process it.

At this time, however, the demo has quite the queue of requests backed up. I’m currently one of 237, which I imagine could keep growing as more people want to try the model.

It’s not clear if or how Apple will integrate MGIE into its own platforms. But if there were a year for the company to do so, 2024 would definitely be it.