It turns out all those hours you spent on Micecraft just might be good for you. New research, reported by Computing, revealed that playing the game can help boost creativity.

The study compared the effect of playing Minecraft, both with and without instruction, to watching a TV show or playing a more frenetic racing-based video game. «Those given the freedom to play Minecraft without instruction were most creative,» the researchers concluded. «It’s not just that Minecraft can help induce creativity. There seems to be something about choosing to do it that also matters,» added Douglas Gentile, a professor of psychology. The research involved a total of 352 participants, with the Minecraft cohort split into two groups, one of which received instruction and was told to be as creative as possible.

Earlier this week, the UK’s National Health Service announced a partnership with Amazon to provide health information via Alexa-enabled devices. While such a move clearly has some benefits, unsurprisingly, it brought up privacy concerns too. Privacy International laid out some of the issues in a recent blog post.

While we welcome Amazon’s use of a trusted source of information for medical queries, we are however extremely concerned about the nature and the implications of this partnership. Amazon is a company with a worrying track record when it comes to the way they handle their users’ data, as we have seen from the recent scandal that revealed how they had contracted thousands of employees to listen in on users’ interactions with their Alexa device. Despite public outrage and campaigning, Amazon chose to ignore the concerns of their customers and maintain their default privacy settings that fail to protect their users. Our medical information is often the most sensitive data there is about us and a lot can be inferred from the questions we ask and the searches we make when we have health concerns.

AirPods don’t come cheap, so it’s quite painful if you lose one. CultofMac reported on one users’ innovative way of saving their headphone, having dropped it on the subway.

[Ashley] Mayer says she is proud of herself for not “lunging after it and becoming the first ever AirPod-related subway death.” But she wasn’t willing to just give up on the missing bud. Mayer asked subway staff if the AirPod could be rescued, but the process would take two hours — and she would have to be present for the whole thing, she explains. So, a more inventive solution was required. Mayer took a trip to a local store and picked up a broom and some duct tape. The duct tape was applied to the handle to make it sticky.