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The 2010s was the Wild West of the mobile world. “Mobile-first” was the buzzword, much like “AI-first” is today. Every company, from the biggest social media giants to your local pizza parlor, seemed to be pestering you to download their app. There was a genuine hype train, and everyone was on board. The apps, frankly, were always mediocre, and a far cry from the full functionality of their website counterparts. But the message was clear. If you weren’t on mobile, you were falling behind. Fast forward to 2025, and that hype hasn’t entirely faded. In fact, it’s evolved into something a little more… persistent. If you’ve ever opened Reddit, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or practically any popular service on your phone’s web browser, you’ve likely encountered it. A relentless push to download their app. They use every dark pattern in the book, subtly nudging you, sometimes even tricking you, into clicking that “Get the App” button. It feels inevitable, doesn’t it? Like you’re constantly fighting against the current. But if you’re already a regular user, happily browsing their service through your phone’s web browser, why are they still so desperate for you to switch to the app? Beyond the Hype: The Real Reasons Companies Want You on Their App The answer, in short, is data. A lot of it. And access. A whole lot more of that too. Think about it this way. What can a website on your browser really get from you? Unless you manually upload your contact information, or there’s a serious security vulnerability, a website’s access to your phone’s deeper functions is quite limited. Apps, on the other hand, are a different beast entirely. They are designed to integrate much more deeply with your device. When you download an app and want to use a particular feature, you’re often prompted to grant various permissions. And let’s be honest, how many of us meticulously read through every single permission pop-up? Most of the time, we just tap “Allow” to get to what we want to do. This seemingly small action can grant companies a treasure trove of information and control: Your Contacts: Want to find friends on the app? Grant access to your contacts. Just like that, your entire network might be uploaded. Location Tracking: GPS and even your phone’s accelerometer can be used to track your precise movements and identify patterns in your behavior. Websites can try to estimate your location, but it’s far less precise and requires explicit permission each time. Microphone Access: Some apps can even record audio. Installed Apps: Yes, apps can often detect what other applications you have installed on your phone. This information can be used to build a more comprehensive profile of you and your interests. All of this data extraction and deeper device interaction is significantly more difficult, if not outright impossible, for a website running in your browser. The web browser, in its own right, is a powerful and increasingly capable operating system. It can play video and audio, support WebGL for advanced graphics, and even has USB support. Most companies aren’t even scratching the surface of what’s possible with a modern web browser. Their primary motivation for pushing the app, more often than not, seems to boil down to gaining more access to your personal data and behavior. The Unseen Cost of Convenience Even if you’re not particularly “paranoid” about your data, it’s worth asking: what can they possibly want to do in their app that they can’t already do in the browser? Often, the answer is nothing that truly benefits you more. The perceived “convenience” of an app often comes at the cost of your privacy and control. It’s incredibly easy to give information away. But once that data is out there, it’s nearly impossible to take back. While regulations like GDPR can ensure that data is deleted from a company’s database, they can’t guarantee that data which has already been sold or shared with third parties will also be erased. So, the next time you’re met with that insistent prompt to download an app, take a moment to consider what you might be giving up. For me, I’m sticking to the website. My browser offers all the functionality I need, without inviting a constant digital spy into my pocket. And that, in my book, is a win for privacy and control. Read More

24th July, 2025 Native CSS transitions have quietly killed the strongest argument for client-side routing. Yet people keep building terrible apps instead of performant websites. The app-like fallacy “Make it feel like an app.” At some point during the scoping process, someone says the words. A CMO. A digital lead. A brand manager. And with that single phrase, the architecture is locked in: it’ll be an SPA. Probably React. Maybe Vue. Almost certainly deployed on Vercel or Netlify, bundled with a headless CMS and a GraphQL API for good measure. But the decision wasn’t really about architecture. It wasn’t even about performance, scalability, or content management. It was about interactions. About how the site would feel when you click around.  The assumption was simple: Seamless navigation requires us to build an app. That assumption is now obsolete. The false promise of SPAs The reason SPAs became the default wasn’t because they were better. It was because, for a while, they were the only way to deliver something that felt fluid – something that didn’t flash white between pages or jank the scroll position. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most SPAs don’t actually deliver the polish they promise. What you usually get is: A page transition that looks smooth, until you realise it’s just fading between two loading states Broken scroll restoration Inconsistent focus behaviour Delayed navigation while scripts rehydrate components Layout shift, content popping, or full-page skeletons A performance hit that’s entirely disproportionate to the effect This isn’t theoretical. Look at most sites built with Next.js, Gatsby, or Nuxt. They’re shipping kilobytes (often megabytes) of JavaScript just to fake native navigation. Routing logic, hydration code, loading spinners – all just to stitch together something that browsers already knew how to do natively. Instead of smoothness, you get simulation. And instead of a fast, stable, SEO-friendly experience, you get a heavy JavaScript machine trying to recreate the native behaviour we threw away. We’ve been adding mountains of JS to “feel” fast, while making everything slower. An aside – I went deeper on this in JavaScript broke the web, where I outlined how our obsession with JS-first development is actively eroding the web’s foundations. The web grew up While we were busy reinventing navigation in JavaScript, the platform quietly solved the problem. Modern browsers – specifically Chromium-based ones like Chrome and Edge – now support native, declarative page transitions. With the View Transitions API, you can animate between two documents – including full page navigations – without needing a single line of JavaScript. Yes, really. What we’re calling “modern CSS” here is shorthand for View Transitions, Speculation Rules, and a return to native browser features that were always designed to handle navigation, interaction, and layout. These capabilities let us build rich, seamless experiences – without rewriting the browser in JavaScript. An aside – CSS is also declarative, resilient, expressive, scalable, and increasingly intuitive. It’s accessible to anyone who can write plain HTML. And that structural clarity reinforces everything I argued in Why semantic HTML still matters – that clean, meaningful markup is the bedrock of performance, maintainability, and machine readability. That means you can: Fade between pages Animate shared elements (e.g. thumbnails → product detail) Maintain persistent elements like headers or navbars Do it all with real URLs, real page loads, and no JS routing hacks Let’s make this concrete. 🔄 Basic cross-page fade transition With just a few lines of CSS, you can trigger smooth visual transitions between pages. On both the current and destination page, add: @view-transition { navigation: auto; } ::view-transition-old(root), ::view-transition-new(root) { animation: fade 0.3s ease both; } @keyframes fade { from { opacity: 0; } to { opacity: 1; } } That’s it. The browser handles the transition – no client-side routing, no hydration, no loading spinners. 🔁 Shared element transitions Want to animate a thumbnail image into its full-size product counterpart on the next page? No JavaScript needed – just assign the same view-transition-name to the element on both pages: On the product listing page: On the product detail page: The browser matches and animates the elements between navigations. You can animate position, scale, opacity, layout – all with CSS. 🤖 But what if I need JS-driven transitions? You can manually trigger transitions inside a page too: document.startViewTransition(() => { document.body.classList.toggle(‘dark-mode’); }); Perfect for things like tab toggles or theme switches — without needing a framework or hydration layer. 🔮 Speculation rules: instant navigation without JS View Transitions make things smooth. But what about fast? That’s where Speculation Rules come in. This lets the browser preload or prerender full pages based on user behaviour – like hovering or touching a link – before they click. The result? Navigation that’s instant. No waiting. No loading. No spinners. ⚠️ A Note of Caution Speculation Rules are a performance multiplier. On a lean site, they make things feel instant. But if your pages are slow, bloated, or JS-heavy, speculation just front-loads those costs. If your site is bloated, speculation will still speculate – and the user pays the price. That means wasted CPU, network bandwidth, and mobile battery – often for pages the user never even visits. Use them carefully. On a fast site, they’re magic. On a slow one, they’re a trap. Browsers want to help – if we let them Modern browsers are smarter than ever. They’re constantly looking for ways to improve speed, responsiveness, and efficiency – but only if we let them. One of the clearest examples is the Back/Forward Cache (bfcache), which allows entire pages to be snapshotted and restored instantly when users navigate back or forward. It’s effectively free performance – but only for pages that behave. That means no rogue JavaScript, no intercepted navigation, no lifecycle chaos. Just clean, declarative architecture. Just HTML and CSS. Unsurprisingly, this plays beautifully with a well-structured, multi-page site. But for most SPAs, it’s a non-starter. The very design patterns that define them – hijacked routing, client-side rendering, complex state management – break the assumptions that bfcache relies on. This is a microcosm of a much bigger theme: browsers are evolving to reward simplicity and resilience. They’re building for the kind of web we should have been embracing all along. And SPAs are increasingly the odd ones out. 📊 SPA vs MPA: a performance reality

Intuitive Surgical, an American biotechnology company, introduced DaVinci surgical robots in the late 1990s, and they became groundbreaking teleoperation equipment. Expert surgeons could operate on patients remotely, manipulating the robotic arms and their surgical tools based on a video feed from DaVinci’s built-in cameras and endoscopes. Now, John Hopkins University researchers put a ChatGPT-like AI in charge of a DaVinci robot and taught it to perform a gallbladder-removal surgery. Kuka surgeries The idea to put a computer behind the wheel of a surgical robot is not entirely new, but these had mostly relied on using pre-programmed actions. “The program told the robot exactly how to move and what to do. It worked like in these Kuka robotic arms, welding cars on factory floors,” says Ji Woong Kim, a robotics researcher who led the study on autonomous surgery. To improve on that, a team led by Axel Krieger, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at John Hopkins University, built STAR: the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot. In 2022, it successfully performed a surgery on a live pig. But even STAR couldn’t do it without specially marked tissues and a predetermined plan. STAR’s key difference was that its AI could make adjustments to this plan based on the feed from cameras. The new robot can do considerably more. “Our current work is much more flexible,” Kim says. “It is an AI that learns from demonstrations.” The new system is called SRT-H (Surgical Robot Transformer) and was developed by Kim and his colleagues, Krieger added. The first change they made was to the hardware. Instead of using a custom robot like STAR, the new work relied on the DaVinci robot, which has become a de facto industry standard in teleoperation surgeries, with over 10,000 units already deployed in hospitals worldwide. The second change was the software driving the system. It relied on two transformer models, the same architecture that powers ChatGPT. One was a high-level policy module, which was responsible for task planning and ensuring the procedure went smoothly. The low-level module was responsible for executing the tasks issued by the high-level module, translating its instructions into specific trajectories for the robotic arms. Read More

Custom sub agents in Claude Code are specialized AI assistants that can be invoked to handle specific types of tasks. They enable more efficient problem-solving by providing task-specific configurations with customized system prompts, tools and a separate context window. What are sub agents? Sub agents are pre-configured AI personalities that Claude Code can delegate tasks to. Each sub agent: Has a specific purpose and expertise area Uses its own context window separate from the main conversation Can be configured with specific tools it’s allowed to use Includes a custom system prompt that guides its behavior When Claude Code encounters a task that matches a sub agent’s expertise, it can delegate that task to the specialized sub agent, which works independently and returns results. Key benefits Context preservation Each sub agent operates in its own context, preventing pollution of the main conversation and keeping it focused on high-level objectives. Specialized expertise Sub agents can be fine-tuned with detailed instructions for specific domains, leading to higher success rates on designated tasks. Reusability Once created, sub agents can be used across different projects and shared with your team for consistent workflows. Flexible permissions Each sub agent can have different tool access levels, allowing you to limit powerful tools to specific sub agent types. Quick start To create your first sub agent: Open the sub agents interface Run the following command: Select ‘Create New Agent’ Choose whether to create a project-level or user-level sub agent Define the sub agent Recommended: Generate with Claude first, then customize to make it yours Describe your subagent in detail and when it should be used Select the tools you want to grant access to (or leave blank to inherit all tools) The interface shows all available tools, making selection easy If you’re generating with Claude, you can also edit the system prompt in your own editor by pressing e Save and use Your sub agent is now available! Claude will use it automatically when appropriate, or you can invoke it explicitly: Sub agent configuration File locations Sub agents are stored as Markdown files with YAML frontmatter in two possible locations: Type Location Scope Priority Project sub agents .claude/agents/ Available in current project Highest User sub agents ~/.claude/agents/ Available across all projects Lower When sub agent names conflict, project-level sub agents take precedence over user-level sub agents. File format Each sub agent is defined in a Markdown file with this structure: Configuration fields Field Required Description name Yes Unique identifier using lowercase letters and hyphens description Yes Natural language description of the sub agent’s purpose tools No Comma-separated list of specific tools. If omitted, inherits all tools from the main thread Available tools Sub agents can be granted access to any of Claude Code’s internal tools. See the tools documentation for a complete list of available tools. Recommended: Use the /agents command to modify tool access – it provides an interactive interface that lists all available tools, including any connected MCP server tools, making it easier to select the ones you need. You have two options for configuring tools: Omit the tools field to inherit all tools from the main thread (default), including MCP tools Specify individual tools as a comma-separated list for more granular control (can be edited manually or via /agents) MCP Tools: Sub agents can access MCP tools from configured MCP servers. When the tools field is omitted, sub agents inherit all MCP tools available to the main thread. Managing sub agents Using the /agents command (Recommended) The /agents command provides a comprehensive interface for sub agent management: This opens an interactive menu where you can: View all available sub agents (built-in, user, and project) Create new sub agents with guided setup Edit existing custom sub agents, including their tool access Delete custom sub agents See which sub agents are active when duplicates exist Easily manage tool permissions with a complete list of available tools Direct file management You can also manage sub agents by working directly with their files: Using sub agents effectively Automatic delegation Claude Code proactively delegates tasks based on: The task description in your request The description field in sub agent configurations Current context and available tools To encourage more proactive sub agent use, include phrases like “use PROACTIVELY” or “MUST BE USED” in your description field. Explicit invocation Request a specific sub agent by mentioning it in your command: Example sub agents Code reviewer Debugger Data scientist Best practices Start with Claude-generated agents: We highly recommend generating your initial sub agent with Claude and then iterating on it to make it personally yours. This approach gives you the best results – a solid foundation that you can customize to your specific needs. Design focused sub agents: Create sub agents with single, clear responsibilities rather than trying to make one sub agent do everything. This improves performance and makes sub agents more predictable. Write detailed prompts: Include specific instructions, examples, and constraints in your system prompts. The more guidance you provide, the better the sub agent will perform. Limit tool access: Only grant tools that are necessary for the sub agent’s purpose. This improves security and helps the sub agent focus on relevant actions. Version control: Check project sub agents into version control so your team can benefit from and improve them collaboratively. Advanced usage Chaining sub agents For complex workflows, you can chain multiple sub agents: Dynamic sub agent selection Claude Code intelligently selects sub agents based on context. Make your description fields specific and action-oriented for best results. Performance considerations Context efficiency: Agents help preserve main context, enabling longer overall sessions Latency: Sub agents start off with a clean slate each time they are invoked and may add latency as they gather context that they require to do their job effectively. Slash commands – Learn about other built-in commands Settings – Configure Claude Code behavior Hooks – Automate workflows with event handlers Read More

Tea, a women’s safety dating app that surged to the top of the free iOS App Store listings this week, has been the subject of a major security breach. The company confirmed Friday that it has “identified authorized access to one of our systems” that exposed thousands of user images.  According to Tea’s preliminary findings, the breach allowed access to approximately 72,000 images, broken down into two groups: 13,000 images of selfies and photo identification that people had submitted during account verification and 59,000 images that were publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages. Those images had been in a “legacy data system” that contained information from more than two years ago, the company said in statement. “At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that current or additional user data was affected.” Earlier Friday, posts on Reddit and 404 Media reported that Tea app users’ faces and IDs had been posted on anonymous online message board 4chan. Tea requires users to verify their identities with selfies or IDs, which is why driver’s licenses and pictures of people’s faces are in the leaked data. The premise of Tea is to provide women with a space to report negative interactions they’ve had while encountering men in the dating pool, purportedly to keep other women safe. The app hit the No. 1 spot on Apple’s US App Store this week, drawing international attention and sparking a debate about whether the app violates men’s privacy. If the reports of a breach turn out to be true, it will also play into the wider ongoing debate around whether online identity and age verification pose an inherent security risk to internet users. In the privacy section on its website, Tea says: “Tea Dating Advice takes reasonable security measures to protect your Personal Information to prevent loss, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. Please be aware, however, that despite our efforts, no security measures are impenetrable.” Tea said it has launched a full investigation to assess the scope and impact of the breach. Read More

Discount available: Marshall’s Major V headphones are worth it even at full price but right now they’re down to $100 — or around 38% off — on Amazon, their all-time lowest price on the site. This covers the black, brown and cream colored versions, but not the midnight blue version for whatever reason. I might not be a true battle-tested headphone expert like CNET’s David Carnoy but I still love headphones and I’m confident in what I like about them. My most recent pickup, the Marshall Major V on-ear Bluetooth headphones, quickly became a pair that I adore. HEADPHONE DEALS OF THE WEEK Deals are selected by the CNET Group commerce team, and may be unrelated to this article. What is Marshall? Marshall is a British audio hardware company that got its start in the early ’60s and became renowned for producing amps and speakers for live music performances. More recently, it’s made a mark in consumer audio, producing home speakers with a distinctly rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic — think rough-patterned black leather materials, gold trim and prominent physical buttons.  Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money.  The brand also has brought its signature sound and style to headphones. Recently, I picked up the Major V, Marshall’s latest iteration of its on-ear Bluetooth model (that’s V as in 5), and I could hardly love them more. Marshall boasts that these headphones can last up to 100 hours on one charge, an almost ludicrous number that has largely held up as I’ve used them. The audio quality, while not a patch on the heavier hitters in the Bluetooth market, is excellent for its price, with strong bass and clean high notes. Vocals can sometimes come off a little shabby at first blush, but I find you get used to it real quick. The connectivity performance has also really impressed me. For such a cheap pair of headphones, the Major V easily maintain connections to at least two devices at a time and can switch between them almost seamlessly. That’s not something I’ve found to be the case for a lot of the affordable Bluetooth headphones I’ve tried in the past. It’s a strong contender overall in the budget Bluetooth headphones space. Why does this deal matter? I was able to scoop up the Marshall Major V for $100, the lowest their price has gone since they debuted last year. For that price, it’s basically a steal. For the amount of blissful use I’ve gotten out of them so far — listening to music, watching movies or getting through my audiobooks — it’s been more than worth the price of admission. They usually retail for about $160, making their current price a 38% discount.  Top deals available today, according to CNET’s shopping experts Curated discounts worth shopping while they last. Read More

Here’s what to know before you launch into the ’60s-inspired world. Meara covers streaming service news for CNET. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in journalism. When she’s not writing, she likes to dote over her cat, sip black coffee and try out new horror movies. Marvel’s newest movie is here, and we have good and bad news. The good: You don’t have to do any homework before seeing The Fantastic Four: First Steps, according to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. The bad: It’s the last Marvel flick we’re getting until 2026. More good: It has a super Rotten Tomatoes score. More bad: You’ll miss out if you don’t stick around to watch the credits. The Fantastic Four: First Steps premiered in theaters on Friday and kicks off Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It drops viewers into a retrofuturistic world where — due to an accident that mutated them and gave them powers — the heroes are Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm/Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm/Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm/The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach).  CNET’s Kourtnee Jackson reviewed First Steps, which she noted is “heavy on the sci-fi and tender family dynamic.” The film featuring Marvel’s First Family continues the tradition of bonus clips after the movie. Here’s what you need to know about post-credit scenes. Does The Fantastic Four: First Steps have post-credits scenes? Yep, it sure does. The new Fantastic Four movie has a mid-credits and post-credits scene. If you want to watch both, you should plan to stay in the theater for about an additional 11 minutes after the film. If you’re here for details about what happens in those clips, you’ll find that below. Don’t keep reading unless you want a spoiler-packed rundown. The Fantastic Four: First Steps follows Marvel’s First Family during a pivotal time in their lives: The pregnancy and birth of Reed and Sue’s baby son, Franklin. That also coincided with the most significant challenge the Four had yet faced: Their planet served up as a snack for the intimidating Galactus. In the end, the Four manage to take their home off the menu, and the film wraps up with them continuing their duties as the protectors of their world (and of the adorable Franklin). It’s clear that Franklin is no average infant either — Galactus identified the baby as a worthy planet-eating successor, and Franklin’s mere presence around his mother seemed enough to resurrect her after the final boss battle. The film’s mid-credit scene, which starts about two minutes after the ending, revolves around Franklin and his loving mom. The scene takes place four years later, meaning Franklin is no longer a tiny tot. Sue and Franklin are sitting on a couch together, and she gets up to grab a new book for them to read together. She asks H.E.R.B.I.E. if the robot has seen the book Franklin loves, and she swaps out one of his favorites, The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, for the other, which is a more kid-friendly book. The exchange between mom and robot suggests the little boy is advanced for his age. But the good times are cut short when Sue senses something is off.  Marvel She returns to Franklin to find him reaching out and touching a cloaked character who wasn’t there just moments earlier. We don’t see the intruder’s face, but he’s holding a silver mask. It’s undoubtedly the incoming MCU antagonist Doctor Doom. The audience sees a message that says, “The Fantastic Four will return in Avengers: Doomsday.”  The Avengers movie will star Robert Downey Jr. as Doom and is scheduled for release on Dec. 18, 2026.  As for the second post-credits scene: If you stay all the way to the end, you’ll catch the cast depicted as cartoon characters on a TV. What could Doctor Doom’s appearance mean? Between Mephisto in Ironheart and Doctor Victor Von Doom’s cameo in this movie, MCU theories are going to spin all over the place. Let us join in.  Doom’s comic book history has mostly put him at odds with the Fantastic Four, with a deep rivalry between him and Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic. The two were once university classmates but never close friends as Victor put himself above everyone. Over the course of storylines, they’ve battled each other while occasionally dropping their beef to fight a common threat. As the Four’s main antagonist, he’s attacked, hatched various evil plots and even kidnapped Franklin. Like Reed, he’s a science whiz and has had brushes with the Silver Surfer and Galactus. With that in mind, he could either have intentions to snatch Franklin to use the child’s cosmic abilities or resurrection powers, or he’s shown up to ask the Fantastic Four for help in a different reality. Or both. After all, Galactus was dropkicked into a different dimension and could very well have landed in the universe with 616 — that Earth could be his next snack. The question is, will Doctor Doom be in his evil era or semi-hero era when Avengers: Doomsday drops next year?  Franklin can create what’s called “pocket universes,” which are basically self-contained within a larger universe. Given that the Doomsday movie could possibly see multiversal drama play out after the events of Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness (remember that scene about an Incursion?) and Fantastic Four, Doctor Doom could be looking to harness the young boy’s powers to either stop — or take advantage of — whatever disaster is on the horizon. And let’s not forget that post-credits scene in Brave New World, where Sam Wilson was sternly warned of “the others” coming from another world.  Realities and universes may be on the brink of colliding when we see Doom next, and then the plot will lead us all into Secret Wars, which, hopefully, gets into the Battleworld comic book storyline. Prepare to see a bunch of heroes and new villains converge from across the multiverse (that includes X-Men and Loki, too).  Other Services

San Diego Comic-Con 2025 is in full swing, and we’ve gotten sneak peeks at The Boys season 5, Predator: Badlands, Lego and Hot Wheels releases. Plus: There’s more news coming for TV shows, movies and games. We’re excited about Avatar: The Last Airbender, Tron: Ares, Gen V and Welcome to Derry, so we’re riding along with fans as announcements and trailer drops come out.  We’ll be posting highlights here from the four-day affair to help you keep up with the hottest, weirdest and most interesting stuff that hits. Stay tuned for our daily updates as the weekend rolls on.  Avatar: Seven Havens first look It’s a 20-year anniversary celebration for Avatar: The Last Airbender, the award-winning animated series that aired on Nickelodeon. Thursday’s Comic-Con panel brought together original creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino and voice cast Zach Tyler Eisen, Jennie Kwan, Michaela Jill Murphy, Jack DeSena (Sokka), Dante Basco (Zuko) and Dee Bradley Baker for a look at the past and present, including Avatar: Seven Havens.  The new animated sequel series, which was originally announced in February, has 26 episodes and will be split into two installments. Fans will meet Avatar Pavi when the series debuts, but for now, here’s a glimpse at the bender picking up the mantle. Nickelodeon Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 The sequel from Blumhouse sees an unsuspecting group pull up to the creepy pizzeria, not knowing about the killer, life-like animatronics with nothing but evil in store. They clearly don’t know about Freddy’s history. Skeet Ulrich appeared in Hall H, announcing that he will be in the movie as “somebody with a very particular and specific past, and somebody who has a deep emotional tie to what’s going on.” For those paying attention, this is sort of a Scream reunion since Matthew Lillard is returning as villain William Afton. Aside from that, details for Ulrich’s character are under wraps. The film hits theaters on Dec. 5. Percy Jackson and the Olympians, season 2 release date Pack up for Camp Half-Blood when the fantasy series returns, this time introducing Tantalus, Thalia and the goddess Athena to the story. The new season arrives on Disney Plus on Dec. 10, and fans will see Percy dealing with more than fantastical monsters: Grover goes missing and there’s drama with friends and a new sibling.  Twisted Metal season 2 sneak peek With a week left before the new episodes of Peacock’s Grindhouse series returns, the show’s main cast, which includes Anthony Mackie, Stephanie Beatriz, Anthony Carrigan and Joe Seanoa, along with showrunner Michael Jonathan Smith, hit the stage in Hall H to tease what’s in store. Smith revealed two separate sneak peek clips for the new season. The first scene found Stu (played by Mike Mitchell) striving to be a better killer. With Sweet Tooth as his mentor, it looks like he has some lofty, murderous goals. Stu takes the crew out, but he missed all the major organs, which Sweet Tooth advised is a major no-no. You have to go for “the grapes, the apple, or the banana,” the evil clown explains. The last victim to die recognizes Sweet Tooth, which brightens the killer’s spirits, until he calls him “Big Baby.”  Yes, there’s a notorious killer out there named “Big Baby” and it looks like Sweet Tooth is going to hunt him down now, too. Michael James Shaw stars as Axel in season 2 of Twisted Metal on Peacock. Peacock The next clip finds John Doe being vulnerable as he talks about living a life without any childhood memories. But, as he realizes, things could be much worse if he had all that knowledge. The big reveal in this clip comes towards the end as Axel (played by Michael James Shaw), the character who’s attached to two giant wheels, comes barrelling through flames, all smiles. Get ready for a trip back into the wastes, Twisted Metal season 2 drops its first three episodes on July 31. Outlander, season 8 teaser Outlander’s final season is due out early next year, ending the love-and-war saga for Jamie and Claire. How will their story — and history — play out? Starz shared a teaser for the last chapter, and Frank Randall’s book has everyone on edge. Check out the clip, mark your calendar for this series’ end and the beginning of the spinoff, Outlander: Blood of My Blood.  Invincible VS trailer shows Battle Beast Gamers were treated to a trailer for the new Invincible VS, a bloody superhero game based on Robert Kirkman’s animated Prime Video series. We’ve been following all the details for this upcoming release, but watch below to see Battle Beast bare his teeth in this latest character reveal. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is ending soon AMC served up a new trailer for season 3 of The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon, but Hall H news revealed the show is renewed for a fourth and final season. Season 3 sees Norman Reedus’s Daryl and Melissa McBride’s Carol heading to Spain in the new installment as they try to find their way home. Though production for season 4 starts soon, there aren’t any details about its plot. In the meantime, fans can tune in on Sept. 7 for the next round. Rick and Morty’s President Curtis gets a spinoff Adult Swim announced that the popular President Curtis is getting his own animated series, with star Keith David reprising his role as the voice behind the titular character.  “President Curtis has always been a blast to play,” said David in a statement. “Getting to explore his world more deeply in this new series is a dream. I can’t wait for fans to see what kind of chaos he stirs up when Rick isn’t around to steal the spotlight.”   Adult Swim Alien: Earth brings the Xenomorph to TV Alien: Earth fans in attendance were treated to a world premiere screening of the pilot episode. After that, show creator Noah Hawley and executive producer David W. Zucker took the stage

Women’s safety app Tea has topped the free Apple App Store rankings and experienced a data breach in the same week. Here’s what you need to know. Taylor Leamey Senior Writer Taylor Leamey writes about all things wellness, specializing in mental health, sleep and nutrition coverage. She has invested hundreds of hours into studying and researching sleep and holds a Certified Sleep Science Coach certification from the Spencer Institute. Not to mention the years she spent studying mental health fundamentals while earning her bachelor’s degrees in both Psychology and Sociology. She is also a Certified Stress Management Coach. Expertise Sleep, Mental Health, Nutrition and Supplements Credentials Certified Sleep Science Coach, Certified Stress Management Coach Ask any single woman right now, and they’d probably tell you how rough it is in the dating world. With ghosting and misleading bios, it can be challenging to know who you’re really talking to on dating apps — and whether they’re telling you the truth. Tea is an app that allows women to anonymously review men and spill “the tea” on men they’ve dated. About 1 million women have started using the app in the past week. It’s reminiscent of those Facebook “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” groups that many cities have, except this app uses AI to verify that the people making profiles are women.  Tea has become a viral sensation in the last few weeks — for good and bad reasons.  The app experienced a security breach — revealed Friday — in which data, including women’s driver’s licenses and selfies, was posted to 4chan. The breach is reportedly the result of Tea’s unsecured database. The company confirmed to CNET that unauthorized access to its systems had occurred. What is the Tea app? Tea is a free, women-only app exclusive to the US. It’s not a dating app; it’s a tool that women use in addition to their dating apps. It’s a space where you can share negative interactions while dating and solicit feedback on specific men you date to expose potential risks and protect other women.  It was founded in 2023 by Sean Cook, who cites his mother getting catfished online as the motivation for the app. Tea has taken off in the past week, gaining more than a million users in that time. According to a social media post from Tea, the app has about 4 million users. It’s the top free app in the App Store right now. Tea is intended to function as a community that keeps women safe, something that traditional dating apps lack. With candid reviews and warnings from other women about people they’ve dated, Tea offers women the security of having a better idea of who they’re dating.  When you open the app, you’ll see local men in your area whose pictures have been uploaded. You’ll also see if the man was labeled as a red or green flag, and any comments left by other women.  You can look up specific names in the search bar and create alerts for names. The app’s capabilities aren’t limited to comments about a man’s “red flags.” Tea can also reverse-search photos to catch catfishers through Tea’s Catfish Finder AI, run background checks, check for criminal histories and public records and look up phone numbers. Additionally, you can post questions and polls on the Tea app. According to Tea’s website, 10% of its profits go to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. How does Tea know if I’m a woman? Not just anyone can join the Tea app — it’s for women only. When you make an account, you’ll be asked to provide your location, birth date and a picture of your ID or a selfie to verify that you’re a woman. Then you wait to be approved, which people are saying can take days from the influx of new users.  The Tea app uses AI to verify your identity and ensure you’re a woman. Once approved, you’re anonymous apart from the username you choose. Tea uses SafeSip AI as a moderation tool that detects and removes harmful content from the app to ensure it stays a safe space for women. Can I join Tea if I’m not a woman? You can’t join the Tea app if you’re not a woman. However, uploading a picture to ensure you’re a woman is far from a bulletproof way to ensure only women join the app. With filters or AI tools, it’s not clear how often Tea catches things like that. What are the security risks of Tea? Tea presents as a safe space to share information because you can’t screenshot in the app, you’re anonymous and it’s verified that all accounts are women.  However, the data breach shows us just how fragile something like this can be. Tea confirmed on Friday that there was unauthorized access to its legacy data storage system. Approximately 72,000 images were exposed, including 13,000 images of selfies and photo identification women submitted to make an account, and 59,000 images publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages. Tea told CNET that the company has engaged third-party cybersecurity experts to secure its systems. The concept of Tea is to keep women safe and give them a space to share negative experiences so that others don’t have to go through the same thing. However, there has also been backlash about whether the app violates men’s privacy. On forums like Reddit, some men have shared that posts about them on the app have been false or misleading, and because they’re not allowed on the app, they cannot engage to correct the posts. In the same way that it could be a safe place for women to share information to keep each other safe, it could potentially become a space where misinformation runs rampant and personal information is shared. Tea didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the potential for misinformation being spread on its platform, or of the allegations of privacy violations against men. We have also

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How nonprofits and academia are stepping up to salvage US climate programs Nonprofits are trying to preserve a US effort to modernize greenhouse-gas measurements, amid growing fears that the Trump administration’s dismantling of federal programs will obscure the nation’s contributions to climate change. The Data Foundation, a Washington, DC, nonprofit, is fundraising for an initiative that will coordinate efforts among nonprofits, technical experts, and companies to improve the accuracy and accessibility of climate emissions information. It will build on an effort to improve the collection of emissions data that former president Joe Biden launched in 2023—and which President Trump nullified on his first day in office.  The new greenhouse-gas coalition is one of a growing number of nonprofit and academic groups that have spun up or shifted focus to keep essential climate monitoring and research efforts going amid the Trump administration’s assault on environmental funding, staffing, and regulations. Read the full story. —James Temple America’s AI watchdog is losing its bite Most Americans encounter the Federal Trade Commission only if they’ve been scammed: It handles identity theft, fraud, and stolen data. During the Biden administration, the agency went after AI companies for scamming customers with deceptive advertising or harming people by selling irresponsible technologies.  With the announcement of President Trump’s AI Action Plan, that era may now be over. The new plan suggests that the Trump administration believes the agency’s previous actions went too far, and that it would be reviewing all FTC actions taken under the Biden administration. The move is the latest in its evolving attack on the agency, which provides a significant route of redress for people harmed by AI in the US. It’s likely to result in faster deployment of AI with fewer checks on accuracy, fairness, or consumer harm. Read the full story. —James O’Donnell Trump’s AI Action Plan is a distraction —Asad Ramzanali is the director of artificial intelligence and technology policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator. On Wednesday, President Trump issued three executive orders, delivered a speech, and released an action plan, all on the topic of continuing American leadership in AI. This flurry of actions made for glitzy press moments, including an hour-long speech from the president and onstage signings. But while the tech industry cheered these announcements (which will swell their coffers), they obscured the fact that the administration is currently decimating the very policies that enabled America to become the world leader in AI in the first place. Read the full story. The deadly saga of the controversial gene therapy Elevidys It has been a grim few months for the Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) community. There had been some excitement when, a couple of years ago, a gene therapy for the disorder was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for the first time. That drug, Elevidys, has now been implicated in the deaths of two teenage boys. The drug’s approval was always controversial—there was a lack of evidence that it actually worked, for starters. But the agency that once rubber-stamped the drug has now turned on its manufacturer, Sarepta Therapeutics. In a remarkable chain of events, the FDA asked the company to stop shipping the drug on July 18. Sarepta refused to comply. In the days since, the company has acquiesced. But its reputation has already been hit. And the events have dealt a devastating blow to people desperate for treatments that might help them, their children, or other family members with DMD. Read the full story. —Jessica Hamzelou A version of this article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Corporate America is paying the price for Trump’s tariffsUS businesses are absorbing the costs—for now. (WSJ $)+ Inflation is likely to hit hard in the fall. (Vox)+ Sweeping tariffs could threaten the US manufacturing rebound. (MIT Technology Review) 2 GPT-5 is reportedly launching next monthAfter some unexpected setbacks. (The Verge) 3 Meta is hosting ads crowdfunding for IDF dronesA watchdog has identified more than 100 ads seeking donations for the army. (The Guardian) 4 AI is helping researchers to combat long covid and MEA new platform spots biological markers of the conditions in patients. (FT $)+ Scientists are finding signals of long covid in blood. They could lead to new treatments. (MIT Technology Review) 5 Demand is surging for banned chip repair expertise in China  While most of Nvidia’s chips aren’t allowed in the country, there’s a booming industry for fixing them once they break. (Reuters)+ Nvidia’s chips are being smuggled in through the black market. (FT $) 6 ChatGPT can offer up instructions for self harm and devil worshipIt guides users through self-mutilation rituals, despite violating its own policies. (The Atlantic $) 7 We have more steel than we can possibly useBut countries are worried about the optics of ceasing production. (NYT $)+ This startup just hit a big milestone for green steel production. (MIT Technology Review) 8 Internet age checks are comingA swath of child protection laws are forcing a profound shift across the web. (Wired $)+ Child online safety laws will actually hurt kids, critics say. (MIT Technology Review) 9 An Italian rocket maker wants to conduct launches in the USAvio SpA is keen to launch flights from Wallops Island in Virginia. (Bloomberg $)+ Rivals are rising to challenge the dominance of SpaceX. (MIT Technology Review) 10 This app allows women to check a potential date’s historyBut men say there’s no recourse to address false posts about them. (WP $) Quote of the day “If OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini had responded that it was trained to appeal to the left, congressional Republicans would have been outraged and opened an investigation. Instead, they were