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Two of the best VPNs around are WireGuard and OpenVPN. To the casual VPN user, they essentially offer the same results: faster VPN connections, security, and reliability, right? Not exactly. 

While WireGuard (released in 2015) is a more modern protocol that’s been vastly adopted by several of the best VPN services, OpenVPN (released in 2001) is still widely used and is considered to be more secure. 

In the grand scheme of things, one isn’t truly better than the other, as it depends on what you’re using your VPN for. This analysis will help you decipher the key differences between the two. 

WireGuard vs. OpenVPN: Speeds

When it comes to internet and VPN connection speeds, WireGuard is the go-to choice. It was specifically designed to offer higher speed performance and be lighter than OpenVPN. To put that into perspective, WireGuard only uses 4,000 lines of code, whereas OpenVPN uses around 70,000.

This lightweight process makes it easier to package and send information, making it faster to browse through websites, stream content, play online multiplayer games, and more. 

It isn’t to say OpenVPN is slow, but WireGuard can pull off speedier connections. So if speed is a priority, you’ll want to switch to a WireGuard VPN protocol.

Winner: WireGuard

WireGuard vs. OpenVPN: Security

Security is a priority for OpenVPN, as its Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption protocol makes it hard for anyone to break through. It supports military-grade AES-256 encryption, has the ability to bypass nearly all firewalls, and is adaptable enough to include several additional security features, such as a kill switch. 

While WireGuard is arguably just as secure, its ChaCha20 cryptography uses fewer lines of code, which is shorter than AES-256. It also doesn’t obfuscate your connection as a matter of course, meaning it’s apparent that you’re actually using a VPN. That said, many prominent VPN services have these features included anyway, like obfuscated servers or dynamic IP addresses.

Overall, if you’re using public Wi-Fi, or need a secure way to access heavily restricted websites, it’s best to use OpenVPN. 

Winner: OpenVPN

WireGuard vs. OpenVPN: Reliability

Both WireGuard and OpenVPN are open source, meaning that anyone can delve into their codes to see if everything is in order. This alone makes them reliable protocols to use, as developers and experts can see if there are any vulnerabilities or backdoors that can be exploited by threat actors. 

Winner: Draw

Other VPN protocols

WireGuard and OpenVPN aren’t the only protocols you can use, as there’s also IKEv2/IPsec, L2TP/IPsec, and PPTP. Now, major VPN services have also tried their hand in creating their own VPN protocols, namely ExpressVPN and NordVPN — and with notable success.

ExpressVPN has its very own Lightway protocol, which is touted to be faster, more secure, and more reliable. Launched in 2020, this open-source protocol uses wolfSSL cryptography that’s been vetted by third-party companies for transparency and security, is lightweight for speedier VPN connections, and is less prone to connection drops. 

NordVPN rivals this with its proprietary NordLynx protocol. It’s built around the WireGuard protocol, but provides even faster VPN connection speeds while still keeping privacy and security a priority. According to NordLynx’s speed test results, it makes it one of the fastest VPNs around. 

Both VPN protocols are available on a majority of platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. If you’ve opted to subscribe to ExpressVPN or NordVPN, it’s worth giving these protocols a try over WireGuard and OpenVPN. Besides, it only takes a couple of clicks to switch VPN protocols. 

It might feel a bit obvious, the message of Ryusuke Hamaguchi's latest film Evil Does Not Exist. But nonetheless, it hits home hard. 

The prolific Drive My Car director's reputation for deeply impactful films precedes him, and his new film, which casts a sense of survivalist dread upon the natural world amid corporate development, doesn’t mince words with its warning. Evil Does Not Exist is an exciting step forward for Hamaguchi, pushing the boundaries of dramatic tension with a project a long time in the works.

What is Evil Does Not Exist about? Credit: NEOPA, Fictive

Evil Does Not Exist tells the story of Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), who resides with his daughter, Hana (Ryo Nishikawa), in a small village outside of Tokyo, where they live in harmonious accordance with nature and its wills. But when a development plan to erect a glamping — as in glamorous camping — site near Takumi's home is discovered by the villagers, the effects of the misguided project have negative effects on the local water supply and, in turn, wreak havoc on Takumi and his community in ways he never saw coming. 

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Hamaguchi's latest film is a robust parable that questions as much as it accuses, wielding both impulses wisely. On the surface, the concept of glamping — and its truly negative effects beyond just being tacky and opulent — is definitely one of curiosity, but when you dig deeper, it becomes the perfect backdrop for the kind of lesson Hamaguchi wants to impart.

At its core, Evil Does Not Exist is a cautionary tale about the price of disrespecting nature, and it doesn’t hold back in indicting our own culpability despite our efforts. Evil does, of course, exist, especially when it comes to the disregard, disruption, and dominance of the natural world by humans.

Eiko Ishibashi's score is to die for.

Though its narrative is compelling and unique enough to intrigue, one of the most captivating elements of the film is the electrifying score by Eiko Ishibashi, with whom Hamaguchi collaborated on Drive My Car. From the film's opening moments, music blankets the forest imagery, imbuing the scene with a grand, foreboding power. But these meticulously beautiful compositions aren't afterthoughts, they've been embedded in the story and framework from the beginning through collaboration. 

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The film was conceived by Hamaguchi after he was approached to create visuals for one of Ishibashi's live performances in 2021, so it's no surprise that the compositions feel part of the intrinsic fabric of the feature film's effective story. Hamaguchi was reportedly researching the rural village where Ishibashi grew up to create the visuals, and decided to shoot a formal feature during the process. This seamlessness and collaboration intensifies the film's dramatic turns that much more, heightening its message of respect within the natural world.

The film's visual language is rich and foreboding.

Not only is the film a slice of auditory heaven, but it is also a visual feast. Yoshio Kitagawa's sharp and rich cinematography is at once lush and muted, highlighting the natural beauty of the village and its surrounding areas but marring it with a wash of pallid, shadowy light. These angles work with Ishibashi's score to amplify the film's sense of foreboding, cementing its atmospheric tone. Kitagawa's eye feels wholly in tune with Hamaguchi's vision for both the beauty of the natural world and the hovering threat of evil and destruction that surrounds it. 

The central performances of Evil Does Not Exist are the film's foundation.

Last, but certainly not least, Evil Does Not Exist is anchored by a set of fantastic leading performances. Omika does a wonderful job as the film's leading patriarch, so much so that few might believe that this is his first role as an actor. He's worked with Hamaguchi before, but in the second unit as an assistant director as well as production manager. Yet he melts seamlessly into his part, both as a believably caring father and a steward of the natural order. It's hard not to feel the weight of his strong performance, as well as that of Nishikawa, who plays his daughter Hana. 

Credit: NEOPA, Fictive

The young Nishikawa has an almost omnipotence about her character, and she brings that same sense of instinctive ability to her performance. She toes a magically effective line as a harbinger of things to come and a being of free will at the same time, and her role in the story becomes more and more crucial as events progress. Nishikawa is certainly a young actor to watch, and her familial chemistry with Omika is what seals the film's parabolic and important message in stone: that we must respect the world around us like our own. Rounding out the central characters, Ryuji Kosaka and Ayaka Shibutani stand out as Takahashi and Mayuzumi, representatives of the impending development and most unwelcome visitors to the village. 

Evil Does Not Exist is a sobering folk tale of the power of the natural order — and what humans must do to heed it, lest we pay the price. Hamaguchi is undoubtedly back with a strong, well-earned precision in this work, unafraid to show us what we stand to lose.

Evil Does Not Exist opens in theaters May 3.

UPDATE: May. 2, 2024, 1:46 p.m. EDT "Evil Does Not Exist" was reviewed out of its world premiere at the 80th Venice International Film Festival.

It takes guts to attempt an action-packed romantic comedy. For every Romancing The Stone, there's a barrage of forgettable imitators. (See: Argylle. Well, don't see Argylle. It's awful.) 

It's a tricky thing to strike a satisfying balance of thrills and laughs with a love story that gets our hearts (and/or loins) engaged. But David Leitch, the former Brad Pitt stunt double turned director of such gonzo action movies as John Wick, Bullet Train, and Atomic Blonde, doesn't scare easily. And now he's delivered the gonzo gift to cinema that is The Fall Guy. 

Adapted from the 1980s TV series of the same name, this action-comedy centers on one of the unsung heroes of Hollywood: the stuntman (Barbie's Academy Award-nominated Ryan Gosling) who takes all the hits so that the arrogant A-lister (Bullet Train's Aaron Taylor-Johnson) doesn't have to. But don't fret if you aren't familiar with the small-screen inspo. The Fall Guy is making its own fun, thanks to a crackling script from Drew Pearce, and the dazzling chemistry between Gosling and Emily Blunt. 

How does The Fall Guy movie relate to the TV series?  Ryan Gosling is under attack in "The Fall Guy." Credit: Eric Laciste / Universal Pictures

Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a stuntman character originated by Lee Majors in the show created by Glen A. Larson. However, where Majors' hero was moonlighting as a bounty hunter when he wasn't on set, Gosling's version is more a hapless nobody who stumbles into a criminal conspiracy. And it's love that keeps him there. 

There's trouble on the set of Metalstorm, a sci-fi epic/romance that stars the obnoxious Tom Ryder (Johnson) as a daring space cowboy. But when the mercurial movie star goes MIA, his old stunt double is called back into action. Not only is Colt tasked with doing intense stunts to keep the movie's production schedule on track, but the high-strung producer Gail Meyer (Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham) asks him to unearth the missing actor. 

It's not just the movie Colt is trying to save. You see, this is the directorial debut of his former flame, Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt). With his heart on his sleeve, this stuntman throws himself into the fray to make her dreams come true, all in hopes of scoring a second chance at romance. 

Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are perfectly paired in The Fall Guy.  Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt star in "The Fall Guy." Credit: Eric Laciste / Universal Pictures

Crucial to a good action/rom-com is a dynamic where conflict and chemistry collide. You need the stars to click on screen so the audience is invested in their getting together. But they need to be believably pugnacious with each other so the why of not being together is clear. 

Smartly, Blunt and Gosling gave the world a preview of their chemistry at the 96th Annual Academy Awards, where they playfully bickered over the Barbenheimer rivalry. In The Fall Guy, the characters are less openly hostile. Jody favors passive-aggressively dressing down Colt over a megaphone on set, while he pushes back with sheepish flirtations. (Look, he knows what he did.) While this sounds less than romantic, it is nonetheless enchanting. 

There is some suspension of disbelief required, of course, but not in the movie's premise — it's that Gosling is supposed to look like he's not a movie star, while he still basically looks like Ken, albeit with some scruffy facial hair. However, as he did playing Ken or the battered detective in The Nice Guys, Gosling has a looseness to the physicality in his comedy that plays divinely. The stunts here are done by a top-notch stunt team, which the movie's promotional tour is keen to celebrate. But Gosling brings to banter scenes and other comedic moments an ego-free display of mugging, an earnest thumbs-up gesture, and even crying to Taylor Swift's "All Too Well" that establishes Colt as a goofball as much as a tough guy. When Blunt coolly instructs him to drive her to her car — parked just feet away from where they idle — you can see the core sense of humor they have in common. 

After a couple of Quiet Place movies and the sternness of Oppenheimer, it's a delight to see Blunt back in comedy. She's got terrific comedic timing that pairs perfectly with her well-placed hard stare. Her Jody isn't made to be an ambitious bitch in the way of broad '80s movie stereotypes, but she has her moments of playing rough. Yet Jody is chiefly defined by trying to maintain her cool under incredibly stressful circumstances, which makes little moments where she breaks down burst with humor — be it a karaoke jam to Phil Collins or literally grasping at a straw. 

Together, Gosling and Blunt create a could-be couple that's alluring not only for their looks but also their awkwardness. Dumb jokes and fumbling flirtations shrewdly undercut what could be a glossy, unnatural rom-com to make a movie that's endearing and entertaining. 

The Fall Guy is a winsome showbiz comedy.  Ryan Gosling, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and several stuntmen from "The Fall Guy." Credit: Eric Laciste / Universal Pictures

True to his reputation, Leitch provides plenty of outrageous action scenes once again. Some are for the movie-within-the-movie, including a car roll that broke a Guinness World Record. Some are part of Colt's off-set misadventures, which include swordplay, fire fights, daring escapes, and a speedboat chase. 

As the discourse around including stunts in the Oscars rages on, The Fall Guy will definitely be a major talking point for advocates of the category addition. However, the stunt community representation within the film feels a bit thin, being just Colt and his stunt coordinator, played by a jovial Winston Duke. They're a terrifically funny duo, but as the third act leans hard on the concept of community, I wished the broader stunt team were more present to make a big leap land more powerfully.

Winston Duke kicks ass in "The Fall Guy." Credit: Eric Laciste / Universal Pictures

The Fall Guy is about more than stunts, folding in the bonds that form across departments on set, including a horny VFX supervisor (Zara Michales), a too-Method ingenue (Teresa Palmer), and a perturbed personal assistant (Everything Everywhere All at Once's Stephanie Hsu). As a whole, this movie delights in giving a peek behind the scenes to reveal the messy human conflicts (which also make for great on-screen drama), as well as the absurdity inherent in playing pretend for a living. What is never mocked is the dream of making movies. 

Whether she's furious at Colt or frustrated by outrageous obstacles, Jody is driven by making the movie that she's dreamed of her whole life. Colt isn't just dedicated to her but also to her vision, as is much of the supporting cast of characters. And in this, there's an enveloping exhilaration, as if we the viewer are part of this collaboration too. This energetic sense of inclusion welcomes us into the twists, fails, and breakthroughs the characters face in an electrifying way. All of that barrels into a finale that is not just exciting but enthralling. 

The Fall Guy is action/romantic-comedy done right, a rare gem in the crown of this challenging subgenre. 

The Fall Guy opens in theaters May 3. 

UPDATE: May. 2, 2024, 1:04 p.m. EDT "The Fall Guy" was originally reviewed out of SXSW 2024.

Tilman Singer's Cuckoo is a fun midnight genre romp that works despite its goofiest elements. A mountainous horror film reminiscent of The Shining — albeit with far more overt body horror — it follows the travails of a family of four as they take up residence near a fancy lodge in an isolated corner of the German Alps.

When strange sounds emanating from nearby forests begin to have bizarre bodily effects on some of the guests, moody 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer of Euphoria) ends up stumbling upon an ongoing investigation into something both silly and sinister. With its tightly wound atmosphere and an impeccable ensemble that throws everything at the wall, Cuckoo emerges as a largely unique work despite its many familiar elements, thanks in part to its increasingly twisted implications surrounding gender and biology. It's incredibly strange and deviously fun.

What is Cuckoo about?

Before introducing its central characters, Cuckoo's mysterious prologue orients the viewer in a realm of familial and bodily dysfunction. In a rural cottage in the dead of night, silhouettes of an unhappily married husband and wife yelling at one another dovetail into shots of a teenage girl — presumably their daughter — waking up in her bedroom and stepping outside to avoid the unpleasantries. Suddenly, a prolonged screeching somewhere in the distance begins to take hold of her, as she writhes and seemingly begins moving against her will.

For any explanations for these oddities, you'll have to wait well over an hour into the film's mere 102 minutes. In the meantime, Singer crafts an alluring character drama the moment he introduces his central cast. As Luis (Marton Csókás), his wife Beth (Jessica Henwick), and their selectively silent daughter Alma (Mila Lieu) drive their family car up the hillside to their new home on a lush resort, Gretchen — Luis's daughter from a previous marriage — rides behind them in the moving van. This dynamic conveys an immediate sense of disillusionment with the family unit. Where Luis, Beth, and Alma dress in fancy, earthy sweaters and put on polite fronts, Gretchen's loose, baggy clothing and flailing, irritable body language set her apart. She feels like an outsider, rejected by her own clan, and she wants nothing more than to return to her mother's home in the U.S.

Once the family arrives, they're greeted by the resort's owner, Mr. König (Dan Stevens), a cartoonishly seedy sort clearly hiding something twisted beneath his welcoming demeanor. It's as though Stevens had been directed to play Victor Frankenstein by way of Christoph Waltz. His vibes are immediately rancid and uncanny, lacing every exchange between him and Gretchen's family — especially his interest in young Alma — with a sense of leery possibility. It feels like anything can happen in Cuckoo, even before anything actually does.

König eventually finds Gretchen a receptionist job at the lodge nearby, though he gives her strict instructions not to stay too long after dark. Gretchen, being a snotty, unhappy teenager, does exactly as she pleases. But when she bicycles home late one night, she ends up being chased by a shadowy figures only seen in glimpses. Gretchen's pursuer inexplicably appears to be a well-dressed mid-century starlet, "normal" in every way except for her ferocity and her glowing red eyes.

No one seems to believe Gretchen, despite her scars and injuries from the encounter. That is, no one except for local police detective Henry (Jan Bluthardt), who not only takes it upon himself to protect Gretchen, but inexplicably enlists her help in what appears to be an ongoing investigation. Before long, Cuckoo becomes a bizarre buddy-cop movie of sorts, with each scene resulting in a more ghastly injury for Gretchen, akin to Homer Simpson plummeting off a cliff and hitting every branch on the way down. It's a treat to watch, even before the film offers any indication whatsoever about what's going on.

Cuckoo's eerie filmmaking is incredibly effective.

A nestling rejected by her own family, Gretchen becomes the center of a distinctly avian-themed work of sci-fi horror. Not only does König have an affinity for discussing the biology and sociology of specific birds, but the peculiar screeching that seems to rattle Gretchen and her half-sister has a bird-like quality, too. Its arrival is also usually marked by dim, disconnected close-ups of a woman's vibrating chest, as though it were a kind of mating call.

However, even when the film isn't directly confronting this animalistic theme — and its eventual implications about "natural order," which comes up plenty in the dialogue — Singer's roving camera never stops searching empty spaces for a place to land and perch itself. Its slow zooms and push-ins feel mischievous. The film has few (if any) traditional jump scares, because it depends largely on inducing a creeping dread, both visually and thematically, as its tale of conspiracies and experiments unfolds.

Much of the tension Singer builds springs from the doubts and reflections he carefully seeds into his script. From the familial rejection and personal isolation felt by Gretchen to her brief, liberating respite when she meets and secretly falls for a boyishly dressed older lesbian at the resort (Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey's magnetic Ed), the specter of conformity and the confines of nuclear family loom large over every scene. Even Cuckoo's monstrous, red-eyed woman has a distinctly and traditionally feminine appearance, adding to the sense that deep-seated notions of gender are forever biting at Gretchen's heels. Eventually, when the plot's specifics come into view — via some rather clunky exposition — these notions are not only further centered, but become perverted in delightful ways. You've never seen a film make vaginal discharge seem this sinister.

That Schafer is a trans woman only enhances this subtext, even though her character’s identity in this regard goes unmentioned. However, what she brings to the role is much more exceptional than nominal representation, given the amount of emotional legwork involved.

Hunter Schafer delivers an incredible performance.

Cuckoo doesn't always work. It's rife with jagged edges and thuddingly obvious metaphors about the long-standing, deep-seated nature of gendered expectations.. However, what's practically indisputable is Hunter Schafer's arrival as a major movie presence, writing entire treatises on the body and the way it keeps the score, even in her stillness.

Take, for instance, the positioning of her hands at her sides, stiff and motionless except for a few twitchy movements of her fingers. At first glance, it's textbook teenage "awkward," a choice that flirts with self-parody, until its function becomes clear. Gretchen happens to carry a switchblade for her protection, and when she finally swishes it around, the motion of her fingers suddenly makes perfect sense. These movements are mirror images of one another, as though Gretchen were always on guard, always at the ready to defend herself from bodily harm. Schafer brings a sense of paranoia to every frame, as if Gretchen had previously been a victim of some sort of targeted harassment — once again, enhancing the film's queer subtext without uttering it out loud.

Equally noteworthy is the way Schafer navigates the emotions of simple domestic scenes, accepting her father's rejection — and his seeming preference for Alma, his more traditionally feminine daughter — with a sense of resignation, as though it were her lot in life. Her teenage jadedness is always rooted in something deeply, fundamentally human that lives just beneath the surface of her body language, like she's telling the story with her arms, her shoulders, her eyes.

That she goes to some difficult emotional places in addition to this, places that require enormous on-screen vulnerability, is just the cherry on top. It's also what prevents Cuckoo from flying entirely off the rails when it gets too caught up in its own ridiculous lore (which, unfortunately, never reaches the freakish apotheosis it seems to promise). Whatever the film's more overt horrors, whether its chilling atmosphere or its attempts at amusing moral and visceral obscenities, they're all bound by Schafer's increasing physical and emotional despondency. She doesn't just save the movie. She is the movie, making it all the more remarkable to watch.

Cuckoo opens in theaters May 3.

UPDATE: May. 2, 2024, 1:24 p.m. EDT "Cuckoo" was originally reviewed out of the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival.

The mysterious allure of stumbling upon some unknown oddity on late-night cable is recreated (and repurposed, to devastating effect) in Jane Schoenbrun's wildly abstract, masterfully accomplished I Saw the TV Glow. The A24 production is a remarkable follow-up and spiritual companion to Schoenbrun's Sundance emo-horror breakout We're All Going to the World's Fair, a hazy, low-budget indie from 2022 told through late-night vlogs and video chats. The latter was their narrative feature debut, and it captured an online obsession with urban myth that the writer/director used as a vessel for a tale of physical discomfort and social unbelonging. It created, through its subtext and aesthetic approach, a mood comprising the constant, oppressive white noise of gender dysphoria.

I Saw the TV Glow picks up that baton and charges headfirst through the screen. It captures the creeping nostalgia of '90s children's and young adult television, as seen through the eyes of two deeply isolated teenagers on arduous, dreamlike journeys of self-discovery. Along the way, the worlds of memory and fiction blur beyond recognition, as the boundary between the characters' distant observations and intimate bodily experiences shatters completely. The result is a new queer and transgender classic. 

SEE ALSO: The 28 best queer horror movies now streaming

While it's likely to be divisive given its esoteric nature, I Saw the TV Glow proves to be an enrapturing experience if you're on its wavelength. It's one of the most overpowering and uniquely despondent works of avant-garde horror to emerge from the American indie scene in several years, making it quite handily the most artistically complete, shatteringly personal movie to play at Sundance this year.

What is I Saw the TV Glow about?

Told initially through childhood memories (and eventually, via first-person recollections delivered to the camera, which hop and skip through time), I Saw the TV Glow provides no temporal anchor for its protagonist, Owen (Justice Smith), a quiet, soft-spoken suburban boy with a doting mother (Danielle Deadwyler) and stern-but-silent father (Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst). Played as a seventh grader by Ian Foreman, Owen stumbles across the quiet, lonely, self-professed lesbian Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine) as she reads the episode guide for her favorite TV show on the floor of their school gymnasium, on the night of 1996 U.S. Presidential election.The Pink Opaque (named for an album by shoegaze pioneers Cocteau Twins) is a low-budget YA action-fantasy that soon becomes Owen's obsession too.

Each physical space during this introduction — and during the film's apparent framing device, which is comprised of an older Owen reminiscing about this encounter by campfire — comes wrapped in an eerie hum, accompanied by lights that always seem to flicker. Even when old CRT television sets aren't part of the mise-en-scène, they're made to feel ever-present, as though each darkened space were illuminated by the specter of TV, or perhaps its memory.

Maddy, who wears oversized, boyish clothes and has visible hints of peach fuzz on her upper lip, seems initially closed off to Owen's friendly advances, though she eventually reciprocates upon noticing his interest in the series. The Pink Opaque is the only thing that makes her eyes light up, and over the following years in high school, she leaves Owen taped episodes with hand-written descriptions (his parents won't let him stay up past the show's 10:30 p.m. air time). 

The atmospheric Buffy-esque series centers on a pair of teenage crime fighters, the carefree Isabel (Helena Howard, Madeline's Madeline) and the tomboyish Tara (Lindsey Jordan, aka indie rocker Snail Mail), who communicate with each other psychically. Together, they battle the show's lunar-themed, pointedly named villain Mr. Melancholy. As the years go by, strange, surreal happenings lead to questions about the nature of this series, whether it's fictional at all, and what mystifying connection Owen and Maddy have to it, since it seems to hypnotize them every time they watch it.

However, these broad strokes are a mere sliver of the bigger picture, a phantasmagorical tapestry laced with static and sadness for which the plot is merely an amoebic, shapeless vessel. It's a film that lives and breathes through its images and sounds, which come crashing together to create an ethereal collage of feeling cut off from the world, and dissociated from one's own self — physically, mentally, spiritually — en route to some of the most rousing and disturbing emotional crescendos in recent memory.

I Saw the TV Glow is a major audio-visual triumph. Credit: A24

Schoenbrun, through their commanding use of framing and movement, creates a winding, melodic tunnel for Owen to traverse, and for us to follow him down. There is perhaps no scene more exemplary of this than a lengthy, unbroken shot following Owen down a high school hallway as Maddy's show notes appear on screen in shiny, pink cursive, while an enveloping electronic track — one of many originals Schoenbrun commissioned for the film — consumes the entire soundscape, echoing endlessly. Owen's solitude is, in this way, immediately contrasted with Maddy's intimate, welcoming messages, as though she were sharing a part of herself with him from a distance. But the scene also becomes subsumed by oppressive noise, as though Owen were being robbed of even a single moment of peace or clarity.

The film's surreal vignettes pull from wistful millennial-tween nostalgia, from the astonishment of witnessing planetarium projections for the first time, to the awe-inspiring wonder of being encased in the airy dome of rainbow-colored playground parachute. But the more Owen and Maddy become absorbed by the story of The Pink Opaque, the more the show's aesthetic approach begins to blur with real life, and with Owen's recollections. Clips from the show are presented in a narrow, 4:3 aspect ratio, and with all the mauve and magnetic flaws of something recorded on withered VHS tapes. These segments are so true to the appearance of mid-'90s media that you'd be forgiven for thinking The Pink Opaque was a real show that Schoenbrun had dug up in some dusty archive.

The rest of the film has the appearance of modern "prestige horror," with its wide frame, warm tones, and impeccably high contrast that makes the world feel obscured by shadow. However, these respective aesthetic fabrics occasionally switch places, as though The Pink Opaque were reality — or vice versa, as though Owen and Maddy's life had been taped on a VCR. These inversions hint at something amiss and entangled in the ether. As the years go by, they feel betrayed by their childhood memories, until thoughts of escaping — their town, their bodies, their reality — consume their every waking thought.

I Saw the TV Glow isn't so much a transgender allegory as it is a pure expression of transness in early youth, unfolding at a time and place where words fail, and stories become a medium for not just entertainment but projection, reflection and self-identification. It plays, at times, like a hyper-charged (but deeply considered) suburban, transgender translation of Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," the essay that popularized this multifaceted idea of the cinematic gaze. 

This expression, of television as an object of identification, goes hand-in-hand with the movie's profound sense of loneliness, which invades every carefully composed frame — usually, images of characters at a distance, on their own, hunched up in corners — and every vivacious musical interlude. Some of these are simply live band performances at dingy venues, led by femme and queer musicians trying to express some lurking part of their experience. One impactful scene, intercut with a revelatory conversation between Owen and Maddy, is just a closeup of King Woman's Kristina Esfandiari screaming for minutes at a time during a music performance, as if trying to expel some wordless, formless embodiment of lifelong isolation.

The movie's original music, composed by Alex G, effectively captures its story in microcosm, appearing usually during hazy scenes of entranced characters lit by the TV's pink and purple shimmer. These fleeting moments appear to be the closest Owen will come to understanding something fundamental about himself, at least until he finds a way to break free of his physical, social, and emotional constraints.

Nothing tangible tethers Owen and Maddy to their small town, but demanding tangibility from a film like I Saw the TV Glow is to fundamentally misunderstand not only the kind of movie it is but the intangible nature of the experiences it unearths. It's the kind of film that, if it speaks to you, is likely to keep you on the verge of tears for all of its 100 minutes, gasping anxiously for breath by the end, feeling like something from deep within you is about to burst forth and see the sun for the first time. And while its success is largely attributable to Schoenbrun's daring aesthetic introspections as a nonbinary artist, it equally owes its emotional impact to the way they unearth their characters through performance.

Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine deliver haunting, pained performances.

As a biracial boy in a mostly white town, and a queer, gender-nonconforming teen who uses she/her pronouns, Owen and Maddy make for a fascinating pair of suburban outsiders. Smith and Lundy-Paige (who is nonbinary) craft two of the most fully formed young characters in recent American cinema — at least since Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman in Licorice Pizza — and they accomplish this by walking a fine and monumentally difficult line.

They're tasked with not only breaking the fourth wall while maintaining the film's illusory nature, but also with diving deep into specific high school "types" that could so easily tip over into self-parody if they aren't modulated correctly. Smith's anguished conception of Owen — while often perplexed and self-effacing — has a doe-eyed quality that, when coupled with a voice pitched-up nearly to the point of falsetto, pushes its way to the limits of "awkwardness" in the public consciousness. And yet, Smith engenders sympathy through his wayward naïveté. He speaks as though every statement were a question, creating a constant sense of yearning — of searching.

Maddy, on the other hand, seems to know something Owen does not. She appears to hold hints of some sacred knowledge, the details of which she may not be fully certain either, though she's always one step closer than Owen to a sense of full, luminous, and terrifying discovery. Lundy-Paige's darting, unblinking eyes dance with the camera, creating a sense of mystery bordering on intentional caricature (as though they were playing the dark-haired, bad boy character Sternum on Moody's Point, a Dawson's Creek send-up on the late '90s Nickelodeon series The Amanda Show). But the more the film goes on, the more natural this heightened performance begins to feel, because of the way Lundy-Paige unfurls Maddy's fears and insecurities, and the reasons for her sardonic, monotone delivery.

Familiar cultural reference points are unavoidable in I Saw the TV Glow; its own '90s media is tongue-in-cheek, and the film can be wryly funny as it unpacks the method to its madness. But the more Lundy-Paige sticks with their approach, the more they call the very nature of their performance into question. Maddy is "real," in the sense that she has presence and corporeal form, but what "real" even constitutes in a media feedback loop — a world of TV teens based on real teens who find identity in fictional form — can be difficult to pin down.

Schoenbrun creates and simultaneously demolishes teenage television archetypes by having their actors lean into familiar cultural shorthands for "awkwardness" — the anxious, self–loathing nerd, and the mean, performative emo girl — until some hidden element of the characters' reality were unlocked and made wholly unavoidable by the camera's gaze. If one were to boil it down to literal terms, given the movie's textual presentation and the characters' evolving costume choices, it isn't hard to surmise that Maddy is further along her queer journey of self-discovery, while Owen tags behind. But to put it so literally, using the language of gradients and spectrums, is to reduce the idea of gender to words and numbers. I Saw the TV Glow, on the other hand, reintroduces it to us using an entirely new cinematic lexicon.

Each time the film filters wordless experiences and self-reflections through familiar linguistic or physical contexts, it's like antimatter popping into existence before being obliterated by matter all around it, thanks to Smith and Lundy-Paige's devastating, delicate work. Their performances are both deeply felt and harrowingly embodied. Maddy delivers several lengthy monologues that verge on performance art, as she tries to explain the movie's strange, surreal happenings to Owen, and to the viewer. But the whole time, her attempts to rationalize her attraction to genre and lore feel as though she’s on the verge of self-discovery — as though she were about to break through the screen and tell us some liberating secret she learned about herself.

Owen, meanwhile, grows increasingly oppressed by the world around him — the four walls of his home, his isolation at school and work, his father's stoic, masculine expectations — until The Pink Opaque becomes his portal to feeling something different, or anything at all. But when the series' strange magic begins to infiltrate his surroundings, he's violently yanked away from his TV at one point (by Durst, who's terrifying in his imposing silence), causing Smith to let out a bone-chilling wail, just about comprehensible in words: "THIS ISN'T MY HOME."

Few scenes this year are likely to be as upsetting or impactful, but this is also the very essence of I Saw the TV Glow. It's an attempt to place years of confusing, festering emotions surrounding unbelonging into something that has shape or form — something that makes sense — but emerges as a desperate, primal scream, exploding with color and shadow. The film is the disturbing sum of its lingering sensations that burrow their way beneath your skin, refusing to leave even after you've left the theater, or once you've cried yourself to sleep. But at the same time, its totality — the sheer fact of its existence, as an unbridled, uninhibited expression of the self — is exuberant and overwhelming. 

I Saw the TV Glow opens in theaters May 3.

UPDATE: May. 2, 2024, 1:15 p.m. EDT "I Saw the TV Glow" was originally reviewed out of Sundance 2024.

Tesla might be working on its own version of Siri.

Tesla hacker @greentheonly shared the news (via Teslarati) after finding evidence for it in Tesla's upcoming 2024.14.3 update. Posting on Wednesday, they claim they found the "beginning of what looks like 'tesla voice assistant' that would be activated by a wakeword," meaning the vehicle would always be listening for it. Yes, just like Apple's "Hey Siri."

Tweet may have been deleted

According to the leaker, the new voice assistant would be narrated by the "Jenny Neutral" voice by Microsoft, though there's no word on what it might be called. We also know nothing about the assistant's features.

Tesla vehicles already have voice controls, activated by pressing the right scroll button on the steering wheel, but there's no way to activate those via a spoken keyword, and the functionality is limited to fairly simple commands.

Tesla already announced a slew of new features that are coming to its cars via an upcoming "spring update," including a revamped UI, a hands-free trunk opening functionality, automatic shifting, and the ability to preview Sentry Mode recordings on the phone.

SEE ALSO: Tesla Model 3 Performance is here. Here are 5 things that make it great, and 3 drawbacks.

But @greentheonly shared a few more features that haven't been officially announced by Tesla. These include support for Amazon Music, more options for the Driver Profiles, including more restricted profiles than what's currently available, and new Track Mode windows with new settings.

Tweet may have been deleted

Finally, they claim that two new "Wishbone" wheel designs will become available for the new Model 3, in 19 and 20-inch sizes.

We don't know when the new features will become available, but Tesla did call this a "spring" update, so it should happen fairly soon.

This content originally appeared on Mashable for a US audience and has been adapted for the UK audience.

Moving to a new area or working at a new job where you don't know anybody can be seriously depressing, especially if you're already introverted as it is. What are you supposed to do? Go sit at the bar by yourself? And talk to strangers? No thanks.

Then comes the lightbulb idea: You can make friends online. If online dating is so popular and successful, there's no way that there aren't a few legit sites where you can make adult friends in your area with similar interests. After a quick search, AdultFriendFinder sounds like a good place to start.

So you're on your lunch break at work, type in the URL, and the next thing you know, you're frantically closing the tab and hoping nobody walked behind you for that split second. AdultFriendFinder is not what it sounds like.

What is AdultFriendFinder?

AdultFriendFinder is one of the most well-known sites for finding quick sexual encounters, regular hookups, and literally anything else even remotely related to sex. The rowdy feed of matches, jumble of explicit photos, and stimulating calls-to-action offering all types of sex makes it heaven for anyone looking for a good time with no filter — and hell for someone who wouldn't be caught dead clicking on a "There are hot singles in your area" ad.

Even if you're not using it for real sex, it's always nice to have spank bank material in your back pocket. During the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, sexting, nudes, and Pornhub searches all saw a spike thanks to the vast number of people who started social distancing at home. Those who didn't want to risk quarantine sex or weren't finding people on their level of horniness on Tinder were pretty much guaranteed to get their rocks off somehow via AdultFriendFinder.

On AFF, you can find someone to sext via messaging or video (and plan to get it on IRL, if that's what you're looking for), watch live streams, or join niche group chats. Is it worth £15-something per month? Depends on how much fishy content you're willing to overlook for a juicy sexting session.

We reached out to Kalyn Sanders, a business development executive at Friend Finder Networks, for updated AFF demographics. Right up there with Tinder's monthly flock, AdultFriendFinder snags the attention of over 55 million visits around the world per month, on average. To whet your appetite upon signup, the main landing page flashes a few statistics, including "98,897,765 hot photos" and "3,375,049 connections," but we're not exactly sure what that means. Most traffic originates from the United States, followed by visitors from the United Kingdom and Canada.

Specifics on the demographic that most people care about — the gender ratio — can be hard to track down. Sanders told us that "there's a two to one ratio of single men versus categories like single women, couples, and groups." The split between men and women is an expected one for a lot of hookup-centric sites. At the end of the day, it's a paradise for straight men, hit-or-miss for straight women and LGBTQ men, and likely an actual hellscape for LGBTQ women.

AFF lets you identify as and search for a man, woman, a couple, or trans. Despite trying to be a sex-positive site with blog posts, groups, a sex academy, and more, its language for the LGBTQ community has historically been anything but inclusive or positive. Previously, the AFF sign-up page listed "TG/TV/TS" as the "trans" gender selection — we'll let you infer what those stand for. Though, we will admit, this language has improved recently with more gender options that are appropriately labeled.

Can you find a serious relationship on AdultFriendFinder?

If you're 100% over being grilled with relationship questions on traditional dating sites like EliteSingles and eharmony, AdultFriendFinder is your golden ticket to instant communication. Registering takes literally 30 seconds — they require nothing from you aside from an email address, a username, a password, and an introduction. Though they don't require a bio or a picture, it's probably best to add a few to up your chances for messages and flirtation, especially if you're looking for something super specific, as you're more likely to be contacted by people looking for the same thing.

After you register, you'll see that there are loads of options to completely personalise your account (way more than we expected from a hookup site, to be honest). The more you fill out, the more attractive your profile will be to new viewers. There are the basic physical appearance questions about eye and hair colour, plus more intimate details.

There's also a personality test that seemed pretty close to something you'd see on Match or eharmony, and we guess it's comforting to know that some people on here care about what's on the inside as well.

One of the funniest forms was the "Purity Test," featuring 100 hilariously-worded questions about how far you're willing to go sexually. It felt like the sexy 20 questions game that you'd play with your middle school crush when neither of you knew how to flirt, but we guess this information is pertinent when you're on a site that's all about sex.

There's no real matching strategy other than the basic info on physical appearances, so don't get your hopes up when it comes to finding a lasting connection or kindred soul — but hey, if you're on the site for the same reasons most other people are, that stuff won't really matter anyway.

How do you find a match on AdultFriendFinder?

Like a traditional dating site, AdultFriendFinderAdultFriendFinder gives you a collage of potential matches at the top of your personal home page. These will be random right after you sign up, but you can opt to update your preferences to refine your results: Choose your preferred gender(s), age range, location and mile radius, race, sexual orientation, body type, and marital status. They'll let you know who's online when you are, which matches are closest to you, new people who liked or messaged you, and all of that good stuff.

AdultFriendFinder is basically like a PornHub that you can interact with. We probably don't have to say this, but AdultFriendFinder is NSFW and not safe to be on while kids are in the room. Some videos will be blurred out and read "Naughty video" until you upgrade to a Gold Membership.

The message section is set up similarly to a Gmail account, and you can mark things as read or important just as you would on a real email. How professional. You'll also receive messages instantly, which is definitely a confidence boost even though you know they're probably just looking for one thing.

You can tell who took the time to look at your profile and who is sending the same thing to everyone, but it's nice to see that there is a range. Unlike more traditional dating sites, these people don't need to talk and get to know you for months before meeting. If you're tired of things moving too slowly or need a change of pace, it's pretty awesome to know you can immediately make plans for each night of the week.

What does AdultFriendFinder get right?

Once you get past the in-your-face sexplosion of naked profile pictures, horny AIM-era profile names, and explicit videos, there are actually an impressive number of resources to help make your experience as satisfying as possible. Some will cost money even outside of the paid subscription, which is kinda dumb.

Aside from the NSFW content, the website is relatively straightforward (albeit ugly). Every feature is advertised in big letters, notifications are displayed clearly with labels, and you don't really have to click around to find anything. This makes it super accessible for users of all ages, even those who aren't tech-savvy and can't even figure out Facebook. Buttons are all over the place, but you figure it out after messing around for a few minutes.

Activities range from direct messaging, sending virtual gifts, watching live videos of people in your feed, joining adult chat rooms that can get very niche, or entering photo contests.

Think of AdultFriendFinder as the dating site version of New York City — it never sleeps. You'll find people who work the regular 9-5, people who work the night shift, and people in other time zones, so it's nearly impossible to log on and not have a lot of people to talk to. You know, like that booty call who's always awake when you text them.

Or at least that used to be the case... 10 years ago. What was once a hot site that a few Reddit users were quick to hype up is now one of the dating sites that Reddit users can't help but diss — in the few instances that AFF is even being discussed at all. The Reddit community is diverse and open-minded, and if a dating site exists, someone on Reddit has used it and has an opinion on it. It's notable that, on a site where online dating is such a mammoth topic of discussion, that AdultFriendFinder has rarely been mentioned since the early 2010s. When an innocent soul does ask if it's legit, AFF usually gets dragged for sketchy pricing and being ridden with bots.

Is AdultFriendFinder free?

As previously mentioned, you can do a lot on the site without paying a penny: You can message people, reply to emails, and visit most profiles and chat rooms. You know, all of the basic stuff. But with just a few clicks AdultFriendFinder can send you deep down the rabbit hole, and a lot of that juicier hidden content can only be unlocked with a paid membership (called the Gold membership) or by earning points.

Points are AdultFriendFinder's non-monetary currency. If you're a free member, you'll have to earn points through on-site activity to unlock stuff that's exclusive to paying members. It's kind of like a game, with points acting like money at the strip club. You can "tip" updates, photos, or videos from a member that you like, buy "bling" (which is basically a badge that makes you look cooler), watch racy videos that are usually blurred out or access other exclusive site content, or "buy" a Gold membership for a month. The more points you have, the more you get out of the site.

But all of that stuff takes a really long time, and is honestly just a hassle. If you want access to all those features, just pay for a Gold membership and upgrade.

If you're a guy looking for girls, we might suggest getting a Gold membership as the standard. While researching on Reddit, we found a few girls who said they won't meet a guy unless he's a Gold member. A Gold membership puts a little bit more credibility behind someone's profile and makes the entire encounter a little less threatening. It's easier to believe that someone's a real person if they're a paying, active member of the site, and it's nice to know that they're taking it slightly seriously. Plus, if you see a picture or profile that looks like it's five years old, it really might be — there are a ton of non-active profiles from old members and escorts still lingering on the site.

If you find yourself spending more quality time on the site than you expected, becoming a paid member is definitely something to consider. Once you're paying, you basically become royalty on the site: Your profile will appear way higher in searches, you can use the most advanced searches, and you can read emails and message to your heart's content (messages and emails are limited with a free account).

A Gold membership can unlock everything that the site has to offer, including unlimited messaging, profiles with private photo albums, and video profiles that are only available for Gold members as well. A general rule is that increased involvement and payment on your end generally equals more success on the website, as your constant activity and heightened search-ability makes it way easier for others to find you. Plus, you'll just get bored with the free features after a while.

Like every other dating site, prices for a Gold membership get cheaper the longer your subscription is: one month is £25.08/month, three months is £16.71/month, and one year is £11.27/month.

Who should try AdultFriendFinder?

This is pretty obvious, but AdultFriendFinder is ace for people who want a quick hookup, people who are in a sexual rut, people who are tired of porn, and people who find sites like eharmony to be lame. Those long compatibility tests can be exhausting, and sometimes you just wanna skip the small talk and have sex. It's gonna get kinky out there, and that's great for those who are dying to blow off steam and are in need of someone who will respond well to a sexy message. It also might be a good place for people who are freshly out of a breakup and in need of attention.

Did we mention it's also a huge confidence boost? People are so active on this site, it's impossible not to feel adored. Just seeing the notifications of users wanting to talk to you will make your heart flutter, and you'll start to loosen up. Even if you're rejected a few times, you'll learn which opening lines and flirty comments work and which don't, making you a smoother operator.

AdultFriendFinder's pro-sex, judgment-free environment means it's open to everyone and highly inclusive, no matter your gender identity or sexual orientation. The variety of people on this thing is so massive that it's nearly impossible to not to meet someone.

As with all dating sites, catfishing is a big buzzkill. Your chances of being pursued are way higher if you have a lot of pictures of the same person (AKA you), videos, and a genuine profile that lets people know they're not dealing with something sketchy. Even if you've had bad luck with online dating in the past, AdultFriendFinder is the place to 100% be yourself.

The site may look like an ad for a strip club, but don't judge a dating site by its cover. If you're willing to look past the questionable design choices, AdultFriendFinder can seriously expand your sexual horizons and introduce you to individuals you never would have met otherwise.

Who should avoid AdultFriendFinder?

You know those warnings that thrill rides at amusement parks are required to put up that tell people who get dizzy easily or have heart problems to not get on the ride? AdultFriendFinder could use something like that. This site is not for the faint of heart — if you're a cynic, conservative by any means, or get sketched out easily, you're probably going to hate it. If you appreciate a well-crafted, aesthetically pleasing website that feels safe — no matter how badly you want to have sex — then this dating site is probably not for you. Nothing is left to the imagination here, and it's definitely not going to be everyone's cup of tea. You have got to be open minded.

AdultFriendFinder is not the place to be if you're trying to make friends, unless "with benefits" is tacked onto the end. Every inch of the site screams "this website is used to have sex," and you should really listen to that. You might get a date out of it, but don't expect the person to introduce you to their parents.

But this isn't to say that meaningful connections or finding a genuine adult friend (get it?) is impossible. There is always the chance of a pure friendship, particularly between two like-minded individuals.

What could AdultFriendFinder do better?

The entire website looks like an ad about hot MILFs that pops up when you're illegally streaming a movie. Seriously, it's bad. Even though the website is technically legit, the pictures, word choice, and exclamation points everywhere scream "scam." No, AdultFriendFinder, "98,897,765 Hot Photos" is not the way to make potential new users trust you.

We're not knocking a quick hookup or no-strings-attached relations. This isn't about morals. Genitals are quite literally in your face from the moment you make an account, and that's just not cute. There are chiller ways to go about insinuating that this is a hookup website without feeling like you're trapped in a sex dungeon with strangers.

It's difficult to get past the fact that the entire site looks like it's about to invite five viruses to your computer. We're talking terrible graphics that look like they were made on Microsoft Paint and pictures of women who look like they're from Pornhub in 2007. Reddit user Snoo53279 summed it up in a comment from July 2020: "The people on AFF are definitely real, but there is a huge smattering of bots that also get in the way so it can be a bit of a PITA to use." If they're not bots, they could be men posing as a couple to seem less threatening.

The parade of women on the landing page is questionable for two reasons. This shouldn't even need to be clarified, but not everyone is looking for a woman. At the least, the advertising just isn't inclusive — but this crosses into fetishisation territory. The cherry on top is that the women in the photos (unsurprisingly) probably aren't even members on the site, according to a disclaimer at the bottom of the landing page.

AdultFriendFinder's overall outdated vibe goes past an aesthetic annoyance — it's downright problematic at times. The "TS/TV/TGs" part of sign-up is nearly unforgivable, and we'd be scared to see some of the related rhetoric that AFF users feel comfortable spewing. Without even a dash of social awareness, it's hard to see how anyone who's not an out-of-touch straight cis man would feel comfortable on this site.

Attempting to navigate the shoddy design might just be enough to smother your horniness. Three main issues can make the site borderline unusable: It looks shady as hell, an alarming portion of the user base is made up of bots and spam accounts, and the user interface itself is outdated and rife with bugs.

Other Reddit users mention that the desktop web version won't even load for them at random times — an especially frustrating roadblock for people who want to end their membership and stop monthly charges. A solution to the laggy web version might be to clear your cache or use the smartphone app instead, but your experience probably won't get better there. AFF's mobile page doesn't even mention an Android app, and the link to the iPhone app brings up a "not available" pop-up in the App Store. For a site that claims to have over 50 million visitors each month, the lack of accessibility to a smartphone app is just plain odd — especially in 2021.

Adding to the sketchiness, a network hack in 2016 exposed around 412 million accounts, including "deleted" accounts that weren't actually deleted from the database. If this is enough reason for you to fall back on Tinder for finding a friend with benefits, we don't blame you. Signing up with a burner email and avoiding using your real name as a username are wise moves (just pick a naughty word and add 69 to the end, maybe), though keeping your personal information private is hard when credit cards are involved.

In 2007, AFF was involved in a lawsuit with the FTC over allegations that the site used malware to send explicit pop-up ads to computers owned by people who hadn't signed up for the service. Though we haven't seen reports like this recently, so we're hoping those ridiculous ads you see are at least confined to people who actually use the site.

What is the best alternative to AdultFriendFinder?

Surprisingly, AdultFriendFinder is one of the more tame hookup sites out there. While other hookup sites have names like Swing Towns and Instabang.com, AdultFriendFinder is probably the safest in terms of your Google search history. Most have the same general idea, which is to find sexual partners, have cyber sex, etc, but with names like those, you do start to question the authenticity. AdultFriendFinder is one of the biggest players in the world of legitimate adult dating/hookup sites and boasts a way larger and more diverse audience than a lot of these newer sites.

Horny Matches is one newer dating site that could be starting to slide in, but it hasn't stolen AdultFriendFinder's thunder just yet, perhaps due to its dodgy name. It does have its advantages, though. Horny Matches' first advantage is just that it's more modern and looks cleaner. The title is more obvious, but the main page encourages "taking the first step" rather than mentioning the words "horny" and "sex" multiple times. The audience isn't nearly as large as AdultFriendFinder, though, and most people will take more options and a less over an aesthetically pleasing app.

Is AdultFriendFinder right for you?

AdultFriendFinder is possibly the easiest, most low pressure way to find a friends-with-benefits situation without insulting anyone. Everyone is pretty much there for the same reason — and though it'll feel pretty unorthodox if you've only ever used to Tinder to scope this type of thing out, AFF's blunt advertising at least means you won't have to explain that you're not looking for a relationship. It's niche-friendly, well-populated, and has a lot of interactive outlets to indulge your primal urges.

But that freedom comes with a price — the price being feeling like one of those people who falls for the ads that pop up before a free Pornhub video. It's not that a site dedicated to sex and sexting is inherently scammy — it's that AdultFriendFinder drowns you with explicit photos on profiles who might not even be real people while asking you to pay for a subscription with every click. Unfortunately, no matter how in the mood you are, some people aren't cut out for the nothing-left-to-the-imagination approach with grammar mistakes all over the place. It wants to be sex-positive so badly, but the way sign-up talks about the trans community is the furthest thing from that.

The functionality and safety of the site and the mobile app aren't where they need to be in 2021. If security measures were tightened, graphics and photos were cleaned up to feel more relevant, and decision-makers behind the scenes were given a lesson in inclusivity and pronouns/identities, AdultFriendFinder could be a handy tool to find attachment-free hookups and connect with a community that's down for anything.

If you're brave enough to jump into the action, you can register for AdultFriendFinder. Good luck out there — and don't try this at work.

Opens in a new window Credit: AdultFriendFinder AdultFriendFinder Get Deal

Collecting all your favourite snacks and drinks, surrounding yourself with comfortable cushions and blankets, and then spending hours in front of a screen can be a truly therapeutic experience. Unfortunately, there is one big problem with this hobby: There is a limited amount of content out there to keep you entertained.

We are a greedy bunch, and regular streamers can quickly get to a point where it feels like there's nothing left to watch. What are you supposed to do then? Don't panic, because there is a simple solution to this frustrating issue.

If you've reached this point of streaming shortage, you should consider investing in a VPN.

What is a VPN?

VPNs are security tools that provide protection for your information by creating a private network that hides your real IP address (digital location). All of your activity is untraceable and secure, because all of your online traffic passes through an encrypted tunnel. Nobody can see into the tunnel, and everything inside the tunnel is protected against online threats like hackers, viruses, and malware.

SEE ALSO: 30 best movies on Netflix to stream right now

The act of hiding your real IP address is what can trick leading streaming sites into thinking you are based in another country.

Do you need a VPN?

VPNs are used to provide protection for your sensitive information, which is obviously super important. This isn't the only reason VPNs are so popular though, because these tools can be also be used to watch content that is normally blocked in your location.

By hiding your real IP address and connecting you to a server in another country, you can watch all your favourite content from that location. For example, you could watch all the extra films and shows on American Netflix that are not usually accessible outside of the U.S. There is so much content out there that can be accessed with the help of a VPN.

Everyone is in need of something that can bypass geo-restrictions to access all of this blocked entertainment, and that something is a VPN. These services are keys to the online world, granting you access to more of the shows and films you love.

How to unblock U.S. Netflix

If you think accessing American Netflix is going to be difficult with a VPN, think again. It's actually a really simple process that absolutely everyone can understand:

1. Sign up to a streaming-friendly VPN (like ExpressVPN)

2. Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)

3. Open up the app and connect to a server in the U.S.

4. Visit Netflix to watch movies and shows from the U.S. content library

If you're worried that this whole thing sounds a bit illegal, then maybe we can reassure you. It's currently legal to watch Netflix while using a VPN, although we should point out that Netflix states in its terms of service that it may restrict your account without compensation or notice if you are engaged in "improper" use. We're not entirely sure what that means, but consider yourself warned.

We should make it very clear that you still need to be subscribed to Netflix for this trick to work. A VPN is not going to grant access to the streaming site for free. A VPN provides access to more libraries from around the world, once you're subscribed.

Should you use free VPNs?

There are plenty of free versions and free trials of VPNs, so why would you ever consider paying for a service? As with most things in life, you get what you pay for with VPNs.

There is always a catch with free versions, and it's normally in the form of limited data usage. These plans will be just fine if you're just an occasional user, but if you're going to be streaming or downloading anything, this isn't going to work. Free trials are different as come with everything you get in a paid plan, but obviously they don't tend to last very long. Trials are great for testing out a service before committing, but this isn't a long-term solution.

To gain access to advanced security features without limitations on usage, you generally need to pay up. That being said, services like ProtonVPN offer an impressive set of features for free. However, you might have trouble streaming Netflix with this free version.

What is the best VPN for Netflix?

There are a lot of VPN services out there that can effectively unblock American Netflix, but which is the best? There are plenty of strong options for you to consider, but we wouldn't want you wasting your time checking everything out. To save you time, we've handpicked your best options. Each service has a different set of features that will suit some users better than others, and it's all about finding something that works for you.

ExpressVPN is at the top of this list because it combines essential features with impressive results, but it isn’t the only option available to you. We have lined up all the best VPNs for unblocking Netflix, with something for everyone on this list. We've highlighted the best deals on the likes of Surfshark, PureVPN, CyberGhost VPN, and NordVPN.

These are the best VPNs for Netflix in 2024.

Free Comic Book Day is back this weekend, offering a slew of free comics for nerds young and old. This year the annual event falls on May 4, which is also a significant day for Star Wars fans. And yes, there will be a couple of free Star Wars comics.

Taking place this Saturday, Free Comic Book Day is an annual event during which comic book shops give free comics to anyone who requests them. However, this doesn't mean you can just wander around picking whatever you fancy off the shelves without paying.

Here's how to make the most out of your Free Comic Book Day, as well as all the free comics on offer.

How does Free Comic Book Day work? Credit: Free Comic Book Day

As glorious and chaotic as a free-for-all comic book Supermarket Sweep would be, that isn't how Free Comic Book Day works. There's actually a set list of comics that participating comic book stores will give to visitors free of charge. These comics are printed specifically for Free Comic Book Day, and contain a mix of original stories, reprints of previously published stories, and previews of upcoming releases.

Fortunately, you're unlikely to get confused and accidentally abscond with a non-free comic. Free Comic Book Day comics are typically distributed by a staff member upon request, and are easily identifiable by the Free Comic Book Day logo on their covers. These logos also indicate the comic's age rating: Green is suitable for all ages, blue is for teens or up, and red is for mature audiences only.

Most of the free comics are categorised as either Gold Comics or Silver Comics as well, typically depending on how popular those titles are expected to be.

SEE ALSO: Netflix's 'Dead Boy Detectives' trailer brings Neil Gaiman's paranormal comics to life

You won't be able to grab all of the comics on offer, though. Though the exact number of free comics you can pick up will depend on your comic book shop's individual policy, it's likely that you'll be restricted to just a few. There may also be further restrictions according to the comics' categorisation — you might be allowed two Silver comics and one Gold, for example.

Such restrictions are put in place so that comic shops aren't wiped out by early birds, and everyone gets the chance to grab some loot. Still, it's a good idea to show up early if you have your heart set on a specific comic.

Where is my nearest comic book store?

Fortunately, it's incredibly easy to find comic book stores near you. The Free Comic Book Day website features a handy store locator to help — just enter your zip code to get a list of shops in your area. The website also indicates which comic shops are participating in the event, as well as whether they have special events on.

Even in the unlikely event that none of the free comics appeal to you, it may still be worth making a trip to your local store. Many comic shops offer other freebies or discounts on Free Comic Book Day as well.

What are the comic books available on Free Comic Book Day 2024?

There are almost 50 free comics available this Free Comic Book Day, so it's a good idea to work through your choice paralysis before the big event.

Gold Comics Credit: Mashable composite: Dark Horse Comics; Papercutz; Marvel Comics; Dynamite

All Ages

• Disney's Encanto and Turning Red: The New Adventures (Preview)

• Pokémon Adventures Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire / Splatoon 3 (Preview)

• Unicorn Crush (Preview)

• Witches of Brooklyn (Original)

Teen (or Teen+)

• Blood Hunt / X-Men (Original)

• Energon Universe Special (Original)

• Hellboy / Stranger Things (Original)

• Jonny Quest (Preview)

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Original)

• The Worlds of James Tynion IV (Reprint)

• Ultimate Universe Spider-Man (Original)

Silver Comics Credit: Mashable composite: Boom Entertainment; Gemstone Publishing; Udon Entertainment; Graphix.

All Ages

• Asterix Olympics Special (Reprint)

• BOOM! Box 10th Anniversary Extravaganza (Preview)

• Doctor Who: The Fifteenth Doctor (Original)

• Eye Lie Popeye (Original)

• InvestiGators: Class Action (Preview)

• Max Meow / Katie the Catsitter (Original)

• The Loud House Special (Preview)

• Maleficent (Reprint)

• Monster High (Original)

• The Night Librarian (Original)

• The Overstreet Guide to Collecting Comics (Original)

• Snoopy Beagle Scout Adventures (Reprint)

• Spidey and his Amazing Friends (Original)

• Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures / Plants vs Zombies (Original)

• Ultraduck (Original)

• UNICO: Awakening (Preview)

Teen (or Teen+)

• Archie Horror Presents: The Cursed Library Prelude (Original)

• CursedVerse: Blighted Dawn (Original)

• Far Cry: Cull the Herd (Preview)

• Flash Gordon (Original)

• Gatchaman (Original)

• Initial D / Kaina of the Great Snow Sea (Preview)

• Marvel & Fantagraphics Present: The Atlas Comics Library (Reprint)

• Marvel's Voices (Original)

• One Piece: Ace's Story / Status Royale (Preview)

• Romeo vs Juliet: A Kill Shakespeare Adventure (Preview)

• Star Wars (Original)

• Street Fighter vs Final Fight (Original)

• The Valiants (Preview)

• Tons of Strange (Original)

Mature

• Conan: Battle of the Black Stone (Original)

• Dying Inside (Preview)

• Gannibal (Preview)

DC Comics

DC Comics' Free Comic Book Day offerings aren't divided into Gold and Silver categories, but that doesn't mean the publisher won't be participating in the event. In fact, DC is using the opportunity to launch a prelude to Absolute Power, "the biggest DC comic book event of 2024."

All Ages

• Barkham Asylum (Preview)

Teen (or Teen+)

• Barda (Preview)

• Mad Magazine Special Edition

• Absolute Power Special Edition (Original)

You'd be forgiven for thinking Sugar is your run-of-the-mill type crime show, because up until the end of episode 6 that's exactly what it is.

John Sugar (Colin Farrell) has spent the season so far on the trail of missing influencer Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler), the granddaughter of powerful Hollywood producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell). There's mystery, there's red herrings, and there's the LA criminal underbelly. There's Farrell's gravelly-voiced narration. All pretty standard ingredients for a neo-noir missing person thriller.

But then, right at the end of episode 6, things appear to go completely off the rails. So what exactly happened, and what does it all mean? Let's dive in.

SEE ALSO: The 20 best TV shows of 2023 What's Sugar about?

The eponymous Sugar is a kind of James Bond-type character, a private investigator who specialises in tracking down the missing. Driven by memories of his own sister, Sugar has been hell-bent this season on finding Olivia, whose brother David (Nate Corddry) is caught up in some shady business with human traffickers.

Sugar is assigned jobs by his boss/friend Ruby (Kirby), who seems particularly reluctant for him to take on this particular case. And the more digging he does, the messier things get.

What happens at the end of episode 6?

After a violent confrontation with highly unpleasant human trafficker Stallings (Eric Lange), Sugar goes to his friend Melanie (Amy Ryan) for help. He then gets patched up by his colleague Henry (Jason Butler Harner), and after waking goes to confront Ruby about tipping Stallings off.

Finally heading back to stay with Melanie again after a long day, Sugar is looking the worse for wear.

"Maybe tonight, maybe it's OK to take a little break," murmurs Sugar's overhead narration as he goes into the bathroom, shuts the door, and pushes a syringe into his own neck. "Just a tiny little break. Just for tonight. Go home. Go home."

Then, without warning, he turns blue. Yes, blue. His hair slowly disappears, strange markings appear on his head, and he basically turns into a less-pointy-eared Na'vi from Avatar before our very eyes. The end credits roll.

What in the sweet hell did we just watch?

Is Sugar an alien?

Unless the ending of episode 6 is some kind of weird dream or hallucination, it certainly seems that way, doesn't it?

And actually, when you think about it, maybe the clues have been there all along: the fact that Sugar is seemingly never afraid for his own safety; the fact he appears to block a bullet in episode 6 with his bare hands; the way he calms down those two angry Dobermans so easily; the weird private club that he's a part of at Ruby's house.

If we go back earlier in the episode, there's another big clue. When Sugar is injured and being treated by Henry, there's a shot of a bag of "blood" Henry takes from his case. But is that stuff really human blood? A second viewing shows what appear to be dots of light floating through the substance, and the bag itself has a symbol on it that looks alien in origin.

We'll have to wait until next week to find out what the heck is going on, but all signs are pointing to the sudden — and very jarring — arrival of extra-terrestrials in our previously quite standard crime show.

How to watch: Sugar is streaming now on Apple TV+, with new episodes streaming every week.

As an interviewer, you need a gameplan. These strategies can help you prepare for and address open-ended questions from a job candidate. First, be aware of what you can and can’t say. Understanding the boundaries of confidentiality is essential, as it ensures the protection of proprietary information, trade secrets, and other sensitive data integral to […]

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TL;DR: A five-year subscription to a Control D Some Control Plan is on sale for £27.87, saving you 70% on list price.

Working from home might be the best part of your job. And while it offers more flexibility and a better work-life balance, it can be hard to eliminate distractions and stay zoned in on your long list of to-dos. 

Whether you find yourself refreshing FaceBook or doom-scrolling on TikTok, you might need a way to block out these apps or content types so you can focus. Control D is designed to make that possible, all in one central place. This deal gets you your first five years for just £27.87.

Control D isn’t like other ad blockers or content filters because it requires zero downloads or installations on your devices. Instead, it connects to your internet and lets you see all devices connected to that network. This subscription will enable you to control up to ten devices and implement different settings for each one.

First, let’s talk about ads. When you’re working or browsing the web, pop-ups quickly get annoying and distracting — especially when they jumpscare you with blasting sound. With Control D, you can block ads on all your devices in one switch. 

You can also set device-specific rules with Control D. In fact, you get access to 10,000 custom rules. If you have kiddos at home, you could remove their access to websites containing adult content or dating apps.

Or, if you work from home and deal with endless distractions, you could set up a productivity schedule with Control D. Block social media apps or YouTube streaming so you have no choice but to stay on task. And when you’re trying to unplug outside of your working hours, you could restrict your own access to work-related websites and apps.

Take control of your digital life with a five-year subscription to Control D Some Control Plan, available for only £27.87.

Opens in a new window Credit: Control D Control D Some Control Plan (5-Year Subscription) £27.87 at the Mashable Shop Get Deal

TL;DR: Watch Mumbai Indians vs. Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL for free on JioCinema. Access this free streaming platform from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.

Five weeks into the 2024 IPL season, and things are continuing to heat up. Next up is Mumbai Indians vs. Kolkata Knight Riders as captains Hardik Pandya and Shreyas Iyer lead their teams in the 51st game of the season.

Want to tune in? You can stream Mumbai Indians vs. Kolkata Knight Riders for free from anywhere in the world, and we have all the information you need.

When is Mumbai Indians vs. Kolkata Knight Riders?

Mumbai Indians vs. Kolkata Knight Riders starts at 3 p.m. BST on May 3. This fixture will be played at the Wankhede in Mumbai, India.

How to watch Mumbai Indians vs. Kolkata Knight Riders for free

JioCinema is providing free live streams of all IPL cricket matches this season in 4K resolution on its app.

JioCinema is geo-restricted to India, but don't fret, you can unblock this free streaming service with a VPN. These tools hide your real IP address (your digital location) and connect you to a secure server in India, meaning you can access JioCinema (and IPL fixtures) from anywhere in the world

Unblock JioCinema to stream the IPL 2024 by following these simple steps:

1. Sign up for a streaming-friendly VPN (like ExpressVPN)

2. Download the app to your device of choice (the best VPNs have apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and more)

3. Open up the app and connect to a server in India

4. Visit JioCinema (you will need an Indian phone number to subscribe)

5. Watch Mumbai Indians vs. Kolkata Knight Riders for free from anywhere in the world

Opens in a new window Credit: ExpressVPN ExpressVPN (1-Year Subscription + 3 Months Free) Learn More

Most of the best VPNs for streaming are not free, but they do tend to offer free trials or money-back guarantees. By taking advantage of these offers, you can watch IPL live streams without parting with your money. Obviously, this won't work as a long-term arrangement, but you will be able to watch some of your favorite IPL matches for free.

What is the best VPN for JioCinema?

ExpressVPN is the best service for unblocking JioCinema, for a number of reasons:

• Servers in 105 countries including India

• Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more

• Strict no-logging policy so your data is secure

• Fast connection speeds

• Up to eight simultaneous connections

• 30-day money-back guarantee

A one-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for £82.82 and includes an extra three months for free — 49% off for a limited time. This plan also includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee.

Stream the IPL for free with ExpressVPN.

Oh hey there! If you're here, it must be time for Wordle. As always, we're serving up our daily hints and tips to help you figure out today's answer.

If you just want to be told today's word, you can jump to the bottom of this article for May 3's Wordle solution revealed. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

Where did Wordle come from?

Originally created by engineer Josh Wardle as a gift for his partner, Wordle rapidly spread to become an international phenomenon, with thousands of people around the globe playing every day. Alternate Wordle versions created by fans also sprang up, including battle royale Squabble, music identification game Heardle, and variations like Dordle and Quordle that make you guess multiple words at once. 

Wordle eventually became so popular that it was purchased by the New York Times, and TikTok creators even livestream themselves playing.

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

What's the best Wordle starting word?

The best Wordle starting word is the one that speaks to you. But if you prefer to be strategic in your approach, we have a few ideas to help you pick a word that might help you find the solution faster. One tip is to select a word that includes at least two different vowels, plus some common consonants like S, T, R, or N.

What happened to the Wordle archive?

The entire archive of past Wordle puzzles used to be available for anyone to enjoy whenever they felt like it. Unfortunately, it has since been taken down, with the website's creator stating it was done at the request of the New York Times.

Is Wordle getting harder?

It might feel like Wordle is getting harder, but it actually isn't any more difficult than when it first began. You can turn on Wordle's Hard Mode if you're after more of a challenge, though.

Here's a subtle hint for today's Wordle answer:

A very brown piece of wood/timber.

Does today's Wordle answer have a double letter?

There are no letters that appear twice.

Today's Wordle is a 5-letter word that starts with...

Today's Wordle starts with the letter E.

SEE ALSO: Wordle-obsessed? These are the best word games to play IRL. The Wordle answer today is...

Get your last guesses in now, because it's your final chance to solve today's Wordle before we reveal the solution.

Drumroll please!

The solution to Wordle #1049 is...

EBONY.

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be a new Wordle for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Reporting by Caitlin Welsh, Sam Haysom, Amanda Yeo, Shannon Connellan, Cecily Mauran, Mike Pearl, and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.

Connections is the latest New York Times word game that's captured the public's attention. The game is all about finding the "common threads between words." And just like Wordle, Connections resets after midnight and each new set of words gets trickier and trickier—so we've served up some hints and tips to get you over the hurdle.

If you just want to be told today's puzzle, you can jump to the end of this article for May 3's Connections solution. But if you'd rather solve it yourself, keep reading for some clues, tips, and strategies to assist you.

What is Connections?

The NYT's latest daily word game has become a social media hit. The Times credits associate puzzle editor Wyna Liu with helping to create the new word game and bringing it to the publications' Games section. Connections can be played on both web browsers and mobile devices and require players to group four words that share something in common.

Tweet may have been deleted

Each puzzle features 16 words and each grouping of words is split into four categories. These sets could comprise of anything from book titles, software, country names, etc. Even though multiple words will seem like they fit together, there's only one correct answer. If a player gets all four words in a set correct, those words are removed from the board. Guess wrong and it counts as a mistake—players get up to four mistakes until the game ends.

Tweet may have been deleted

Players can also rearrange and shuffle the board to make spotting connections easier. Additionally, each group is color-coded with yellow being the easiest, followed by green, blue, and purple. Like Wordle, you can share the results with your friends on social media.

Here's a hint for today's Connections categories

Want a hit about the categories without being told the categories? Then give these a try:

• Yellow: Going out spots

• Green: Leave behind

• Blue: Types of measurements

• Purple: Different places to sale things

Featured Video For You Connections: How to play and how to win Here are today's Connections categories

Need a little extra help? Today's connections fall into the following categories:

• Yellow: Nightspots

• Green: Cast Off

• Blue: Units of Length

• Purple: ___Sale

Looking for Wordle today? Here's the answer to today's Wordle.

Ready for the answers? This is your last chance to turn back and solve today's puzzle before we reveal the solutions.

Drumroll, please!

The solution to Connections #327 is...

What is the answer to Connections today

• Nightspots: BAR, CLUB, DISCO, LOUNGE

• Cast Off: DITCH, DROP, LOSE, SHED

• Units of Length: FATHOM, FOOT, LEAGUE, YARD

• ___Sale: BAKE, CLEARANCE, GARAGE, SAMPLE

Don't feel down if you didn't manage to guess it this time. There will be new Connections for you to stretch your brain with tomorrow, and we'll be back again to guide you with more helpful hints.

Is this not the Connections game you were looking for? Here are the hints and answers to yesterday's Connections.

Google Street View offers a window to the world in all its bizarre, intimate, and often unfiltered glory. However, this peek into everyday life also extends to your home, potentially revealing more than you'd like — from views into bedroom windows to concerns about privacy and safety.

Fortunately, there's a solution. You can request Google to blur your house permanently, leaving behind only a vague outline of the building. The process is surprisingly simple.

Launched in 2007, Street View provides a ground-level perspective of numerous cities and towns worldwide, captured by roving vehicles and photographers equipped with camera-laden backpacks. From its inception, the service has been a subject of controversy, touching on expected concerns as well as unexpected ones.

In 2008, for instance, the Minnesota suburb of North Oaks objected to its inclusion on Google's service, citing trespassing concerns. In response, Google promptly removed the images from Street View.

SEE ALSO: How to remove your personal info from Google search results

In 2009, Privacy International, a lobbying organization, lodged a formal complaint with the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), alleging that Google had not adequately anonymized the individuals captured in Street View images. According to a BBC report from that time, such a failure could have significant consequences.

The report detailed complaints received by Privacy International, including one from a woman who had relocated to escape a violent partner but was still identifiable outside her new residence on Street View. Another complaint involved two colleagues caught in what appeared to be a compromising situation, leading to embarrassment when the image circulated at their workplace.

Staying cool in Brooklyn. Credit: Screenshot / street view

And that's just the obvious stuff.

Google has faced several privacy controversies over the years. In 2010, the company admitted that its Street View vehicles, which continuously roam neighborhoods worldwide, had covertly been collecting data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks they passed by for several years. This revelation led to a $13 million settlement to resolve a class-action lawsuit over the collection of data from an estimated 60 million individuals.

SEE ALSO: 3 tips for using Google Maps effectively, according to Google

Whether you're concerned about online stalkers, unwanted surveillance, potential break-ins, or simply value your privacy, it's understandable why you might not want indexed and digitized images of your home readily available on Google Street View. Fortunately, requesting Google to blur out your home or apartment is a straightforward process.

Here's what you do.

Total Time

• 2 min

What You Need

• Smartphone desktop or laptop

Step 1: Go to Google Maps and enter your home address.

Step 2: Enter into Street View mode by dragging the small yellow human-shaped icon, found in the bottom-right corner of the screen, onto the map in front of your house.

Step 3: With your house in view, click "Report a problem" in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

Step 4: Center the red box on your home, and select "My home" in the "Request blurring" field.

Google's San Francisco office. Credit: screenshot / google

Step 5: Write in the provided field why you want the image blurred (for example, you may be concerned about safety issues).

Step 6: Enter your email address, and click "Submit."

It's crucial to be certain about your decision, as Google emphasizes that once your house is blurred on Street View, it's a permanent change.

Remember, you still live in the location, so you can always step outside to see your home if you need a reminder of its appearance.

After submitting your request, Google will send you an email confirming that it's reviewing the image you reported and will notify you once your request is resolved. In some cases, the company may ask for more specific details about the area you want blurred. If this happens, you'll need to repeat the process, clearly specifying the exact area of the picture you want blurred.

And that's all there is to it.

SEE ALSO: 7 Google privacy settings you should enable now

The processing time for Google's requests can vary, so it's wise to initiate your request as soon as possible. Additionally, consider making a similar request to blur your home on Bing Maps, as the process is quite similar — and it's not like Microsoft should get any special treatment when it comes to your privacy.

Privacy Please is an ongoing series exploring the ways privacy is violated in the modern world, and what can be done about it.

The Tesla Cybertruck is, famously, a vehicle with a reputation problem. This video of a Cybertruck owner appearing to have his finger almost cut off by his truck's motorized front hatch is not going to help.

Tweet may have been deleted

It was discovered early this year in the days just after the Cybertruck's debut that the "frunk" (front trunk) was disturbingly capable when repurposed as a food slicer. Where competitor vehicles with automatic hatch closures would generally stop if they encountered blobs of fleshy, tender, organic material — possibly loaded with nerve endings — the Cybertruck was apparently more than happy to sever the object cleanly In one comparison test the Cybertruck fared the worst at avoiding hatch-related carnage among the other vehicles sampled, although some others did at least some damage to vegetables.

SEE ALSO: Tesla cuts prices after massive Cybertruck recall

However, Tesla influencer Jeremy Judkins claims the situation has improved since then. "With just a software update, the Tesla Cybertruck frunk is way safer," he says, describing a past video in which the hatch was kinder to various produce items. However, he says, his Cybertruck did lop off part of a carrot in his test, leaving him to wonder what it would do to a finger. Unlike most people, Judkins then (if the video is real) put his actual human finger on the line in the name of content science.

The result is the harrowing video above. His arm and full hand receive forgivable pinches, but then the truck chomps down on Judkins' finger, and one can't help but wonder for a few seconds if one is watching a gore vid. Then Judkins gets his other hand involved, and the robotic jaws release.

"That's kinda bad," he says, displaying his pinched and trembling finger.

Plastics are deeply woven into our societies, our supply chains, our lives, our possessions, even our bodies. Runaway plastic pollution and waste is the other great environmental crisis facing our civilisation.

Unlike most plastics, it’s actually possible to break this global problem down into its constituent parts. Here in infographical form.

That way, you can at least start to see the actions and choices that might make a difference.

» The Problem with Plastic Recycling isn’t working
» The 7 Main Types of Plastic Known your frenemy
» The Myth of Biodegradability None of the major plastics breakdown in nature
» Can’t We Just Use BioPlastics instead? Kinda. Sorta. Maybe?
» Our Routes for Solving the Plastics Crisis We CAN do this
» What Can *You* Do About Plastics in Your Daily Life? Simple, effective actions

Taken from our book Beautiful News: Positive trends, uplifting stats, creative solutions

» See all our data and research

The FDA just gave the Apple Watch a historic first approval for a digital health tech device.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Apple Watch – or more specifically its atrial fibrillation (AFib) feature – has received its approval as a qualified device in the Medical Device Development Tools (MDDT) program. The feature helps detect abnormal heart patterns and has previously been credited for saving users' lives.

SEE ALSO: Apple Watch Series 9 vs. SE: A smartwatch skeptic tested both for 13 days

This FDA approval allows the Apple Watch AFib feature to be used as a "tool to assess atrial fibrillation (a type of arrhythmia, or abnormal heartbeat) burden estimates within clinical studies."

The Apple Watch can now be used as a non-invasive "biomarker test to help evaluate estimates of AFib burden as a secondary effectiveness endpoint within clinical studies intended to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of cardiac ablation devices to treat," according to the FDA.

A digital first

But perhaps even more notable is that the Apple Watch AFib feature becomes the first ever digital health technology to qualify under the FDA's MDDT program. 

The Apple Watch had previously received FDA "clearance" to include the atrial fibrillation detection feature in the device in 2022. According to 9to5Mac, this was the "lowest hurdle" with Apple basically proving that its AFib feature worked similarly to existing devices that affect AFib.

This FDA approval for the MDDT program places the Apple Watch in a unique category, particularly concerning its application in clinical studies.

The Rabbit R1 and the Humane Ai pin are two AI-focused devices that have intrigued many tech enthusiasts, but after influencers and reviewers got a hold of these gadgets, the critical reception was disastrous.

Journalists with early access to the Humane Ai pin dragged it to hell and back for its disappointing performance, with YouTuber MKBHD's scathing critique arguably putting the final nail in its coffin. And the Rabbit R1, released to some members of the press and early adopters at a recent pick-up party, didn't fare any better.

I reviewed the Rabbit R1 myself, and as the headline says, "I can't believe I paid money for this bunny."

SEE ALSO: Rabbit R1: I spent 17 hours with it — and something's iffy about it

These AI gadgets haven't proven to be very useful to consumers so far, so why not pop open the hood, so to speak, and check out what's inside? That's exactly what iFixit did in a new teardown video.

Rabbit R1 teardown

Starting with the teardown of the Rabbit R1, iFixit called its internals "charming," pointing out an oversized motor that is very steampunk-esque.

Tweet may have been deleted

Some notable points based on the Rabbit R1's exposed guts:

• It has a 3.85 watt-hour battery. Reviewers have commented that the battery drain was unbearable, but it's worth noting that after a battery update, the Rabbit R1's power efficiency has improved. (I can confirm that the battery life is definitely better.)

• The scroll wheel is really just a single metal shaft that can easily slide out with tweezers.

• There are no on-device internals that run AI computations. The LLM that powers R1 is cloud-based, which Rabbit has always disclosed. This prompted iFixit to ask the oft-asked question, "Couldn't this have just been an app on a phone?"

Humane Ai pin teardown

The Humane Ai pin was next to get pried open, allowing us to see the projector that beams green virtual artifacts to one's palm, as well as other sensors that power the AI device.

Tweet may have been deleted

Here are some highlights:

• iFixit commented that the Humane Ai pin's internals looks similar to the Apple Watch. This makes sense, considering that Humane's cofounders are former Apple employees.

• The backplate says "Made with ... trust, truth + joy."

• It has a 1.1 watt-hour battery.

• Its wireless-charging capability could be behind its reported overheating issues.

For both devices, iFixit noticed a common issue: Accessing the battery was difficult. "A lithium-based battery is generally good for about 400 charge cycles. And you're going to go through an awful lot of cycles very quickly with these devices, which makes the difficulty of getting to the batteries in each respective device that much more perplexing," the iFixit host said.

Both gadgets really have no business being packaged as hardware; both could have been an app, the iFixit video concluded. The host hypothesized that Rabbit and Humane may have ditched the app pathway to escape Google and App Store restrictions.