IT General

Side-switching isn't an uncommon occurrence in the world of House of the Dragon, but it's a bit more important when you've got a dragon in tow.

Last season, Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) went to great effort to recruit herself some new dragonriders, but in Season 3 it already looks like one of them may be on the cusp of stabbing her in the back.

So, what exactly happens at the end of episode 7, and what does it mean for Ulf the White (Tom Bennett)?

SEE ALSO: 'House of the Dragon': Who is Dreamfyre, and why are her eggs so important? What happens at the end of House of the Dragon Season 3, episode 7?

The final scene of the episode sees a hilltop conversation between Ulf and the ever-sneaky Lord Ormund (James Norton), where the latter professes his apparent shock to hear that Daemon (Matt Smith) has struck Ulf in the streets of King's Landing.

"It is obvious Rhaenyra and her ilk regard you only as a tool to be used and reprimanded, whereas I understand who you really are," Ormund says.

"You said last time that you could gift me a lordship," responds Ulf. "And a castle. Honeyholt."

"Honeyholt?" says Ormund with a smile. "Honeyholt is a trifle. It seems that Driftmark itself may soon be without a master. Lord of the Tides. What do you think of that? They will laugh at you no more, when they see you as you are."

"No," says Ulf. "They will burn."

Doesn't sound great, does it? So, has Ulf really gone over to Team Green? And what could that mean for Rhaenyra if he has?

Featured Video For You 'House of the Dragon' cast unpack Season 3, episode 2's biggest moments Has Ulf switched to Team Green?

It seems like the answer is probably a yes. Earlier in the episode, Ormund tells Gwayne (Freddie Fox) that he "has a piece on the board that will bring the bitch to her knees." Gwayne thinks he's talking about Lord Corlys (Steve Toussaint), who was kidnapped in the last episode, but now it seems clear he was actually talking about Ulf and his dragon.

Ultimately, Ulf's main motivation has always been the status a new dragon might bring. He's longed for a title and a castle. And over the past few episodes, we've seen him growing increasingly dissatisfied with his treatment at the hands of Team Black.

Ormund, who is a cunning character, likely spotted this discontentment when he first spoke to Ulf. Since then, he's promised the dragonrider exactly what he's always wanted — and as of their latest meeting, it seems that Ulf is more than happy to turn against the people who first lifted him up.

New episodes of House of the Dragon air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.

Dreams and prophecies can never be dismissed in House of the Dragon, and that goes double for Helaena (Phia Saban), who has a proven track record when it comes to seeing into the future.

In Season 3, episode 7, she has a number of dreams. Some of these feel pretty straightforward — her dream about her baby being taken away from her, for instance — while others are a bit more cryptic.

So, what does she dream, and can any of these dreams offer us an insight into the future?

SEE ALSO: 'House of the Dragon': Who is Dreamfyre, and why are her eggs so important? What does Helaena dream in episode 7?

Helaena has four different dreams over the course of episode 7. The first one happens right at the beginning of the episode, while the next three are interconnected dreams that happen over the course of the same night's sleep. You could argue that's just one dream, but as they're four very different scenes we've broken them up:

1. Helaena's in an empty courtyard, standing next to a white horse pulling a trailer. The large doors open and light comes in, before she's woken by Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) calling her name.

2. Helaena screams during childbirth. Her baby is handed to a guard, who immediately takes it away.

3. Helaena sits atop a large dragon while a crowd of people rushes towards her. She cries out, "Dracarys!" and the dragon unleashes fire upon them.

4. Helaena is sitting outside a house in the countryside with two blonde children and a white horse, feeding chickens. Snow begins to fall, and the sun is blocked by an eclipse. She stands up, looking round, as white mist rolls towards them.

Four very different, intriguing scenes. But, how do they fit in with the show and the wider Game of Thrones universe?

Featured Video For You 'House of the Dragon' cast unpack Season 3, episode 2's biggest moments What could Helaena's dreams mean?

Okay, let's break them down one by one. The first, in which Helaena stands beside a horse in the courtyard, seems simple enough: This is surely Helaena dreaming of leaving her current imprisonment. The doors open and light pours in, but we don't see what's outside. This likely represents Helaena's uncertainty at where she would go if she did escape King's Landing.

The next dream seems like a manifestation of her very real (and understandable) fear of what might happen when she gives birth. As she's already been made well aware by her mother, Alicent (Olivia Cooke), a baby boy would be seen as a threat to Rhaenyra's claim to the throne — hence the soldier that immediately takes the child away from her.

The third and fourth dreams are where things get a bit more abstract. We do have some clues, though: In the third dream, for instance, the building Helaena sees in the distance is the Red Keep of King's Landing. It seems likely she's in the Dragonpit, where Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) had his coronation. And the dragon she's riding? That's a little more tricky to say. It's certainly not a dragon we've seen yet in the show, at any rate, meaning this is likely a vision of something that happens in the future. Could it be a vision of Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) attacking King's landing on the back of Drogon? Possibly, but in Game of Thrones, this doesn't take place in the Dragonpit. And although the dragon Helaena rides is dark like Drogon, it looks slightly more purple in its colouring. Perhaps this is a vision of something else?

The final dream, meanwhile? Our best guess is that this is another future vision, this time of the Long Night and the coming of winter that Game of Thrones revolves around.

House of the Dragon Season 3 is now streaming on HBO Max, with new episodes premiering Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.

Maybe your home router died at an inconvenient time, you're in a hotel room that only has a single Ethernet jack and terrible Wi-Fi, or you're in a new place without internet.

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Your car is the perfect place to put your 3D printer to work. From utility items like sunglasses clips and phone holders, to fun things like take-out sauce cup holders, here are five fun projects to 3D print for your car.

Just like the list of new movies for this month, Netflix also has a great lineup of new and returning shows in August. Later in the month, the streamer says goodbye to the Pogues, who plan to go out in a fiery fifth and final season.

I've been using Linux for a decade now, and around the five-year mark, I went all-in on Arch. I daily drove Garuda Linux for four of those years, dabbled with CachyOS and a few other Arch-based distros, wrote a small mountain of articles about Arch-based distros, and told anyone who would listen to give them a shot. And while it's been a good run, I think it's finally time to call it quits. I figure I owe you all an explanation, and it really boils down to three reasons.

Large language models entered the mainstream when OpenAI wrapped one in a chat window and called it ChatGPT. The interface was so intuitive that everyone copied it, and it's still how most people think about AI: you type a question, you get an answer. But a lot has changed since then.

The Odyssey follows Odysseus on his long journey home from the Trojan War. Its viewers, however, are heading in the opposite direction...back to Troy.

Christopher Nolan’s epic has quickly become one of the year’s biggest movies. The film opened with $264.1 million worldwide, the largest global debut of Nolan’s career, and earned another $90 million domestically during its second weekend. By its 12th day in theaters, it had generated $727.9 million worldwide.

All that attention has also sent viewers toward a much older, looser interpretation of Homer’s Iliad.

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Clips from Wolfgang Petersen’s 2004 film have been circulating across social media. Viewers are comparing the movies’ battle scenes, costumes, performances, and versions of the fall of Troy. Some have gone further, arguing that the critically dismissed Brad Pitt blockbuster may actually be the better movie.

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The renewed attention is showing up beyond social media. As of July 23, Troy ranked 12th on IMDb’s list of most popular movies and 23rd on Letterboxd, while The Odyssey held the top position on both. By the end of the month, Troy had also climbed to No. 2 on AMC+ in the United States.

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Suddenly, a movie once remembered primarily for Pitt’s armor and extremely committed workout routine is receiving a full cultural re-evaluation.

Why Troy looks different in 2026

When Troy opened in 2004, Hollywood was still crowded with historical and fantasy epics. Gladiator had arrived 4 years earlier, and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy had just demonstrated how emotionally and commercially successful a massive fantasy production could become.

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That competition made Troy feel less remarkable at the time. Petersen removed nearly all the gods and supernatural forces from Homer’s story and condensed years of mythology into one muscular, star-filled blockbuster.

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Critics were divided by the results. Troy currently holds a 53 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus describes it as an entertaining spectacle without enough emotional resonance. Audiences were warmer, giving it a 74 percent score.

22 years later, some of what once made Troy seem conventional has become the reason viewers are praising it. Compared with The Odyssey, fans say Troy better captures the sheer scale of the war. They have also singled out its radiant colors, weathered costumes, and supporting performances from Eric Bana and Peter O’Toole.

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Most of all, viewers keep returning to its action: the battles clearly show the tactics of two armies, while the duel between Achilles and Hector lets audiences follow every blow. Those qualities stand out even more when placed beside The Odyssey, according to fans.

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Of course, the two movies are trying to accomplish very different things. Troy is a war movie built around Achilles, Hector, and the destruction of a city. The Odyssey follows the exhausted soldier who has to live with what happened afterward.

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Still, watching them so close together has made viewers appreciate a movie has been overlooked for years.

Troy was always more popular than its reviews suggested

Despite its mixed reviews, Troy earned more than $497 million worldwide during its original theatrical run. Nearly three-quarters of that total came from international audiences.

The irony is that viewers now seem more eager to defend Troy than some of the people who made it.

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Pitt said he appeared in the movie because he had withdrawn from another Warner Bros. project and remained obligated to make something for the studio.

"I was put in Troy," Pitt told The New York Times in 2019. He said the experience convinced him to begin following his instincts when selecting future roles.

Bloom was even less nostalgic about playing Paris. "I think I just blanked that movie out of my brain," he told Variety in 2024, explaining that he never wanted to play the Trojan prince.

Christopher Nolan nearly made Troy himself

The most unexpected connection between the movies belongs to Nolan, actually. More than two decades before directing The Odyssey, he was originally hired by Warner Bros. to make Troy.

Petersen had begun developing the movie before leaving to work on a planned Batman vs. Superman project. When Warner Bros. abandoned that film, Petersen asked for Troy back. Nolan agreed, although he later told Empire that Homer’s world remained in the back of his mind. He was especially interested in how he would depict the Trojan horse.

Losing Troy worked out reasonably well for him. Nolan instead directed Batman Begins, which screenwriter David S. Goyer later jokingly described as Warner Bros.’ "consolation prize." The movie launched Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and helped establish the blockbuster career that eventually allowed him to return to Homer on an even larger scale.

That history makes the current comparison feel almost too good to be true. Nolan finally got to create his version of Homer’s world. And though Odysseus needed 10 years to find his way home, Troy needed 22 to get its retrial.

USB-C has been a game changer for electronics like phones, laptops, and other small devices, but the same isn't true for desktop PCs. After going through the trouble of adding a USB-C port to my slightly-older PC, I've only used it a handful of times, and I frequently find myself wondering if it was worth the fuss.

Samsung has dominated foldable phones for years, but it's conceding one of its thrones to Motorola with the Galaxy Z Flip 8. It's not just that this is a mostly warmed-over design with a higher price tag. It's that Samsung has ditched the "budget" FE model right as Razr phones have become more compelling than ever, often at a lower cost. If I want a clamshell foldable phone in the modern era, I go with Moto.

Snapchat is officially joining the race to clean AI slop out of social media.

The company announced July 31 that wholly AI-generated videos will no longer be eligible for recommendation in Spotlight, Snapchat’s discovery feed for trending videos from creators across the platform in order to "reward authentic creativity."

The policy does not prevent users from posting AI-generated videos elsewhere on Snapchat. It also does not disqualify every video that involves AI. Creators can continue using Snapchat’s AI tools to edit or enhance their original footage, and those videos will remain eligible for Spotlight recommendations with transparency indicators.

SEE ALSO: New safety rules for under-16 Snapchat users

The line Snapchat is drawing comes down to who, or what, created the underlying video. AI can help a person make something. It cannot make the entire thing and still expect Snapchat’s recommendation system to distribute it.

"As low-quality, repetitive, AI-generated content becomes increasingly common across the internet, we want Spotlight to remain a place where people can discover authentic creativity from real people," the company wrote in a blog post.

Keeping entirely generated videos out of Spotlight matters on the platform because recommendation is what allow a creator’s work to reach people who do not already follow them. Removing that distribution makes Spotlight far less valuable as a growth channel for automated content farms that can produce synthetic videos at scale.

It also protects a part of Snapchat that has been attracting more creators. Snap said the number of unique people contributing to Spotlight globally has increased by more than 120 percent over the past year.

Exactly how Snapchat will identify wholly AI-generated videos is less clear. The company has not explained what level of human involvement would make a video eligible or how it will distinguish an AI-enhanced recording from a generated video that received a few human edits.

Snap acknowledged that challenge in its announcement, saying that "no detection system is perfect."

Social platforms are reconsidering AI slop

Snapchat isn't the first platform to decide that the flood of repetitive AI content is becoming a problem for its users.

LinkedIn began expanding tools in July that allow members to report posts and comments that "seem like AI slop." The company is also introducing classifiers intended to reduce low-quality AI content in recommendations and replacing its "enhance your post" writing feature with a more limited proofreading tool.

LinkedIn Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivasan emphasized that the company does not consider all AI-assisted work to be slop. The concern is content that feels automated, generic, or disconnected from the person publishing it.

Substack has taken a transparency-focused approach. On July 21, the newsletter platform introduced an optional AI-detection feature built with Pangram. Readers can scan posts, notes, replies, and comments longer than 100 words to receive an estimate of how much of the text was written by a person or with AI assistance.

YouTube’s current policies similarly make repetitive or mass-produced "inauthentic content" ineligible for monetization. Its spam rules also prohibit creators from using automated or synthetic tools to flood the platform with large volumes of nearly identical videos.

TikTok has also put more of the decision in viewers’ hands. The platform began testing a setting in November that lets users increase or decrease the amount of AI-generated content that appears in their For You feeds.

Snapchat’s decision also arrives as Meta imagines a very different future for social media.

In its latest earnings remarks on July 29, Meta said its Muse image and video models would create a "nearly infinite universe of personalized content" across its platforms. That AI-generated material would become another source of recommendations alongside posts from friends and established creators.

Snapchat is making a different bet for Spotlight. As synthetic video becomes easier to produce and harder to distinguish from recorded footage, the platform is reserving its most valuable discovery space for content that begins with a person.

Drawing that line may be easier than enforcing it. Still, Snapchat has made its preference clear: AI can stay behind the scenes. Spotlight belongs to the humans.

Start rearranging your Top 8: Myspace’s owners are hinting at a comeback.

Chris and Tim Vanderhook, whose company acquired Myspace in 2011, say they plan to relaunch the once-dominant social media platform. The brothers confirmed their intentions in Tommy Avallone’s recent documentary Myspace, although they have not announced when the relaunch will happen or what it will look like.

"We still own Myspace," Tim Vanderhook said in the documentary. "We are going to relaunch Myspace. We’re just waiting for the right time to do it."

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Before you start choosing a profile song, there are still plenty of unanswered questions. The owners have not announced a launch date, development timeline, or which classic Myspace features might return. For now, the comeback is closer to a promise than a product. But a promise nonetheless.

Myspace has tried this before

If the relaunch talk sounds familiar, that is because Myspace has never completely stopped trying to come back.

The platform, launched in 2003 by co-founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, quickly became one of the internet’s largest social networks. In July 2006, Myspace was the most-visited website in the United States, placing it ahead of Google and eBay.

Its appeal was more chaotic than the uniform profiles that came later. Users could customize their pages with HTML and CSS, change their backgrounds and fonts, embed glittering graphics, and choose a song that played automatically for every visitor.

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Music was central to the platform. Artists used Myspace pages to upload songs and communicate directly with listeners before streaming services became the dominant way to discover new music. Adele, Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys, and Calvin Harris were among the musicians whose early careers became closely associated with the site.

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News Corp purchased Myspace and its parent company, Intermix Media, for approximately $580 million in 2005. Facebook eventually overtook it, and Myspace cycled through several leaders and redesigns as its audience declined.

By 2011, News Corp had sold the platform to Specific Media and Justin Timberlake for a reported $35 million. In 2013, the new owners unveiled a redesigned, music-focused Myspace, but the relaunch never restored its former audience.

"We really tried to modernize it, but it was a different company at that point," Tim Vanderhook said in the documentary. "It wasn’t the same Myspace."

The consequences were expensive. The brothers said advertisers canceled their contracts after the acquisition and estimated that they lost more than $150 million attempting to rebuild the platform. Even that did not kill their interest in another try. In the documentary, Tim says that if the next relaunch does not work, they will simply "do it again."

What would a new Myspace actually offer?

The platform people remember was designed for a different internet. Its profiles were built around individual customization and updates from mutulas that users had deliberately added to their network.

Myspace’s owners have not said whether they intend to recreate the older model or build something closer to existing platforms. The distinction could determine whether people are interested in using a new Myspace or simply interested in remembering the old one.

For at least some former users, however, the lack of details has not dampened the excitement. As one commenter wrote, "Oh my god we are actually so back."

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People have not abandoned social media, but recent research suggests plenty are frustrated with what their feeds have become.

In a 2026 study of 1,000 social media users, the Institute for Public Policy Research asked participants to categorize the first four posts in their most-used feed. Only 18 percent came from someone they actually knew. Influencers, public figures, and recommended content accounted for 35 percent, while advertisements and brands made up another 29 percent. Researchers said platforms were increasingly prioritizing "sticky" features and short-form video over social connection.

Some users are responding by stepping away. A 2026 Deloitte survey found that 70 percent of Irish consumers believed they spent too much time on their phones, while nearly one-quarter had deleted a social media app. Needing a break was the most common reason, followed by excessive time consumption and too many advertisements or sponsored posts.

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None of that means users are waiting specifically for Myspace. A revived platform would still have to compete with Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Threads, Bluesky, and every other app already fighting for their attention.

The requests surrounding its proposed return, however, are relatively specific: more control over what appears on screen, more personal profiles, and updates from actual friends.

In Reddit discussions about the proposed relaunch, former users reminisced about learning basic HTML and CSS while designing their profiles. One person said Myspace’s level of customization “hasn’t really been replicated,” while another recalled charging friends to design their pages.

Of course, the same freedom also produced unreadable text, flashing backgrounds, slow-loading pages, and songs that began playing at full volume without warning. When one Reddit user argued that being ambushed by Linkin Park or Evanescence was exactly why those designs had disappeared, others insisted that it was "part of the charm." On the other hand, some argued that a platform could not recreate "a feeling from 20 years ago."

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Myspace’s original friendly face has also floated a comeback separately. In January, Anderson, better known as everyone’s first friend "Myspace Tom," told his Threads followers that he would discuss reviving the platform if his account reached 1 million followers. The now-deleted post received nearly 15,000 likes and more than 2,000 comments within a day, according to Parade.

Anderson, however, sold the company in 2005 and is not involved with the Vanderhooks’ current plans.

Whether Myspace can recreate its old appeal remains unanswered. For now, at least, nobody has to explain why their best friend suddenly fell from No. 2 to No. 7.

In case you've been living under a proverbial rock (or have a life, I guess), you're probably aware of the vocal backlash Sony is experiencing right now after it announced the date for the end of new PlayStation 5 game disc production.

While many people think Linux performs better than Windows, it depends on the distribution. Some of them have system requirements that rival modern versions of Windows. These distros are lean and mean. They're great for fast modern machines or wringing more use of out of older computers.

Are you looking for some ways to tinker with your Bambu Lab 3D printer? You're in luck! Even though Bambu has made some functions a bit harder to access, there's actually a lot of ways to tinker with your Bambu Lab 3D printer, and here are three of my favorite projects.

Powering Android Auto is one of the most demanding things your phone does. Sometimes you can even keep your phone plugged in and still find that the battery level drops during a long drive. However, with these changes to your setup, you can minimize battery drain and make sure you've still got a decent amount of power left when you reach your destination.

Rather than carry a USB drive with me everywhere, I tried switching to a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, a high-capacity microSD card, and a short cable. Instead of a physical disk, I now carry a tiny file server that literally fits in my pocket. For roughly the same price as a flash drive, you can build a tool that is far more interesting.

Docker changed how developers build and distribute applications. It made containers approachable, introduced a simple workflow, and created an ecosystem that became the default for modern software development. For years, installing Docker was for me the first step after setting up a Linux workstation or server.

USB-C was meant to be the one technology to rule them all, but it's turned into a bit of a mess, and thanks to the stubborn USB-A connector sticking around for 30 years so far, fully embracing the USB-C standard has been harder than it should be.