Technology

Google Meet offers several features to make your online meetings convenient and productive. If this tool happens to be your favorite meeting tool, I have some tips to share with you.

Ever wondered how your online data and conversations stay secure from hackers and intruders? That’s the work of cryptography, a technology we rely on daily, often without even realizing it. Here’s how it all works behind the scenes.

It's been almost four years since Windows 11 came out, and it still feels like it's in beta. Now that Microsoft has thoroughly botched the release of Windows 11, I miss some old features of Windows 7 and XP more than ever. I bet you'll relate to at least one.

Our passwords are the primary way we log in to all the services we use day in and day out. Unfortunately, passwords are becoming increasingly complex as pressure from hackers push us towards more secure choices. But what if there were a better way that didn't involve memorizing an incomprehensible string of characters?

In some huge gaming news, rumors suggest that Valve Software’s long-dormant Half-Life 3 not only exists — it’s playable from start to finish. And if the leaks are to be believed, the company could be gearing up to announce it later this year.

SEE ALSO: 'Half-Life: Alyx' trailer reveals a VR story before the events of 'Half-Life 2'

As always with Half-Life 3 rumors, skepticism is warranted. The latest report comes via Valve insider and longtime leaker Tyler McVicker, who teased a series of pointed hints during a recent livestream. According to McVicker, the information surfaced because the game is now in such wide playtesting that some testers have started talking.

The claims track with previous speculation from last summer, including McVicker’s own datamining of recent Valve code drops. Additionally, in February, datamining sleuths uncovered code references to “HLX” buried in update files for Valve’s upcoming MOBA-style game Deadlock, adding further speculation that something Half-Life-related is in active development.

"This is the furthest [HLX] has ever been. Period," McVicker said during the stream. "The game is playable—end to end. Period. Other HL3 or Episode 3 projects never got that far. They’re optimizing, polishing. It’s probably content-locked, or at the very least mechanic-locked."

Still, until Valve breaks its silence, treat this like every other Half-Life 3 whisper over the past 15 years: with cautious optimism. Based on the details provided by McVicker on stream, this Half-Life 3 is not to be confused with Half-Life 2: Episode Three, an announced sequel to Episode Two way back in 2007.

Development on Half-Life 3 reportedly began around 2013 or 2014, with a 2020 leak suggesting the game would have featured procedurally generated level design — an approach McVicker reaffirmed during his recent Q&A session.

Either way, something’s moving inside Valve. If it does launch, it would mark the first mainline Half-Life entry since Episode Two dropped in 2007, and the first release in the franchise since the 2020 VR-exclusive Half-Life: Alyx.

PC gamers benefit from having multiple game storefronts and Android gamers are starting to do the same. There are already several games on the Epic Games Store that are currently not available via Google's official Play Store.

Ever gotten a random text that starts with a name that’s not yours, in a scenario you’ve never been in? Maybe someone thinks you’re "Emily from the gym" or "Daniel from the yacht club." You reply with the classic "wrong number," but instead of backing off, the stranger suddenly wants to chat. Friendly. Curious. Weirdly persistent.

Congratulations: you’ve just been targeted by a scam — and no, you’re not the only one. According to cybersecurity firm McAfee, as cited by CNBC, a staggering 25 percent of Americans have received these mystery messages. The scam isn’t new. In fact, it first started gaining traction back in 2022. What is new is how it’s evolving.

SEE ALSO: E-ZPass toll scams are back. What to do if you're targeted.

These are called pig-butchering scams — a grotesque name with grotesque intent. Borrowed from the farming world, the term describes how scammers "fatten up" victims emotionally and psychologically before the financial slaughter. They operate like long-con romance scams: someone pretending to be rich and important, who just so happens to find you fascinating. Over time, they build trust, often steering the conversation toward crypto investments or too-good-to-be-true opportunities.

Experts told CNBC that the rise of generative AI is supercharging these operations. It's letting scammers craft messages that feel more personal and making it easier to change up the script to sound more like a real person. And the numbers show it's working.

In 2024 alone, text message scams cost Americans $470 million, according to the Federal Trade Commission. That’s five times what it was in 2020.

The bleaker reality behind these scams is that many are fueled by forced labor. Large-scale operations based in Southeast Asia are often behind the messages, with workers trafficked from across the region under false promises of legitimate employment. Once there, they’re coerced into running scams under constant surveillance and threats — essentially trapped in digital sweatshops.

Not all participants are victims, though. Some of these operations are run by shady online gambling groups, staffed by people who know exactly what they’re doing.

The simplest and most effective way to protect yourself? Don’t respond. If a text pops up from "Emily from the gym" or "Daniel from the yacht club" and you have no idea who that is, ignore it. If the number’s from an unfamiliar area code or a region you’ve never set foot in — ignore it. That’s it. No need to engage, correct them, or play along. Just block the number and move on.

Microsoft Excel's CHOOSECOLS and CHOOSEROWS functions are a game-changer if you want to quickly extract specific columns or rows from your data without nesting several functions in your formula. What's more, they're dynamic functions, meaning they adapt to changes in your dataset.

TL;DR: Make sure you always have something to watch with this lifetime subscription to BitMar Streaming Content Finder, now A$23 (reg. A$234) with code BITMAR5 through June 1.

If you're sick of shelling out a small fortune in streaming services each month and still ending up with nothing to watch, it's time to meet BitMar.

This convenient content finder helps you discover millions of shows and movies, and right now it's just A$23 for life with code BITMAR5 now through June 1. 

Never run out of things to watch

It's time to break up with your expensive streaming services. BitMar's lifetime subscription lets you pay once and enjoy endless content for life thanks to its content finder that aggregates millions of free movies, TV shows, videos, songs, and more from various online sources.  

It may sound too good to be true, but BitMar uses artificial intelligence and a Bing-powered search to hunt down filter-free content streaming worldwide, so you have nearly endless options to choose from. (Seriously, it's more than cable, satellite, Netflix, Disney Plus, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Peacock, and Hulu, have to offer combined.)

Want to listen to music? There's also ample music options — more than Pandora, Spotify, Amazon Prime Music, and Apple Music combined. 

It's easy to use and also includes an ad-blocker that helps you bypass video ads, which really comes in handy for content on platforms like YouTube. You can also rest easy knowing BitMar protects user data and prevents malware infections.

If you're wondering if this free content access is legal, rest easy. BitMar complies with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as its content-finding model lets content creators and owners monetize via the traffic BitMar brings them. 

Enjoy endless entertainment with this lifetime subscription to BitMar Streaming Content-Finder for just A$23 (reg. A$234) with code BITMAR5 through June 1.

StackSocial prices subject to change.

Opens in a new window Credit: BitMar BitMar Streaming Content-Finder: Lifetime Subscription AU$23
AU$234 Save AU$211 Get Deal

Data control and privacy are legitimate concerns in a world filled with untrustworthy apps. Fortunately, for iPhone users, open-source alternatives provide options that value data security, privacy, and freedom.

Are you still not using a password manager? I switch to using 1Password nearly a decade ago, and not a single day has gone by since when I didn't use the app at least once. I trust 1Password with my entire digital life, and you should too.

The top Star Wars Day deals Ruggable deal Ruggable x Star Wars Rugs and Doormats $101.15 (save 15%) Get Deal Amazon deal Star Wars Echo Dot with TIE Fighter Stand $97.98 at Amazon (save $12) Get Deal Lego deal Lego Star Wars BrickHeadz Revenge of the Sith Heroes and Villains $49.99 (New release) Shop Now Funko Pop! deal Funko Pop! Mandalorian with Grogu $15 (Buy 2 get 1 free) Get Deal New Lego release Lego Star Wars Logo model 75407 $59.99 Shop Now Target deal Oversized Grogu Plushie $25.49 (save $4.50) Get Deal For collectors Darth Vader 3D AirPods Case: Collector's Edition $138 Shop Now

Star Wars Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated every year on May 4 — as in, "May the 4th" (as in, "May the Force be with you"). And every year, we see retailers release limited-time discounts and Star Wars product launches in honor of the geeky occasion.

In 2025, May the 4th happens to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, which was back in theaters for a short run in late April. As such, a lot of this year's releases embrace the Dark Side. (Is there anything that can't be turned into some variation of Darth Vader's helmet? Apparently not.)

SEE ALSO: All 12 Star Wars movies, ranked from worst to best

Below, we're keeping a running list of all the best May the 4th sales and drops from across the web. It must be said: These are the Star Wars Day deals you're looking for.

The Lego Store — shop new sets and score some freebies

The Lego Store's busy Star Wars Day programming runs in stores and online from May 1 to 5. It's headlined by the release of several brand-new sets, including a 2,970-piece build of bounty hunter Jango Fett's starship (the latest addition to Lego's Ultimate Collector Series).

Most importantly, if you live near a Lego Store, swing by on Sunday, May 4 from 12 to 2 p.m. local time for a free make-and-take Grogu model. You can also shop these Star Wars Lego sets:

• Lego Star Wars Jango Fett's Firespray-Class Starship — $299.99

• Lego Star Wars Chopper (C1-10P) Astromech Droid — $99.99

• Lego Star Wars Jango Fett Helmet — $69.99

• Lego Star Wars Kylo Ren Helmet — $69.99

• Lego Star Wars Rebel U-Wing Starfighter — $69.99

• Lego Star Wars Kylo Ren’s Command Shuttle — $69.99

• Lego Star Wars Brick-Built Star Wars Logo — $59.99

• Lego Star Wars BrickHeadz Revenge of the Sith Heroes and Villains — $49.99

• Lego Star Wars BrickHeadz Luke Skywalker (Rebel Pilot) — $9.99

Shoppers who spend a certain amount of money can also snag exclusive freebies from the Lego Store, so long as they're signed up for its Lego Insiders rewards program. (It's free to join.) Starting May 1, purchases of $40 or more come with a free Millennium Falcon Mini-Build worth $4.99, and purchases of $160 or more unlock a free Kamino Training Facility set worth $29.99.

Opens in a new window Credit: Lego Store Lego Store Star Wars Day sale Shop Now Amazon — save on a new Star Wars Echo Dot bundle

The retail giant is set to release a new limited-edition TIE Fighter stand for its latest Echo Dot on May 6. If you'd like to preorder it ahead of time, you can save $12 by bundling it with the smart speaker.

Amazon has a lot more Star Wars day deals, with Funko Pop! figures starting at just $3.99, Lego sets up to 31% off, and select deals on video games from the franchise.

• Star Wars Echo Dot Bundle with Limited-Edition TIE Fighter Stand - $97.98 $109.98 (save $12)

• Ruggable x Star Wars Rugs and Doormats - Starting at $101.15

• Lego Star Wars R2-D2 Building Set - $167.99 $239.99 (save $72)

• Lego Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer Building Set - $111.99 $159.99 (save $48)

• Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon 'A New Hope' 25th Anniversary Collectible - $67.95 $89.99 (save $22.04)

• Lego Star Wars Logo Building Set - $59.99 (new release)

• LEGO Star Wars BrickHeadz The Phantom Menace 40676 - $57.99 $34.99 (save $17)

• 'Star Wars Outlaws' Standard Edition - PC - $35 $69.99 (save $34.99)

• Funko POP 'Star Wars: Ahsoka' - Sabine Wren - $3.99 $12.99 (save $9)

Star Wars Echo Dot Bundle with Limited-Edition TIE Fighter Stand $97.98 at Amazon
$109.98 Save $12 Get Deal Audio-Technica — shop limited-edition Star Wars earbuds

Audio-Technica, a Japanese audio company, teamed up with Lucasfilm and Disney Consumer Products for four limited-edition sets of wireless earbuds inspired by Star Wars icons: the Mandalorian, Grogu, Darth Vader, and R2-D2. Each pair comes with a matching charging case (complete with sound effects) that adds up to 40 hours of listening time to their 25-hour battery life. They're now available for preorder for $179 apiece.

Opens in a new window Credit: Audio-Technica Audio-Technica ATH-CKS50TW2 Star Wars earbuds $179
Shop Now Casetify — shop new Star Wars tech accessories

Casetify is expanding its Star Wars collab with a new "Rebellion and Empire" collection packed with limited-edition designs for gadget cases, chargers, and charms. The (Death) star of the lineup is definitely the $138 Darth Vader AirPods Case Collector's Edition, which can play ominous breathing sound effects at the touch of a button. Prices start at $32.

Opens in a new window Credit: Casetify Star Wars x Casetify: Rebellion and Empire Shop Now Funko — buy two Star Wars items, get one free

The pop culture collectible company's online store has an extensive line of Star Wars-themed Funko Pop! figurines, including exclusive vinyl bobbleheads of the Mandalorian (with Grogu), Darth Vader, Rey Skywalker, Kylo Ren, and Admiral Ackbar. Add three items to your cart, and you'll get the cheapest one for free. Prices start at just $3.

Opens in a new window Credit: Funko Funko May the 4th sale Shop Now Nanoleaf — save on select lighting kits, including new Star Wars bundles

Nanoleaf's Star Wars Day sale features two new limited-edition smart lighting bundles that build into the shapes of Yoda and R2-D2 — a subtle way to rep your fandom in an office or gaming room. The sale runs through May 5, and prices start at $7.99.

Opens in a new window Credit: Nanoleaf Nanoleaf May the 4th sale Shop Now Microsoft Store — save up to 85% on select Xbox Star Wars games

Virtually every Star Wars video game and DLC for Xbox is on sale in the Microsoft Store through May 5, with the biggest discounts going to 2019's Jedi: Fallen Order, 2020's Squadrons, and an EA bundle that combines them with 2017's Battlefront II and its Celebration Edition upgrade. Prices start at only $2.44. (Let's hope you already owned a current-gen Xbox prior to May 1, when they got significantly more expensive because of "market conditions and the rising cost of development," per a company statement.)

• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order — $5.99 $39.99 (save $34)

• Star Wars: Squadrons — $5.99 $39.99 (save $34)

• Star Wars Battlefront II Celebration Edition — $7.99 $39.99 (save $32)

• EA Star Wars Triple Bundle — $13.49 $89.99 (save $76.50)

• Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga Deluxe Edition — $13.99 $69.99 (save $56)

• Star Wars Jedi: Survivor — $13.99 $69.99 (save $56)

• The Sims 4 Star Wars: Journey to Batuu Game Pack — $13.99 $19.99 (save $6)

• Star Wars Outlaws — $34.99 $69.99 (save $35)

Opens in a new window Credit: Electronic Arts Xbox Star Wars Day sale Shop Now Ruggable — save 15% on washable Star Wars rugs

Our reviewer found Ruggable's washable rugs to be soft and durable, but pricier than similar options from other brands. All the better since its entire collection of Star Wars designs is 15% off through May 6, including area rugs and doormats. Prices start at $101.10.

Opens in a new window Credit: Ruggable Ruggable Star Wars collection Shop Now Target — save on all sorts of Star Wars gear

The bullseye brand's Star Wars Day sale features 50 pages of deals on franchise merch and collectibles, from Lego sets to action figures, clothing, bedding, glassware, and books; prices start at $4.99. As part of the event, Target is also giving shoppers who spend at least $25 on Apple gift cards a free bonus bundle for the mobile game Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. That offer is valid through May 20.

Opens in a new window Credit: Target Target Star Wars Day sale Shop Now

UPDATE: May. 4, 2025, 11:44 a.m. EDT This guide was updated with additional deals from the Amazon Star Wars Day promotion.

Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update anchors Michael Che and Colin Jost are thriving in Trump’s second term, with no shortage of absurd headlines to skewer.

SEE ALSO: Quinta Brunson gets into charades fight in 'SNL' ferry sketch

They opened with the surreal news of Trump posting an AI-generated image of himself as the pope, barely two weeks after the actual death of Pope Francis. Jost joked that Trump apparently attended the funeral, walked past the open casket, and thought, “Oh, we should do a ‘who wore it best.’”

Che followed up with a dig at Attorney General Pam Bondi, who claimed the amount of fentanyl seized at the border was enough to prevent 75% of Americans from dying. “Don’t threaten us with a good time,” he joked.

The duo also poked fun at Elon Musk, who reportedly stepped back from his role at DOGE. "As always," Che quipped, "Elon pulled out a little too late."

Fans of documentaries are spoiled for choice on streaming platforms like Netflix, which offers a wide collection of titles alongside its regular film and show catalog.

Abbott Elementary star and creator Quinta Brunson returned to Saturday Night Live this week, reviving the popular "Traffic Altercation" sketch from her 2023 hosting debut.

SEE ALSO: 'SNL' Cold Open turns Trump’s 100 days into a bizarre executive order bonanza

In the sketch, Brunson and Mikey Day play strangers stuck on a ferry, with Day’s character launching into a petty feud over a bad parking job. What starts as a tense exchange quickly unravels into a chaotic pantomime, with both characters expressing their outrage through exaggerated gestures.

Chloe Fineman appears as Day’s daughter, attempting to support her dad but ultimately adding to the confusion and making things worse for both of them.

The sketch ends with a surprise cameo from "Weekend Update" co-host Colin Jost, who enters trying to offload an actual Staten Island ferry. In 2022, Jost and Pete Davidson bought the decommissioned vessel for $280,000. Jost has since described it as the "dumbest purchase" he’s ever made.

President Donald Trump has officially crossed the 100-day mark in office for his second term — an occasion that feels less like a milestone and more like a never-ending fever dream. To honor the moment, Saturday Night Live kicked things off with a Cold Open featuring James Austin Johnson’s pitch-perfect (and deeply weird) impression of the president.

SEE ALSO: Trump casts himself as pope in AI-generated image

Much like FDR, but in exactly one, extremely specific way, Trump has a deep affection for signing executive orders. Sure, legally and constitutionally, some of Trump's executive orders have been little more than glorified press releases (like that time Trump made everyone female), but SNL Trump’s executive orders veer into absurdist fun.

Among the highlights from the Cold Open is an order reinstating Columbus Day — something that real Trump plans to do, even though it's already a federally recognized holiday.

Another, dubbed the "Belichick Law," makes it socially acceptable for men over 70 to date women barely out of college. Then there’s the one demanding fewer interracial couples in TV commercials, and another aimed at making the New York Times Connections game easier (honestly, we get it, Mr. President).

Oh, and one executive order bans Hispanic babies from getting their ears pierced. Trump, of course, blames that one on Marco Rubio.

There are a few more gems in the sketch we won’t spoil — but what makes the satire hit differently is the gnawing feeling that, yeah… he might actually try some of this. And that’s the part that’s not so funny.

Have you seen the term "homelab" but weren't exactly sure what it is? Well, it has a fairly broad definition, but in its simplest terms, it's just a place where you play with computers, servers, and networking equipment. Here's everything a homelab involves, and how you get started with your own.

Professional Bull Riding was meant for TikTok fame.

It’s short, intense, and impossible to look away. A rider adorned in thick gloves, a protective vest, and a helmet hops onto a bull from the side of the fence that surrounds the ring. A stock contractor tightens a flank strap around the bull's sensitive stomach, which makes the bull buck. The gate opens, and the bull instinctively jerks out into the arena. As soon as the bull's shoulder or hips clear the gate, the timer starts. The rider’s goal is to stay on the bull for just eight seconds — and it's as hard as it looks, with the rider holding onto the beast with one hand (if they touch the bull with the second hand, they're disqualified) and two legs. Not only do they have to hang on, riders also have to demonstrate their own personal style and fluidity, which they'll be judged on. Eight seconds later, sometimes sooner, the rider is typically bucked off and flees for safety.

Finish recording and immediately upload. It's not just a sport, it's a TikTok worth millions of views.

PBR — the sport, not the beer — has made big waves on TikTok in 2025. Since January, Professional Bull Riding has gained 650,000 followers across social media accounts, just 200,000 short of the growth they saw in the entirety of 2024. This recent popularity has jettisoned them to the upper echelons of social media, with 2.9 million followers on TikTok. Mitch Ladner, the social media lead for PBR, told Mashable that most of that growth is thanks to followers between 18 and 35 years old.

"We've seen a massive spike in our followership across all of our platforms, but definitely more so on TikTok and Instagram, and I definitely attribute that to a younger audience," Ladner said.

SEE ALSO: Is 'castlecore' the aesthetic of our technofeudal future?

Once a symbol of conservative Americana, cowboy culture — from rodeo-inspired fashion like Pinterest’s Western Gothic to the visceral thrill of professional bull riding — is being reimagined by Gen Z. On one end of the spectrum is Beyoncé, whose Grammy-winning Cowboy Carter album and tour shine a spotlight on a long-overlooked side of the cowboy narrative. On the other are tradwife influencers in prairie dresses, reviving idealized visions of ranch life. Together, they signal a shift: cowboycore is no longer just a fleeting aesthetic; it's a full-blown lifestyle, and it defies political binaries. Nowhere is this cultural collision more vivid than at PBR events, where Chappell Roan and Morgan Wallen tracks spin back-to-back; newbie influencers cozy up to livestock while rodeo athletes put their bodies on the line; and American identity feels up for grabs. Suddenly, cowboycore isn’t just a style — it’s a statement, and everyone wants a piece.

Make no mistake: Cowboys are not strictly American. Their roots trace back to Spain and Portugal, and many of the riders who joined the cattle drives of the late 19th century were African, Mexican, and Indigenous. The vaquero traditions in northern Mexico likely spurred much of what we consider cowboy culture today, and, during the late 1800s, 25 percent of workers in the range-cattle industry in the American West were Black cowboys, a truth rewritten in many portrayals of the American West in order to favor a settler-colonialist tilt. But the reality of past American life is often forgotten when aesthetics take over.

"If you go around the world and ask, 'What's your idea of an American?' a lot of people would say a cowboy," Joshua Garrett-Davis, the H. Russell Smith Foundation curator of Western American History, told Mashable. Whether or not it's based in simple historical reality, cowboy culture "is a shorthand for what America is."

Now, in a time of national uncertainty, Millennials and Gen Z are reshaping cowboy aesthetics through a new lens, incorporating ideas about identity, danger, nostalgia, digital performance, and the influencer economy, often with very different results. PBR is ground zero for that transformation.

Cowboycore’s complicated dual identity

As more young people flock to a sport with conservative roots, you might presume an immediate political line has been drawn. And it’s true that Gen Z, once seen as a progressive and digitally native generation, has surprised pollsters by, in some cases, actually leaning conservative. According to a new poll out of Yale, while voters aged 22 to 29 years old favored Democrats in the 2026 congressional elections by 6.4 points, those aged 18 to 21 years old leaned Republican by 11.7 points — an 18-point swing within a single generational bracket. 

Still, it’s complicated, and the fact is, people of all political stripes are finding resonance in cowboy Americana. Take Chappell Roan's queer anthem "The Giver," which debuted at no. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs Chart, and Stud Country, a line dancing and two-stepping event specifically for queer people that has taken off in big cities. Palestinian supermodel and activist Bella Hadid is a literal cowgirl. Pharrell Williams, who showcased embroidered suits, cowboy hats, and bolo ties for Louis Vuitton's 2024 menswear presentation, told GQ that "it was an honor" to create a collection "around the West and Western workwear vibes" because cowboys "look like us, they look like me, they look Black, they look Native American." And of course, there’s Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, along with movies like The Harder They Fall, Concrete Cowboy, and Queen & Slim, which all push against the narrative that cowboy culture is inherently white. 

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But there’s also a more conservative (and highly popular) romanticization of cowboy culture. For instance, tradwife influencer Hannah Neeleman, aka Ballerina Farm, whose Instagram bio reads, "city folk turned ranchers," has 10 million followers.

PBR officials, for their part, hope to keep their version of Americana apolitical as much as possible. "If loving your country and honoring your veterans and the heroes and those that sacrifice before us is a political issue, then you could paint us with a political brush, because we've done that from day one," PBR CEO and Commissioner Sean Gleason told Mashable.  

PBR doesn't have a political arm or any official donations to candidates, though it has encouraged its viewers to vote. And although its leadership has emphasized keeping the organization apolitical, the cultural and economic realities around rodeo often place it at odds with liberal politics. For example, some Democratic politicians have introduced bills that would ban rodeo and PBR in their states because of the effect it can have on the animals involved. At the same time, affiliations and moments in PBR's recent history lean more conservative — the Border Patrol has been a sponsor since 2016, and that same year, when Colin Kaepernick kneeled to protest racial injustice, PBR athletes countered with a public pledge to stand during the national anthem.

"Our mantra is: Be cowboy," Gleason said. "It doesn't matter where you live, what you drive, how you dress, the color of your skin, or your gender. If you live honestly with integrity, hard work, and an appreciation for the history and heritage of America, you're a cowboy."

Meanwhile, the "American" sport is not actually that American — just 10 of PBR's top 25 bull riders hail from the U.S. Fourteen are from Brazil, and one is from Australia; a Brazilian rider won the sold-out MSG series.

In uncertain times, Americans reach for ‘Americana’  

Historically, Western nostalgia tends to achieve new heights during times of national uncertainty. Consider the presidency of "California cowboy" Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, when the country was experiencing its worst recession since the Great Depression, IBM released the first personal computer, more than 100,000 people died from the AIDS epidemic, the Cold War was ending, and conservatism was on the rise. Reagan didn't have any red hats, but his slogan was "Let's Make America Great Again," which sounds awfully familiar. The American Cowboy Culture Association was created in the 1980s, and, of course, there was a resurgence of country music and Westerns — albeit completely whitewashed versions of the true Wild West. 

Garrett-Davis said the resurgence of cowboycore is "almost always making a claim about America or the United States as a nation, even if it's in a fun, playful, ironic, or satirical way. There's both this appropriation of cowboy imagery and an appropriation of Native American imagery," Garrett-Davis said. "I'm psychoanalyzing here, but when things feel so unmoored, it makes sense that you would grab onto something that feels 'authentic.'"

It seems like that's happening. In January, for the first time in nearly two decades, a PBR event sold out three days at Madison Square Garden, attracting a record-breaking 42,257 fans.

'We've been making eight-second content for 30-plus years' 

PBR’s massive uptick in social media followers didn’t happen by accident. A few years ago, their biggest audience was on Facebook, but the sport, with each ride lasting for a maximum of eight seconds, was built for short-form video content. It’s a spectacle, with thrilling, fast-paced content perfect for capturing short attention spans and TikTok virality.

The scoring is simple. Each ride is worth up to 100 points — 50 for the rider and 50 for the bull. Two judges score the rider, two judges score the bull, and each judge can award up to 25 points, with the score then tallied together. At the end of each event, the top 12 riders compete in the championship round; the rider with the highest point total from the entire event becomes the champion.

"We've been making eight-second content for 30-plus years," Ladner told Mashable. "It just took TikTok to catch up with us."

Ladner's strategy for audience-building and engagement focuses on riders themselves, not just highlights, and it works well. In one of PBR's most viral TikTok videos, the cowboys are doing seemingly regular things—leaning over a pole, standing with their arms crossed, laughing—to the tune of "Breakin’ Dishes" by Rihanna. Another popular video shows one of the cowboys stretching out for his turn on a bull with the song "Bounce When She Walk" by BeatKing and Oh Boy Prince in the background.

"We kind of flipped around our social strategy to 'let's just have fun with this' and 'let 'er rip,' honestly," Ladner says of the strategy he implemented in November. Now, the TikTok account leans into the knowledge that the cowboys are, for lack of a better word, really hot.

While Ladner says "our biggest influencers are our riders," not all cowboys are stoked about being on camera — they want to be riding bulls and playing on a ranch with their buddies. So Ladner adds that involving influencers outside the Western niche has been imperative to growth and expanding reach. And more often than not, Ladner says, those influencers are reaching out to him.

"We get a ton of inbound DMs saying, 'Hey, I'd love to come to the event, and I have a million TikTok followers,'" Ladner said. "If I can get a mommy blogger or a fashionista or a chef to come to our event, that's an audience that our paid media ads can't necessarily target with marketing messages that come off authentic."

While some might be worried about the co-opting of the country lifestyle, PBR isn’t. And they argue their fans, who they say aren’t conservative or progressive but simply American, aren't either.

"I've seen no measurable gatekeeping from our fans at all," Ladner said. "We've been doing this since 1992, and we've had a very loyal, diehard base since the jump. [The fans are] just glad these riders are getting their due."

The politics of authenticity, gender, and performance

Bull riding seems like an ultra-masculine spectacle. It appeals to this cathartic fantasy of toughness and risk as its polar opposite, tradwife content, continues to flourish online, playing out gendered performances of impossible ideals for the camera. But, at the same time, cowboy aesthetics have always played with gender. Look no further than Ryan Rash, a stock show judge who famously slaps cattle with glitter, wears fabulously flamboyant outfits and faux eyelashes, and posts a lot of pro-President Trump memes on his Facebook page.

These seemingly conflicting ideologies may be part of the point. Cowboy culture has never truly been a reality. 

"Most of us are working office jobs, are working at a restaurant or whatever, and so there's some catharsis in imagining the life of picking up eggs and milking the goats and riding a bull and being in so, so much danger," Garrett-Davis said. "It totally makes sense that now, in this fast-paced time of really rapid change, we might yearn for a slower pace, a simpler life, and because of all the ways that the West is associated with this national identity, it's something that feels authentic to grab onto, even though its authenticity is very doubtful the closer you look at it.”

The American insistence on being born a nation on the backs of brave, ragged people of the Wild Wild West is itself a fantasy. The white man was not the hero of the story, and cowboy boots look just as great on the New York City subway as they do mucking a stall. Despite its lack of authenticity, there is a certain je ne sais quoi about our imagined Wild Wild West. A simpler life is appealing if you refuse to look any deeper at it. And maybe that escapism is good enough, at least for right now.

Whether for the purposes of creating a new identity, finding escape, or leaning into either the irony or sincerity of it all, the cowboy endures — more mediated than ever online, but just as mythic. For the increasing number of Gen Zers who are scrolling TikTok for the latest PBR clip or boot recommendation, cowboycore doesn’t have to be a relic or a remix: It can be both. 

Gleason says that we're in a "renaissance" and "resurgence" of "interest in cowboy and country music and these authentic touch points with the history and heritage of America," describing it as the opposite side of the pendulum of "this ultra-woke culture sweeping the nation." 

Yet somehow, adherents to both groups find solace in the cowboycore aesthetic. So the cowboycore aesthetic endures, pushed on by another season of political uncertainty and polarization. Whether it will hang on longer than eight seconds remains to be seen. "One thing I know for certain is that the pendulum swings," Gleason said. "The pendulum of politics, the pendulum of culture, they swing." 

For now, it endures, pushed on by the seemingly perpetual push and pull of who gets to define Americana — and who belongs in the annals of its history.

Just like AI models, AI news never sleeps.

Every week, we're inundated with new models, products, industry rumors, legal and ethical crises, and viral trends. If that's not enough, the rival AI hype/doom chatter online makes it hard to keep track of what's really important. But we've sifted through it all to recap the most notable AI news of the week from the heavyweights like OpenAI and Google, as well as the AI ecosystem at large. Read our last recap, and check back next week for a new edition.

Another week, another batch of AI news coming your way.

This week, Meta held its inaugural LlamaCon event for AI developers, OpenAI struggled with model behavior, and LM Arena was accused of helping AI companies game the system. Congress also passed new laws protecting victims of deepfakes, and new research examines AI's current and potential harms. Plus, Duolingo and Wikipedia have very different approaches to their new AI strategies.

What happened at Meta's first LlamaCon Credit: Chris Unger / Zuffa LLC / Getty Images

At LlamaCon, Meta's first conference for AI developers, the two big announcements were the launch of a standalone Meta AI app to compete more directly with ChatGPT and the Llama API, now in limited preview. Following reports that this was in the works, CEO Sam Altman once joked that maybe OpenAI should do its own social media app, but now that is reportedly happening for real.

We also went hands-on with the new Llama-powered Meta AI app. For more details about Meta AI's top features, read Mashable's breakdown.

During LlamaCon's closing keynote, Mark Zuckerberg interviewed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about a bunch of trends, ranging from agentic AI capabilities to how we should measure AI's advancements. Nadella also revealed that up to 30 percent of Microsoft's code is written by AI. Not to be outdone, Zuckerberg said he wants AI to write half of Meta's code by next year. 

ChatGPT has safety issues, goes shopping

Meta AI and ChatGPT both got busted this week for sexting minors.

OpenAI said this was a bug and they're working to fix it. Another ChatGPT issue this week made the latest GPT-4o update too much of a suck-up. Altman described the model's behavior as "sycophant-y and annoying," but users were concerned about the dangers of releasing a model like this, highlighting problems with iterative deployment and reinforcement learning.

OpenAI was even accused of intentionally tuning the model to keep users more engaged. Joanne Jang, OpenAI's head of model behavior, jumped on a Reddit AMA to do damage control. "Personally, the most painful part of the latest sycophancy discussions has been people assuming that my colleagues are irresponsibly trying to maximize engagement for the sake of it," wrote Jang.

Earlier in the week, OpenAI announced new features to make products mentioned in ChatGPT responses more shoppable. The company said it isn't earning purchase commissions, but it smells an awful lot like the beginnings of a Google Shopping competitor. Did we mention OpenAI would buy Chrome if Google is forced to divest it? Because they totally would, FYI.

The ChatGPT maker has had a few more problems with its recent models. Last week, we reported that o3 and o4-mini hallucinate more than previous models, by OpenAI's own admission.

Anyone in the U.S. can now sign up for Google AI Mode

Meanwhile, Google is barreling ahead with AI-powered search features. On Thursday, the tech giant announced that it's removing the waitlist to test out AI Mode in Labs, so anyone over 18 in the U.S. can try it out. We spoke with Robby Stein, VP of product for Google Search, about how users have responded to its AI features, the future of search, and Google's responsibility to publishers.

Via Giphy

Google also updated Gemini with image editing tools and expanded NotebookLM, its AI podcast generator, to over 50 languages. Bloomberg also reported that Google has been quietly testing ads inside third-party chatbot responses.

We're keeping a close eye on that final development, and we are very curious how Google plans to inject ads into AI search. Would you trust a chatbot that gave you sponsored answers?

Leaderboard drama 

Researchers from AI company Cohere, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, and Ai2, published a paper this week calling out Chatbot Arena for essentially helping AI heavyweights rig their benchmarking results. The study said the popular crowdsourced benchmarking tool from UC Berkeley allowed Meta, Google, OpenAI, and Amazon "extensive private testing" and gave them more prompt data, which "significantly" improved their rankings. 

In response, LM Arena, the group behind Chatbot Arena said "there are a number of factual errors and misleading statements in this writeup" and posted a pointy-by-point rebuttal to the paper's claims on X. 

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The issue of benchmarking AI models has become increasingly problematic. Benchmark results are largely self-reported by the companies that release them, and the AI community has called for more transparency and accountability by objective third parties. Chatbot Arena seemed to provide a solution by allowing users to choose the best responses in blind tests. But now LM Arena's practices have come into question, further fueling the conversation around objective evaluations. 

A few weeks ago, Meta got in trouble for using an unreleased version of its Llama 4 Maverick model on LM Arena, which scored a high ranking. LM Arena updated its leaderboard policies, and the publicly available version of Llama 4 Maverick was added instead, ranking way lower than the unreleased version. 

Lastly, LM Arena recently announced plans to form a company of its own.

Regulators and researchers tackle AI's real-world harms

Now that generative AI has been in the wild for a few years, the real-world implications have started to crystallize. 

This week, U.S. Congress passed the "Take It Down" Act, which requires tech companies to remove nonconsensual intimate imagery within 48 hours of a request. The law also outlines strict punishment for deepfake creators. The legislation had bipartisan support and is expected to be signed by President Donald Trump.

The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report on generative AI's impact on humans and the environment. The conclusion is that the potential impacts are huge, but exactly how much is unknown because "private developers do not disclose some key technical information."

And in the realm of the frighteningly real and specific harms of AI, a study from Common Sense Media said AI companion apps like Character.AI and Replika are unequivocally unsafe for teens. The researchers say if you're too young to buy cigarettes, you're too young for your own AI companion.

Then there was the report that researchers from the University of Zurich secretly deployed AI bots in the r/changemyview subreddit to try and convince people to change their minds. Some of the bot identities included a statutory rape victim, "a trauma counselor specializing in abuse," and "a black man opposed to Black Lives Matter."

Other AI news...

In other news, Duolingo is taking an "AI-first" approach, which means replacing its contract workers with AI whenever possible. On the flip side, Wikipedia announced it's taking a "human-first" approach to its AI strategy. It won't replace its volunteers and editors with AI, but will instead "use AI to build features that remove technical barriers to allow the humans at the core of Wikipedia."

Yelp deployed a bunch of AI features this week, including an AI-powered answering service that takes calls for restaurants, and Governor Gavin Newsom wants to use genAI to solve California's legendary traffic jams.

Shopping for a laptop is already hard enough due to the sheer number of options. But your task gets even more difficult when you need a laptop for a very specific purpose, like photo editing. This demands even more research and scrutiny on your part, which may sound like a tall order. Talk about analysis paralysis.

If you're in the market for a photo editing laptop and are having a hard time making the final decision, you're in luck, because we're here to help you choose something you'll love. In fact, not only have we tested all of the top powerhouse laptops, but we even brought in some backup — to give us some more insight into buying a laptop for photo editing, we reached out to Tommy Yonash, a Brooklyn-based documentary and portrait photographer, and Joseph Maldonado, a photographer for Mashable's parent company, Ziff Davis.

What makes a good photo editing laptop?

"Honestly, it comes down to three things for me," Yonash told us. When shopping for the best laptops for photo editing, he recommends prioritizing something with fast processing speeds, a great battery life, and something that's lightweight and portable so you can take it on the go. Maldonado agrees that speed is vital to having a good photo editing experience. "It just has to be able to process the images quickly," he said. "I don’t enjoy a laptop that slows down while bouncing between different photos."

Yonash told us that he uses a MacBook Pro for photo editing, as it's a great marriage of all three of those important specs. "I work between the M1 Pro and the M1 Air, both of which have held up great over the years, but the Pro has usually been my go-to for its better battery life," he added. While the M1 line of MacBook laptops can still be found pretty cheap at various retailers, Apple has since released the MacBook Pro and Air with the latest and greatest M4 chips, which are much faster. For photo editing laptops specifically, we recommend going current-gen to get the best bang for your buck.

SEE ALSO: The best laptops for video editing, according to an experienced editor

Yonash maintains that speed, portability, and battery are the most important specs when shopping for photo editing laptops, but out of those three, processing speed will always win out. "Since I don't do too much editing on the go, I would have to say speed or processing power is the number one most important feature," he told us. "Nothing kills editing flow like a laggy computer." Maldonado concurred on this point, but also added that a great display and plenty of storage are also a necessity. He said that a minimum of 1TB of SSD storage will serve you well.

What are the best laptops for photo editing?

After all of our research, testing, and expert interviews, we found that the M4 MacBook Air will be the best photo editing laptop for most people (and if you want to splurge a bit, go for the Pro). We know that not everyone is an Apple die-hard, though, so we included laptops from beyond the Apple ecosystem as well. Below, our top picks for the most reliable photo editing laptops.