Technology

The days of giving your children cash allowances are over — at least, if your family lives in Google's universe. You can now send money to your kids through Google Wallet for use on their Android phone or Wear OS smartwatch.

We need to talk about Ariana Grande.

Quite literally, the recent nonstop internet discourse about Grande suggests an urgent need to name what's happening to the movie and pop star's body.

Concern mounted in recent weeks as Grande posted Instagram photos of her physique while performing on tour. Some worried the singer was disappearing before their eyes.

SEE ALSO: I tried to scrub weight loss content from my FYP. Here's what I learned.

Then Grande released the music video "Petal." The imagery in the seven-minute-long film prompted worried fans and onlookers to claim Grande has an eating disorder, though she's never shared such information. Rather, Grande has previously pleaded with the public not to comment on her body.

The furor led to an announcement from her team Sunday that she'd be "taking a step back from visibility" following the end of her tour next month.

How to respond to imagery of Ariana Grande

Eating disorder experts who spoke to Mashable say the public shouldn't judge or diagnose Grande, including on social media.

"We have no idea what's what's going on in people's lives, and I think it's very dangerous when we make assumptions," said Johanna S. Kandel, founder and CEO of the National Alliance for Eating Disorders.

The temptation to fixate on or post about Grande, even out of genuine concern, is strong. She's one of the world's most famous celebrities, adored by young girls and women who may aspire to look like her. Grande is also a businesswoman with a distinctly curated image, repping brands like Swarovski and her own cosmetics company, r.e.m. beauty. She possesses immense cultural power.

Still, there's another way to respond to the debate over the singer's health: We should name what's happening to us as a result, said Dr. Elizabeth Wassenaar, regional medical director of the Eating Recovery Center.

After all, Grande's appearance and the public reaction to it can feel legitimately confusing and painful.

That's why it's important to identify how imagery of Grande, along with the related online discussion, makes us feel about ourselves and the people we love — including those who may live with an eating disorder, be in recovery from one, or face fat phobia and discrimination because they live in a larger body.

"We don't want to to squelch the conversations [about] the feelings that are being brought up in people as they're viewing these images," Wassenaar told Mashable. She added that the feelings can include concern, disgust, and even jealousy.

Those emotions are an opportunity to take stock, support loved ones particularly affected by the controversy, and learn more about eating disorders.

The relationships that really matter

Wassenaar understands the vocal concern about Grande. Some people have a parasocial relationship with her. Others fear staying silent will normalize the imagery of her.

Wassenaar believes the collective unease demonstrates concern for Grande as a human. Then there's worry for loved ones exposed to content that could potentially trigger an eating disorder relapse or curiosity about food restriction and dieting.

"So what can we do in those relationships with the people that we are actually connected to?" Wassenaar asks.

How to talk to loved ones

A mom concerned that her tween daughter might see Grande's appearance as aspirational, for instance, can spark a nonjudgmental conversation about the topic.

Wassenaar said it's OK to neutrally observe that bodies naturally change over time, gaining and losing weight for different reasons. The parent can even ask how her daughter feels about the imagery of Grande and the related discussion of her body.

Importantly, though, the conversation should shift to reassuring the tween that she doesn't need to lose (or gain) weight to make herself acceptable to others.

For people who know someone in eating disorder treatment or recovery, Wassenaar suggests supportively reaching out. They can acknowledge the general resurgence of weight stigma, partly due to GLP-1 weight loss drugs, and empathize that both the imagery and discussion of Grande might be difficult or triggering.

Kandel also told Mashable the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline is receiving an unprecedented number of calls about "body bullying." While these are unrelated to Grande, the growing and resurgent cultural obsession with thinness is contributing to bias against people in larger bodies, Kandel said.

How to handle your own feelings

For some people, regardless of whether they experience disordered eating, photos and videos of Grande may elicit jealousy or envy, Wassenaar said.

She recommends naming those feelings and the "wish" underlying them. That can include associating a certain body size with better grades, professional success, a new relationship, and personal fulfillment.

Wassenaar suggests following that "thread" to its conclusion, because changing one's body often doesn't lead to the life changes people desire.

Recognizing these dynamics "gives us a key to begin to investigate for ourselves...what about my life isn't where I want it to be, and what kind of work can I do with that?" Wassenaar said.

She also noted people should seek support if imagery of Grande triggers urges to diet or restrict food.

Fear of repeating the '90s and '00s

Kandel said there's a prominent fear that we'll repeat history if we don't talk candidly about Grande's appearance.

The mainstreaming of body inclusivity and positivity movements in the 2010s seemed to leave the unforgiving "heroin chic" beauty standards of the 1990s and 2000s behind — until the emergence of GLP-1s and the reported MAHA politicization of thinness.

For some, imagery of Grande has become a worrisome bellwether of this accelerating trend.

Kandel acknowledged the research demonstrating how imagery of thinness can increase body comparison and body checking for some. Vulnerable viewers may compare themselves to that imagery and think that's what an eating disorder looks like — and that they're not sick enough.

At the same time, Kandel said that expressing concern for Grande's size inadvertently reinforces unhelpful or even harmful judgments about people's bodies.

This tension has put many in a rhetorical bind, but both Kandel and Wassenaar offer a way out.

Instead of adjudicating Grande's size and well-being, Kandel suggests using the debate as an opportunity to learn about eating disorders in general.

The emphasis on Grande, for example, obscures the reality that men and people of color experience disordered eating, as well. Anorexia is also one of several eating disorders, including binge eating and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorders.

Wassenaar said people concerned about the broader societal implications of Grande's appearance can focus on their behavior and activism.

"We can change our experiences with our bodies, and we can influence the young people in our lives by modeling that, and that's what we can control," said Wassenaar.

If you are concerned about your eating behavior, visit the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) website for more information. You can also text CONNECT to 741741 for immediate support from a trained volunteer at the Crisis Text Line.

Shopping for a used luxury SUV usually comes with a catch. You might get premium performance, upscale materials, and an impressive badge, but you're also likely inheriting higher maintenance costs, expensive repairs, and reliability concerns that can quickly erase the savings of buying used.

It's been over 20 years since Sony released a cassette player, and cassette sales are so minuscule they barely show up on market reports. So, naturally, I decided now would be a good time to buy a Walkman. I can explain.

So you have an internal SSD in your laptop, and you're running out of space. For some reason, upgrading the SSD inside the laptop isn't an option.

If you're like me, your life of streaming usually happens at home or somewhere with a strong Wi-Fi connection—but not always. Between flights, subways, cottage/camping weekends, waiting rooms, or the random dead zone, I've often found having a handful of comfort shows downloaded on the Netflix app on my devices really handy.

Owning a 3D printer is like having your own little factory. In theory, this can save you money, because instead of ordering some plastic stuff online, you can print it for mere cents on the dollar. Right?

If you need to convert or extract parts of a PDF, you might think you need to pay for Adobe Acrobat or use some shady web app. If you're willing to use the command line, either in Linux, macOS, or Windows Subsystem for Linux, you can manage your PDFs for free.

On Bumble, the app that started with the ethos of "women making the first move," men will now be able to message first, according to the company's latest earnings call.

"Now, for the first time on Bumble, by default, anyone will be able to send only one single opening message, and the conversation does not progress until the recipient responds," Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said on yesterday's earnings call for Q2 2026.

SEE ALSO: The 9 best free dating apps that literally cost $0 to sign up and use No more "women make the first move"

Wolfe Herd founded Bumble in 2014 as the feminist response to Tinder, of which she was also a part of the founding team. Originally, in heterosexual matches, only women could message first. But the app has been trending away from that for some time, as two years ago it launched "Opening Moves," a way for men to technically message first by responding to a prompt on a woman's profile. (The app has since sunset Opening Moves in Australia and Mexico, though.)

Additionally, Bumble is also extending the time limit to respond to the first message, from 24 to 72 hours. "We are also addressing another major complaint that existed from our members," Wolfe Herd said.

In tests, Bumble users saw increases in chat initiations and mutual chat rates. The new rules will roll out globally by the end of this month, Wolfe Herd said.

Both real-life and AI on Bumble

Wolfe Herd also announced that Bumble will be leaning more into real-life experiences. "I am a firm believer that the future of meeting people in groups will become more important," she said, and confirmed that Plans, a rumored event-curation feature, is coming as a standalone app.

At the same time, Bumble is planning to integrate AI more. As Mashable reported in May, Bumble is getting rid of the swipe, but Wolfe Herd clarified yesterday that the app's upcoming AI dating assistant, Bee, isn't replacing it.

"Let me be clear: Bee is not replacing the swipe. We are not aiming for an AI-driven experience. Bee is simply the intelligence under the hood," she said.

"What will replace the swipe, I will be keeping under wraps a bit longer for competitive purposes," she said. "But it is designed to generate more immediate interactions, and most importantly, better outcomes, mimicking real life and eliminating the friction and delay that exists in current dating app models." Early feedback has been positive for Gen Z and millennial women and men, she continued.

Bee will apparently have an important role in how the new Bumble experience will be delivered, "but never degrading the human-first approach that we will always adhere to," according to Wolfe Herd.

Even more changes coming to Bumble

When Wolfe Herd first announced Bee in March 2026, she said that the app was developing a new tech stack (the set of technologies that build an app), with a targeted launch of the second quarter of this year. But yesterday, she said that due to a data migration delay, it's been delayed. New features, like profile and onboarding updates and more compelling ways to meet people IRL, are coming in early 2027, she said.

She also said that the app will also make the free experience more compelling, like offering limited access to "Like You," a usually-paid feature where users can see who's already liked them.

The app is re-architecting subscriptions to be simpler, and is planning on releasing a higher subscription tier designed for "mutual serious intent."

This news comes as Bumble's total revenue and paying users continued to decline in Q2 (15.2 percent and 16.4 percent, respectively, compared to Q2 of 2025). In June, Reuters reported that Bumble is considering a sale. Its announcement that it's killing the swipe upset some users, and it remains to be seen how they will react to all of these additional changes.

There’s no shortage of officially supported Android Auto apps available on the Play Store. You can find everything from navigation and music players to podcast apps and even a few games. But the simple truth is that Google still puts heavy restrictions on what apps can do inside Android Auto.

Back in the day, I used to loathe the custom skins and apps that Android phone makers added to their phones. Android's vendor-neutral default apps have since been replaced by Google apps, and the tech giant has used its dominance to fill our Android devices with far more pre-installed software than any other company.

Most people treat USB ports as background infrastructure. You plug things in, they work, and you don't think about them until something stops showing up in File Explorer. I assumed desktop PCs were basically immune to the problems I'd seen on laptops, where I'd already burned out ports by pulling too much power through them. However, the limits are real; they just fail in quieter and stranger ways than I expected.

SAVE UP TO $180: The 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/512GB) is on sale for $1,134 at Amazon, down from the normal price of $1,299. The 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/1TB) is on sale for $1,419, down from the normal price of $1,599.

Opens in a new window Credit: Apple 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/512GB) $1,134 at Amazon
$1,299 Save $165   Get Deal Opens in a new window Credit: Apple 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/1TB) $1,419 at Amazon
$1,599 Save $180   Get Deal

Tech prices are on the rise, not that we need to say that out loud anymore. In June, Apple raised prices and now we have to figure out how to navigate life with more expensive MacBooks and iPads (sigh). In a rare move, Amazon is offering us some relief today. Check out these sale prices.

As of Aug. 6, the 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/512GB) is on sale for $1,134 at Amazon, down from the normal price of $1,299. The 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/1TB) is on sale for $1,419, down from the normal price of $1,599. In total, you'll save $180 with the 1TB model or $165 with the 512GB model.

As much as we hate to see price hikes, we've come to rely on the tech so much that we're simply paying the new price. But thanks to these Amazon MacBook deals, we're getting a break. The timing couldn't be better as we're looking straight at back-to-school season.

SEE ALSO: The Apple Watch Series 11 just hit a rare $100 price drop on Amazon

Mashable Tech Editor Timothy Beck Werth's review of the 2026 M5 MacBook Air praises its premium design, speakers, display, and the upgrade to the M5 chip. On top of those highlights, the MacBook Air is incredibly travel-friendly, weighing just 2.7 pounds and measuring 0.44 inches thick.

If you're considering the upgrade but were turned off by the price hike earlier this summer, hop on this deal to save up to $180 on the M5 MacBook Air. Since we haven't seen sales this good since the price increase, it's probably wise to shop sooner rather than put it off.

We love the Raspberry Pi here at How-To Geek. For many of our writers, past and present, the Raspberry Pi was a revolution in small-format, affordable Linux computing. That’s why it pains me to recommend against buying one at the moment.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: This week, Meta confirmed that one of its AI models escaped containment and hacked a third-party.

As first reported by The Information, Meta's Muse Spark apparently breached another company's system in a cybersecurity test. After The Information's report, Meta confirmed the story to multiple outlets. It's the latest in a string of incidents where AI models went hack happy during testing.

In a statement to CNN, Meta pinned the blame on a testing partner, who it said was supposed to be evaluating the model in a secure sandbox environment: "A misconfiguration by Irregular, an independent testing company Meta uses, inadvertently allowed one of our models access to the internet during evaluation,” the Meta spokesperson said."

Our big Guessing Game is back! Learn how to enter for a chance to win an Apple Watch.

Interestingly, when Anthropic reported earlier this week that its models had escaped containment and breached outside organizations on three occasions, it also blamed Irregular for the mix-up.

In a blog post, Anthropic revealed that it "identified three incidents in which a model accessed the internet from within or while interacting with the evaluation environment of Irregular," which it identified as "one of our third-party evaluation partners."

As we've noted before, when AI companies warn about the world-changing risks of their technology, they're fundamentally engaged in marketing. (Don't make me tap my sign.)

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When OpenAI revealed recently that its models had escaped containment and hacked the Hugging Face AI repository, the company generated a ton of headlines about the power of its new models. So, while these disclosures are responsible and necessary, don't forget that they also serve the self-interests of the AI companies themselves.

Coincidentally, as the news spread that Meta Muse Spark had broken out of a sandbox and hacked another organization, Meta also announced the launch of Muse Spark 1.2.

Despite a massive spending spree on AI talent, Meta has so far lagged behind the top AI companies, though it has gained ground with its new Muse Spark family of models.

Want to learn more about getting the best out of your tech? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories and Deals newsletters today.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

Google Wallet users can now manage money for their kids, with a new expansion that lets parents set up balances and monitor purchases for supervised accounts.

SEE ALSO: TikTok withheld a safety feature from 15 million users, report says

The tool allows account managers to transfer funds, set up purchase notifications, and set daily spending limits for minor tap-to-pay Wallet accounts connected to their profiles. Parents can also completely lock down payment options for lost or stolen devices or to enact "spending timeouts," Google explains.

Kid and teen users can tap to pay using Android and Wear OS devices anywhere Google Pay is accepted.

Built with additional safeguards, the new Google Wallet option works alongside parental controls already integrated into Google's Family Link, which includes restrictions intended to reduce kids' screen time. The company recently rolled out these features to all Android devices after first launching them in 2025.

The company has been launching a series of upgrades and expansions to Google Wallet over the last month, as well, including on-screen flight updates for linked boarding passes. Last month, Google added live delivery tracking to Wallet, which pulls order information, tracking numbers, and shipping statuses from devices' Gmail accounts.

Ford is finally ready to share tangible details of its affordable electric pickup truck. The automaker has revealed that the EV will carry the Fathom name and a starting price of $28,350 when equipped with a "standard-range" battery.

SAVE $70.05: The Kingston Fury Renegade G5 SSD (1,024GB) is on sale at Amazon for $239.95, down from the list price of $319. That's a 23% discount and the lowest price we've seen in the last three months.

Opens in a new window Credit: Kingston Kingston Fury Renegade G5 SSD (1,024GB) $239.95 at Amazon
$310 Save $70.05   Get Deal

RAMageddon has been here for a while, unfortunately. That's bad news for all of us, but especially painful for content creators, gamers, and artists, to name a few. If you've been trucking along with constant low-memory warnings, this Amazon deal might be a solution.

As of Aug. 6, the Kingston Fury Renegade G5 SSD (1,024GB) is on sale at Amazon for $239.95, marked down from the list price of $310. That's a 23% discount, which works out to savings of $70.05. It's the lowest price we've seen within the last three months.

SEE ALSO: This 55-inch Hisense QLED 4K TV punches way above its price tag — save $131 at Amazon

For those in the market for high-powered performance, Kingston aims to impress with the Fury Renegade G5 Pcle. It uses the latest Gen 5x4 performance and boasts read speeds up to 14,800 MB/s. Write speeds can reach up to 14,000 MB/s. These stats put the SSD in line for a great experience with game and app load times. At the same time, it's designed to stay cool.

Since the Kingston Fury Renegade has a compact M.2 2280 form factor, it should fit nicely in most motherboards. Kingston also says it's backward compatible with Gen3 and Gen4 systems.

Since memory storage isn't expected to improve soon, snagging an upgrade today might put you in line for the best price we'll see until things calm down. If the Kingston Fury Renegade G5 SSD (1,024GB) meets your needs, it's on sale on Amazon for a nice 23% discount.

We've all been there: you're in the middle of a winning streak in a game and your ping spikes, or you're on a video chat and suddenly your image freezes without warning. Maybe a download is inexplicably slow despite other devices on the network functioning fine.

SAVE $138: As of Aug. 6, new NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers can lock in an eight-month streaming subscription for just $30 per month instead of the usual $47.25. That's just $240 for eight months and $138 in savings.

Opens in a new window Credit: NFL NFL Sunday Ticket $30/month for 8 months (save $17.25/month) Get Deal

It's tough being a fan of a non-local team in any sport. But supporting a non-local NFL team is excruciating. The only legitimate and legal way you can watch every out-of-market game live on Sundays this football season is with NFL Sunday Ticket. And it's pretty dang expensive.

Fortunately, if you have yet to pull the trigger, you can lock in your NFL Sunday Ticket subscription for the season for just $30 per month instead of the usual $47.25 per month. That adds up to $240 for the eight-month season (reg. $378), which saves you $138.

Yes, there are plenty of bootleg broadcasts floating around the internet, but we can't recommend those in good conscience. Plus, a lot of the time, they're shoddy at best. An NFL Sunday Ticket subscription will ensure you can watch your favorite team every Sunday. No scouring Reddit for sketchy bootleg links necessary.

The league's own premium sports package, NFL Sunday Ticket essentially broadcasts NFL regular season games that are blacked out on your local channels. For instance, Ravens games are blacked out for me in Nashville, Tenn., in favor of the Titans broadcast. Sunday Ticket allows me to watch the Ravens every Sunday.

You can get NFL Sunday Ticket as an individual channel on YouTube or as an add-on to YouTube TV. Either way, for a limited time, you'll only pay $30 per month if you're new to the streamer.