Blogroll

China's growing influence in the global auto industry has become a major issue in the United States, with lawmakers increasingly scrutinizing foreign ownership of automakers. While much of the focus has been on keeping Chinese brands out of the U.S. market, proposed legislation could also have unintended consequences for long-established manufacturers already operating in the States.

Prime Video released the teaser for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power at San Diego Comic-Con, and things are looking bad for Middle-earth.

SEE ALSO: 'Blade Runner 2099' teaser: Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer team up and hunt rogue replicants

Season 3 picks up five years after the fall of Eregion, with Sauron (Charlie Vickers) now comfortably in control of Middle-earth. His armies have swept across the world, and only a few places remain free from his dark grasp. The dwarves have shut themselves away in Khazad-dûm, while the elves remain ensconced in the realms of Lindon and Rivendell, protected by their three rings of power. Their time of relative safety may be coming to a close, though, because Sauron is hard at work on his greatest piece of statement jewelry yet: a little bauble called the One Ring. Surely that won't cause any problems, right?

The teaser isn't all doom and gloom, though. It offers up our first glimpse of the reunion between Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) and her long-lost husband, Celeborn (Jamie Campbell Bower), who share some passionate moments even as the world crumbles around them.

Celeborn isn't the only new character joining this season. The Rings of Power Comic-Con panel also saw the announcement of three major players this season: Thrain (Eddie Marsan), older brother of King Durin IV (Owain Arthur); Anarion (Andrew Richardson), the younger son of Elendil (Lloyd Owen); and Marnûkh (Adam Young), a mysterious Orc. Oh, and for the first time ever, the ferocious Balrog will be speaking, and will be voiced by Simon Pegg. More Balrog can only mean one thing: Khazad-dûm isn't long for this world.

To watch all these characters and more — including the Nazgnagôl, early incarnations of the Nazgûl — in action, check out the full teaser above.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3 premieres Nov. 11 on Prime Video.

In a sea of bad headlines for PlayStation, a big network outage probably isn't going to help.

PS5 owners logged into their consoles on Friday to find that PlayStation Network, the online infrastructure that makes everything from game purchases to online matches work, was experiencing an outage. Multiple sources, both primary and secondary, confirm this, as DownDetector shows a steady stream of complaints starting on Friday morning and continuing into the afternoon. On top of that, PlayStation's own server status page showed that all services were experiencing issues at the time of publication.

Credit: Screenshot courtesy of PlayStation SEE ALSO: 'Splatoon Raiders' is a spiffy single-player makeover for Nintendo's coolest series

Mashable has reached out to Sony for comment and will update this article if we receive a response. As of early Friday afternoon, the PlayStation support account on X had not acknowledged the outage at all.

All of this comes amidst a very, very rough time for PlayStation's public relations.

PS5 consoles recently saw price increases nearly six years after the initial launch, and word is that the next PlayStation console might cost north of $1,000 whenever it launches. If that wasn't bad enough, every single PlayStation social media account has been hounded by angry comments from players who are aghast at Sony's recent decision to stop manufacturing games on physical discs in 2028.

Needless to say, this is not the best time for a major, unexplained network outage.

This is a developing story...

Google made nearly $120 billion in earnings last quarter. Somehow, that still was not enough to cover what the company is pouring into AI.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, announced Wednesday, July 22, that it recorded negative free cash flow of $5.9 billion for the second quarter of 2026, marking the first time that figure has fallen below zero since the company went public. Google generated $39.1 billion in operating cash flow, but spent $44.9 billion on capital projects, with most of the money going toward the servers, data centers, and networking equipment needed to support its AI products.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

To be clear, Google is still making plenty of money. In the Q2 2026 earnings report, the company disclosed $119.8 billion in quarterly revenue, a 24 percent increase from the same period last year. Its operating income reached $40.8 billion, while its net income climbed to a record $112.1 billion.

There is an important catch to that record profit, however. Much of it came from Alphabet’s investments rather than its main businesses. The company reported approximately $98 billion in other, primarily from unrealized gains in its portfolio of equity investments. Those gains reflect assets that increased in value but were not necessarily sold for cash.

Free cash flow offers a look at the money Google actually had left after covering its operating expenses and investments in assets such as equipment and facilities. The company typically produces billions of dollars in free cash flow each quarter. This time, though, its rapidly growing infrastructure costs consumed more cash than its businesses generated.

And Google does not plan to slow down.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Also on July 22, the company raised its expected capital spending for 2026 to between $195 billion and $205 billion. Google had previously told investors during its first-quarter earnings report on April 29 that it expected to spend between $180 billion and $190 billion this year. The updated forecast would be more than twice the approximately $91 billion it spent in 2025.

The bill is expected to keep growing next year. During Alphabet’s call on Wednesday, Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi told investors that capital expenditures would increase "significantly" again in 2027.

"We expect that free cash flow will remain under pressure driven by our investments in technical infrastructure, which enable us to capitalize on the AI opportunity and continue to drive attractive returns," Ashkenazi said.

So, where is all that money going?

According to Ashkenazi, approximately 60 percent of Google’s technical infrastructure spending during the quarter went toward servers. The remaining 40 percent went toward data centers and networking equipment.

Google also said it needs that additional capacity to meet demand from outside cloud customers and support its own products, including Search, Gemini, and Google Workspace. There are already signs that some of the spending is paying off: Google reported that Cloud revenue reached $24.8 billion during the quarter, an 82 percent increase from the previous year, while its operating income more than tripled to $8.8 billion.

Google’s other major businesses continued to grow, too. The company also reported that Search advertising generated $63.3 billion, YouTube advertising brought in $11.1 billion, and revenue from subscriptions, platforms, and devices reached $12.9 billion. Google said demand for AI subscriptions helped boost its Google One business.

They are hardly the only company writing enormous checks for AI. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta are collectively expected to invest more than $700 billion this year, largely in data centers, chips, and electricity required to build and run their AI systems.

Investors, however, did not appear reassured by Google’s growth. Alphabet shares fell nearly 7 percent on Thursday, July 23, the day after the company raised its spending forecast and warned that free cash flow would remain under pressure.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Google still has a substantial financial cushion, but with the company already warning that infrastructure spending will climb significantly again in 2027, this may not be the last quarter in which Google’s enormous AI bill outpaces the cash coming in.

Most routers will encourage you to use one Wi-Fi name for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Sure, why not. In theory, your devices should work together to pick the best band automatically.

If you’re up for a little mystery this weekend, we’ve got you covered with some unsettling storytelling that is less about action and more about getting inside the characters’ minds, often in disturbing ways that require you to think. They all revolve around uncovering the truth in a distinctive setting that not only helps shape the story at hand but also amplifies the tension.

Prime Video revealed the first teaser for Blade Runner 2099 at San Diego Comic-Con, and the sneak peek is as rainy and neon-lit as you'd expect.

SEE ALSO: 'Percy Jackson and the Olympians' Season 3 teaser gives us our first look at the Titan's Curse

The sequel series, executive produced by Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, takes place 50 years after the events of Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049. In those 50 years, Los Angeles has been transformed by a replicant uprising. Now, these synthetic humans are running the show, but that doesn't mean blade runners aren't still around to hunt down any replicants who step out of line.

One of those blade runners is Olwen (Michelle Yeoh), a replicant who's tracking down a group of missing replicants who have gone rogue. With only days left to live, she'll stop at nothing to complete her mission.

She'll team up with Cora (Hunter Schafer), a human fugitive who becomes a blade runner in an attempt to finally stop running. The teaser shows her fleeing through Los Angeles and getting captured by Olwen, so it looks like their partnership will get off to a contentious start. Can this unlikely duo find the runaways and save their fragile city from total collapse?

Watch the full teaser above to see Olwen and Cora in action, plus the return of the iconic Voight-Kampff test.

Blade Runner 2049 also stars Dimitri Abold, Lewis Gribben, Katelyn Rose Downey, Daniel Rigby, Johnny Harris, Amy Lennox, Sheila Atim, Matthew Needham, Tom Burke, and Maurizio Lombardi.

Blade Runner 2049 premieres Nov. 20 on Prime Video.

Any time you look into switching to Linux, you'll come across the same advice: install Linux Mint. It looks just like Windows and you won't have any problems adjusting.

Jimothy has crossed Seattle streets and climbed neighborhood staircases, and now he's wandered into the gaming world.

The unusually shaped raccoon became an internet celebrity after Seattle resident Kiana Hall spotted him in the city’s Ballard neighborhood on July 13, 2026. Since then, his compact torso, rounded back, and long legs have inspired memes, murals, tattoos, merchandise, and an expanding collection of digital recreations.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Players and developers have already begun recreating Jimothy across video games and tabletop worlds. And now, one of gaming’s biggest studios is preparing to make room for him.

“You asked, Jimothy answered,” the official World of Warcraft X account wrote on July 24. “Coming soon to Azeroth.”

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

It is the latest step in Jimothy’s rapid transformation from neighborhood raccoon to cross-platform gaming character.

How Jimothy scurried his way into gaming

Before Jimothy became a prospective Azeroth resident, he was simply an unusual-looking raccoon walking beneath a parked car in Seattle.

Hall initially mistook the animal for a cat, then began recording when he emerged with the masked face of a raccoon and a noticeably shortened torso and neck. She named him Jimothy because, as she later explained to Today.com, he simply looked like one.

The brief video accumulated millions of views. Experts believe Jimothy’s appearance may be caused by a congenital spinal deformity resembling short spine syndrome. Despite his compressed build, videos show him walking, climbing, finding food, and independently navigating the neighborhood.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Those same physical features also made him immediately recognizable when artists began translating him into different virtual worlds. Some redrew Jimothy in their games’ established art styles, while others creatively repurposed existing character models to reproduce his distinctive silhouette.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

In an Old School RuneScape tribute, Jimothy becomes a low-poly raccoon who looks as though he has always been wandering through Gielinor. Mouse: P.I. For Hire transported him to Mouseburg, redrawing him in the black-and-white rubber-hose animation style of its 1930s-inspired world.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Dead by Daylight gave him a horror makeover complete with glowing features and bloody tentacles. The official Sims account attempted to build him using a human Sim, producing a character who resembled someone wearing a slightly unsettling raccoon costume.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Halo’s interpretation required another inventive workaround. Rather than creating a new animal model, senior community manager John Junyszek bent a Spartan onto all fours and extended its neck and feet to imitate Jimothy’s proportions.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Other images placed the resulting raccoon-like soldier near Master Chief’s crashed escape pod in scenes based on Halo: Combat Evolved and its Campaign Evolved remake.

Jimothy also reached several other established gaming worlds. Warner Bros. Games imagined that he had arrived in Gotham City, while the teams behind Among Us and Cult of the Lamb redesigned him to fit their respective visual styles.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Most of these official tributes exist only as images. Fans and modders, however, have gone further by turning Jimothy into a character people can actually play with.

Fans make Jimothy playable

Artist and entrepreneur Chris Pirillo built an entire browser game around Jimothy. The four-level, NES-style game borrows elements from classic arcade titles including Frogger and the original Donkey Kong, transforming parts of the raccoon’s real and imagined adventures into short challenges.

One level asks players to help Jimothy cross traffic, while others involve raiding garbage cans, escaping paparazzi, and climbing ladders.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Fans have also inserted Jimothy into several popular games through mods. In Skyrim, one fan-made addition turns him into a character players can approach and speak with. Stardew Valley modders have created multiple versions, including options that let players keep Jimothy as livestock or purchase him from Marnie as a companion.

In Minecraft, a creator modified the raccoon from the Naturalist add-on to match Jimothy’s proportions, translating his shortened body and long legs into the game’s blocky visual style.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Dungeons & Dragons has produced one of the most elaborate interpretations so far. Its official Jimothy stat block identifies him as a "Beloved Cryptid" and gives him abilities based on both his physical appearance and the increasingly elaborate stories surrounding him.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

"Compact Frame" allows Jimothy to squeeze through gaps measuring less than four inches wide. "Hurl Garbage" lets him attack enemies with trash, dealing both bludgeoning and poison damage. The stat block contains everything players need to add him to a tabletop campaign, where he can search for food, befriend adventurers, or become an unexpectedly dangerous opponent.

Together, these official tributes and fan-made creations have allowed Jimothy to enter gaming in nearly every possible form: artwork, character models, mods, browser games, and tabletop campaigns.

The real Jimothy remains a wild animal roaming Seattle, where wildlife officials have advised people to observe him from a distance. His digital counterparts, however, are proving much easier to approach — and collect.

For more than five decades, HBO/HBO Max has mastered the serious business of fire-breathing dragons, drug warfare, and gangsters sleeping with the fishes. But when you scroll past all that brooding, though, you'll find the service is also quietly stacked with all kinds of comedies, and right now, U.S. subscribers have four of them right at their fingertips for a weekend full of laughs.

Bluetooth is a fantastic feature on mobile phones, but if you use it to listen to your favorite tunes regularly, you might notice it sometimes sounds dead, tinny, or just plain bad. The culprit might actually be the default codec your phone is using for Bluetooth.

Honda built the Ridgeline to compete in the same segment as the Toyota Tacoma and Chevrolet Colorado, but with a different approach. When the truck launched for the 2006 model year, Honda skipped the body-on-frame design that defined the segment and used a unibody platform shared with the Pilot instead.

Subscription fatigue is real. It feels like every useful app now locks its best features behind a monthly fee, whether you're streaming music, organizing your media library, or automating repetitive tasks. But this weekend, instead of signing up for another recurring payment, replace those subscriptions with these free, open-source alternatives (FOSS) and save some money in the process.

I love the Galaxy Z Fold 8, I really do. The wide form factor makes it a true pocket tablet while reviving the glory days of phablets. It'll be fast, likely last longer on battery than the Z Fold 7, and take quality (if zoom-free) photos. I'll be ecstatic if it fares well, in part because the mobile space is in desperate need of excitement.

It's hard to believe, but we've hit the tail end of July, when Netflix's new releases run dry until the calendar flips into August, when a new season of Alone: Australia lands alongside Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy, in which comedian Mo Gilligan eats nothing but fried chicken for a month.

It's hard to believe, but we've hit the tail end of July, when Netflix's new releases run dry until the calendar flips into August, when a new season of Alone: Australia lands alongside Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy, in which comedian Mo Gilligan eats nothing but fried chicken for a month.

It's hard to believe, but we've hit the tail end of July, when Netflix's new releases run dry until the calendar flips into August, when a new season of Alone: Australia lands alongside Big Chicken: A Fast Food Conspiracy, in which comedian Mo Gilligan eats nothing but fried chicken for a month.

For some social media users, Facebook may feel like an app left behind in an online era of the past. However, for others, Facebook has reinvented itself as the modern-day Craigslist with Facebook Marketplace.

Meta seems to have taken notice and is now releasing a standalone app for the Facebook Marketplace power users who keep the platform going: It's sellers.

The new app, aptly named Seller, launched on Friday and provides Facebook Marketplace sellers with tools to list their wares and manage their current listings. 

Like Facebook Marketplace itself, the Seller app is free for users. Meta monetizes Facebook Marketplace with ads and does not take any percentage of its users' sales. Users will be able to download the app and login with their Facebook account starting today.

Credit: Facebook

Seller provides a tool to post new listings, a dashboard to manage their existing ones, an in-app inbox to reply to prospective buyers, and analytics for all of their old listings. 

Seller also introduces a few new tools for sellers as well. According to Facebook, Seller users will be able to scan their products with their smartphone, and AI will fill-out the listing details automatically.

In an interview with the New York Times, Facebook head Tom Allison said that the app would be the Marketplace seller equivalent of a video editing tool for content creators. Allison also explained how Meta is experimenting with more standalone products for Facebook's power users, which include Marketplace Sellers and Facebook Groups administrators.

As social media users move to competing platforms like TikTok and Meta's own Instagram, Facebook has found new life within specific, once-niche features on the platform. In May, Facebook launched a standalone app called Forum for its Facebook Groups power users. Now, the company is doing the same for Facebook Marketplace sellers.

Meta says that one-third of young adults who use Facebook also use Marketplace. And, every month, more than 420 million items are listed on the Marketplace platform. 

A member of the Ferrell family is going viral, although this time, comedy has very little to do with it.

Magnus Ferrell, the 22-year-old musician and oldest son of Will Ferrell, is reaching a wave of new listeners (and arguably becoming social media's summer boyfriend) through "Asleep Talking," his bedroom-pop single about being unable to stop thinking about someone, even while asleep.

"I AM SO HAPPY!" he captioned a July 3, 2026 TikTok, calling the number of new people showing love to the song "absolutely mind boggling."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Released April 24 (but gaining fresh momentum this summer), "Asleep Talking" features understated piano and guitar production as Magnus returns to the song’s central idea: someone has occupied so much of his mind that he talks about them in his sleep. Its official video has received more than 400,000 views on YouTube and has over 600,000 streams on Spotify.

The track is also reaching some of the internet’s largest music-reaction creators. The Morning Shift Show, which has more than 1 million followers on the platform, listened and reacted to "Asleep Talking" July 23, introducing the song to its own audience — one commenter arrived on Magnus’ page writing "sent here by ma boys The Morning Shift," adding that the track was already "on repeat."

The song received another endorsement on July 1, when Ferrell appeared on Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson’s IMO podcast. Will played "Asleep Talking" for the hosts, and Obama gave the song a round of applause.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

For those unfamiliar with the Ferrell family tree beyond Will, Magnus is the oldest of the actor’s three sons with his wife, Swedish auctioneer Viveca Paulin. The couple, who married in 2000, also shares sons Mattias and Axel.

Magnus began playing piano as a child and later became interested in jazz, which gave him more freedom to improvise and develop his own approach to music. He has frequently collaborated with his longtime friend Gabe Yaron, who co-wrote the viral song.

By the time Magnus enrolled at the University of Southern California (USC), his father’s alma mater, he and Yaron were roommates, posting covers and original songs online. Magnus later took a leave of absence from USC to focus on music full-time and signed with Republic Records.

In a 2025 interview with Atwood Magazine, he described his approach as "groove therapy," or a way to share his love of music while allowing listeners to take their own feelings from it.

On TikTok and X, listeners have been finding their own ways to describe its dreamy, nostalgic sound. One called it "dancing in the kitchen making dinner sipping wine music," while another heard "Super 8 rom com vibes."

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Like many celebrity children (or "nepo-babies") pursuing careers of their own, Magnus has acknowledged that his father’s fame inevitably affects how audiences first encounter his work.

"I’m not someone who’s going to pretend it’s not a thing," Magnus also told the publication. "Most definitely, it is. I’m not going to hide it."

"Asleep Talking" may be introducing Magnus to a much larger audience, but it’s far from his first release. His earlier catalog includes tracks like "Drinks on Me," "Life or Death," and "Miss Me Vendetta," along with the EP Hasn’t Even Started. He’s also no stranger to the stage, having performed at the 2025 Summer Bash in New York and the MTV Video Music Awards that September as a solo artist.

One of Magnus’s earlier tracks made its way into a project starring his father. He and Yaron wrote "Slow Down" while trying to break out of a creative rut, then sent it to Will during production of the 2025 Prime Video comedy You’re Cordially Invited. The song eventually landed in one of the movie’s party scenes. Later, at his band’s first live performance—a 2022 Cancer for College benefit—his father joined him onstage with a cowbell, recreating the instrument at the center of his famous Saturday Night Live sketch.

The father and son generated another viral moment the following year when Will DJed a USC fraternity tailgate at Magnus’ invitation. With Magnus beside him, the actor played tracks including Survivor’s "Eye of the Tiger" for the crowd.

Magnus later explained that he simply asked his dad whether he wanted to take over the music for a few minutes. Will agreed, and another Ferrell family video began making its way across social media. When asked where he learned to DJ, Magnus joked, "I got my chops from my pops."

"Asleep Talking" is producing a different introduction. This time, Will Ferrell may provide a familiar name, but Magnus has given TikTok a song it cannot get out of its head.

San Diego Comic-Con, the annual gathering for all things comic books and nerd culture, is here. This year's event kicked off on July 23 and runs through July 26, so you'd best prepare for a weekend of big reveals and new movie trailers.

This year's edition of the long-running pop culture showcase features panels from all over the world of movies, TV, video games, and maybe even a comic book or two, here and there. Our friends at IGN created an excellent rundown of the weekend's schedule of events, but there are a few announcements in particular we're looking forward to. (Mashable and IGN are both owned by the same parent company, Ziff Davis.)

So, here are some of the biggest panels and announcements we expect this weekend at SDCC 2026.

SEE ALSO: 'Supergirl' review: Better than the comic, but not DC's best Somehow, Spaceballs returns

Comedy legend Mel Brooks just celebrated his 100th birthday, and he still has jokes to tell, as a long-awaited sequel to his old Star Wars parody, Spaceballs, is in the works. Spaceballs: The New One comes out next April. There's a panel at SDCC on Friday featuring the cast and crew of the new movie, where they will discuss the project in detail, and maybe even give us a real look at it, since it's only been shown in brief teaser form thus far.

Prime Video shows off its Blade Runner and Lord of the Rings shows This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

Earlier on Friday, you can expect some new info from Amazon about two of its higher-profile streaming TV projects.

First, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is set to return for its third season, after season two took the series to new heights all the way back in 2024. Amazon's panel will feature a look at season three of the expensively produced and divisive fantasy epic.

Beyond that, Blade Runner 2099 will make its debut at this panel. The new Prime Video series stars Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer and returns viewers to the bleak techno-dystopia that somehow became a nearly 50-year-long media franchise.

A look at the future of Apple TV

Apple is holding a panel focused on original Apple TV programming, which has really hit its stride recently with shows like Silo and Widow's Bay. Apple's official description for this panel is very vague, but hopefully, we'll get updates on the streaming app's best new shows. Check in on Saturday if you want to hear more about the next moves for Apple TV.

Some fresh God of War: Laufey insight

SDCC is not generally a big gaming show, especially with Gamescom coming up in August. But PlayStation will have a presence at the show, and that includes a God of War: Laufey panel on Friday night.

And finally, the MCU returns with Doomsday

You may have heard that there's a new Avengers movie coming out. I mean, there usually is, but this one seemingly has way more guys in it than usual. It also features the MCU debut of fan-favorite villain Dr. Doom, played by returning star Robert Downey Jr.

Saturday night will see a Comic-Con panel featuring Kevin Feige and other "special guests," and they should give us an idea of what to expect not just from Doomsday, but from the next year or two of the MCU.