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Charli XCX is going from pop star to movie star with a string of films, including the queer fantasy 100 Nights of Hero, the mockumentary The Moment, and the sapphic romantic drama Erupcja.

Charli XCX co-wrote the script for Erupcja with director Pete Ohs and co-star Lena Góra. Set in Warsaw, the film focuses on two women, a local florist named Nel (Góra) and a tourist named Bethany (XCX), who has repeatedly crashed her love life. But this time, Bethany's brought her current boyfriend Rob (Will Madden), who is looking for the perfect moment to propose.

In my review out of the film's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is quoted in the above trailer, I cheered: "Shot with the kinetic yet poised cool of the French New Wave, this Polish production feels timeless. Its scenes play out with enough specificity for audiences to hook in, but enough ambiguity that they can feel like a dream. There's a touch of fairy tale to that. Ohs keeps his characters curious and fluid, refusing to shove them into easy-to-define roles of hero and villain. Instead, Erupcja embraces the feral nature of love, messy and wondrous.... Erupcja is a thundering rumble of drama and romance, leaving its audience excited and rattled."

Erupcja opens in theaters April 17.

Years before I started buying Samsung phones, you could unlock your phone by scanning your eyes. This went away with the release of the Galaxy S21. Now iris scanning is back, not on the latest Galaxy phone, but on a device where it inherently makes sense.

The dating app Bumble has been known for "women making the first move" (messaging first) in straight matches since its 2014 launch. Now the company is reversing a more recent change to let men message first — but only in a couple of areas.

Last week, Bumble announced that it's removing the Opening Moves feature in Mexico and Australia. The feature has been removed automatically for those users.

SEE ALSO: All your Bumble questions, answered

Opening Moves was introduced in 2024 as a way for men to send the first message to women and was advertised as a way to lessen exhaustion with dating apps. The company's former CEO Lidiane Jones led the charge after taking over from founder and first CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who shortly thereafter returned to the CEO role after Jones held the position for only a year.

While the reputation of dating apps overall has been slipping in recent years due to burnout and bad actors, Bumble has been especially hit financially. The company laid off 30 percent of its workforce last year, and its stock price has fallen 95 percent from its IPO as of this writing.

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Bumble seems to be returning to its original ethos even amid legal challenges. The Observer reported Bumble introduced Opening Moves following lawsuits and legal threats in California, claiming that the app discriminated against men, according to sources familiar with the matter. The Observer states that the company is starting to remove Opening Moves in Australia and Mexico due to lower legal risks in those markets.

"At Bumble, we regularly test and innovate our features to foster healthy, respectful connections while staying true to our women-first mission and prioritizing member safety," a Bumble spokesperson told Mashable. "Supporting our community as they go from match to message is a key part of that work. As with all testing, we evaluate our learnings before considering a wider rollout, ensuring any changes continue to meet our community’s needs and deliver a positive experience for our members."

The first major release of Windows 11 for 2026 has arrived, as Windows 26H1. However, it won't be rolled out to any existing PCs, and it will only exist as a starting point for specific new PCs.

Facebook is rolling out a new, Meta AI-powered feature that will allow users to animate their profile pictures.

Was the online public necessarily clamoring for Facebook profile pictures that waved via AI? Well...not really. But it's here nonetheless.

Users will have access to preset animations that will turn a photo into an AI-powered, GIF-like moving profile picture. Wrote Facebook in a press release:

"You can now animate your profile picture, turning a still photo into a playful animation in seconds. Choose from preset animations — like natural, party hat, confetti, wave, and heart — to bring your profile picture to life depending on how you’re feeling. We’ll add more animation options throughout the year so you can celebrate and express yourself during seasonal moments and special events.

For the best results, we recommend using a photo that features a single person facing the camera with their face clearly visible, and not holding other objects. You can select photos to animate directly from your camera roll or choose photos you’ve already uploaded to Facebook. Once a photo is animated, you can share it to your Feed and view it on your profile."

How the animation process looks. Credit: Meta

Is it the coolest thing to animate your profile picture to make it look like you're making a heart with your hands? Not really. But honestly, I can imagine a kooky aunt or uncle loving it. And kooky aunts and uncles love Facebook as much as they love AI photos and images.

Facebook also announced it had added a "restyle" feature that uses AI to touch-up or change photos in Stories. So, a normal photo with a friend, for instance, could be reimagined to look like an illustration. The restyle feature has preset options and can also reimagine a photo based on a text prompt.

Bad Bunny's halftime show at the Super Bowl made waves even among porn watchers. During the game, Pornhub's traffic crashed the hardest not during the (admittedly snoozy) four quarters, but during the Benito Bowl.

Credit: Pornhub

Compared to an average Sunday, Pornhub's traffic dropped 46 percent at 8:31 p.m. ET — right around the ending of Bad Bunny's performance. The big dip began between 8:11 and 8:19, and according to Men's Journal, the halftime show started at 8:12. Football and non-football fans alike turned off explicit content for a few minutes to tune in.

SEE ALSO: 11 Super Bowl ads from the past that were actually funny

Despite the Patriots' performance, Massachusetts fans had a bigger drop-off on Pornhub around halftime than fans in the Seahawks' home state of Washington: Massachusetts traffic was 44 percent below average at that time, while Washington's was only 14 percent below average. Once the game was over, though, Pornhub traffic in The Bay State crept up to 15 percent above average — maybe they were soothing their loss. Washington fans were celebrating, with traffic at a one percent below average at the same time.

Credit: Pornhub

Surprisingly, Pornhub traffic in Bad Bunny's home of Puerto Rico had a smaller dip below average during halftime (29 percent below an average Sunday).

Credit: Pornhub

Overall, the decline in Pornhub traffic during the Big Game was pretty typical. According to this graph from the tube site, it usually sees a 15 to 28 drop in traffic during those times. This year's game was somewhere in the middle (24 percent). Considering it wasn't the most exciting game of football, it's no wonder that most locked in to see Bad Bunny.

Credit: Pornhub

There aren't many mainstream sedans that come to mind when you think luxury, but one affordable midsize four-door delivers comfort, refinement, and premium features once reserved for upscale brands, without the luxury-brand price tag. While many shoppers settle for basic transportation in this segment, this model’s higher trims bring near-luxury appointments and thoughtful touches that feel a level above the mainstream.

3D printing gives you a way out of boring mass-market limitations, letting you create custom solutions and enjoy being completely self-sufficient. Unfortunately, that enthusiasm often means people rush into neat projects that everyone sees circulating online, without thinking about how usable the end result really is.

Android phone in a bit of a lull? Before you give it a kick and toss, a small change here and some optimization over there can dramatically improve the speed, performance, and efficiency of your smartphone.

CrossOver, the Windows app compatibility layer for Linux and Mac, just got a massive upgrade. The latest update is now based on Wine 11, allowing Borderlands 4, Helldivers 2, Starfield, and other games to finally work on Mac.

NVMe SSDs are all the rage because they're small, cost-effective, and blazing fast. Unfortunately, if you've built or purchased a PC in recent years, you may have noticed that there aren't nearly as many M.2 NVMe slots on your motherboards as you might like. That is where PCIe bifurcation comes in.

If you want a glimpse at how far AI video generation has come since 2023, look no further than the "Will Smith eating spaghetti" test, which has basically become the Hello World of generative AI.

In a video from a Reddit user on the r/OpenAI subreddit, the post shows the evolution of the test — from its humble beginnings as a monstrous, pixelated mess to something far more cinematic, even if you can still tell it’s AI. This version was made using the Kling 3.0 video generator, developed by Chinese tech company Kuaishou Technology. In it, Will Smith is seen at a dinner table not just eating spaghetti, but actually talking with a younger man seated across from him.

Reddit Reddit

They discuss the capabilities of Kling AI to create videos like the one you’re watching, making it pretty clear that this is an ad. Still, it offers a striking look at just how much generative video has matured in a remarkably short period of time. Three years isn’t that long — though, in AI terms, it kind of is.

SEE ALSO: 9 ways to spot an AI-generated viral video

If you recall, the very first version of AI Will Smith eating spaghetti was made with ModelScope and could barely keep the actor’s face consistent from one frame to the next. By the following year, the video — and countless variations of it — had taken off as a meme, to the point that Smith himself poked fun at it, before later being caught using generative AI for a TikTok video of his own. Here's an example of the test in Veo 3.1 from last year.

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Among today’s major players in video generation, like Grok and OpenAI, passing the spaghetti test has become much harder. These companies have put extremely strict guardrails in place around third-party likenesses and copyrighted material, especially as Hollywood continues to crack down on AI models trained on its IP.

Mashable attempted to recreate the test using OpenAI’s Sora and Google Gemini’s Veo 3.1, but both attempts were denied on copyright grounds. For now, it seems that as more AI generators — particularly U.S.-based ones — pull back on the use of third-party likenesses, the spaghetti test may finally be nearing the end of the line.

BUY ONE GET ONE 50% OFF: Through Feb. 14, Target is running a sale where Circle members can buy one book and get another for half price, including new releases and bestsellers. The sale also applies to select games and movies.

Opens in a new window Credit: Target / Mashable Photo Composite BOGO 50% off books, movies, and games at Target   Get Deal

I'm a huge supporter of audiobooks, but nothing beats the feeling of physically turning pages. If you also love the dopamine hit given by physical books, Target's latest book, movie, and game sale can help you put paperbacks and hardcovers in your hands for less.

Through Feb. 14, Target is running a buy one, get one 50% off sale on select books, games, and movies exclusively for Target Circle members. And that's on top of most books already being discounted. If you're not already a Circle member, joining is as easy as filing out your name, email, and phone number.

As far as books go, there are tons of popular titles included in the sale, like People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry, Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid, My Friends by Fredrik Backman, Dear Debbie and The Housemaid by Freida McFadden, and the soon-to-be motion picture Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Amaze! Amaze! Amaze!). Many of the eligible books are also already on sale, so you can definitely do some damage. For instance, Dear Debbie and Heated Rivalry are both on sale for $13.13 (reg. $17.99) and $15.19 (reg. $18.99), respectively. During the sale, you could grab both for $21.76 instead of $36.98 (a total savings of $15.22). With how expensive physical books are, this is a great way to pad your TBR list for less.

As far as games go, you can grab Twister, Battleship, Scrabble, plenty of versions of Monopoly and much more. Meanwhile, you can build your movie collection with Blu-ray and 4K versions of new movies like Wicked and Wicked: For Good, Sinners, and F1.

There are hundreds of thousands of eligible books, movies, and games to choose from in the sale — and you're free to mix and match. Just be sure to shop before the sale ends on Feb. 14 if you want to secure some deals.

Most of us think of YouTube as a place where the content is made by regular people, rather than professional outfits. For the most part, this is still true, but fundamentally, YouTube is technically no different from any streaming service. Which is why you'll also find honest-to-goodness movies on YouTube that are both legal and free to watch.

TikTok loves labeling food. Remember Girl Dinner, which was basically a snacky meal? Or Slop Bowls, which effectively amount to the offerings at places like Cava or Sweetgreen? Well, guess what? Now we have Boy Kibble.

Yes, it is another silly name for relatively normal food. If there's anything TikTok loves, it's branding.

What is Boy Kibble?

In short: Boy Kibble is mostly ground beef over rice. Typically speaking, a kibble recipe involves lean ground beef over white rice. And, to be fair to the name, that pretty much is kibble. It's basic, lean protein and some carbs, as simple as could be, but effective. Naturally, folks mix in veggies or other nutritious additions — others go really wild and substitute chicken or turkey for beef — but the idea is to create a simple, easily repeatable, healthy meal. It should feel as easy as pouring kibble into your dog's bowl.

To be clear, Boy Kibble isn't just for men, just as Girl Dinner wasn't only for women. It's really just a clever branding for a meal that Gym People have been eating for ages. It's a simple meal with very little cooking experience needed. Though even an accomplished chef like Matty Matheson made his version of kibble.

So that's it, really: Boy Kibble or Human Kibble is just a protein-filled, no-fuss meal. It's diet food for gym-goers. But hey, there far worse meals than beef, veggies, and rice.

SAVE $45: As of Feb. 10, get the Anker Prime Power Bank for $134.99 at Amazon, down from its usual price of $179.99. That's a discount of 25%.

Opens in a new window Credit: Amazon Anker Prime Power Bank $134.99 at Amazon
$179.99 Save $45   Get Deal

How often have you been out and about somewhere and found yourself dealing with a dead phone? A dead tablet? It's frustrating to be sure, but nothing you can't overcome with a great power bank. And if you don't have one, now's a good time to invest with an excellent deal that'll get you a power bank that lasts and lasts.

As of Feb. 10, get the Anker Prime Power Bank for $134.99 at Amazon, down from its usual price of $179.99. That's a discount of 25%.

SEE ALSO: The Anker Solix C1000 power station is on sale for its best-ever price at Amazon — save over $400

This compact power bank is no slouch in terms of ability. It packs 20,100mAh into this small package, which is enough to power up your phone, tablet, or other small devices in a pinch. It has three ports for multiple items to be charged up simultaneously, and it can even handle your laptop if needed. With 140W fast charging, it can do it all in the blink of an eye, too, so you don't have to sit around and wait long.

You can recharge the device after it's depleted back up to 50% in just 25 minutes as well, and you can charge something like a 16-inch MacBook Pro (yes, a behemoth like that) to 50% in just 28 minutes. It's all about speed, and a lot of it, in a short amount of time.

So if you're someone who finds themselves needing a charge desperately here and there, be sure not to miss this power bank while it's still up for grabs at this price. It'll come in handy more than once.

You can run pretty much any popular Linux distribution on your Android phone in a few simple steps. With the right scripts, you can even install a fully-featured GUI distro with the desktop environment and window manager of your choice. Let me show you how.

SAVE 64%: The Blueair ComfortPure 3-in-1 air purifier (T10i) is on sale at Woot for $179.99, down from the list price of $499.99. That's a savings of $320.

Opens in a new window Credit: Blueair Blueair ComfortPure 3-in-1 air purifier (T10i) $179.99 at Woot
$499.99 Save $320   Get Deal

The calendar says February, but for those of us who live in spring pollen areas, we know that things can get intense any day now. Before the allergies take hold this year, equip your home and gift your sinuses an air purifier that'll cut down on the pollen count. One of Mashable's favorite models is on sale today.

As of Feb. 10, the Blueair ComfortPure 3-in-1 air purifier (T10i) is on sale for $179.99 at Woot, marked down from the normal price of $499.99. That's a massive 64% discount that works out to a savings of $320.

SEE ALSO: The Blueair ComfortPure 3-in-1 air purifier does it all: Heating, cooling, and purifying

When testing the best air purifiers for wildfire smoke, I loved the features on the Blueair ComfortPure 3-in-1. Like the name suggests, it can tackle several jobs at the same time. You can use the ComfortPure as a space heater, fan, and air purifier. That means there's a use for it all year long, and you'll never need to stash it away in a closet. Plus, the heating and cooling function are perfect for spring weather when it's 70 degrees one day and 40 the next.

Equipped with a HEPA filter, the Blueair will help rid your indoor air from pet dander, dust, pollen, and even some viruses. Those all give you an immediate level-up in terms of health. This model is designed to filter smaller areas, and it'll clean the air in an 840-square-foot room in 60 minutes.

Since this is a deal of the day at Woot, it could sell out at any moment, so if this model looks appealing, it's best to check out as soon as possible. Keep in mind Prime members get free shipping at Woot so long as you sign in.

Before it disappears, grab the Blueair ComfortPure 3-in-1 air purifier (T10i) from Woot and be sure you're ready for the upcoming pollen deluge.

During Bad Bunny's Super Bowl Halftime Show, millions of viewers experienced the performance together — cheering in living rooms, filming on their phones, and reacting in real time. But for those of Latin American descent, hearing their home countries named out loud during Benito's grand finale made the moment especially meaningful.

In his closing act, Bad Bunny transformed the stage into a celebration of the Americas. Dancers carried flags from countries across North, Central, and South America, while a massive screen behind him flashed messages like "The only thing more powerful than hate is love." He capped the roll call of nations with a declaration that "together, we are America," framing the finale as a moment of shared identity and joy.

SEE ALSO: Bad Bunny Super Bowl Halftime Show Easter eggs: 15 things you might have missed

For those watching at home, the emotion didn't end when the music stopped. Viewers immediately took to social media to document their reactions, sharing clips of their friends and families cheering, hugging, and erupting with pride when their countries were named — turning a televised performance into a collective celebration.

Together, these clips formed a digital mosaic of diaspora, stitched from small, intimate moments across phone screens and time zones. Each video captured the same feeling: that for a few minutes, home — wherever it was — didn't feel so far away.

A quick look at our favorite Valentine's Day delivery deals The Bouqs Co. Save 25% with code LASTCHANCE Shop Now 1-800-Flowers Save up to 50% on top Valentine's Day picks Shop Now Urban Stems Save 25% sitewide with code LOVE25 Shop Now

Unless your recipient has explicitly expressed their disdain for receiving flowers (we all know at least one hater), you really can't go wrong with surprising someone with fresh blooms for Valentine's Day. Not when there are so many opportunities to pick out a truly unique bouquet that fits his or her tastes: Most of the best flower delivery services are offering great last-minute Valentine's Day deals on flower deliveries, saving you 25% to 50% on a gift for the upcoming romantic weekend.

SEE ALSO: 21 last-minute Valentine's Day gifts for procrastinators in love: Thoughtful gifts that won't feel rushed

1-800-Flowers is your go-to spot for a classic bouquet of roses on a budget, while The Bouqs Co. and Urban Stems have elevated takes on traditional arrangements that aren't like anything you'd walk past in the grocery store. A majority of bouquets on sale can be delivered by Saturday, Feb. 14 (check the earliest possible delivery date for each). Either way, you're bound to find some pretty stems that scream "them" — so while the timing itself is rushed, the flowers they receive don't have to feel like an afterthought.

Opens in a new window Credit: Urban Stems Urban Stems Save 25% sitewide with code LOVE25 Shop Now Opens in a new window Credit: The Bouqs Co. The Bouqs Co. Save 25% with code LASTCHANCE Shop Now Opens in a new window Credit: From You Flowers From You Flowers Save 20% sitewide with code 1127 Shop Now Opens in a new window Credit: 1-800-Flowers 1-800-Flowers Save up to 50% on Valentine's Day top picks Shop Now Opens in a new window Credit: FTD FTD Save $10 on all items, plus other savings sitewide Shop Now Opens in a new window Credit: Lego Lego Botanicals Bouquet of Roses $49.99
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