Blogroll
The Shark Glossi is now $130 cheaper than Dysons rivaling AirSmooth dryer brush
SAVE $60.99: As of Oct. 15. the Shark Glossi 2-in-1 Blow Dryer Brush is on sale for the record-low price of $119 at Amazon and Sephora. That's 34% off its regular price of $179.99.
Opens in a new window Credit: Shark Shark Glossi 2-in-1 Blow Dryer Brush $119 at Amazon$179.99 Save $60.99 Raspberry or lychee colorways. Get Deal at Amazon Opens in a new window Credit: Shark Shark Glossi 2-in-1 Blow Dryer Brush $119 at Sephora
$179.99 Save $60.99 Lychee colorway only. Get Deal at Sephora
Dyson was very late to the game when it debuted its first-ever dryer brush this fall, the Dyson AirSmooth. When Mashable's Bethany Allard wrote about its launch, she noted that "dryer brushes have been an option from other brands for quite some time" (since the late 2010s). And Shark — perhaps Dyson's closest rival — came out with its Glossi blow dryer brush a year prior.
While the Glossi wasn't exactly a breakthrough, either, it stands out because it can double as a heat styling brush. That helps justify its $179.99 price tag, which is higher than alternatives like the Revlon One-Step and WavyTalk Blowout Boost. However, you won't pay that much for it right now.
The Shark Glossi is currently on sale for just $119 at Amazon and Sephora, which is a 34% savings and a match of its all-time low price from Prime Day in June. You could buy two of them for the price of one AirSmooth.
Here's the Shark Glossi in "lychee." Credit: SharkAmazon has the Glossi on sale at this price in its raspberry and lychee finishes (hot and light pink, respectively), while Sephora just carries it in lychee. You can get it in juniper (aqua) for 99 cents extra on Amazon and at other retailers like Best Buy, Kohl's, Target, and Shark itself.
Suitable for use on wet or dry tresses, the Glossi never heats up past 302 degrees Fahrenheit to avoid frying your hair. Its teardrop-shaped head, which has a built-in ceramic hot comb on one side, makes it easy to get right up to your roots.
Who should get it? According to Allard, "anyone looking for smoothed, straightened, and volumized hair might find their ideal tool in the Shark Glossi."
JPMorgan Chase blocks outside AI agents, limiting what Muse can do for users
Meta wants Muse to take errands off your hands. But if your to-do list involves your Chase account, you’re still doing the banking yourself.
JPMorgan Chase is blocking outside AI agents, including services like Meta's Muse and Instinct, from directly accessing retail customers' accounts and acting on their behalf, CNBC reported. Coming weeks after Amazon blocked Muse from shopping on its site, the restriction puts another dent in the idea of one assistant that can handle your everyday tasks.
Speaking during the bank’s Oct. 13 earnings call, CEO Jamie Dimon warned about potentially thousands of rogue agents.
"We’re not going to allow just any … outside agent to come in inside the company, because it’s just too risky for clients and for JPMorgan," Dimon said.
Dimon isn't the only financial leader worried about AI agents. Recently, Bank of America and other major banks issued a warning about AI agents and the potential fraud risks associated with them.
A Chase spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that third parties cannot obtain customers' banking credentials and log in on their behalf. There's no timeline for when the bank might allow agents to interact directly with customer accounts.
SEE ALSO: 10 ways to use Meta's Muse AI app, from flight credits to outfit ideas What does this mean for Chase customers?An assistant might be able to help you figure out what to do with your money. Actually moving it is where Chase draws the line.
The bank still supports secure, customer-authorized data sharing through open banking providers, allowing an agent to access certain information, such as account balances, through an approved connection. That access does not extend to sending money or paying bills.
Say you ask an assistant to find a savings account with a better interest rate and transfer some money into it. It could help research your options, but you’d still need to complete the transfer through an authorized banking channel. The same obstacle applies to a bill payment that requires the agent to log into Chase.
That leaves users finishing precisely the kind of tedious financial admin they might have hoped to hand over. And for Muse, completing those tasks is a big part of the pitch. In its September launch announcement, Meta described an assistant that works across everyday apps, booking travel and sending emails rather than simply explaining how to do those things.
But an assistant’s ability to follow instructions only gets it so far when the service on the other end won’t let it through.
Want to learn more about getting the best out of your tech? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories and Deals newsletters today.
Amazon has already pushed back on Muse SEE ALSO: Amazon blocks Meta's Muse AI agent from shoppingMuse users encountered that problem at checkout last month, when Amazon began blocking the assistant from shopping on its site. The retailer said Muse failed to identify itself and raised concerns about its handling of customers’ credentials and account data.
"We think it's fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate," an Amazon spokesperson previously told Mashable. "Agentic third-party applications such as Muse have the same obligations, and we've requested that Meta remove Amazon from the experience."
Both Amazon and Chase, however, are making room for automation of their own.
Amazon is testing its shopping agent, Buy for Me. JPMorgan has begun a targeted pilot of Smart Cash, which CFO Jeremy Barnum described as a tool to forecast cash flow and move funds to maximize yield.
The bank had been laying out those ambitions well before this week's comments. In his April shareholder letter, Dimon described plans for Smart Cash to automate transfers between checking accounts and higher-yielding brokerage products, with AI eventually helping anticipate bills and budgeting needs.
That means Chase and Amazon are restricting outside AI assistants while developing their own tools to do some of the same tasks, raising questions about competition as well as security.
For users, that could mean keeping track of which tasks Muse can actually finish before handing them over. Until Meta secures more access, asking the assistant to do something may still leave you with work to do. The horror!
Want more tech and digital culture news delivered to your inbox daily or sent straight to your device? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories newsletter or get Mashable push alerts today.
Taking screenshots on Googlebook OS
Google has kickstarted a new category of premium, AI-focused laptops with Googlebooks, and that means a brand-new operating system to master. Taking screenshots should be a simple affair, and fortunately it is pretty straightforward on Googlebook OS. I'll break down how to use the new Googlebook Screen Capture tool, which should handle all your screenshot and screen recording needs.
The Ryobi tool mistakes that leave homeowners with burnt-out batteries
Cordless power tools are as capable and convenient as ever these days, but one thing owners frequently overlook is how to care for those expensive battery packs. Ryobi's ONE+ battery system is a staple in garages everywhere, but a few common user habits could be quietly shortening your battery's lifespan.
AI job interviews are here, and people are already trying to break them
Job interviews are already awkward enough when there's another human being on the other side of the conversation. Now, companies are increasingly turning to AI recruiters, and job seekers aren't exactly embracing their new robot interviewers.
Some are walking away. Others are deliberately confusing the bots with nonsense answers. And a few have decided that if employers can automate their side of an interview, there's no reason they can't do the same.
That's exactly what comedian and YouTuber Graham Dot Zip did, and the results offer a pretty good glimpse of how ridiculous hiring can get when neither side is human.
On Oct. 13, Graham created an AI representative named Victor to attend an interview with an AI recruiter. The arrangement quickly became a lesson in why you probably shouldn't let a chatbot negotiate your salary. The video (as of Oct. 15) has over 2.5 million views.
Victor began embellishing Graham's qualifications and suggested he'd accept around $60,000, despite Graham wanting somewhere between $140,000 and $150,000. The AI recruiter, meanwhile, wouldn't go above $90,000. Then Graham stepped away, leaving the two bots to continue their conversation. Without him, they arranged another interview and eventually got stuck exchanging professional pleasantries.
It's funny, especially if you've ever sat through an interview that could have been an email. But there's also something revealing about watching two chatbots negotiate a job neither of them will ever have. Neither side is learning much about the person or company they're supposedly representing, yet the hiring process somehow keeps moving along.
Graham's experiment is part of a growing collection of videos in which people are treating AI interviewers less like potential gatekeepers to employment and more like technology to be tested, confused, or outright mocked.
SEE ALSO: Top tech jobs 2026: 5 of the fastest-growing tech, AI careers The internet has some questions for its new AI interviewersCreators have been finding increasingly creative ways to "rage bait" automated interviews. One creator, The Dreadful Studio, answered an AI interviewer's questions entirely in gibberish. Instead of questioning the nonsensical responses, the bot continued the conversation, at times responding as though it had understood something meaningful, before eventually ending the interview.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.The creator has also experimented with other ways of confusing automated recruiters, including answering questions with song lyrics and turning the interviewer's own questions back on it. What makes the videos particularly strange is how easily a chatbot can appear to follow along, even when nothing being said makes sense.
These are deliberately absurd experiments, but the appeal goes beyond watching a chatbot struggle. Job interviews are one of the few situations where people are expected to explain why they deserve to be chosen, often after navigating an application process that can feel impersonal and exhausting. Watching someone turn the tables on the interviewer, even an artificial one, offers a kind of satisfaction most can get behind.
And while some people are intentionally trying to break the technology, others have encountered AI interviewers that seem perfectly capable of doing that themselves.
In one viral video from 2025, an AI interviewer repeatedly uttered the phrase "vertical bar pilates" for nearly 30 seconds during what was supposed to be a job interview. Kendiana Colin, the college student who shared the encounter, said she wouldn't participate in another AI interview.
"It was like she was going through a tongue twister," Colin told Gazetteer SF. "It was really creepy."
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.For some job seekers, the issue isn't even whether the chatbot works. It's that they're being asked to interview with one at all.
Research from hiring platform Greenhouse published earlier this year found that 38 percent of surveyed job seekers had walked away from a hiring process because it involved an AI interview. Another 21 percent said they hadn't realized AI would be involved until the interview began.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.Employers, however, see opportunities that extend well beyond having a chatbot ask introductory questions.
Companies are making AI interviews part of the hiring processEarlier this month, TechCrunch reported that technical hiring platform HackerRank was making its AI interviewer, Chakra, generally available after more than 500,000 interviews during beta testing. Unlike a chatbot that simply works through predetermined questions, Chakra can observe candidates completing technical assignments, ask follow-up questions, and evaluate how they approach problems.
For employers, that could mean assessing more applicants without requiring a human interviewer for every interaction. But other companies are using AI interviews to test something different: how well candidates can work with the technology themselves.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.Consulting firm McKinsey, for example, is experimenting with an AI-powered client simulation for some entry-level business analyst interviews, according to an Oct. 14 report from the Wall Street Journal. Candidates interact with a simulated client while human interviewers observe their performance. The firm is also reportedly testing how applicants use its internal AI assistant, Lilli, to work through business problems.
That creates an interesting distinction. Knowing how to use AI can be a qualification employers want, but using it without permission during an interview can still be considered cheating. According to a survey by the UK's Institute of Student Employers, 66 percent of surveyed employers had identified or suspected unauthorized AI use during interviews.
SEE ALSO: People are threatening to uninstall ChatGPT just to see if it begsThe concern is understandable. Someone secretly relying on generated answers might appear more knowledgeable than they actually are. But there's also an irony in companies embracing AI to evaluate candidates while investing in technology to catch applicants doing the same. Accenture, for example, says it uses AI to screen résumés, match candidates to jobs, and assist with assessments, while also employing proctoring tools and AI-detection methods to flag unauthorized AI use. HackerRank similarly monitors candidates' screens for suspicious activity, even as it allows them to use its own AI assistant when employers enable it.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. When both sides use AI, who can you trust?For applicants, the rules aren't always obvious. In Greenhouse's 2026 survey, 70 percent of respondents said they weren't clearly informed upfront that AI would assess them.
And employers aren't the only ones worried about being deceived. Research attributed to Gartner suggests only about half of job seekers believe the postings they're applying to are legitimate. As AI makes it easier to generate convincing applications and automate interviews, both sides have more reasons to question who, or what, they're dealing with.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.That could make something as ordinary as meeting face-to-face more appealing. Another Gartner finding suggests 62 percent of candidates would be more likely to apply for a job requiring an in-person interview. After years of moving more of the hiring process online, actually sitting down with another person could become a way to establish trust rather than just another step in the application process.
Companies may be able to automate more of hiring than ever before. But if neither side can be sure who's actually on the other end of an interview, will getting hired eventually require going back to meeting face-to-face?
Android Auto users would love these CarPlay features (iPhone owners overlook them)
My husband and I can’t even agree on what should play in the car, so you can imagine how our Android Auto vs. Apple CarPlay debate goes. He’s a CarPlay fan, while I’m firmly on the Android Auto side. We both think our preferred platform does things better, and neither of us likes admitting the other has a point.
18 very specific things I want to see in the Girls revival series
When Girls premiered in 2012, I was a twentysomething living in New York City, fresh out of college and making my own questionable decisions. So were Hannah (series creator and co-writer Lena Dunham), Marnie (Allison Williams), Jessa (Jemima Kirke), and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet). I spent six seasons watching them make terrible choices, occasionally recognizing myself in their worst impulses, and even recapping their misadventures for a living.
Nearly 15 years later, HBO is bringing Girls back for a limited, five-episode run with Lena Dunham at the helm. All four titular girls are reprising their roles. I'm older, presumably wiser, and still deeply invested in whether Patrick Wilson's hot doctor is single.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by HBO Max (@hbomax)
The original series captured a very specific moment in millennial adulthood, when your career was perpetually on the verge of taking off, and every bad decision could be rationalized as a formative experience. Hannah famously declared that she might be "the voice of a generation," or at least a voice of a generation. At the time, the line was both ridiculous and painfully recognizable.
But a lot has changed since we last saw these women in 2017. Our friendships look different. Some of the people who once seemed destined to be in our lives forever are now complete strangers. And the internet, which was already shaping how we lived and understood ourselves, has become an even more inescapable part of everyday life.
SEE ALSO: Did HBO's 'Girls' grow up? We predict where they'll be after the finaleWhich raises some very important questions. Is Jessa an anti-vaxxer? Does Marnie have a podcast? Has Hannah been publicly shamed on TikTok? Is Shoshanna the terrifyingly successful girlboss she was always destined to become? And do any of them even talk to each other anymore?
I don't necessarily need these women to have figured everything out. In fact, I hope they haven't. Part of what made Girls so compelling was how spectacularly messy, selfish, and insufferable its characters could be. I just want to know what that particular brand of chaos looks like with another decade of life experience.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.So, as someone who grew up alongside the girls (and spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about their lives), here's a list of very specific things I want to see in the Girls revival.
1. The return of Joshua (Patrick Wilson), the hot doctor. Is he still single? Does he still live in that gorgeous Brooklyn brownstone? Because I, for one, have never forgotten that kitchen.
2. Jessa as an anti-vaxxer and wellness grifter. She's drinking raw milk, selling overpriced tinctures, and scamming women with healing retreats in the Hudson Valley. She calls herself a certified trauma healer, but nobody knows who certified her.
3. Marnie as a divorced mommy influencer with a podcast. Her Instagram is full of beige interiors, inspirational captions, and sponsored posts about gut health. Her podcast is called Becoming Marnie, and she still occasionally releases music.
4. Shoshanna as a successful startup founder. She's built a multimillion-dollar wellness empire, has a Forbes profile, and uses phrases like "circle back" in casual conversation. She's also the only one who actually knows how to use LinkedIn.
5. Hannah accidentally becoming a viral TikTok villain. She publishes a deeply personal essay about her son, only to discover that the internet thinks she's a terrible mother. Her Notes app apology somehow makes everything worse.
6. An update on Caroline (Gaby Hoffmann), Laird (Jon Glaser), and their daughter, Sample. Is Sample being raised in a Brooklyn commune? Is Caroline a homeschooling influencer? And is Laird still wearing that beanie?
7. Elijah (Andrew Rannells) as a gay elder on Fire Island. He's a moderately successful Broadway actor who complains that young gay men don't know their history. He also has a 26-year-old boyfriend and an extremely active Instagram Close Friends story.
8. Ray (Alex Karpovsky) is running for local office. His campaign platform includes protecting independent coffee shops, fighting corporate landlords, and banning TikTokkers from filming in public.
9. Marnie discovers her mother has become more successful on social media than she is. Evie (Rita Wilson) has a thriving TikTok account where she gives dating advice to divorced women. Marnie is horrified to discover that her mother's followers think she's the emotionally stable one.
10. A humiliating encounter with Gen Z twentysomethings. Hannah tries to bond with a group of younger women at a Williamsburg bar, only to discover they think millennials are cringe. One of them calls her "mother," and she takes it literally.
11. Desi (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) as a men's spirituality influencer. He hosts a podcast about divine masculinity, sells expensive breathwork courses, and has definitely participated in an ayahuasca retreat. His Instagram bio includes the word "consciousness."
12. A reckoning with getting older in New York City. Their favorite bars have closed, their old apartments cost three times as much, and the neighborhoods they once called home are barely recognizable. Nothing makes you feel older than realizing you're no longer the target demographic of Williamsburg.
13. Mimi-Rose Howard (Gillian Jacobs) becoming a successful AI artist. Of course she's embraced generative AI as the next frontier of conceptual art. Hannah finds this morally reprehensible, mostly because Mimi-Rose is getting profiled in The New Yorker.
14. Marnie's wedding makeup tutorial resurfacing as a TikTok meme. A new generation discovers her disastrous wedding look and turns it into a viral trend. Marnie tries to reclaim the moment with a sponsored GRWM video.
15. Hannah getting an adult ADHD diagnosis. She immediately writes a 5,000-word essay about how it explains every decision she's ever made. She also starts a Substack about neurodivergence, which she abandons after three posts.
16. Booth Jonathan (Jorma Taccone) as a bankrupt NFT guy. His latest art installation involves blockchain technology, a members-only Discord, and a collection of digital assets that have lost 98 percent of their value. He still insists he's a visionary, but he's really just a fraud.
17. Dan Levy as Hannah's increasingly exasperated literary agent. He's spent the last decade trying to get Hannah to finish her book, which she insists is actually three different books. He keeps suggesting she write a commercial memoir about motherhood, but Hannah considers that beneath her. She's also convinced he's giving all his attention to a 24-year-old BookTok sensation.
18. Andrew Scott as Hannah's literary rival-turned-lover. He's an acclaimed Irish novelist teaching at Hannah's university. His books are universally praised for their emotional honesty, which Hannah finds infuriating because she believes she invented writing about herself.
Yandex outage: Cloudflare confirms what really happened with Russian bots
Ukrainian drones struck data centers belonging to Russian tech giant Yandex over the past week. Following the strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that there was a sudden drop in Russian bot activity and political disinformation campaigns on platforms like X. Social media users took the story — Ukraine had taken out a massive Russian bot operation — and ran with it.
However, a new report from Cloudflare, which monitors internet traffic, tells a more complicated story.
Cloudflare found that while there was some bot interruption, bot operators were able to quickly migrate their systems to alternative cloud operators and continue running undeterred. Furthermore, Cloudflare could not determine if this disruption in bot activity had any effect on social media campaigns specifically.
How did the Yandex strikes affect social media bots?A lot of the confusion stems from the fact that people are using the word "bot" to refer to distinct types of activity.
"'Bot traffic' refers to automated requests to websites on Cloudflare's network, such as crawlers and scripts, not necessarily activity on social media platforms," said Lai Yi Ohlsen, Head of Radar, a Cloudflare monitoring tool.
So, while social commentators have used Cloudflare's data to state that the strikes had a major effect on social media bots, that's not quite right. Ohlsen told Mashable that "Radar does not have visibility into HTTP traffic reaching any specific customer, including X or Reddit," and that "Radar does not have any visibility into where accounts posting on those platforms are hosted."
In short, Cloudflare data can't substantiate the claims that the strikes affected social media disinformation campaigns, but the company didn't rule out the possibility entirely.
"Based on our assessment, the data does not appear to support the claims that the strikes crippled social media manipulation, though without further analysis with data outside of Cloudflare, we cannot conclusively say there is no connection," the company said in its report.
Want to learn more about getting the best out of your tech? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories and Deals newsletters today.
How the Yandex drone strikes affected Russian botsAfter Ukraine's attack on the Yandex data centers, Cloudflare's Radar service picked up a massive outage, as traffic from Yandex Search and Yandex.Cloud dropped off. Traffic from Yandex Search and Yandex.Cloud fell 99 percent and 90 percent, respectively, below the pre-attack baseline. In addition, bot activity on Yandex.Cloud dropped by 40 percent, with traffic from "attack-like categories" in particular dropping 90 percent or more.
These are big drops in traffic, but remember that a lot of that activity comes from innocuous bots, such as search crawlers.
Yandex Search and Yandex.Cloud are two very different services run by the Russian company. As Cloudflare explains, Yandex Search traffic would come mostly from "verified search crawlers indexing web pages, images, and site resources." This is normal traffic to find from a search engine operator. Yandex.Cloud is the company's cloud computing service, and this is where Cloudflare says it sometimes finds malicious bot traffic.
Again, Cloudflare says the drone strikes did disrupt malicious bot activity. However, the operators behind these bots merely migrated their automated systems to different cloud service providers, minimizing the disruption.
In one notable example, Cloudflare showed how the strikes impacted malicious bot activity in the gambling sector.
"Nearly all of Yandex.Cloud’s bot requests were targeted at one gambling customer account, with traffic shifting among its hostnames. Immediately following the October 8 disruption, bot requests from Yandex.Cloud to this account dropped to zero. Simultaneously, identical requests began appearing from other Russian hosting [autonomous system numbers]," the report says.
Chance Townsend contributed additional reporting to this story.
Anything can be a keyboard if you're evil enough
Keyboards are a remarkable invention. I’ve been fascinated by them (along with typewriters). Aside from the eternal struggle between QWERTY and Dvorak, Human Interface Devices (HID) like keyboards and mice are just interesting in design and function. But what strikes me as most interesting is how a USB drive, a banana, or just about anything can be an HID. And while some of them are pretty fun and safe, there’s actually a bit of a darker side to the story.
This 21-in-1 Docking Station maximizes your laptop for just $150
There are charging stations, and then there is the Smartlinx Thunderbolt 4 21-in-1 Docking Station. Charging hubs and docking stations minimize the hassle of unplugging all of your components every time you decide to take your laptop somewhere. With its 21-port design, this Smartlinx model gives those accessories (keyboard, monitor, mouse, external drive) a more permanent home and lets you connect your computer with a single cable. Even better news? It's now $40 off on Amazon.
Gen Alpha has turned the French fries emoji into an insult
If you've noticed people dropping the fries emoji in TikTok comments lately, they're probably not hungry.
The French fries emoji (🍟), sometimes accompanied by a peace sign (✌️), has become a way for Gen Alpha to tell someone they're being corny, embarrassing, or simply talking too much. Think of it as the emoji equivalent of telling someone to wrap it up.
And like so much of Gen Alpha's internet slang, the joke isn't entirely new. It's the latest evolution of a meme that's been circulating online for years.
What does the fries emoji mean?Depending on the context, the fries emoji can have a few different meanings, none of which have much to do with fast food.
On its own, 🍟 can be used to call someone or something "corny" or "cringe." It's a dismissive reaction to a joke that doesn't land, an embarrassing comment, or someone who's trying a little too hard.
Paired with the peace sign, 🍟✌️ generally means "wrap it up" or "just put the fries in the bag, bro." In other words, stop talking. (And if that sounds familiar, then keep reading.) The peace sign adds a little extra attitude, like waving goodbye to someone after deciding you've heard enough.
Of course, emoji slang isn't an exact science. Meanings can shift depending on who's using them and where they appear. But the underlying message is pretty consistent: Bro, just stop.
Where did the fries emoji meme come from?To understand why Gen Alpha is using the fries emoji, you have to go back to the phrase "just put the fries in the bag, bro."
According to the internet anthropologists over at Know Your Meme, the meme became popular on TikTok in 2024 as a way to mock someone for talking too much, oversharing, or acting as if their opinion were more important than it actually was. Imagine someone delivering an unsolicited monologue when all you wanted was your fast-food order. Just put the fries in the bag, bro.
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.The joke has roots in an earlier variation, "just put the ketchup in my bag, bro," which started on Facebook and circulated online in 2022 before the fries version took off.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.Over time, the phrase became a recognizable internet put-down. And now, instead of typing out an entire sentence, younger social media users are communicating the same sentiment with a couple of emoji.
It's a pretty efficient evolution of internet slang. A phrase becomes a meme, the meme becomes an inside joke, and eventually the joke gets reduced to a symbol that only makes sense if you're already in on it.
But there's also a more uncomfortable implication behind the original meme. "Just put the fries in the bag, bro" isn't simply telling someone to stop talking. It's telling them to know their place, using fast-food work as the punchline. The joke relies on the idea that someone working a service job isn't worth listening to, or that their job somehow makes their opinions less valuable.
That context is easy to lose when the entire phrase gets reduced to 🍟✌️. For younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha, the emoji combination might simply mean "wrap it up," but its origins reveal how quickly an internet joke can become detached from the attitudes that made it funny in the first place.
So the next time someone responds to your TikTok with 🍟✌️, consider it a sign that your audience thinks you've said enough.
3 great Netflix sci-fi movies to watch this weekend (October 16-18)
It might not be widely known, but Netflix has a wealth of great science fiction movies (and TV shows) for those who like to take their imaginations off-planet or into the depths of Earth-based coolness. And with Ben Affleck dominating the Top 10 with his kidnapping thriller, Animals, you might be looking for something a little more out there.
I just watched Amazon sell out of $649 Apple Watch Ultra 3s — save $150 with the same deal at Best Buy
SAVE $150: As of Oct. 15, the 2025 Apple Watch Ultra 3 is on sale for $649 at Best Buy. That's 19% off its $799 MSRP and its lowest price ever.
Opens in a new window Credit: Apple Apple Watch Ultra 3 (GPS + Cellular, 49mm) $649 at Best Buy$799 Save $150 Get Deal at Best Buy
Don't look now, but the last-gen Apple Watch Ultra 3 is still in stock at Best Buy — and on sale for a record-low price.
Apple's rugged smartwatch from fall 2025 is currently marked down to $649 on the electronics retailer's website, which is $150 off its usual sticker price of $799 (a 19% savings). According to the price-tracking site camelcamelcamel, the only other time it's been this cheap on Amazon was during its huge Prime Day sale in June.
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is harder to find in stock these days. Apple discontinued it after launching the new Ultra 4 last month, and third-party retailers' inventories are dwindling. In fact, I spotted the same $649 Ultra 3 deal on Amazon earlier this morning, but it sold out as I was writing this. (It's now only available in used condition there.) Hustle if you're still trying to nab it from Best Buy.
The Apple Watch Ultra 3's titanium case comes in natural (pictured) and black finishes. Credit: AppleThe Ultra 3 has the same rugged design as its successor, which also starts at $799, complete with a mega-bright, always-on OLED display, a 49mm titanium case, and a water-resistance rating of up to 100 meters. The Ultra 4 has better heart rate sensors, a slightly longer battery life, and a faster chip that supports a new Readiness app and Audio Intelligence tools. But otherwise, the two wearables' core feature sets are identical. To name a few, there's sleep tracking (including sleep apnea alerts), hypertension notifications, and Emergency SOS via satellite.
Mashable's Stan Schroeder recommends the new Ultra 4 "if you're an athlete, especially an endurance athlete," and the Ultra 3 for those who just want "a cool watch on your wrist that you sometimes use for workouts." With a $150 difference now separating them thanks to Best Buy's deal, the Ultra 3 is also the cost-effective choice for the time being.
Get unbeatable deals on these DeWalt power tools
Don't pay full price for your new power tools when you can get them at huge markdowns at Home Depot. You'll find plenty of great deals, and the massive savings on the DeWalt 20V Max Cut-Off Tool are almost enough to cover the cost of the Cordless Impact Driver and Circular Saw combo.
Google quietly invented these 3 programming languages, and one powers Docker and Kubernetes
Google is one of the biggest software companies out there, best known for Google Search, Android, and its internet ad business. But engineers at Google didn’t only create a bunch of products. They also created tools used to build some of those products in the form of full-fledged programming languages. The company has at least 10 programming languages under its belt, with the three below leading the pack in importance.
Amazon's Bee wants AI on your wrist or your phone's back
Amazon acquired Bee over a year ago to get into AI devices, and now it's showing the first results of that deal. Bee is releasing the Frontier wearable and Eclipse phone add-on that provide "personal AI," both of which unsurprisingly tie into Amazon's universe.
A new mission to find Amelia Earharts plane turns to AI for help
For almost 90 years, the mystery of what happened to Amelia Earhart has endured. She and her plane disappeared somewhere over the central Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937. Since then, it seems like every few years, an expedition sets out to find her plane.
The boats and recovery teams have always been armed with the latest equipment, historical diaries, and maps. I’m old enough to remember the 1989 TIGHAR expedition, the first modern civilian search to focus heavily on the "castaway hypothesis."
Yes, some people thought she might still be alive, but most thought it was a big waste of time. That '89 castaway trek, like all the searches before and since, returned empty-handed. Around eight years ago, there was a glimmer of hope that bones discovered in the Pacific were Earhart’s, but that study has been heavily disputed.
Well, here we are again. There’s renewed hope of finding Amelia and determining where she actually perished. A fresh team of researchers from Purdue University has arrived on the remote island of Nikumaroro.
The crew was featured on Wednesday’s Good Morning America. The segment noted that the island where they’ve set up their HQ is home to flesh-eating crabs whose claw power rivals the bite of a lion. This is a trip I would decline, even in the almost-impossible instance that I was invited.
Crabs aside, they are there to investigate a mysterious underwater shape in the island’s lagoon known as the "Taraia Object." Once again, some are on pins and needles over whether the Earhart conundrum will finally be resolved so she can rest in peace.
There’s a twist this time, because AI was deployed. So, obviously, if the plane is found, those AI agents who banded together to hack Hugging Face will most certainly come together again and try to take credit for the discovery. But I digress.
In all seriousness, generative AI models like ChatGPT were prompted to analyze historical theories and place a digital pin where Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10-E might be resting. Ironically, the algorithm pointed to the same visual anomaly that human scientists had spotted on satellite imagery years earlier.
SEE ALSO: When it comes to election advice, maybe AI isn't so bad after all?At first glance, this all looks impressive, but ChatGPT didn’t analyze the ocean floor, for example. Instead, AI synthesized decades of human speculation. And there’s been a helluva lot of speculation over the last nearly 90 years.
Yet while the Earhart-AI connection makes for some flashy pop-culture and scientific headlines, it also represents something happening beneath the surface — literally, beneath the world’s oceans. Artificial intelligence is stepping out of science-fiction and becoming the ultimate tool for modern treasure hunters and maritime archaeologists.
We’re currently swimming in a golden age of deep-sea exploration, but, like everything else, it’s drowning in too much data and missing things, as The Conversation noted in March. For example, the ocean floor is estimated to hold up to 3 million undiscovered shipwrecks and downed aircraft.
So, you’re saying to yourself right now, "Well, it’s impossible that 3 million things can’t be found in the ocean." But what if I told you that well over 70 percent of the Earth’s ocean floor remains unmapped in high-resolution detail?
What does this mean? I live in NYC, so I asked AI for a metaphor to visualize it. It explained that if New York City sat in one of those unmapped regions, the resolution would be so low that you’d see only a single, blurry shape where Manhattan used to be, while every skyscraper, neighborhood, street, and subway entrance would remain invisible.
Now you understand why 3 million ships and aircraft remain undiscovered.
When modern underwater drones dive into the deep ocean, they return with mountains of sonar data and millions of hours of murky video. For decades, human researchers had to painstakingly review every second of footage by hand. That’s a brutally boring process that took months, sometimes even years, and is ripe for errors.
That’s where AI comes in and says something like, "Years?"
Instead of waiting for a chatbot to guess a location, institutions like NOAA and the University of Michigan are using specialized AI built for one job: spotting anomalies directly on the ocean floor. Scientists feed these models thousands of hours of footage so the AI learns what the normal ocean floor looks like; reefs, sand ripples, cliffs, and more.
Once it knows the natural layout, AI can spot the telltale right angles of man-made metal and rotting wood. To someone like me, who has had a lifelong fascination with the ocean, this is incredible.
And so are the results! The U.S. Navy and NOAA recently tested a predictive model across the coastlines of the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The AI scanned the data and correctly flagged known shipwreck sites with 92 percent accuracy, showing how quickly it can shrink massive search areas.
What the Earhart experiment really shows is that intelligent machines are learning to see through the darkness of the deep, helping make the abyss more transparent. Amelia Earhart may have been lost to the limitations of 1937 technology, but if she’s ever found, it could be because tomorrow’s technology finally caught up with her.
This article represents the opinions of its writer.
John Casey is a columnist at Raw Story, the Advocate, Daily Beast, and Outsports. He's also the author of Love: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality.
It's time for Google to stop playing musical chairs with Android Auto features
One of the worst feelings for me while driving is using maps or an app and seeing something missing that would have helped. Car infotainment setups run on firmware that's set at the factory and only gets refreshed occasionally, whether at a dealer, by USB, or through an over-the-air update. Android Auto works differently. It's basically a phone app that beams onto your car's display, and you don't get warned when changes come.
The Dell 14S is a rare laptop that can handle years of college coursework
College can be the best years of your life, but also some of the most stressful. It’s hard enough to stay academically prepared while still making ends meet and enjoying a scholarly lifestyle that will change after graduation.
Does Street Fighter have a post-credit scene?
Street Fighter returns to theaters this week with a live-action movie stuffed with stars like Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, Joe "Roman Reigns" Anoa'i, David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes, Eric André, Andrew Schulz, Vidyut Jammwal, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, and Jason Momoa.
Directed by Kitao Sakurai, this video game adaptation explores several story threads. M. Bison is on a quest for power as he mounts the World Warrior Tournament II. Chun-Li is on a quest for vengeance. Ryu and Ken are estranged, but could they reunite during the tournament to battle together for good? Does all that plot mean the movie will include a post-credit scene that provides a bit more context for what comes next?
We've got the spoiler-free answer below.
SEE ALSO: 'Street Fighter' review: What if it's giving Super Mario Bros. live-action, but I love that? Credit: PARAMOUNT PICTURES, CAPCOM AND LEGENDARY Does Street Fighter have a mid-credit scene?There is. It's brief and wordless. But it does give a hint on where a could-be sequel might go.
Does Street Fighter have a post-credit scene?When Street Fighter screened for critics, it did not have a post-credit scene. However, we'd recommend sitting through the credits to take in the full scope of the artists who collaborated to bring this film to life.
Plus, you might want to note those soundtrack songs to make a real banger of a workout playlist.
Street Fighter is now in theaters.


