Month: July 2026

Do you remember that time Futurama ended and then started up again on a new network? Take your pick, because it’s happened twice: first from Fox to Comedy Central, and then from Comedy Central to Hulu, not counting the movies that came out along the way. And despite everything, here we are: 14 seasons later (or 11, depending on who you ask) with the Planet Express in full working order.

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When do we want it? Fry’s dog!

These 10 new episodes will air between August 3 and September 28, and they’ll feature more or less the usual: alien threats, enemies of every kind, Fry acting like an idiot, and Zoidberg volunteering to be cannon fodder. The problem is that, just like with The Simpsons, it’s showing its age and its seasons… well, they’re just not as good as they used to be.

What’s more, it’s already been announced that next year Futurama will premiere three extended episodes (which it’s not clear yet whether they’ll be movies or extended specials) along the lines of what The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Bob’s Burgers are doing. Frankly, you’d think its popularity has declined, but given the network’s commitment, it’s possible that, without seeing the numbers, we haters are wrong.

Personally, I dropped it a few seasons ago, feeling like it was almost an obligation I owed to my teenage self. Even so, the legendary episodes are behind us now, and what we have today is an imitation that never gets the same laughs or inspires the same affection for the characters. Who knows? Maybe the 14th time’s the charm.

In 1968, The Thomas Crown Affair, starring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, was released in theaters, becoming a resounding hit that was even nominated for two Oscars. It took 31 years for its remake to come out, swapping McQueen for Pierce Brosnan and Dunaway for Rene Russo. It was another smash hit thanks to John McTiernan’s direction, but Brosnan, neck-deep in the James Bond saga, never followed it up with a sequel and the franchise was forgotten… until now.

My name is Crown. Thomas Crown.

Although it was announced back in 2007 that Paul Verhoeven was interested in making a sequel inspired by another classic, the fabulous Topkapi, nothing came of it. Later, McTiernan got out of prison and announced that he’d written a sequel (Thomas Crown and the Lost Lioness), but nobody paid him any attention. And now, at last, we know that on March 5, 2027, Thomas Crown will finally be back. It’s taken a while, huh?

This time, the lead will be Michael B. Jordan, and the idea is entirely his. It was he who, a decade ago, approached MGM in the hope of producing the remake and, after several ups and downs, not only got the starring role, but also the director’s chair. In fact, we can already see him jetting around the world in its first fantastic trailer. After Creed III and his Oscar for Sinners, he should have carte blanche.

However, as he warns, it’s not a reboot, but his own take on it: “The first two films were about rich white guys stealing for fun. That doesn’t fly now. Ours is more personal. The stakes are higher, but it still has the fashion and the romance“. Consider us interested, Mr. Jordan.

Quietly, American Horror Story is already heading toward its 13th season. And these days that’s no small thing, whether you’re a Ryan Murphy fan or not. Since 2011, and at practically a season-a-year pace (it only skipped the 2020 and 2025 installments), Hollywood’s most controversial and prolific creator has explored all his obsessions with a cast that has always surprised… and that this new season would be no different, with a kind of “greatest hits” lineup.

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Make Mine Murphy!

On September 24 we’ll see what comes of the experiment, but for now we know it won’t be a continuation of Coven, season 3, but rather a kind of mixture of what we’ve seen so far. In fact, Sarah Paulson plays six or seven roles, and Jessica Lange plays the four characters she’s played over the years. And they aren’t the only ones returning.

“Evan Peters will play five characters, and of course Kathy Bates, and Emma Roberts, and Billie Lourd. It’s like The Avengers! They’ve come together to defeat the big bad“. In fact, Murphy has said that even the actors who over the years had resisted coming back, had no choice but to say yes to the idea. So American Horror Story fans are in for a treat while the rest of us don’t understand a thing that’s happening.

“I told Jessica Lange and she said ‘Shit, now I have to do it.’ They’re all in one season, and it’s 13 episodes because it’s called 13. I’ve spent many, many months and many years writing it. I want to do 13 in a special way”, he said. Meanwhile, Murphy keeps churning out projects: since 2020 alone he has had 22 series on the air at the same time. And there are more to come.

Buying TikTok followers, likes, or views today means taking on fake engagement and real account risk. Most of these services rely on bots, low-quality accounts, or coordinated fake activity, and that kind of artificial engagement breaks TikTok’s rules. A lot of them also look and act like phishing operations: they push users toward unofficial login pages, ask for email credentials, or collect payment details. Some attacks aimed at TikTok and TikTok for Business go even further, using adversary-in-the-middle methods to intercept authentication and get around two-factor protections.

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Even if you don’t lose access to your account, you’re usually paying for followers who never watch. On a platform with a reported 4.20% median engagement rate, that can drag your performance down. What you’re left with is inflated numbers, and brands usually don’t trust those numbers.

If you want a real audience, this isn’t worth it. In the first half of 2024, TikTok said it stopped more than 700M fake accounts, removed more than 940M videos from fake accounts, blocked more than 15B fake follow requests, and removed more than 207M fake followers. Suspicious spikes can get an account flagged, restricted, suspended, or banned.

And the damage doesn’t stop with one account. The influencer-fraud market is projected to cause $4.8B in losses in 2026, and one study found that 37.2% of influencer followers were fake or suspicious. Fake popularity feeds ad fraud, malware, misinformation, and manipulation of public debate.

Shein has now revealed in its Hong Kong IPO prospectus that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating the fast-fashion retailer on consumer-protection grounds. That puts a fresh layer of regulatory pressure on the company just as it tries to get its listing over the line.

Reuters reports that this appears to be the first time Shein has disclosed the probe. The company says it’s cooperating with the FTC, but it also says it can’t predict either the timing or the outcome. In the filing, Shein warns that any settlement or other resolution could require significant payments and could materially hurt its finances.

The FTC hasn’t said what it’s examining, exactly, and it hasn’t tied the case to any specific Shein practice. Still, the timing is rough. Shein has already had listing plans in New York and London stall. Reuters also points to a reported Hong Kong target valuation of $40 billion to $50 billion, far below the $100 billion valuation it carried in 2022 and only modestly above the roughly $30 billion level some investors reportedly have in mind. The operating picture has worsened too: a $99 million loss in Q1 2026 after a $395 million profit a year earlier, plus a 14% drop in U.S. revenue to $2 billion after the end of the de minimis exemption. And that’s before you get to the broader scrutiny around dark-pattern-style countdown timers, flash sales, gamified discounts, EU reviews of returns and discounting, a June 2025 complaint from 21 watchdogs alleging fake timers and confirm shaming, along with forced-labor, copyright, and privacy concerns.

If you’re tracking Shein’s IPO, this disclosure matters. You can find it in the prospectus.

Ukraine’s Western-supplied F-16s appear to have scored their first confirmed air-to-air kill on July 8 over eastern Ukraine: the reported downing of a Russian Sukhoi Su-35. The confirmation came from U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Dan Caine.

Caine disclosed it publicly during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. If you track the air war closely, this one stands out. The Su-35 is one of Russia’s most capable multirole fighters, and until now Ukraine had used its F-16s mostly in a defensive role since they started arriving in the summer of 2024, mainly to intercept drones and cruise missiles.

So this matters on two levels, military and symbolic. It points to Kyiv possibly moving those Western-supplied F-16s into offensive counter-air missions against Russian crewed aircraft.

Ukraine hasn’t said which F-16 variant was involved or what missile was fired. Russian sources, for their part, claimed a Mikoyan MiG-29 may have been used as a decoy and that support from a Patriot air defense system may have helped set up a wider ambush. None of that has been independently confirmed. Russian military bloggers did say the Su-35 pilot ejected and survived.

Ukraine’s F-16s are older airframes, but they’ve been updated and can carry AIM-120 AMRAAM and AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles. Ukraine is also expected to receive about 85 to 100 of the jets from Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway. How much difference they make still comes down to the less glamorous parts of the equation: missiles, maintenance, spare parts, training, and tactics.

Google says its Google Play Age Signals API is now open to Android developers. The rollout is already underway in Brazil, with Canada and Australia next, and Google expects it to be available globally by the end of the year. For apps aimed at younger users, the company says developers can work with age bands such as 0 to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, and 18+ rather than asking for a full birthdate. The idea is to let apps shape onboarding, social features, recommendations, and in-app messages around a user’s age group while revealing less personal information.

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According to Google, developers are only allowed to use the age signal for age-appropriate experiences and communications. It can’t be used for advertising, profiling, or analytics. For child accounts, parents can turn age-band sharing on or off through Google Family Link, which gives developers one centralized consent flow instead of leaving families to sort through separate settings in every app.

If you build for Google Play on a regular basis, this API is one to keep an eye on. Lawmakers and regulators in places such as Texas, Utah, and Louisiana are pressing harder on age assurance and parental consent, and Apple has already rolled out a similar tool called the Declared Age Range API. Backers argue that systems like this can help protect minors without exposing full birthdates. Privacy advocates, along with some developers, see it differently. Their concern is that age data is still sensitive, and the real question is whether any of this actually makes kids safer in practice.

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