Let's make this simple: You want to know if there are any post- or mid-credits scenes in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. The answer is no, there are none.Full spoilers follow.It's been one wild, stunt-filled ride over the past 29 years, but every mission must come to an end eventually. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning is apparently the final entry in this long-running series, as Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt confronts his most daring and high-stakes mission yet.Now that The Final Reckoning is in theaters, we’re here to break down the ending to this epic blockbuster. Who lives? Who dies? Is this really the end of the road for Ethan and his team, or could the franchise return? Read on to learn more.Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning GalleryMission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning’s Ending ExplainedThe Mission: Impossible series has always been about the IMF racing against the clock to prevent various villains from unleashing global catastrophes, but the deck is really stacked against Ethan and his team in the eighth and final movie. While Ethan stopped Esai Morales’ Gabriel in the short term in 2023’s Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, there’s still the little problem of the hyper-advanced AI known as “The Entity” worming its way into every computer system across the globe. The situation is immediately dire in The Final Reckoning, with The Entity systematically taking over the nuclear stockpiles of every nation on Earth and Angela Bassett’s President Sloane forced to choose whether to unleash a preemptive strike on those nations. The Final Reckoning only further cements its dark, foreboding tone when Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell becomes an early casualty in the conflict with Gabriel, which allows Gabriel to take possession of Luther’s Poison Pill device. Even after Ethan defies the odds and retrieves The Entity’s source code from the sunken Sevastopol submarine, he knows that the code is useless unless he can combine it with the Poison Pill. One way or another, all roads lead to Gabriel.As this conflict unfolds, The Final Reckoning introduces some fun and unexpected callbacks to previous Mission: Impossible films. For example, we learn that The Entity has its roots in the Rabbit’s Foot, the MacGuffin device from 2006’s Mission: Impossible III. Ethan’s team also reunites with former CIA analyst William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), the man who almost walked in on Ethan during his tense wire-hacking mission from the original film. Meanwhile, Shea Whigham’s Jasper Briggs is revealed to be the son of Jon Voight’s Jim Phelps, the IMF leader from the original film. No wonder he seems to bear such a personal grudge toward Ethan. Ethan and Gabriel’s paths do ultimately converge in South Africa, at a digital bunker where The Entity plans to retreat before unleashing a nuclear holocaust. Ethan’s plan is to retrieve the Poison Pill and combine it with the source code module, tricking The Entity into isolating itself on a holographic drive that Hayley Atwell’s Grace can then pickpocket. Predictably, things go haywire with the arrival of CIA Director Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and his team, and Simon Pegg’s Benji is shot in the ensuing chaos. As Ethan and Gabriel battle it out aboard two dueling planes, the clock steadily ticks down to nuclear armageddon. President Sloane is forced to make her choice, and she chooses to trust Ethan and pull the US’s nuclear arsenal offline rather than allow The Entity to take control. Ethan finally outwits Gabriel, and the latter’s defiant villain speech is cut short when he bashes his head into the tail of his plane. Ethan parachutes to safety and combines the module with the Poison Pill. Grace performs the impossible feat of snatching the drive at just the right moment, trapping The Entity in its tiny prison. Once again, Ethan and the IMF have saved the world from ruin, even if few people will ever know the full truth. Even more impressive, they do so without any further casualties. Benji survives his near-fatal gunshot wound, meaning Luther is the only IMF member to die in The Final Reckoning. Ethan and his team reunite one last time in London’s Trafalgar Square, where Grace hands Ethan the briefcase containing The Entity. After exchanging solemn nods, they all go their separate ways. Thus ends their latest, and apparently last, impossible mission.PlayDoes The Final Reckoning Have a Post-Credits Scene?As mentioned above, the eighth and final (for now?) Mission: Impossible movie has no mid- or post-credits scenes. You're free to leave once the credits start rolling. Though, as always, it never hurts to stick around and show some appreciation for all the cast and crew who made those death-defying stunts happen. The lack of a post-credits scene isn't necessarily that surprising, given that they've never really been a thing with this particular Hollywood franchise. Still, with this supposedly being the last entry in the series, you might think Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie would want to give fans one last nod before sending Ethan Hunt off into the sunset. As much as this is billed as the conclusion of the series, The Final Reckoning certainly leaves the door open for more. A post-credits scene could have hinted at what’s next for the victorious Ethan. But that does raise an important question. Is this really the end? Let’s explore what we know.Is This Really the End of the Mission: Impossible Series? Paramount has definitely marketed The Final Reckoning as the conclusion to the Mission: Impossible saga. It’s right there in the name. This film is meant to cap off a 29-year journey and chronicle Ethan Hunt’s final and most desperate mission.But how final is this film, really? It certainly wraps up on a pretty open-ended note. Ethan is still alive, having somehow survived diving to loot a sunken submarine in the frigid Arctic Ocean. Luther may have perished heroically, but the rest of the IMF is alive, too (even Benji, who was touch-and-go there for a bit). That’s honestly one of the criticisms that can be leveled at The Final Reckoning. Even in this supposedly final outing, the film seems reluctant to break too many of its toys or veer outside the standard formula. Anyone expecting to see Cruise’s iconic hero finally bite off more than he can chew and meet his end will come away disappointed.Given the way The Final Reckoning ends, there’s nothing stopping Paramount from greenlighting another sequel featuring this revamped cast, with Cruise’s Ethan being joined by Atwell’s Grace, Pegg’s Benji, Pom Klementieff’s Paris, and Greg Tarzan Davis’ Theo Degas. The studio certainly seems to be leaving that door open, whether or not they choose to walk through it.It may all come down to a question of money. The Mission: Impossible franchise has certainly raked in the cash for Paramount over the years, but these movies are also insanely expensive to produce. Stunts this epic and stars this famous don’t come cheap. Case in point: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One grossed an impressive $571 million worldwide, yet the film is still considered to be a box office failure because of its massive budget (which was inflated by complications stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic). PlayThe Final Reckoning’s budget is reported to be as high as $400 million even before marketing, meaning it needs to gross way more than its predecessor to break even. That may be too much to hope for in a summer movie season as crowded as this one. That’s to say nothing of the fact that audiences are proving ever more fickle in the age of endless streaming options.Given the astronomical cost of making Mission: Impossible movies, Paramount may be happy to close the door on the franchise and focus on the more profitable Top Gun series. The ROI simply isn’t there any longer.That said, we could see Paramount pivoting in a slightly different direction with Mission: Impossible. Perhaps Cruise’s character could become more of a supporting player, with a new generation of heroic IMF agents taking center stage. That formula certainly worked for 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. At one point, rumors even suggested that Maverick star Glen Powell was being eyed to become the new face of the M:I franchise, though Powell himself has denied this. At the very least, we know director Christopher McQuarrie has explored the idea of further sequels beyond The Final Reckoning. But if the studio ever does greenlight them, we suspect the goal will be to pivot to smaller, cheaper spinoffs with less emphasis on Cruise. It’s not as if Cruise is getting any younger, and at some point, Ethan Hunt needs to be allowed to retire for real. How many times can one guy save the world before it’s enough? In IGN's Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning review, Clint Gage gave the film a 6 out of 10, writing, "While its action is reliably thrilling and a few of its most exciting sequences are sure to hold up through the years, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning tries to deal with no less than the end of every living thing on the planet – and suffers because of it. The somber tone and melodramatic dialogue miss the mark of what’s made this franchise so much fun for 30 years, but the door is left open for more impossible missions and the hope that this self-serious reckoning isn’t actually final." PlayFor more on the series, check out our ranking of the Mission: Impossible movies from worst to best.Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket byfollowing @jschedeen on BlueSky.

The leaders of OpenAI and Google have been living rent-free in each other’s heads since ChatGPT caught the world by storm. Heading into this week’s I/O, Googlers were on edge about whether Sam Altman would try to upstage their show like last year, when OpenAI held an event the day before to showcase ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode. This time, OpenAI dropped its bombshell the day after.OpenAI buying the “io” hardware division of Jony Ive’s design studio, LoveFrom, is a delightfully petty bit of SEO sabotage, though I’m told the name stands for “input output” and was decided a while ago. Even still, the news of Ive and Altman teaming up quickly shifted the conversation away from what was a strong showing from Google at this year’s I/O. The dueling announcements say a lot about what are arguably the world’s two foremost AI companies: Google’s models may be technically superior and more widely deployed, but OpenAI is kicking everyone’s ass at capturing mindshare and buzz. Speaking of buzz, it’s worth looking past the headlines to what OpenAI actually announced this week: it’s paying $6.5 billion in equity to hire roughly 55 people from LoveFrom, including ex-Apple design leaders Evans Hankey, Tang Tan, and Scott Cannon. They’ll report to Peter Welinder, a veteran OpenAI product leader who reports directly to Altman. The rest of LoveFrom’s designers, including legends like Mike Matas, are staying put with Ive, who is currently designing the first-ever electric Ferrari and advising the man who introduced him to Altman, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. OpenAI’s press release says Ive and LoveFrom “will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI.”When LoveFrom’s existing client work is wrapped up, Ive and his design team plan to focus solely on OpenAI while staying independent. OpenAI, meanwhile, already has open “future of computing” roles for others to join the io team it brought over. One job listing for a senior research engineer says the ideal candidate has already “spent time in the weeds teaching models to speak and perceive.” (Total compensation: $460K to $555K plus equity.)The rough timeline that led up to this moment goes as follows: Altman and Ive met two years ago and decided to officially work on hardware together this time last year. The io division was set up at LoveFrom to work with a small group of OpenAI employees. OpenAI and Laurene Powell Jobs invested in the effort toward the end of 2024, when there were quiet talks of raising hundreds of millions of dollars to make it a fully standalone company. (The OpenAI startup fund, which is bizarrely not owned by OpenAI, also invested around this time.) Importantly, Ive ended his consulting relationship with Apple in 2022, the year before he met Altman. That deal was highly lucrative for Ive, but kept him from working on products that could compete with Apple’s. Now, Ive and Altman are teaming up to announce what I expect to be a voice-first AI device later next year. Early prototypes of the device exist (Altman mentioned taking one home in his promo video with Ive). Altman told OpenAI employees this week that it will be able to sit on a desk or be carried around. Supply chain rumors suggest it will be roughly the size of an iPod Shuffle and also be worn like a necklace. Like just about every other big hardware company, Ive and Altman have also been working on AI earbuds. Altman is set on bundling hardware as an upsell for ChatGPT subscriptions and envisions a suite of AI-first products that help lessen the company’s reliance on Apple and Google for distribution. With his Apple relationship in the rear-view mirror, Ive now seems set on unseating the company he helped build. Google, meanwhile, was firing on all cylinders this week. AI Mode in Google Search is being rolled out widely. Its product strategy is still disjointed compared to OpenAI’s, but it’s starting to leverage the immense amount of personal data it has on people to differentiate what Gemini can do. If Gemini can hook into Gmail, Workspace, YouTube, etc., in a way that people want to use, it will likely keep many people from shifting to ChatGPT — just like Meta did to Snapchat with Stories in Instagram. After meeting with Google employees up and down the org chart, I came away from I/O with the feeling that the company doesn’t see a catastrophe on the horizon like a lot of outsiders. There’s a recognition that the ability to buy out distribution for search on Apple devices is probably coming to a close, but Gemini is approaching 500 million monthly users. ChatGPT is undoubtedly eating into search (it’s impossible to get Google execs to comment on the actual health of query volume), but Google has shown a willingness to modernize search faster than I expected. The situation differs from Apple, which isn’t competitive in the model race and is suffering from the kind of political infighting that Google mostly worked through over the last couple of years.There’s also no question that Google is well-positioned to continue leading on the frontier of model development. The latest Gemini models are very good, and Google is clearly positioning its AI for a post-phone world with Project Astra. The company also has the compute to roll out tools like the impressive new Veo video model, while OpenAI’s Sora remains heavily gated due to GPU constraints. It’s still quite possible that ChatGPT’s growth continues unabated while Gemini struggles to become a household name. That would be a generational shift in how people use technology that would hurt Google’s business over the long term. For now, though, it looks like Google might be okay. ElsewhereAnthropic couldn’t sit this week out either. The company held an event on Thursday in San Francisco to debut its Claude 4 models, which it claims are the world’s best for coding. With OpenAI, Google, and Meta all battling to win the interface layer of AI, Anthropic is positioning itself as the model arms dealer of choice. It was telling that Windsurf, which is in talks to sell to OpenAI, was seemingly intentionally left out of getting day-one access to the new models. “If models are countries, this is the equivalent of a trade ban,” Nathan Benaich wrote on X. (Also, what does it say about the state of the industry when the supposed safety-first AI lab is releasing models that it knows want to blackmail people?) Microsoft Build was overshadowed by protests. There were several interesting announcements at Build this week, including Elon Musk’s Grok model coming to Azure and Microsoft’s bet on how to evolve the plumbing of the web for AI agents. All of that was overshadowed by protestors who kept disrupting the company’s keynotes to protest the business it does with Israel. The situation has gotten so tense that Microsoft tried unsuccessfully to block the ability for employees to send internal emails with the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “Genocide.” I tried Google’s smart glasses prototype. I spent about five minutes wearing the reference design prototype of Google’s new smart glasses. They had a small, low-res waveguide in the center of each lens that showed voice interactions with Gemini, a basic version of Google Maps directions, and photos I took. They were… fine? Google knows this tech is super early and that full AR glasses are still years away. In the meantime, it’s smart of them to partner with Warby Parker, Gentle Monster, and Kering to put Android XR in glasses that I expect to start coming out next year. With Apple now planning a similar pair of AI-powered glasses in 2026, Meta’s window of being the only major player in the space is closing.Personnel logYouTube hired Justin Connolly from Disney as its head of media and sports, a move that Disney is suing over. Tinder CEO Faye Iosotaluno is stepping down. Her role will now be overseen by parent company Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff. Vladimir Fedorov, a longtime Meta engineering exec, joined Github as CTO.Will Robinson, Coinbase’s former VP of engineering, has joined Plaid as CTO.Stephen Deadman, Meta’s VP of data protection in Europe, is leaving due to “structural changes.”Link listMore to click on:If you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to The Verge, which includes unlimited access to Command Line and all of our reporting.As always, I welcome your feedback, especially if you have thoughts on this issue, an opinion about stackable simulations, or a story idea to share. 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In The Electric State, based on a graphic novel by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, after a robot uprising in an alternative version of the 1990s, an orphaned teenager goes on a quest across the American West, with a cartoon-inspired robot, a smuggler, and his sidekick, to find her long-lost brother. Adapting this sci-fi adventure for Netflix were Joe and Anthony Russo; their film stars Millie Bobbie Brown, Chris Pratt, Stanley Tucci, Giancarlo Esposito and a cast of CG automatons voiced by the likes of Woody Harrelson, Alan Tudyk, Hank Azaria, and Anthony Mackie.  Overseeing the visual effects, which surpassed what the Russos had to deal with during their halcyon MCU days, was Matthew Buttler, who turned to the venerable Digital Domain. As the main vendor, the studio was responsible for producing 61 character builds, 480 assets, and over 850 shots. “It was one of the biggest projects that I’ve done in terms of sheer volumes of assets, shots and characters,” states Joel Behrens, VFX Supervisor, Digital Domain.  “Our wonderful asset team did the 61 characters we were responsible for and had to ingest another 46 characters from other facilities.  We didn’t do any major changes. It was pushing our pipeline to the limits it could handle, especially with other shows going on. We took up a lot of disk space and had the ability to expand and contract the Renderfarm with cloud machines as well.” In researching for the show, Digital Domain visited Boston Dynamics to better understand the technological advancements in robotics, and what structures, motions, and interactions were logical and physically plausible.  “There is a certain amount of fake engineering that goes into some of these things,” notes Behrens.  “We’re not actually building these robots to legitimately function in the real world but have to be visibly believable that they can actually pull some of this stuff off.”  The starting point is always the reference material provided by the client.  “Is there a voice that I need to match to?” notes Liz Bernard, Animation Supervisor, Digital Domain.  “Is there any physical body reference either from motion reference actors in the plate or motion capture? We had a big mix of that on the show.  Some of our characters couldn’t be mocapped at all while others could but we had to modify the performance considerably.  We were also looking at the anatomy of each one of these robots to see what their physical capabilities are.  Can they run or jump?  Because that’s always going to tie tightly with the personality.  Your body in some ways is your personality.  We’re trying to figure out how do we put the actor’s voice on top of all these physical limitations in a way that feels cohesive.  It doesn’t happen overnight.”  The character design of Cosmo was retained from the graphic novel despite not being feasible to engineer in reality.  “His feet are huge,” laughs Bernard.  “We had to figure out how to get him to walk in a way that felt normal and put the joints in the right spots.” Emoting was mainly achieved through physicality.  “He does have these audio clips from the Kid Cosmo cartoon that he can use to help express himself verbally, but most of it is pantomime,” observes Bernard.  “There is this great scene between Cosmo and Michelle that occurs right after she crashes the car, and Cosmo is still trying to convince her who he is and why she should go off on this great search for her brother across the country.   We were trying to get some tough nuanced acting into these shots with a subtle head tilt or a little bit of a slump in the shoulders.”  A green light was inserted into the eyes.  “Matthew Butler likes robotic stuff and anything that we could do to make Cosmo feel more grounded in reality was helpful,” observes Behrens.  “We also wanted to prevent anyone from panicking and giving Cosmo a more animated face or allowing him to speak dialogue. We started off with a constant light at the beginning and then added this twinkle and glimmer in his eye during certain moments. We liked that and ended up putting it in more places throughout the film. Everybody says that the eyes are the windows to the soul so giving Cosmo something rather than a dark black painted spot on his face assisted in connecting with that character.”  Coming in four different sizes that fit inside one another - like a Russian doll - is Herman. Digital Domain looked after the eight-inch, four-foot and 20-foot versions while ILM was responsible for the 60-foot Herman that appears in the final battle.   “They were scaled up to a certain extent but consider that the joints on the 20-foot version of Herman versus the four-foot version need to be more robust and beefier because they’re carrying so much more weight,” remarks Bernard.  “We were focusing on making sure that the impact of each step rippled through the body in a way that made it clear how heavy a 20-foot robot carrying a van across a desert would be.  The smaller one can be nimbler and lighter on its feet.  There were similar physical limitations, but that weight was the big deal.”  Incorporated into the face of Herman is a retro-futuristic screen in the style of the 1980s and early 1990s CRT panels. “It has these RGB pixels that live under a thick plate of glass like your old television set,” explains Behrens.  “You have this beautiful reflective dome that goes over top of these cathode-ray-looking pixels that allowed us to treat it as a modern-day LED with the ability to animate his expressions, or if we wanted to, put symbols up. You could pixelized any graphical element and put it on Herman’s face.  We wanted to add a nonlinear decay into the pixels so when he changed expressions or a shape altered drastically you would have a slow quadratic decay of the pixels fading off as he switched expressions. That contributed a nice touch.” One member of the robot cast is an iconic Planters mascot.  “Everybody knows who Mr. Peanut is and what he looks like, at least in North America,” observes Behrens.  “We had to go through a lot of design iterations of how his face should animate. It was determined that as a slightly older model of robot he didn’t have a lot of dexterity in his face. We were modelling him after Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz Pizza animatronics, so it was like a latex shell over the top of a mechanical under structure that drove his limited expressions. It allowed him to open and close his mouth and do some slight contractions at the corners, leaving most of the acting to his eyes, which did not have as many restrictions. The eyes had the ability to move quickly, and dart and blink like a human.”  The eyebrows were mounted tracks that ran up and down a vertical slot on the front of the face.  “We could move the eyebrows up and down, and tilt them, but couldn’t do anything else,” states Bernard.  “It was trying to find a visual language that would get the acting across with Woody Harrelson’s amazing performance backing it up.  Then a lot of pantomime to go with that.”  Mr. Peanut moves in a jerky rather than smooth manner.  “Here is a funny little detail,” reveals Bernard.  “If you think about a peanut shell, he doesn’t have a chest or hips that can move independently.  We realized early on that in order to get him to walk without teeter-tottering everywhere, we were going to have to cut his butt off, reattach it and add a swivel control on the bottom.  We always kept that peanut silhouette intact; however, he could swivel his hips enough to walk forward without looking silly!”  Other notable robots are Pop Fly and Perplexo; the former is modelled on baseball player, the latter on a magician.  “We decided that Pop Fly would be the clunkiest of all robots because he was meant to be the elder statesman,” states Behrens.  “Pop Fly was partially falling apart, like his eye would drift, the mouth would hang open and sometimes he’d pass out for a second and wake back up.  Pop Fly was the scavenger hunter of the group who has seen stuff in the battles of the wasteland. We came up with a fun pitching mechanism so he could actually shoot the balls out of his mouth and of course, there was his trusty baseball bat that he could bat things with.” An interesting task was figuring out how to rig his model.  “We realized that there needed to be a lot of restrictions in his joints to make him look realistic based on how he was modelled in the first place,” notes Bernard.  “Pop Fly couldn’t rotate his head in every direction; he could turn it from side to side for the most part.  Pop Fly was on this weird structure with the four wheels on a scissor lift situation which meant that he always had to lean forward to get going and when stopping, would rock backwards.  It was fun to add all that detail in for him.”  Serving as Perplexo’s upper body is a theatrical box that he pops in and out of.  “Perplexo did not have a whole lot going on with his face,” remarks Bernard.  “It was a simple mechanical structure to his jaw, eyes, and eyelids; that meant we could push the performance with pantomime and crazy big gestures with the arms.”               A major adversary in the film is The Marshall, portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito, who remotely controls a drone that projects the face of operator onto a video screen.  “We started with a much smaller screen and had a cowboy motif for awhile, but then they decided to have a unifying design for the drones that are operated by humans versus the robots,” remarks Behrens.  “Since the artist Simon Stålenhag had done an interesting, cool design with the virtual reality helmets with that long duckbill that the humans wear in the real world, the decision was made to mimic that head style of the drones to match the drone operators. Then you could put a screen on the front; that’s how you see Ted [Jason Alexander] or The Marshall or the commando operators. It worked out quite nicely.”   There was not much differentiation in the movement of the drones.  “The drones were meant to be in the vein of Stormtroopers, a horde of them being operated by people sitting in a comfortable room in Seattle,” observes Bernard. “So, they didn’t get as much effort and love as we put into the rest of the robots which had their own personalities. But for The Marshall, we have great mocap to start from Adam Croasdell. He played it a little bit cowboy, which was how Giancarlo Esposito was portraying the character as well, like a Western sheriff style vibe. You could hear that in the voice.  Listening to Giancarlo’s vocal performance gives you a lot of clues of what you should do when you’re moving that character around.  We put all of that together in the performance of The Marshall.”   Many environments had to either be created or augmented, such as the haunted amusement park known as Happyland. “The majority of the exterior of Happyland was a beautiful set that Dennis Gassner and his crew built in a parking lot of a waterslide park in Atlanta,” states Behrens.  “We would go there at night and freeze our butts off shooting for a good two and a half weeks in the cold Atlanta winter.  Most of our environmental work was doing distance extensions for that and adding atmospherics and fog.  We made all the scavenger robots that inhabit Happyland, which are cannibalistic robotics that upgrade and hot rod themselves from random parts taken from the robots that they kill.  Once we get into the haunted house and fall into the basement, that’s where Dr. Amherst has his lab, which was modelled off a 1930s Frankenstein set, with Tesla coils, beakers, and lab equipment.  That was initially a set build we did onstage in Atlanta. But when we got into additional photography, they wanted to do this whole choreographed fight with The Marshall and Mr. Peanut. Because they didn’t know what actions we would need, we ended up building that entire lower level in CG.”   At one point, all the exiled robots gather at the Mall within the Exclusion Zone.  “We were responsible for building a number of the background characters along with Storm Studios and ILM,” remarks Behrens.  “As for the mall, we didn’t have to do much to the environment.  There were some small things here and there that had to be modified.  We took over an abandoned mall in Atlanta and the art department dressed over half of it.” The background characters were not treated haphazardly. “We assigned two or three characters to each animator,” explains Bernard.  “I asked them to make a backstory and figure out who this guy is, what does he care about, and who is his mama?!  Put that into the performance so that each one feels unique and different because they have their own personalities.  There is a big central theme in the movie where the robots are almost more human than most of the humans you meet.  It was important to us that we put that humanity into their performances. As far as the Mall and choreography, Matthew, Joel and I knew that was going to be a huge challenge because this is not traditional crowd work where you can animate cycles and give it to a crowds department and say, ‘Have a bunch of people walking around.’  All these characters are different; they have to move differently and do their own thing.  We did a first pass on the big reveal in the Mall where you swing around and see the atrium where everybody is doing their thing.  We essentially took each character and moved them around like a chess piece to figure out if we had enough characters, if the color balanced nicely across all of them, and if it was okay for us to duplicate a couple of them.  We started to show that early to Matthew and Jeffrey Ford [Editor, Executive Producer], and the directors to get buyoff on the density of the crowd.”    Considered one of the film’s signature sequences is the walk across the Exclusion Zone, where 20-foot Herman is carrying a Volkswagen van containing Michelle, Cosmo and Keats on his shoulder.  “We did a little bit of everything,” notes Behrens.  “We had plate-based shots because a splinter unit went out to Moab, Utah and shot a bunch of beautiful vistas for us.  For environments, there were shots where we had to do projections of plate material onto 3D geometry that we built. We had some DMPs that went into deep background. We also had to build out some actual legitimate 3D terrain for foreground and midground because a lot of the shots that had interaction with our hero characters rocking and back forth were shot on a bluescreen stage with a VW van on a large gimbal rig.  Then Liz had the fun job of trying to tie that into a giant robot walking with them.  We had to do some obvious tweaking to some of those motions. The establishing shots, where they are walking through this giant dead robot skeleton from who knows where, several of those were 100 percent CG. Once they get to the Mall, we had a big digital mall and a canyon area that had to look like they were once populated.”  Modifications were kept subtle.  “There were a couple of shots where we needed to move the plate VW van around a little bit,” states Bernard.  “You can’t do a lot without it starting to fall apart and lose perspective.”  “The biggest challenge was the scale and sheer number of characters needed that played a large role interacting with our human actors and creating a believable world for them to live in,” reflects Behrens.  “The sequence that I had the most fun with was the mine sequence with Herman and Keats, as far as their banter back and forth. Some of our most expansive work was the Mall and the walk across the Exclusion Zone.  Those had the most stunning visuals.”  Bernard agrees with her colleague.  “I’m going to sound like a broken record.  For me, it was the scale and the sheer number of characters that we had to deal with and keeping them feeling that they were all different, but from the same universe.  Having the animators working towards that same goal was a big challenge.  We had quite a large team on this one.  And I do love that mine sequence.  There is such good banter between Keats and Herman, especially early on in that sequence.  It has so much great action to it.  We got to drop a giant claw on top of The Marshall that he had to fight his way out of.  That was a hard shot.  And of course, the Mall is stunning.  You can see all the care that went into creating that environment and all those characters.  It’s beautiful.”      Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.

Two months ago, Marvel announced the cast for the highly-anticipate Avengers: Doomsday in a, let’s call it “unique,” manner. On social media, the studio streamed video of cast chairs with a particular actor’s name on it. The camera would hold for twelve minutes or so, and then Alan Silvestri’s Avengers theme would play and the camera would pan to the right for the next reveal. Odd as it was, the gamble mostly worked, as we nerds spend all day talking about the names on the internet. Turns out, the methodical pace of the reveal had something else to tell us about Doomsday: that we were going to have to wait a bit. Yesterday, Hollywood Reporter announced that Marvel has pushed Doomsday‘s release date from May 1, 2026 to Dec. 18, 2026 and the release date to the sequel Avengers: Secret Wars from Dec. 17, 2027 to May 7, 2027. At this point, the release date change shouldn’t be much of a surprise. After all, the fourth Avengers movie was supposed to have released a few weeks ago, on May 1, 2025. Of course, that announcement came back in 2022 and it was for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, staring Jonathan Majors as the time-traveling baddie Kang the Conquerer. Since then, Majors’s off-screen behavior got him booted from the universe and Kang was defeated, first by Ant-Man and a giant bug in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and then his variants were dealt with in the second season of Loki. Since then, the Avengers movie has been in creative overhaul, first by moving Kang Dynasty director Destin Daniel Cretton over to Spider-Man: Brand New Day and replacing him with Joe and Anthony Russo, who helmed Infinity War and Endgame. Further, Marvel brought back Robert Downey Jr., now as Fantastic Four arch-villain Doctor Doom, in a move that still doesn’t make sense, but hopefully will on screen. In short, Marvel’s had a lot of work to do and the pauses make sense, even if Doomsday is now currently in production. However, the decision to push back the release date is a good thing on creative level. It’s no secret that Marvel has been struggling since Endgame. It’s not just that superhero fatuige has set in and it’s not just that Endgame and it’s exit of many beloved characters gave fans a good jumping-off point. It’s that the company has spread itself too thin, drawing MCU chief Kevin Feige‘s attention away from quality and pushing out substandard entries that most people don’t want. For a while, audiences kept showing up for the good stuff, as demonstrated by the success of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and X-Men ’97, and for stuff that resonates with them, like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Deadpool & Wolverine. But too many bland entries, such as Thor: Love and Thunder and Secret Invasion have burned the general viewer too many times, and even solid releases like Loki‘s second season went underwatched. We are starting to see that turn around. Thunderbolts* proved a hit among critics and audiences, even if it didn’t do the box office numbers of movies from the MCU’s heyday. Likewise, Daredevil: Born Again didn’t dominate the discussion, but it generated decent buzz. Marvel knows all this. They’ve been quite open about the need to slow production. They already made the bold move of revamping Daredevil: Born Again midway through production, which resulted in a first season that sometimes showed the seams of being two radically different shows stitched together, but overall gave people what they want from Marvel: likable characters, good drama, and cool superhero action. In fact, Daredevil: Born Again should be the project that fans keep in mind when they consider the Doomsday news. There’s no question that Feige et al. made the right decision when bringing on new showrunner Dario Scardapane and directing duo Aaron Benson and Justin Moorehead, who changed the series from a superhero-adjacent courtroom drama to more of a character piece about Daredevil struggling with the ethics of vigilantism. But they needed to hit their new launch date and so retained a great deal of the original footage shot by the previous creative team. So as good as the final product was, the first season of Daredevil: Born Again didn’t always feel like a coherent vision and often shifted tones wildly. Scardapane, Benson, and Morehead have been promising that season two of the series will be more coherent, and that’s a good thing. But that’s also something they can do because they’re working on a television series. The Russo brothers can’t do the same thing with a movie, even a serialized one like the Avengers films. The story that hits the screen is going to be the story. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! And so, we wait a bit more and we’re glad to do it. We want Marvel to get this right, to tell a high adventure story that does right by the characters we love, that makes us feel like we did when we left the theater after Infinity War. In the meantime, we can keep looking at the back of casting chairs and speculating. Avengers: Doomsday comes to theaters on May 1, 2026 Dec. 18, 2026

Apple CEO Tim Cook oversaw his company's deep investment in China. That was an enormously successful strategy for Apple — but now it's a real problem, argues author Patrick McGee. VCG/VCG via Getty Images 2025-05-23T16:56:30Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Donald Trump wants Apple to make iPhones in America. There's no chance that will happen, says Patrick McGee, a journalist who just published a book on Apple's deep ties to China. McGee also argues that Apple's end-around on Trump's China tariffs — saying that some iPhones and other products are made in India and Vietnam — is misleading. Donald Trump says that iPhones need to be built in the US, or they'll face a 25% tariff.But it doesn't matter what Trump says: iPhones are never going to be built in the US.That's according to Patrick McGee, a journalist who just published "Apple In China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company" — a detailed look at all of the money and effort Apple spent over decades to enmesh itself in China.McGee, who has covered Apple for the Financial Times, explains why this has been enormously helpful to Apple — because it created an ecosystem that lets it make ultra-complicated devices at vast scale. But he argues that it was even more helpful to China — because Apple gave Chinese engineers access to valuable technology that has let them build other high-value supply chains.And that McGee posits, has created both a problem for Apple CEO Tim Cook — because he can no longer practically extract the company from China — and for the US — because its adversary is now using American know-how to compete with American companies.(I asked Apple if it wanted to weigh in on McGee's book. Via a rep, the company said that "claims in the book are untrue" and "filled with inaccuracies" and that McGee didn't fact-check the book with Apple.)I talked to McGee for the newest episode of my Channels podcast. In the edited excerpt below, we talk about why he thinks it's impossible for Apple to move iPhone production to the US. And why McGee thinks that Apple saying it's moving some production to India and Vietnam, in order to escape some US tariffs on China, is deeply misleading.Peter Kafka: The Trump administration says it wants Apple to move all of its manufacturing to the US. You and anyone else who knows anything about Apple saying that is literally not possible when it comes to the iPhone. Why?Patrick McGee:And then they're moving on to another project. So Apple doesn't bear the cost. It's using the likes of Foxconn to do manufacturing as a service.There's an analyst quoted last month who said it would be like if in the city of Boston, every person dropped what they were doing and just worked on iPhones. And as quotable as that is, that understates the challenge. Because it would like the city of Boston transporting itself to some other place, like Milwaukee, assembling iPhones for a few weeks and then moving on to some other project.China has this floating population — that's literally what it's called — and that workforce alone is greater than America's entire labor force. So we're never going to match them in terms of density of population and, more especially, dynamism of the population.Let alone that it's happening at way lower labor rates. Let alone it's got way better machinery and automation. It's not a matter of willpower and cost — that seems to be what the MAGA dream is based on. It goes so much beyond this.We often say Americans don't want to do these jobs. The Chinese don't want to do these jobs. But there are so many people that would rather be doing that than toiling in the fields for 14 hours a day. We just don't have a base of labor that would do that.One of the other arguments you and others make is that China has people, but there's also just huge infrastructure: a whole series of plants and subplants and subcontractors that all are sort of built around getting Apple the products it needs, at a drop of a hat.Yeah. In the amount of time that it would take China to build a new factory, we would still be doing the environmental paperwork.But in Apple's most recent earnings call, the company said that for the next quarter at least, every iPhone they sell in the US is going to come out of India, and most of the other electronics they sell in the US — AirPods, etc — are going to come out of Vietnam.So what am I missing here? It makes it seem like Apple has gone ahead and figured out how to move this stuff out of China.Not at all. Think of it like this: If there's a thousand steps in making an iPhone and the final one is now in India, you're avoiding tariffs. The final assembly is considered "making it in India."Like if I took every step of baking a cake except for putting the icing on or ...Putting it in the box or something.Honestly, not much is happening in India. That might change in the next five to 10 years, but the idea that there is actual production happening in India is just wrong.If you buy an iPhone next year, it'll say "made in India." I think that's a near-certainty. But that phone will be no less dependent on the China-centric supply chain than any other iPhone you've ever purchased.On that earnings call, Apple also said that the existing tariffs will cost them $900 million in the next quarter. That may sound like a big number, but Apple makes $100 billion in profit a year, so it's not. If that was just the only impact from the tariffs, that seems like a pretty solvable problem for Apple: They have to move final assembly to India, and eat some costs, but they could do it.Yeah, absolutely.Where I think things are much dicier is that the political ties that Apple has with China are unbreakable. I shouldn't say political ties — I really mean the business ties. They are not going to leave China anytime soon.Yet the technological transfer that is engendered by designing cutting-edge products every year and building them in China inherently causes a technology transfer from America to China on a crazy level. And if you think of China as a threat, if you think of them as America's biggest adversary, it is insane that the world's greatest company is equipping China with this technological know-how year in, year out.The Wall Street Journal just reported that Apple is thinking about maybe tacking on some of these additional costs to the next round of iPhones they start selling this fall — passing those costs on to the consumer. Does that sound right to you?Yes, because the other alternative is that you're squeezing out more from your suppliers. Some analysts have suggested that, and it's kind of laughable. Because if there's anything to squeeze out of the supply chain, you damn well better know that Apple's already done it. Apple pays its suppliers very slim margins. There are not a bunch of fat cats out there that they can just be squeezing

Kerry Wan/ZDNETSoundbars are gaining in popularity because of their sleek design and ability to provide an ample boost in audio quality compared to built-in TV speakers. Even with their plug-and-play nature, you can make a few modifications to help unleash the best possible sound quality. Also: This Amazon Fire TV soundbar upgraded my home entertainment without breaking the bankWhether you're new to soundbar setups or a self-proclaimed audiophile, familiarizing yourself with some key settings can take your viewing and listening experience to new heights. Read on for five pointers on how to optimize your soundbar's performance. 1. Placement and acoustics It may sound obvious (because it is), but where you place your soundbar is a major factor. For the most balanced sound, position the soundbar directly below your TV, centered and parallel to the screen. Mounting a soundbar above your screen is also an option, but the ideal height placement for ultimate clarity is at or near ear level. Make sure your soundbar isn't obstructed by furniture or even decorative items that can block sound waves. Also: I changed 3 settings on my PS5 to significantly improve the performanceEach room has unique acoustics. Does your room have high ceilings or large windows? Are your floors hardwood or tile? If so, consider adding soft furnishings such as rugs and curtains to reduce reflections. You could also take it a step further by adding acoustic panels or diffusers to your area. Acoustic panels or diffusers can help manage sound reflections and create a more balanced audio environment.As noted by ZDNET contributor Artie Beaty, advanced soundbars like LG's S95TR go through a tuning process specific to the layout of your viewing area by using an AI room calibration feature. If your soundbar lacks such a feature, do some experimenting to find the sweet spot.Remember that most soundbars are designed to project sound directly toward the audience, so make sure the device is angled for optimal sound dispersion across all seating positions. Moving the soundbar a foot or so from your listening area or adjusting the angle just a few inches can noticeably improve or degrade the output. 2. Subwoofer location means everything Kerry Wan/ZDNETIf your soundbar has a subwoofer, place it on the floor, preferably in a corner or along a wall, to enhance bass response. The aim is to create a seamless blend between low-frequency effects and the rest of the audio spectrum. I've read about a music producer who would do a "crawling test" to pinpoint the best location. This involves playing some bass-heavy content and literally crawling around the room to find the spot with the most balanced bass output. Voila -- there's the best place to put your subwoofer. Also: What is spatial audio? Here's everything you need to knowSome soundbars come with a built-in subwoofer, and others allow you to connect an external subwoofer wirelessly or via a wired connection. (More on this later.) In the absence of a subwoofer, and if it's in your budget, consider adding a unit like the SVS SB-1000 Pro. A more affordable option is the Klipsch Reference R-120SW. Hooking up a subwoofer can significantly enhance your audio experience with deeper, more impactful low-frequency effects, making you feel like you're part of the onscreen action. 3. Customizing your soundbar's equalizer and audio settings As I mentioned earlier, some soundbars feature automatic calibration systems that use a microphone to measure and adjust sound settings for your specific room. Many more of them come with various audio presets or EQ settings that you can adjust according to your tastes. Certain soundbars offer the flexibility to tailor audio settings for individual inputs, allowing you to fine-tune the sound quality based on whether you're watching shows, listening to music, or gaming. In any case, adjusting bass, treble, and other parameters can greatly improve audio quality based on your room's acoustics and your listening habits. Also, make sure to experiment with any advanced features, such as Virtual Surround Sound, Dialogue Enhancement, or Bass Boost, if available. Increasing the bass can add depth and power to action scenes, making explosions and other intense moments more dramatic and engaging. Raising the dialogue levels puts a focus on the center channel and midfrequencies, making vocals more distinct and easier to comprehend -- so you can actually understand what Yennefer of Vengerberg is whispering in The Witcher. Along those lines, check to see if your soundbar has a volume leveler. This feature (which can be turned on and off) lets you listen to content with greater consistency. You'll be reaching for the volume button on your remote much less frequently with volume leveling. 4. Check your (HDMI) connection Michael Gariffo/ZDNETYour soundbar is likely connected to your TV via an HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) or eARC (enhanced Audio Return Channel) port. This technology supports advanced 3D audio formats such as Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and Sony 360 Reality Audio for a super-immersive surround-sound experience. Ideally, your soundbar will support HDMI-CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) connectivity, which lets you command devices connected through HDMI by using only one remote control. In this scenario, you can use your TV's remote to control the soundbar and, for instance, an added Blu-ray player. Also: What is EQ and why is it an important factor in improving sound?Integrating the operation of multiple devices into one is certainly my preference. Who wants three separate remotes sitting on their coffee table? Having all your devices plugged into the soundbar reduces clutter and avoids having to install a switch box. You can then easily switch between audio sources by changing the soundbar's input mode using your single remote. OK, this doesn't pertain to maximizing audio quality, but here's something that does. Compared with connecting your soundbar via Bluetooth, a wired connection remains the best method for transferring sound. Opting for a wired connection, such as HDMI or optical cables, guarantees a stable and lossless audio transmission. This allows the audio content to be heard as it was intended, without any degradation or disruptions caused by wireless signal interference or compression. Also, keep in mind that not all cables are created equal. Be sure to use a cable that supports high-res formats and has a higher bandwidth that can process more channels to support extra bass and tweeter speakers. 5. Updates are essential This one is short and sweet: check for software and firmware updates! (This, by the way, is essential for any device.) Manufacturers often release updates that can improve your soundbar's performance and add new features. Regularly installing updates ensures your soundbar benefits from the latest enhancements and fixes, and squashes bugs that can corrupt sound quality. Also: Your TV's USB port has hidden superpowers: 5 benefits you're not taking advantage ofWith these simple tips, you can maximize your soundbar's performance and enjoy a richer, more immersive audio experience. Proper placement, room acoustics optimization, and thoughtfully adjusting your settings will surely elevate your listening experience for streaming. Whether you're watching action-packed blockbusters or rocking out to your favorite tunes, your soundbar will be ready to deliver exceptional audio quality. This article was originally published on April 28, 2025, and was updated on May 23, 2025.Looking for the next best product? Get expert reviews and editor favorites with ZDNET Recommends.Featured reviews

May 23, 20257 min readWhat FDA’s Planned Limits on COVID Vaccinations Mean for HealthDespite the fact that vaccines against COVID have already undergone strict safety reviews and that people continue to die from the disease, Trump’s FDA is moving to reduce access to annual COVID boosters for healthy AmericansBy Stephanie Armour & KFF Health News aire images/Getty ImagesLarry Saltzman has blood cancer. He’s also a retired doctor, so he knows getting covid-19 could be dangerous for him — his underlying illness puts him at high risk of serious complications and death. To avoid getting sick, he stays away from large gatherings, and he’s comforted knowing healthy people who get boosters protect him by reducing his exposure to the virus.Until now, that is.Vaccine opponents and skeptics in charge of federal health agencies — starting at the top with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — are restricting access to covid shots that were a signature accomplishment of President Donald Trump’s first term and cost taxpayers about $13 billion to develop, produce, and distribute. The agencies are narrowing vaccination recommendations, pushing drugmakers to perform costly clinical studies, and taking other steps that will result in fewer people getting protection from a virus that still kills hundreds each week in the U.S.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“There are hundreds of thousands of people who rely on these vaccines,” said Saltzman, 71, of Sacramento, California. “For people who are immunocompromised, if there aren’t enough people vaccinated, we lose the ring that’s protecting us. We’re totally vulnerable.”The Trump administration on May 20 rolled out tougher approval requirements for covid shots, described as a covid-19 “vaccination regulatory framework,” that could leave millions of Americans who want boosters unable to get them.The FDA will encourage new clinical trials on the widely used vaccines before approving them for children and healthy adults. The requirements could cost drugmakers tens of millions of dollars and are likely to leave boosters largely out of reach for hundreds of millions of Americans this fall.Under the new guidance, vaccines will be available for high-risk individuals and seniors. But the FDA will encourage drugmakers to commit to conducting post-marketing clinical trials in healthy adults when the agency approves covid vaccines for those populations.For the past five years, the shots have been recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for everyone 6 months and older. They have been available each fall after being updated to reflect circulating strains of the virus, and the vaccines have been shown to be safe and effective in clinical trials.Vinay Prasad, who leads the FDA’s division overseeing vaccines, cited “distrust of the American public” as he announced the new guidelines at a May 20 briefing.“We have launched down this multiyear campaign of booster after booster after booster,” he said, adding that “we do not have gold-standard science to support this for average-risk, low-risk Americans.”The details were outlined in a May 20 article in The New England Journal of Medicine, written by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. He and Prasad later followed up with the briefing, which appeared the same day on YouTube.The added limits on access aren’t the result of any recent data showing there are new health risks from the covid vaccines. Instead, they reflect a different regulatory stance from Kennedy, who has a history of anti-vaccine activism, and Makary, who has questioned the safety data on covid mRNA shots.Announcing a major regulatory change in a medical journal and YouTube video is a highly unusual approach that still leaves many questions about implementation unanswered. It remains unclear when the changes will go into effect or whether there will be any public comment period. The changes were announced by the administration before an FDA advisory committee meeting on May 22 to consider the 2026 covid vaccine formula.It’s a sharp reversal from the first Trump administration, which launched Operation Warp Speed — the effort that led to the development of the covid shots. Trump called the vaccines the “gold standard” and a “monumental national achievement.”Concerns About Higher TransmissionThe announcement is rattling some patient advocacy groups, doctors, nursing home leaders, and researchers who worry about the ramifications. They say higher-risk individuals will be more likely to get covid if people who aren’t at risk don’t get boosters that can help reduce transmission. And they say the FDA’s restrictions go too far, because they don’t provide exceptions for healthy individuals who work in high-risk settings, such as hospitals, who may want a covid booster for protection.The limits will also make it harder to get insurance coverage for the vaccines. And the FDA’s new stance could also increase vaccine hesitancy by undermining confidence in covid vaccines that have already been subject to rigorous safety review, said Kate Broderick, chief innovation officer at Maravai Life Sciences, which makes mRNA products for use in vaccine development.“For the public, it raises questions,” she said. “If someone has concerns, I’d like them to know that of all the vaccines, the ones with the most understood safety profile are probably covid-19 vaccines. There is an incredible body of data and over 10 billion doses given.”Some doctors and epidemiologists say it could leave healthy people especially vulnerable if more virulent strains of covid emerge and they can’t access covid shots.“It’s not based on science,” said Rob Davidson, an emergency room doctor in Michigan and executive director of the Committee to Protect Health Care, which works to expand health care access. “It’s what we were all worried would happen. It risks peoples’ lives.”Current federal regulators say there is no high-quality evidence showing that vaccinating healthy people, including health workers who are near or around immunocompromised people, provides an additional benefit.“It is possible, actually, that such approvals and strategies provide false reassurance and lead to increased harms,” Prasad said.The covid vaccines underwent clinical trials to assess safety, and they have been subject to ongoing surveillance and monitoring since they obtained emergency use authorization from the FDA amid the pandemic. Heart issues and allergic reactions can occur but are rare, according to the CDC.On a separate track, the FDA on May 21 posted letters sent in April to makers of the mRNA covid vaccines to add information about possible heart injury on warning labels, a move that one former agency official described as overkill. The action came after the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a panel of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, held a hearing on alleged adverse events associated with covid vaccines.Limiting boosters to healthy people goes against guidance from some medical groups.“The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective, and the best way to protect children,” Sean O’Leary, chair of the Committee on Infectious Diseases at the American Academy of Pediatrics, said in an email. “Young children under 5 continue to be at the highest risk, with that risk decreasing as they get older.”Unsupported Claims About mRNA VaccinesThe covid booster clampdown is supported by many adherents of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, which casts suspicion on traditional medicine. Some opponents of covid mRNA vaccines say without evidence that the shots cause “turbo” cancer, are genetic bioweapons, and cause more heart damage than the covid virus.There is no evidence the shots lead to rapid and aggressive cancers. Cancer rates decreased an average of 1.7% per year for men and 1.3% for women from 2018 to 2022, according to the National Institutes of Health. The covid vaccines debuted in 2021.Federal regulators say narrowing who can get the boosters will align the U.S. with policies of European nations. But other countries have vastly different economic structures for health care and approaches to preventive care. Many European countries, for example, don’t recommend flu shots for the entire population. The U.S. does in part because of the financial drain attributed to lost productivity when people are sick.They also want more information. “I think there’s a void of data,” Makary told CBS News on April 29. “And I think rather than allow that void to be filled with opinions, I’d like to see some good data.”A massive five-year study on covid vaccine safety by the Global Vaccine Data Network, involving millions of people, was underway, with about a year left before completion. The Trump administration terminated funding for the project as part of cuts directed by the president’s Department of Government Efficiency, and work on the study has stopped for now.There are a multitude of studies, however, on the vaccines’ effectiveness in preventing severe illness, hospitalization, and death.Limiting boosters for healthy people can be risky, some doctors say, because people don’t always know when they fall into higher-risk categories, such as individuals who are prediabetic or have high blood pressure. The covid vaccine restrictions could deter them from getting boosted, and they might experience worse complications from the virus as a result. For example, about 40% of people with hepatitis C are unaware of their condition, according to a study published in 2023.The number of people getting covid vaccines has already dropped significantly since the height of the crisis. More than half of the more than 258 million adults in the U.S. had gotten a covid vaccination as of May 2021, according to the CDC. In each of the past two seasons, less than 25% of Americans received boosters, CDC data shows.While deaths from the virus have dropped, covid remains a risk, especially when cases peak in December and January. Weekly covid deaths topped 2,580 as recently as January 2024, according to CDC data.Some high-risk individuals are worried that the new restrictions are just the first salvo in halting all access to mRNA shots. “The HHS motivation really is hidden, and it’s to dismiss all mRNA technology,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.Officials at the NIH have told scientists to remove references to mRNA in grant applications. HHS also announced plans in May to develop new vaccines without mRNA technology, which uses messenger RNA to instruct cells to make proteins that trigger an immune response.Rose Keller, 23, is concerned about future access to covid shots. She would be eligible under the current announcement — she has cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic condition that makes the mucus in her lungs thick and sticky, so covid could land her in the hospital. But she is concerned the Trump administration may go further and restrict access to the vaccines as part of a broader opposition to mRNA technology.“I’ve had every booster that’s available to me,” said Keller, a government employee in Augusta, Maine. “It’s a real worry if I don’t have the protection of a covid booster.”KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

As generative AI becomes faster, cheaper, and more convincing, the ethical stakes are no longer theoretical. What happens when the tools to deceive become widely accessible? And how do we build systems that are powerful — but safe enough to trust? At TechCrunch Sessions: AI, taking place June 5 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, Artemis Seaford, Head of AI Safety at ElevenLabs, and Ion Stoica, co-founder of Databricks and professor at UC Berkeley, will take the main stage to unpack the ethical challenges of today’s AI. Their conversation will cut to the heart of one of the most urgent questions in tech: What are we unleashing — and can we still steer it? How Seaford and Stoica are tackling AI’s toughest ethical questions Artemis brings a rare blend of academic depth and frontline experience. At ElevenLabs, she leads AI safety efforts focused on media authenticity and abuse prevention. Her background spans OpenAI, Meta, and global risk management at the intersection of law, policy, and geopolitics. Expect a grounded, clear-eyed take on how deepfakes are evolving, what new risks are emerging, and which interventions are actually working. Ion, meanwhile, brings a systems-level view. He’s not just a leader in AI research—he’s helped build the infrastructure behind it. From Spark to Ray to ChatBot Arena, his open source projects power many of today’s most advanced AI deployments. As executive chairman of Databricks and a founder of several AI-driven companies, Ion knows what it takes to scale responsibly — and where today’s tools still fall short. Together, they’ll unpack the ethical blind spots in today’s development cycles, explore how safety can be embedded into core architectures, and examine the roles that industry, academia, and regulation must play in the years ahead. Join the front lines of AI — insight, access, and $600+ in ticket savings This session is part of a day-long exploration at the front lines of artificial intelligence, featuring speakers from OpenAI, Google Cloud, Anthropic, Cohere, and more. Expect tactical insight, candid dialogue, and a rare cross-section of technologists, researchers, and founders — all in one room. Plus, you’ll have the chance to engage with these top minds through breakouts and top-tier networking. Grab your ticket now and save big — over $300 off, plus 50% off a second ticket. Whether you’re building the future or just trying to keep up with it, you and your plus-one should be in the room for this. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW The tools are moving fast. The ethics need to catch up. Don’t get left behind — learn how to stay compliant.

Sagrada Familia, the Catholic church designed by Antoni Gaudí, isn’t hurting for visitors. Any tourist knows where to go first on their trip to Barcelona. But far fewer are aware of the smaller inventions of its architect. For instance, the Batlló chair, originally designed by Gaudí in 1906, was reissued by BD Barcelona in 2024. After seeing it at the Milanese design fair, Salone del Mobile, that same year, interior designer Giancarlo Valle and his editor wife Jane Keltner de Valle pursued a partnership with BD Barcelona. Now, for the first time, the chair is coming to the US. Gaudí acolytes can see and even sit in one at Casa Valle, the pair's gallery in New York City.“There are so many inspiring and celebrated architect-designers,” says Keltner de Valle, “Josef Hoffmann, Josef Frank, Gio Ponti. But Gaudí, though prolific and arguably more famous than any other, is often overlooked in that context. His furniture has never been exhibited in New York before and many people aren’t even aware he designed furniture.”Courtsey of Casa ValleThe Batlló chair by Antoni Gaudí, produced by BD Barcelona for Casa Valle.At first glance, the chair reads as vaguely anthropomorphic, with a form that calls to mind snails or bones. Fittingly, the house Gaudí built for the Batlló family, Casa Batlló, is known colloquially as the “Casa Dels Ossos” or “House of Bones”, due to its façade of broken ceramic tiles. First built in 1877 for Lluís Sala Sánchez, the house was bought in 1903 by textile industrialist Josep Batlló. Gaudí convinced Batlló to remodel it rather than tearing it down, and by 1906 had finished a complete overhaul of the structure, encouraged by Batlló to design something completely free and without restriction. Gaudí saw to the house in detail, including designs for built-in and free-standing furniture.The Batlló chair started its life in Casa Batlló’s dining room. Fifty oak chairs of the same design, with a new ebony finish, are available through Casa Valle. Seeing the nearly $9,000 price point might prompt the curious to ask if they’re buying a name and legacy or artistic genius and quality. The answer is: All of the above. For starters, each chair is meticulously constructed in Barcelona and takes eight to ten weeks from beginning to end. “Gaudi’s furniture today is crafted exactly as it was in 1906 with the same methods and materials and a certificate signed by the director of the Gaudi Cathedra,” says Valle. “You can very much feel that connection in the works.” Is 100 years of innovative Catalan design worth that price tag? We think sí!

There's no escaping spreadsheets. Tools like Excel and Google Sheets are ubiquitous these days, and learning how to use them more effectively will quickly enhance your daily work. But spreadsheets aren't always the easiest thing to work with. Grids of numbers, obscure menus, arcane formula syntax—it can leave you feeling lost and overwhelmed. That's the bad news.The good news? I've figured out how to harness AI to make Excel and Google Sheets much easier to work with. And I'm not talking about specialized plug-ins or spreadsheet-specific apps. Standard (and free) AI tools can give you a major leg up. I've been using my newfound spreadsheet superpowers to do everything from planning birthday dinners to automating work tasks and diving deeper into advanced features in Google Sheets.Here are my three favorite basic ways to level up your spreadsheet game with ChatGPT. You can use basic chatbots to effortlessly get structured data from almost any source, use AI as your personal formula generator, and even get personalized tutorials and guidance for mastering advanced features.Choosing Your AI Spreadsheet AssistantFor this project I'm using Google Sheets for my spreadsheet work and ChatGPT for AI assistance. But I regularly use other tools, like Google Gemini, and the same techniques apply. In fact, these tips will also work with other Anthropic's Claude, DeepSeek, Perplexity, and others.This guide also isn't limited to Google Sheets, since the same general approach works for Microsoft Excel and even more specialized tools like Microsoft Access.While sophisticated, purpose-built AI tools and even integrated AI features within Excel and Google Sheets exist (topics for another time), it's impressive how even these free chatbots can really elevate your everyday spreadsheet use. Right now, I'm using ChatGPT because it's the most popular AI tool out there, but you can get even more out of your spreadsheets when used synergistically with the right chatbot: If you're an Excel user, Microsoft Copilot delivers even more capability, while Google's Gemini is the best tool for enhancing Google Sheets. We'll address those specific tools in future articles but know that what we're looking at here is just scratching the surface.Stepping Up My Spreadsheet Game With Google Sheets and ChatGPTWhile I do not do financial analysis or data science as a writer for PCMag, I do deal with a fair amount of data. From test results to traffic reports—not to mention researching new stories and staying up to date on academic studies around AI and other tech topics—it's not unusual for me to have to dig through some numbers now and then.I've also found ways to speed up my data entry with a couple of handy automations that pull specific bits of information from a website or parse extra-long URLs to let me quickly grab product photos from an article when I need to reuse them elsewhere. But all of those tools require complex functions that, in all honesty, I don't want to figure out from scratch.AI has enhanced all of that, so let's explore the three most basic ways ChatGPT can help you do more with spreadsheets.1. Get Structured Data From Any SourceOne of my favorite uses for tools like ChatGPT is to take data from one source and turn it into a structured table or list. That sort of data manipulation can be grueling when done manually, but AI can do it quickly and accurately, letting you automate data entry and skip that step entirely.For example, I recently planned a birthday dinner for someone who loves sushi. But as anyone who knows their sashimi from their wasabi can tell you, bites of fish and rice get pricey. Putting the sushi selection and pricing details into a spreadsheet could make it easier to track who wanted what, how much, and what it would all cost. But first, I'd need to get all of that delicious data into spreadsheet format. I don't love sushi (or spreadsheets) enough to do all of that manually. Thankfully, ChatGPT is pretty great at taking data from one format (be it plaintext or a PDF) and outputting it as another. In this example, all I had to do was download the menu from the restaurant's website, upload it to ChatGPT, and specifically ask for a table that included all of the items on the sushi menu, with price information.(Credit: OpenAI / Brian Westover)It took a little tweaking to get things just how I wanted them, including details like whether it was priced per roll or per piece, but in short order, I had a nicely formatted table of menu items and prices. (Credit: OpenAI / Brian Westover)Copying and pasting into Google Sheets was a cinch. And here's a bonus tip: Pasting with CTRL+V might result in some funky data formatting. Instead, use CTRL+Shift+V to get tables to paste cleanly. (And for a real upgrade, you can do all of this with Google Gemini, and then output the resulting table directly to your Drive as a Google Sheet.)This works for more than just semi-structured restaurant menus and PDF files. You can do the same thing for plaintext lists, photos of whiteboards, scans of old book pages, almost anything. The output format can be as simple or complex as you want. You can output as a table or CSV or use structured formats like JSON or XML. In this case, while copy and paste would do the job just fine, I also wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to output something to a CSV file. (Credit: OpenAI / Brian Westover)If you're unfamiliar, CSV stands for "Comma-separated values" and is a plaintext file format for storing tabular data—literally tables of text and numbers. II's a file format that's supported by both Excel and Google Sheets, so even huge reports can be opened as a clean spreadsheet.(Credit: OpenAI / Brian Westover)As for the data in CSV format, just copy and paste the resulting text into a text file and change the file extension from .txt to .csv. Now, it can be easily opened in Excel or Google Sheets with proper table formatting, ready to be used however you need.2. The Three Fs: Formulas, Formatting, and FeaturesOnce you have your data, AI can also help you wrangle it. While you can use AI to do some data analysis, I find it's much better to just let AI assist me with building out my spreadsheets the way I want, using ChatGPT as an AI Excel formula generator.Recommended by Our EditorsExcel and Google Sheets formulas hit a sweet spot for tools like ChatGPT, where there's a ton of consistent and helpful instructional material on the topic in their training data. It's a mix of language and straightforward logic, making it easy for the AI to understand the tools and the syntax that often leaves human users scratching their heads. The result is even better: instant, copy-and-paste solutions.There are a ton of different ways to leverage this faculty with formulas. Here are just a few examples of the prompts I've found useful in my own work, starting with simple formulas.(Credit: OpenAI / Brian Westover)As you can see, these formulas work for handling math and logic, but also extracting information, whether it's grabbing domain names from email addresses or sifting through text for numbers.That same formula-writing capability is great for setting up more sophisticated conditional formatting rules:(Credit: OpenAI / Brian Westover)All you need to do is explain what you want the rule to do, and ChatGPT can figure out the formatting rule formulas for you, and even walk you through how to set up your custom formatting.And it goes the other direction, too. Not only can ChatGPT write formulas based on your plain English explanation of what you want it to do, but it can also break down what a complex formula does and walk you through the individual functions and variables. It's a great resource for learning formula syntax, but also for troubleshooting a formula that isn't working.(Credit: OpenAI / Brian Westover)Whether you need it for writing formulas, crafting rules for conditional formatting, explaining a formula you might not understand, or debugging a formula that's causing trouble, ChatGPT becomes your AI spreadsheet wingman.3. Learn Excel With AI: Your Personal VLOOKUP Tutorial and MoreChatGPT is also super-effective as a tutor for learning advanced features in Google Sheets and Excel. For all the same reasons that an AI chatbot is great at writing formulas, they're also well-equipped to teach you how to do things in your favorite spreadsheet app.What's the feature you've always thought would be useful but never really understood? Maybe it's Excel Macros or Google Sheets App Script. Maybe you feel intimidated by Regex, pivot tables, or VLOOKUP. Whatever it is, your AI tool of choice can probably help you learn it, and quickly.Now, you always have the option of looking up tutorial videos or digging through FAQs and help forums. There are even Excel tutors and courses that offer premium instruction on any aspect of the app you want to learn.But ChatGPT is also pretty great, and can do it for free. And it will do more than just regurgitate information; you can ask questions, get clarifications, and ask for step-by-step instructions when needed. You can also use it to create custom learning plans, make tutorials that solve your real-world problems and projects, and answer your questions over and over and over again. Unlike a human, AI won't grow impatient when you get stuck.Honestly, the best feature of using AI for learning is that it's endlessly patient and flexible. You can ask it anything, no matter how simple, complex, or specific to your exact use.For example, I needed to brush up on Google Sheets' ImportXML function to update several tools I use to grab product data as part of my work. So I used an extremely simple prompt to go over the basics:(Credit: OpenAI / Brian Westover)In response, ChatGPT walked me through the essential information about how ImportXML functions work, the nuances of Xpath usage, and the syntax of the formula structure used.(Credit: OpenAI / Brian Westover)And this isn't limited to any one function or feature. You can rinse and repeat to learn any aspect of Google Sheets or Excel, or all of them. You can even ask ChatGPT to put together a learning plan to boost your spreadsheet knowledge across the board.Smarter Spreadsheets for Your Daily LifeThese same uses can help you level up your own daily work in all sorts of ways. Whether you're assembling data for a weekly report, analyzing information to find actionable insights, or mining old content for new data, your use of spreadsheet tools can be simpler, faster, and more insightful.And we've only scratched the surface. Consider experimenting with using AI to go beyond basic formulas. The ability to use natural, conversational language to write complex formulas and fine-tune the more advanced features of modern spreadsheets is powerful. Even casually including your preferred chatbot in your daily work leverages AI productivity to make you faster and more efficient and unlock new ways to explore data for unexpected insights.But that doesn't mean that these lessons need to stay office-bound. AI can make Excel and Google Sheets so much more accessible, and you can leverage that in your daily life in creative ways:Grocery inventory and needs tracker to automate making grocery listsSchoolwork project and assignment tracker to keep you on course all semester longDIY Project materials calculator to keep your next project under budgetFantasy football draft and league tracking, so you can enjoy the gameAnd the broader lessons from these tips apply elsewhere. The same AI that can explain Excel formulas and teach you advanced features can be used to troubleshoot a Python script or quickly master the shortcuts in Adobe Photoshop.Personalized tutoring on things like Pivot Tables and ImportXML functions can also be applied to other subjects and skills. AI like ChatGPT is a hugely powerful learning tool and one that can be tailored to you, your projects, and your needs in any combination.Disclosure: Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.