There’s buzz about a theoretical E3 2022.

First, let’s face facts: It’s not happening. The rumor that’s floating right now around is mostly based on some chatter from GamesBeat’s Jeff Grubb, who mentioned during a recent podcast that Microsoft is planning for an “E3-style” event in June. But even if something called “E3” gets announced, it’s not the in-person exhibition that was already cancelled back in January.

The show has suffered in recent years, and not just because of the ongoing pandemic. The proliferation of high-quality video streaming has made it easy for publishers to share news with the public on their own terms, removed from the all-consuming buzz of gaming’s biggest U.S. trade show. Electronic Arts has been doing its own event near E3 but not at the show itself since 2016. Other major names like Nintendo and Microsoft have also scaled back their presence in other ways.

The show’s organizer, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has also had its share of troubles. The industry group has struggled to regain the trust of the press and influencer community after a shockingly careless leak of attendee data in 2019. And new competition from the likes of Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest and IGN’s Summer of Gaming has joined old standbys like PAX and Gamescom, giving publishers more places to go to make waves with their news during the pre-holiday summer months of what is traditionally trade show season for video games.

While all of this has been going on, however, cloud gaming capabilities have leveled up repeatedly. Stadia has had its share of struggles as a business, but Google’s cloud gaming service, along with competitors like Amazon’s Luna, capably deliver on the promise of high-end gaming streamed straight to your device (bandwidth permitting).

There’s no reason that cloud-based game previews can’t be opened up for a wider audience.

For someone like me who works on the press side of the industry, I’ve had closer experiences than most with the true power of this technology. Multiple major publishers rely on cloud gaming services like Parsec to bring me the hands-on preview experience at home. It’s fantastic.

From my perspective as a full-time remote worker, streaming a game preview to my home computer is a welcome alternative to shlepping off to meetings that are a two-hour commute away. And from the publisher perspective, the security benefit speaks for itself: No one can pirate a playing experience that is managed remotely, by the publisher. They flip a switch and it’s game over, literally.

There’s no technical reason that cloud-based game previews can’t be opened up for a wider audience. Even if it’s not under an “E3” banner, publishers have lots to gain and little to lose by letting you and your friends check out the kind of polished gameplay demonstration that gets trotted out at trade shows.

At the behind the scenes level, lots of demo experiences are projects unto themselves that stand apart from the ongoing work of building whatever game. If all that extra work is happening anyway, why not put it in front of more people? Reading a preview that someone else has written isn’t nearly as instructive as playing the polished demo that write-up is derived from yourself.

Publishers have often shied away from showing off unfinished work to people who aren’t industry professionals. Which is totally fair: Games that aren’t finished are usually a hotbed of bugs and unexpected issues. Those who work in the industry understand and make allowances for that before forming a judgment.

But as loud as the community can sometimes be, gamers are a pretty plugged in bunch. The proliferation of “early access” games — which is to say, titles that are released unfinished, often at a reduced price, and developed as feedback comes in — and public beta tests in recent years has helped people better understand the process that unfolds as a game comes together.

In 2022, you don’t need to be an industry professional to “get it.” Game makers have been implicitly teaching their audiences how the development process works for a very long time. They’ve even monetized it in some cases, turning something like access to a public beta test into the stuff of pre-order bonuses.

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• How to start playing ‘Dota 2’

Now, bring that thinking to the trade show circuit. Anyone can stream Electronic Arts’ slate of reveals in the publisher’s annual EA Play broadcast. But what if you could, for a small fee, sign up for some kind of “VIP access” that would open the door to hands-on opportunities as well?

The premise I’m attacking this from is “publishers should do this,” but truly, I think it’s only a matter of time before it actually happens. Cloud gaming has already changed the landscape for preview access in the press, with the switch away from in-person meetings opening them up to a wider range of people. It’s not a far leap to imagine similar opportunities being offered to the general public, especially in a world where things like Steam Next Fest already exists.

Don’t forget, E3 was never a public event… until it started transforming into one in 2016. So whether or not that specific trade show comes back, the thinking that’s always guided it — a festival of video game reveals and previews — can now be extended from insiders-only to outsiders as well in a way that hasn’t been possible before. Here’s hoping our favorite publishers seize the opportunity sooner rather than later.

The Boys are almost back in town.

On June 3, Amazon Prime Video’s subversive superhero series returns for a third season. Inspired by the comics from Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, The Boys asks the question: What would a world shaped by the societal tensions we live with today look like if there were also real superpowers?

This latest look at Season 3, which comes in the form of a “red band” trailer (i.e. prepare for plenty of blood and gore), hints at the various ways the show will continue to ask that question in the coming next chapter of its story. There’s even a moment that looks like a riff on that cringeworthy 2017 Pepsi ad featuring Kendal Jenner.

The Boys returns to Amazon Prime Video on June 3 with Season 3.

Recommended reading:

• The Boys is the perfect superhero story for our screwed-up world

• Amazon’s The Boys holds a mirror up to society in Season 2. It’s the best kind of ugly.

• The Boys by way of Rick and Morty? Diabolical dares to dream big and weird.

YouTube is now removing all content with ties to Russian state-funded media, it announced Friday, in its latest effort to curb misinformation and prioritize “trusted” news sources.

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“Our teams have now removed more than 1,000 channels and over 15,000 videos for violating not only our hate speech policy, but also our policies around misinformation, graphic content and more,” the company tweeted alongside the announcement.

On March 1, YouTube announced it was removing the Russian channels RT and Sputnik, both of which are state-funded news media, and pausing all ads and recommendations for any Russian state-funded media channels. The company also drew attention to its Russia-specific information flags, introduced in 2018, which appear under videos to designate when content is linked to government funding. The panel reads, “funded in whole or in part by the Russian government.”

Along with its latest decision to expand these restrictions, YouTube added that the site has seen more interaction with its monitored “Top News” and “Breaking News” homepage shelves — the pages have received more than 17 million views in Ukraine alone. Moving forward, the company says it will continue to ramp up its systems to remove more state-sponsored content as needed.

YouTube suspended all forms of monetization for Russian state-funded content, as well.

Globally, social media companies including Meta, Twitter, and TikTok have taken steps to try and prevent the spread of misinformation on their platforms, from cutting revenue-generating advertisements to deleting accounts, even partnering with third-party media literacy organizations.

Gaming developers like Microsoft and Sony have pulled product launches and services, and service apps like Paypal and Airbnb have made the choice to suspend their offerings in Russia. These decisions will surely have an impact on Russian citizens who remain in the country as well as those abroad — many of whom are stranded without access to money or information due to global sanctions.

But the choice to remove Russian-state controlled media from sites like YouTube will hopefully turn more people toward trusted news organizations. And as many Russians face intense retribution from state officials for decrying the invasion and combatting misinformation campaigns from their own leaders, that’s a significant task.

For more stories on the war in Ukraine:

• How to keep up with the news from Russia and Ukraine

• Watching footage from Ukraine? Here’s how to protect your mental health.

• What social media platforms are doing to stop misinformation about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

• How to help refugees fleeing Ukraine

Stephen Colbert’s pitch for an Ocean’s Eleven-style blockbuster built around an NFT heist was doomed from the start, and the reasons are right there in the pitch.

For all the chatter around non-fungible tokens, they’re simply not well understood by the general public. And most of what’s out there paints a picture that ranges from utterly ridiculous to profoundly alarming. So in this fake movie trailer that aired during Friday’s Late Show, the perps behind a heist-in-the-making are derailed from the start because nobody has a clue.

That’s the joke, of course. Colbert’s writers correctly zeroed in on the superficial popularity of NFTs, and the expository bridges that would have to be built in a theoretical NFT heist flick just to help people understand the premise. The conflict in this pitch doesn’t come from stylishly committing crimes a la Danny Ocean; it comes from someone questioning the virtues of NFTs as a whole.

If there’s any takeaway, it’s save your money. There are plenty of pressing issues abroad and at home where those dollars could be far more helpful.

• What are NFTs? Everything you need to know.

• Pete Davidson explains NFTs in another amazing Eminem parody on SNL

• Even Salesforce’s own employees think its NFT plans are dumb

Ride-sharing behemoth Uber will institute new surcharges on Uber rides and Uber Eats deliveries to offset the high costs of gas for its drivers, the company announced Friday.

The addition of new fees is intended to address the financial pinch many drivers are facing with historically-high costs of fuel. Liza Winship, Uber’s head of driver operations for the U.S. and Canada, said in the announcement that Uber was hoping to reduce this burden.

“While earnings on our platform remain elevated compared to historical trends, the recent spike in gas prices has affected rideshare and delivery drivers,” Winship wrote. Gas prices in the United States have hit an average of $4.30, breaking records set before the 2008 financial crisis.

So Uber, which doesn’t cover the cost of gas for its drivers, is asking riders to pitch in. The exact cost of surcharges will depend on your location and state price increases, ranging from either $0.45 or $0.55 on Uber rides and either $0.35 or $0.45 on Uber Eats deliveries — 100 percent of the surcharge goes straight to the Uber driver, the company says.

The added fees will not apply to deliveries and rides originating in New York City, Uber also said, after the city recently increased the minimum pay for drivers. The company also credits the high amount of bike deliveries there for its lack of surcharges.

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Many Uber drivers have expressed frustration with the company’s decisions to place the offset costs on riders, saying the per-ride fees are too low to account for the many miles a single Uber ride or delivery can traverse (and the accompanying amount of gas used).

Ben Valdez, an Uber driver and ride share organizer, told The Washington Post that new surcharges wouldn’t be enough to actually help many drivers faced with increasing financial burdens, and explained that it would take at least 10 trips for the fees to offset a gallon of gas. Others online also criticized the company’s refusal to take on the responsibility itself.

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Beyond ride sharing, many drivers are now considering alternatives to combat the high prices. Appropriate public transportation is once again top of mind, with online communities offering advice for bike and transit alternatives across the country. E-bike sales are also on the rise in some cities. And many Americans are once again considering the switch over to electronic vehicles.

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Even the ride-sharing company is encouraging drivers to turn away from gas-powered transportation. The company once again touted its Green Future Program in its surcharge announcement, which provides financial incentives to drivers of electric vehicles. The company also said it has negotiated discounts for drivers of certain EV models and exclusive deals on vehicle charging. And Uber has partnered with car rental company Hertz to encourage drivers to rent Tesla models rather than drive their own vehicles.

The surcharges will begin on March 16 and be in effect for at least 60 days, after which the company has said it will reassess the situation.

As Russian military forces bombarded Ukraine, a congressional committee huddled to discuss progress on Artemis, the ambitious U.S. effort to put astronauts on the moon and Mars.

They didn’t discuss the raging war, but global tensions of the hour were certainly in the air.

“China and Russia have their sights set on the moon and its resources,” said Rep. Bill Posey, a Republican who represents Cape Canaveral in Florida. “Given what the moon represents in terms of resources, prestige, U.S. national security, what does the U.S. and NASA need to do to guarantee the success of the Artemis program in the coming years?”

NASA’s James Free, the agency’s associate administrator of exploration systems development, answered by talking about the growing number of countries signing the Artemis Accords, a U.S.-led international agreement on principles for human space exploration. He talked about focusing on “performance,” the schedule, and budget.

But Posey wanted to get down to brass tacks. To some people, this is a space race.

“For the record,” he said, referencing China’s growing lunar ambitions, including launching robots to the moon’s resource-rich south pole in the coming few years. “What is the China-Russia date?”

The potential obstacle standing in the way of the United States achieving the world’s first lunar outpost and Mars landing is NASA’s gargantuan rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS. Taller than the Statue of Liberty at 322 feet and weighing 5.75 million pounds, the American rocket has 15 percent more thrust than the Saturn V rocket used during the Apollo program.

And it has a price tag to match, said Inspector General Paul Martin, who acts as the federal watchdog over the space agency. The cost to develop and operate SLS is so high, it imperils the entire deep spaceflight program, he said at the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics hearing on March 1.

Until now, few had so publicly called out the elephant in the room.

“As NASA moves forward, it must accelerate these efforts to make Artemis programs more affordable,” Martin said. “Otherwise, relying on such an expensive single-use rocket system will, in our judgment, inhibit, if not derail, NASA’s ability to sustain its long-term human exploration goals to the moon and Mars.”

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Though NASA has yet to detail its spending plan for the entire lifecycle of the program, the watchdog estimated the initial four missions will cost about $4.1 billion each, the first of which is an uncrewed test that could happen this spring or summer. For perspective, that’s about one-fifth of the entire NASA budget. Roughly half of the expense is the new rocket system. By 2025, the agency will have spent about $93 billion on Artemis, Martin said.

Those are sobering figures as the commercial space industry shows it could likely do the job cheaper. SpaceX’s Starship rocket, though still a prototype, is designed to be reusable, will carry heavy loads, and has the potential to launch more often than the single-use SLS rocket. The United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket under development also might offer an alternative with a cheaper bottom line.

“Relying on such an expensive single-use rocket system will, in our judgment, inhibit, if not derail, NASA’s ability to sustain its long-term human exploration goals to the moon and Mars.”

The cost per launch does seem high, said Peter Beck, CEO of the commercial space company Rocket Lab, in an interview with Mashable: “I know what I could do for $4.1 billion, and it’s a lot.”

Such candid talk from NASA’s inspector general might lead one to think SLS could cripple the agency’s human space exploration program if the rocket isn’t scrubbed.

Yet despite its problems, the rocket isn’t going anywhere, experts say. Because if nothing else, the “elephant” was born a political animal.

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“For at least the next 10 years, the SLS program is politically very, very secure, absent some sort of catastrophic failure,” Casey Dreier, senior space policy adviser for the nonpartisan Planetary Society, told Mashable.

Crucially, cost efficiency was never the priority. When Congress adopted the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, it directed the space agency to build the rocket.

SLS is literally and figuratively founded on the Space Shuttle legacy, which operated between 1981 and 2011. NASA has upgraded components of the shuttle for the new rocket, using a larger version of the shuttle stack that swaps out the legendary winged orbiter for either a cargo or crew capsule. The vehicle’s core rocket stage is a stretched shuttle fuel tank, powered by four shuttle main engines.

Rather than reusing those engines, though, NASA will ditch them in the ocean during the Artemis missions. Lightening the load enables the spacecraft to get on a moonbound trajectory.

House and Senate leaders, wanting to support their space industry constituents, legally required NASA to work with all the same contractors used for the shuttle. In 2010, during the Great Recession, those lawmakers sought to preserve thousands of jobs in their districts. About 1,100 U.S. companies and employees at every NASA center are now involved in the megarocket project.

The 2010 bill even told NASA to use the old “cost-plus contracts,” deals that pay the contractor for all of its expenses and then some to allow for a profit (as opposed to a “fixed cost contract” where the total budget is set). This model doesn’t create an incentive for the contractor to finish its work within a set time and budget. Despite poor performance from Boeing, for instance, NASA gave the company 86 percent of all available award fees for developing the core, Martin said, “despite being billions over budget and years behind schedule.”

“NASA was told what to build and told the kind of pieces to use,” Dreier said. “They couldn’t just start fresh.”

“I know what I could do for $4.1 billion, and it’s a lot.”

That’s a key difference between the SLS and SpaceX Starship, which isn’t tethered to decades-old technology or inefficient contracts. Elon Musk’s heavy-lift rocket is reusable and designed to be refueled in flight, allowing it to carry more people and cargo, said Loizos Heracleous, a professor of strategy and organization at Warwick Business School. He co-wrote a book, Above and Beyond: Exploring the Business of Space.

SpaceX has proven that the United States does have other transportation options, regardless of recent comments from Russia’s space agency chief, Dmitry Rogozin. Russia decided to stop supplying rocket engines to America following U.S. sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

“In a situation like this, we can’t supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what,” Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, said on state Russian television last week, according to news wire reports.

Musk reacted on Twitter, labeling SpaceX’s extremely successful Falcon 9 rocket an “American broomstick.”

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SpaceX doesn’t publicly disclose its financials, but at an event at its Texas facility last month, Musk announced he believed Starship could fly orbital missions for under $10 million per launch in as little as two or three years. (Though Musk has a history of overpromising technological targets.)

If true, that would be “several orders of magnitude cheaper than the SLS,” Heracleous said. It would be a classic case of commitment bias for the United States to stick to its guns because of the time and money already invested into SLS, he said.

“This means that good money is being thrown after bad, rather than cutting one’s losses and going with the better option,” he said in an email.

When legislators mandated SLS into existence in 2011, the commercial space industry didn’t have a spacecraft or rocket to send astronauts anywhere. And there are reasonable concerns for allowing a private company to handle the launching system, Dreier said. When Musk wrote to his team that a crisis with the Raptor engine production on Starship threatened to bankrupt the company, skeptics of space exploration privatization pointed to it as an example of why the United States has to have its own rocket.

“You’re putting the entire national goal on the whims of one company.”

“You’re saying that this one privately held company that is under the sway of a very powerful, influential individual whose vision drives the company, if anything happens to him or that company, the U.S. has no assured way to get astronauts to the moon,” Dreier said. “You’re putting the entire national goal on the whims of one company.”

The last three Apollo missions in the 1970s — 15, 16, and 17 — cost about $3.8 billion each when adjusted for inflation, Dreier said. That makes the Artemis missions look significantly overpriced. Launching more frequently could reduce the cost, but NASA only plans to blast off once per year.

Given that the cost of running the entire International Space Station is about $4 billion annually, it’s not surprising that the inspector general found the SLS cost unsustainable, said Matthew Weinzierl, a Harvard Business School professor who researches space economics.

“Of course,” he wrote in an email, “Congress could easily make it ‘sustainable’ if it were to increase its allocation to space and if it felt Artemis was worth the investment.”

At this point, there’s no reason to believe legislators have lost the political will for the endeavor or their beast of a rocket, apropos for the program’s namesake Artemis, Greek goddess of wild animals. Time and again, Congress has given more money to the program than the White House has requested.

At the recent Artemis mission hearing, Congressman Brian Babin, a Republican representing Houston, made his priorities clear. Where does NASA plan to run mission control, he asked?

Houston.

“OK, great. Thank you very much,” he said. “That’s good news.”

The last time anyone set foot on the moon, in 1972, astronauts plunged metal tubes into the lunar ground. They captured soil and rock and then sealed off the precious extraterrestrial material.

One of the samples, 73001, has been fastened shut for half a century. But in recent weeks, scientists pierced the metal tube to reveal what’s inside. Mashable spoke with these researchers, clad in their white clean-room attire, via a video chat just after they’d collected rare moon gases from sample 73001. It’s one of the last remaining unopened lunar specimens.

Apollo Astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, who gathered 73001 from the ancient Valley of Taurus-Littrow, couldn’t have known NASA would store the sample for the lengthy span of 10 presidential administrations inside a specialized lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. But the space agency waited until the technology to sleuth out the tube’s untainted contents had progressed.

“We were waiting for the instruments to get better,” Ryan Zeigler, NASA’s Apollo sample curator, told Mashable. Before we spoke on March 8, Zeigler worked with Juliane Gross, a planetary scientist at Rutgers University, and Rita Parai, a geochemist at Washington University in St. Louis, to collect the lunar gases.

“This gives us our best chance to learn what gas is leaking out of the moon.”

Yet the decision to unseal the rare sample was nudged by more than scientific curiosity and technological advancement. NASA is building a new megarocket, the powerful Space Launch System, and has designs to return to the moon, specifically the shadowy South Pole, later this decade. All the lunar samples gathered between 1969 and 1972 — all 842 pounds — are from the dayside of the moon, somewhat near the moon’s equator. But before NASA returns to a disparate southern region to scour the area for valuable resources (like hydrogen, oxygen, and ice), the agency wants to know what gases seep from the moon, and what exactly is in the equatorial rock gathered by Apollo astronauts. NASA needs to gauge what they might discover in the South Pole, and compare how different — or valuable — the resources are in this new region.

That’s where the gases sealed in sample 73001 come into play. “This gives us our best chance to learn what gas is leaking out of the moon,” NASA’s Zeigler said.

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To collect these extraterrestrial gases, the researchers are using a contraption dubbed a “manifold.” Just weeks ago, it carefully pierced the 50-year-old tube, and now captures the gases preserved inside. When I spoke with the extraction team, they had just filled their 11th bottle with lunar gas.

Next up, scientists will closely inspect the actual lunar rocks and soil. “There’s a lot that will happen,” explained Zeigler. Different planetary scientists and geologists with different expertise will inspect the composition of these moon fragments. Some salient goals include better understanding resources on the moon (like water ice), and the origins of different elements.

When future astronauts, perhaps later this decade, collect moon samples, they’ll work in remarkably different environs than the lunar explorers of half a century ago. The Apollo astronauts roved around the moon in bright sunlight. But in the lunar South Pole, the moon barely rises over the horizon. It’s an eerie, dark, and shadowy place.

And if all goes as planned, astronauts will return new, precious lunar samples to the vault at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

You like good tweets, don’t you? I mean…why else would click this story? Unless you’re my parents, who read all my stories, in which case, hi Mom and Dad.

Anyway, we’ve collected the funniest tweets of the week, like we always do. I’m talking the cream of the crop, the absolute best, the tippity-top. The good stuff. I mean, I probably missed a few good posts but you get the picture — these tweets are good.

So…here they are, the 9 funniest tweets of the week.

1. These are perfect nights. These are the sorts of evenings when you can nearly touch the divine. You can feel its presence in the atmosphere.

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2. We’ve got a real thinker of an idea here.

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3. Just when you think the descriptions are good, they keep getting better.

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4. Slowly puts down greasy breakfast sandwich.

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5. This is a fantastic combo of a popular meme from this week and the iconic sketch show I Think You Should Leave.

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6. Frankly, this is a very good question to ask about the movie.

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7. People will get hurt but we will go down in history.

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8. An obligatory dril tweet.

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9. And finally, we end with this.

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I knew that Disney’s Turning Red is about teen angst in 2002, but I did not expect to relate to it as deeply as I did.

Turning Red follows 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian, Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang) as she grapples with her changing body — not in the usual ways, but in the form of the giant red panda, which she turns into if she feels any strong emotion. It turns out that the panda problem runs in the family, and that all the women in her family, including Mei’s mother (Sandra Oh), have faced it.

I grew up in an almost overwhelmingly female family (not overwhelming for me, but maybe for the odd boy cousin). My mother has a sister; my grandmother had six. Many of them had daughters, usually in pairs, who went on to have more daughters. When my cousin gave birth to a boy in 2018, the first in 14 years, another cousin told me nervously: “We don’t have boys!”

Even as an only child living far away from my extended family, I always felt close to them — just like Mei. When the awkwardness of my teen years set in, any cousin or aunt was a phone call away, and my mother became a trusted confidante — when most people I knew were running fully in the opposite direction from their parents. I have seen countless shows and movies about teenagers who act out and rebel, but barely any where the kid unironically spends time with her parents or doesn’t do anything more scandalous than lie about going to a concert (Mei and I kept things pretty PG, but I think I speak for us both when I say: No regrets).

When Meilin’s red panda arrives, her mother tells the other women in the family. They share stories of their own pandas and gather to help her expel hers in a ceremony. Mei might want to get out of the house to see her friends and raise money for concert tickets, but she isn’t generally averse to her family. The support isn’t lost on her, nor is her unique circumstance and having people to share it with. As Mei grows reluctant to part with her panda, she never questions the other women’s decision to stifle it, nor questions her place in the family.

Watching Mei gather with her mother and aunts took me instantly back to every big family gathering over the years — birthdays, weddings, and Bengali ceremonies where babies eat solid food for the first time. Wherever we meet suddenly echoes with the voices of sisters and cousins talking, laughing, fighting, and ordering each other around. We fall naturally into the roles we held as children or the last time we were in that home, we share stories that span decades and continents. When Mei’s family squeeze in around the dining table at her Toronto home, I felt a physical pang for the counterparts in my life, all oceans away until we meet next.

How incredible that I grew up thousands of miles away from some of the people I love and trust most in the world.

Turning Red masterfully weaves together many threads; early 2000s nostalgia, boy band fever, the unique horror of being a teenage girl, and female familial relationships. I did not expect it to leave me warmly thinking about distant family members and wanting to call my mom (who would call me within hours asking about our Netflix password). The aunties and grandmother aren’t central to the film, but they struck a chord that will stay with me for a long time.

My mom and her cousins grew up in the same city, no one more than an hour away from each other. I sometimes wonder what they were all thinking when they grew up, dreamt big, and scattered across the world. They can’t have been thinking about the challenges of raising Indian children in unfamiliar countries, of being custodians of an entire culture, or of a generation of cousins that would sometimes not see each other for years. I say this with admiration, not resentment; for how remarkable is it that Ma’s family managed to stay this close despite time and distance? How incredible, that I grew up thousands of miles away from some of the people I love and trust most in the world, and that she made that possible. 

In Turning Red, Mei grapples with growing up and growing away from her family, but she realizes that it’s ultimately her own choice. She may spend less time with her mother or share life’s daily gossip with her friends, but there are bonds that can’t be broken. At the end of the day, she shares her roots — including that fluffy red bear — with a core of mighty women who will spring to her aid at any moment, and nothing can take that away from her.

Turning Red is now streaming on Disney+.

We’re just gonna say it: Creating strong, complex passwords — and then actually remembering what those passwords are — has become a huge pain in the behind. The well-known advice is that you shouldn’t use the same password for everything because it’s not safe, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying as you’re mentally shifting through every password and password variation you’ve ever created as you try to log into a bank account or online shop.

This warning to use a different password for each site is definitely true though: According to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigations Report, 81% of hacking related breaches involved the misuse of stolen or weak credentials — AKA crappy, overused passwords. And we probably don’t have to tell you this, but having your money or identity stolen isn’t exactly a good time either.

But even if you do manage to come up with Olympic-level strength passwords, remembering your complex, unique passwords for dozens of different sites is nearly impossible, especially when password requirements sound more like the recipe for a potion. Uppercase letter, number, symbol, eye of newt, etc.

So before you know it, you’ve used up your three guesses and you’re locked out because you can’t remember your genius combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. And now you need to create a new amazing password again. So you try something you think you’ll remember and  just like that, you get the alert that “new password cannot be the same as old password.”

Enter: password managers. AKA your new best friend to help keep your online accounts safe and keep you from tossing your device across the room every time you need to remember or create a new password. 

What does a password manager really do?

The best password managers are essentially a way to safely store all your logins and passwords in a safe place. 

All you have to do is remember one master password and then your password manager will autofill the rest for you, plus more security stuff you probably didn’t even think about.

In other words, a password manager is like a secure list of passwords in your phone’s notes (or a notebook, if you’re old-school), except losing your phone or notebook won’t mean that your entire life is about to be hacked.

Password managers can be apps on your mobile phone, plugins in your browser, or desktop software you install. 

Some will also help you create, not just store, some super secure passwords that a hacker wouldn’t be able to guess so you don’t have to keep thinking of variations based on your pets’ or kids’ names. 

The best password managers will also allow you to secure your devices — like your Kindle or Apple Watch — and even your photos and other private documents that you won’t want easily accessible on your computer or smartphone. Think of it as a form of personal encryption to add even more security to your digital life.

Things to consider when choosing a password manager:

• Do you want passwords to be remembered on your phone and laptop? If so, you’ll need to make sure the password manager allows syncing on multiple devices. (As you’ll see, most free versions other than LastPass do not allow more than one device.)

• Are you storing passwords just for personal use or do you need to share with a group? Some password managers will allow you to share logins with colleagues or family without actually telling them what the password is. That will allow you to give them access to a site or platform you all use — and remove their access if you need to — without having to worry that they can share the password with people you don’t approve. Others will allow you to set up a family account so that you and your spouse or children can share passwords easily.

• Two-factor authentication: Using the Google Authenticator app, an external device, text message, or something similar, does the password manager require a second form of insurance to make sure that it’s actually you trying to log in? Without this, if someone gets ahold of your master password, they have access to all of your stuff.

• Emergency contacts: If you forget your master password, you need to make sure you’re not completely screwed. Many password managers are equipped with emergency contacts, which are basically the password version of writing someone into your will. This is where you give a trusted friend, family member, or boss access to your master password in the event that you can’t provide it.

What are some of the best password managers on the market?

Interested in employing a password manager to help make your online life a little easier? We’ve sifted through a whole bunch of password manager programs out there so you don’t have to. Below, we’re listing six of the best password managers and exactly what each plan offers, so you can easily find the one that best fits your individual needs. All prices listed are for the year.