Review: We had our doubts, but Peacemaker is a cheeky, irreverent delight

John Cena shows he has some dramatic chops as well as comedic timing in <em>Peacemaker</em>.

Enlarge / John Cena shows he has some dramatic chops as well as comedic timing in Peacemaker. (credit: HBO Max)

We had our doubts about Peacemaker, the HBO Max spinoff series based on John Cena’s character from 2021’s The Suicide Squad. But I’m happy to report that those doubts were entirely unfounded. Series creator James Gunn has successfully taken a seemingly irredeemable character and sent him on an emotional journey that made us love him—all framed in a blood-soaked, action-packed, cheekily irreverent main story that makes for top-notch entertainment.

(One big spoiler for The Suicide Squad below. Some spoilers for Peacemaker, but no major reveals.)

Gunn wrote the series for fun during his downtime in 2020 and ended up pitching it when DC Films approached him about a spinoff series for one of the characters in The Suicide Squad. HBO Max ordered Peacemaker straight to series. When the first teaser dropped last year, I admitted to being a bit skeptical. Cena’s performance in The Suicide Squad was terrific, but he wasn’t exactly a sympathetic character—or a particularly complex one. On the other hand, Gunn clearly felt there was more of the character’s story to tell, and that instinct proved correct.

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Millions of WordPress sites get forced update to patch critical plugin flaw

Millions of WordPress sites get forced update to patch critical plugin flaw

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Millions of WordPress sites have received a forced update over the past day to fix a critical vulnerability in a plugin called UpdraftPlus.

The mandatory patch came at the request of UpdraftPlus developers because of the severity of the vulnerability, which allows untrusted subscribers, customers, and others to download the site’s private database as long as they have an account on the vulnerable site. Databases frequently include sensitive information about customers or the site’s security settings, leaving millions of sites susceptible to serious data breaches that spill passwords, user names, IP addresses, and more.

Bad outcomes, easy to exploit

UpdraftPlus simplifies the process of backing up and restoring website databases and is the Internet’s most widely used scheduled backup plugin for the WordPress content management system. It streamlines data backup to Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, and other cloud services. Its developers say it also allows users to schedule regular backups and is faster and uses fewer server resources than competing WordPress plugins.

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How to Manage State in Your React Apps

Managing state in your React apps isn’t as simple as using useState or useReducer. Not only are there are a lot of different kinds of state, but there often dozens of ways of managing each kind. Which should you choose? In this guide, we will uncover the several kinds

How Disney built its Audience Graph to meet data demands


Using Snowflake’s Media Data Cloud, Disney is a new clean room, which offers brands a single location to securely access data on hundreds of customer segments across the entertainment giant’s entertainment services. Global brands can use Disney’s data-modeling capabilities to undertake deeper insights on the commercials they intend to run.Read More

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