A word of caution as we inch closer to tonight’s Grown-ish finale: You might be left screaming, “NOOOOOOOOOO!” at your TV screen by the end of the night.

At least that’s what Francia Raisa predicts will happen, and she would know — her Ana is one of the characters who has elicited some of the most emotional reactions from fans so far this season. “They’re gonna tell us it’s not fair, they’re gonna be angry it’s not an hour long — which I keep seeing a lot — and they’re gonna be really upset that we’re leaving them with such a cliffhanger,” the actress forecasted with MTV News.

Sophomore year for the Grown-ish gang has been a wild ride, with each week seeing the group deal with a new batch of very plausible situations that feel authentic to the modern college experience. Sure, it might be slightly more sanitary and with way better hair than the real thing, but the half-hour comedy helps us laugh our way through the problems we can (see: Ana’s utterly exposing tips for social media stalking) and find help for those we can’t.

Here, Raisa looks back on the major story lines of the season and offers some clarity and insight into her fictional friends to prepare us for the heart-stopping spring finale.

Zoey

Freeform

The cool-girl attitude that Yara Shahidi’s Zoey embodies on Black-ish looks a little bit different when you’re privy to her inner thoughts. Whereas freshman year was pretty much dominated by which guy she should date, sophomore year has been a bit more hectic for Zoey’s schoolwork-life balance.

Totally lost in her relationship with Luca (Luka Sabbat), Zoey has been making a lot of decisions based around keeping him happy — dropping a competitive class with him, getting caught up in their social media perfection, spinning out over his ex — all moves that some Twitter critics have decided make her look dumb. “I feel like she’s almost losing her identity because she’s trying to please him so much that she doesn’t even know who or what is going on anymore, to where she had to cheat [on her chem final] because she was so stuck in trying to fit in,” Raisa said.

Meanwhile, Luca — whom the internet has deemed a dream boyfriend — always reacts maturely to Zoey’s needs, “but she doesn’t say what she needs,” Raisa said. But that doesn’t necessarily make Zoey dumb. “She’s just being confused, and instead of trusting her instincts and really taking the time to reflect on it the way that she needs to and talk to the proper people that she needs to, she’s acting out of emotion.”

Ana

Freeform

Raisa’s Ana has certainly turned up the heat this season. That bb freshman who couldn’t handle her alcohol now has a steamy secret romance — with her best friend’s almost-ex, Aaron (Trevor Jackson).

“When it first happened, I had so many people just hate me because of girl code,” Raisa recalled. But over time, most fans warmed up to the idea of ultra-conservative Ana and social justice warrior Aaron’s blossoming love, even if it did mean a little sneaking around.

“I feel like this is the first time Ana was really seen by anyone,” Raisa assessed. “I have grace for her in the sense that she’s still so confused and trying to figure out what she’s even feeling, but at the same time, this is her friend and I feel like she should have addressed it with Zoey before anything happened, especially after the first time they kissed.”

Now that Ana’s realizing things with Aaron might be more than a fling, she’s summoning the courage to talk to Zoey about it all — but still, it hasn’t been easy to play the role of a good friend. (Zoey does, as we’ve discussed, have her own problems to deal with.)

“Because I know her heart, I wouldn’t call her a bad friend,” Raisa said. “It’s not like she did anything directly to her and she doesn’t love her and she’s not not thinking about her – she just handled it poorly.”

Nomi

Freeform

Sophomore year has been a year of self-acceptance for Nomi, played by Emily Arlook. The mostly-out (just not to her parents) bisexual student has been taking some time to explore her queerness, starting the season off by providing a service of sorts to her fellow classmates — offering a one-time, same-sex experience in bed to a rotating cast of nameless characters.

It wasn’t until she got closer to the group’s teacher, Professor Hewson (Katherine Moennig), that she really got curious about the queer community. “I don’t think she realized what a pimp she was being with her other girls and stuff and I’m glad that she’s getting in touch more so with her emotions and with her identity and who she is as a person,” Raisa said. “But at the same time it’s like, well, is this the right way to go about it?”

Oh, I’m sorry — did I forget to mention that bombshell car kiss? It turns out, Professor Hewson’s Intro to Queer crash course came with Halsey tunes and a short make-out, leaving Nomi “deeply in like.”

Hooking up with a professor is a sticky line that some schools have outright banned due to the complicated power dynamic at play in such a relationship. At the same time, Nomi is legally an adult and free to make her own decisions. The situation is confusing all around, and it might be too soon for us, the viewers, to adequately assess it. “Maybe they truly did have a connection, and for Nomi then, it’s like, this is someone that I’m finally feeling comfortable talking to about this and I get it — it’s so easy to feel such an emotional connection if this is the first time you’re opening up emotionally,” Raisa said. “But on Professor Hewson’s end … is this different or is this a pattern that she has? We don’t know.”

Jazz & Sky

Freeform

Played by the package-deal Chloe and Halle Bailey, Jazz and Sky really show their different personalities this season. While they continued to share an unbreakable sisterly bond, Sky took on a quieter persona, letting Jazz take the reins for the two of them as she tried to modestly sex-up their Instagram game to get athletic endorsement deals.

But one person wasn’t a fan of Jazz’s bodily expression — her boyfriend, Doug (Diggy Simmons), who ended their relationship over the ordeal. “Jazz and Doug clearly do not know how to communicate and clearly are stuck in their own ways and their own pride,” Raisa assessed. “No one is trying to please the other and they don’t mind arguing.”

Can the once picture-perfect couple find a compromise?

We’ll have to tune in to find out. Grown-ish’s spring finale airs on Freeform Wednesday, March 6, at 8 p.m. ET.

Mark Zuckerberg has a plan to fix Facebook, and all it will take is completely rebuilding Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram. 

The Facebook CEO published a lengthy post laying out “our vision and principles around building a privacy-focused messaging and social networking platform.” The post explains more about the company’s plans to merge WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram’s messaging features, as well as a broader shift to encrypted and ephemeral content across its services. 

SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg explains why he wants to merge Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram

“As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms,” Zuckerberg writes, noting that private messaging and disappearing Stories are already very popular. 

Zuckerberg identifies several idea he says will guide the new, “privacy-focused platform,” including: private interactions, encryption, reducing permanence, safety, interoperability, and secure data storage. “Over the next few years, we plan to rebuild more of our services around these ideas. The decisions we’ll face along the way will mean taking positions on important issues concerning the future of the internet,” Zuckerberg says. 

Notably, the CEO has already spoken about one major change that will come from incorporating these ideas: combining the messaging infrastructure of WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram so that users can message each other between apps even if they don’t have an account on each one. 

The idea, which was first reported in earlier this year and has already received pushback from some European regulators,  would also extend to SMS on Android. “We plan to start by making it possible for you to send messages to your contacts using any of our services, and then to extend that interoperability to SMS too,” Zuckerberg says. 

He explains:

This could also improve convenience in many experiences where people use Facebook or Instagram as their social network and WhatsApp as their preferred messaging service. For example, lots of people selling items on Marketplace list their phone number so people can message them about buying it. That’s not ideal, because you’re giving strangers your phone number. With interoperability, you’d be able to use WhatsApp to receive messages sent to your Facebook account without sharing your phone number — and the buyer wouldn’t have to worry about whether you prefer to be messaged on one network or the other.

You can imagine many simple experiences like this — a person discovers a business on Instagram and easily transitions to their preferred messaging app for secure payments and customer support; another person wants to catch up with a friend and can send them a message that goes to their preferred app without having to think about where that person prefers to be reached; or you simply post a story from your day across both Facebook and Instagram and can get all the replies from your friends in one place.

Zuckerberg also writes at length about increasing end-to-end encryption and ephemerality across its services. 

“I believe there’s an opportunity to set a new standard for private communication platforms — where content automatically expires or is archived over time. Stories already expire after 24 hours unless you archive them, and that gives people the comfort to share more naturally. This philosophy could be extended to all private content.”

You can read Zuckerberg’s full post here.

The small mound on the back of Waymo’s self-driving cars is for sale. 

The Alphabet-owned autonomous car company is making its “homemade” LiDAR sensor, the Laser Bear Honeycomb, available to other companies. 

In a blog post Wednesday, the company said it’s offering the light-measuring device to car companies, as well as firms in other industries such as robotics, manufacturing, agriculture, security, entertainment, and gaming. Imagine a security robot guarding a building or a camera rig scanning a movie set. 

Right now, the device sits on the self-driving Chrysler Pacifica minivans Waymo has been using in Arizona and the Bay Area. 

The move is another way for Waymo to bring in revenue, since the self-driving unit is only operating an autonomous car service in the suburbs of Phoenix, called Waymo One. It has similar pricing to Uber and Lyft, but Waymo only has about 400 vehicles on the road.

SEE ALSO: Waymo chooses snowy location for its factory devoted to self-driving cars

Last quarter Alphabet reported it spent $1.3 billion on “other bets,” including Waymo. In Wednesday’s post, the company wrote, “Offering this [LiDAR] to partners helps spur the growth of applications outside of self-driving cars and also propels our business forward.”

The price of the device was not immediately available, but entire self-driving rigs are known to cost more than $100,000.

If you’re interested, Waymo is taking requests for the sensor now. 

Facebook’s rumored cryptocurrency project hasn’t even launched, and yet it’s already a punchline for the tens of thousands of security professionals, cryptographers, and researchers gathered at the annual RSA conference. 

On March 5, in the San Francisco Moscone Center, the hotly anticipated Cryptographers’ Panel met to discuss the future of cryptography, the internet, and e-commerce. Of course cryptocurrency came up, with a mention of the so-called Facebook Coin drawing perhaps the biggest laugh of the talk. 

SEE ALSO: Facebook might launch a cryptocurrency in the first half of 2019

Speaking of the problems inherent in putting even great research ideas into practice, panelist and cryptography expert Paul Kocher (known for, among other things, co-discovering Spectre) told attendees that the blockchain only makes things trickier. 

“[The] idea of combining Bitcoin’s theft mitigation and Facebook’s privacy seems particularly toxic for users.”

“When you add the froth of blockchain into there, these just sort of things that seem crazy just keep amplifying,” he explained. “I think the latest one that I saw is one where you can take Bitcoin where you can lose your money, Facebook you can lose your privacy, and now there’s ‘Facebook Coin.’ And it’s not even a joke, it’s apparently coming.”

Just to make sure that no one misunderstood him, he continued. “So, not going to buy any of that.”

While it’s a little difficult to hear in the below recording, I was in the room, and the audience laughed hard at that last line. It would seem that no one, at least not the security researchers and cryptography experts at RSA, takes the idea of a Facebook cryptocurrency very seriously. 

The relevant part of the discussion begins around the 32:40 mark of the video below.

We followed up with Kocher to get a better understanding of his views on a possible cryptocurrency project from the largest social media company in the world, and, if anything, he expressed even more skepticism over email than he did on stage. 

While emphasizing that he hasn’t seen the specifics of any Facebook plan, Kocher was still able to highlight some obvious red flags. 

First, he observed what he saw as a general failure of cryptocurrency. “Payment systems need to protect users against fraud,” wrote Kocher. “Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have fared badly in this regard, resulting in numerous major thefts.”

Which, definitely yes. He then pivoted straight into the possible forthcoming Facebook Coin. 

“[Our] medical procedures, personal relationships, health problems, bad habits, hopes, and fears are all reflected in how we spend money,” he continued. “If abused, this information can harm users in both obvious ways (e.g. job discrimination, etc.) and more subtly (e.g. showing offers for higher-interest credit cards or lower quality health insurance). Given this, the idea of combining Bitcoin’s theft mitigation and Facebook’s privacy seems particularly toxic for users.”

Kocher was quick to add that potential promises of user privacy and good intentions shouldn’t sway us when it comes to using any digital currency from Facebook.

“Doubtless Facebook would try to claim that they’d do the ‘right’ thing, but their track record reflects a pattern of disregard for user privacy,” he observed. “More broadly, Facebook’s business model has intrinsic conflicts between their interests and those of their users (and perhaps society as a whole) which would be challenging to navigate for a company whose leadership had a strong moral perspective (which, frankly, Facebook hasn’t demonstrated).”

Which, yeah. We don’t think we’ll be buying any Facebook Coin, either.