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Today β€” 25 January 2026Main stream

This amazing HBO Max feature helps me discover what's actually worth watching

25 January 2026 at 09:30

As a frequent user of HBO Max, I love how easyβ€”effortless, reallyβ€”it is to explore and discover all the content its library has to offer. One of my favorite features to dive into is the streamer’s unique Discover Our Collections category, which contains a heck of a lot more than just random collections of content. The service also offers a rabbit hole into entertaining experiences and insider information.

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Spotify is letting you control the algorithm with new Prompted Playlists

22 January 2026 at 09:00

It’s common knowledge that many apps use algorithms these days. However, years before β€œFor You” timelines, Spotify subscribers were already complaining about the algorithm. Well, the music service is finally giving you the keys to its recommendation engine with Prompted Playlists.

The funniest medical drama ever made is about to return

20 January 2026 at 16:00

2026's television slate has no shortage of familiar faces returning to our screens. Not only will series such as Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Boys take us back to fantastical realms, but grounded series like The Pitt will return to shine a light on the struggles that the real heroes in our world face.

The funniest medical drama ever made is about to return

20 January 2026 at 16:00

2026's television slate has no shortage of familiar faces returning to our screens. Not only will series such as Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Boys take us back to fantastical realms, but grounded series like The Pitt will return to shine a light on the struggles that the real heroes in our world face.

Missing Yellowstone? Fill the void with this gritty neo-Western predecessor

20 January 2026 at 13:01

The end of Yellowstone left a gaping hole in the hearts of viewers everywhere. As that hole has grown, so, too, has the search for the perfect series to fill the void. Luckily, I’ve got that answerβ€”and no, it’s not Longmire. Instead, we're going completely unorthodox and trading horses for Harleys and cowboys for outlaw bikers.

Black Mirror was right: 4 warnings we ignored

20 January 2026 at 11:00

In January 2026, Charlie Brooker confirmed that Black Mirror is returning for an eighth season on Netflix. The first seven seasons offer a near-future fiction thriller that leaves you looking over your shoulder. However, looking back, it's more of an eerie user manual for today's tech reality.

Reports of ad-supported Xbox game streams show Microsoft's lack of imagination

19 January 2026 at 12:16

Currently, Microsoft's long-running Cloud Gaming service is limited to players who have a Microsoft's Game Pass subscription. Now, new reporting suggests Microsoft is planning to offer non-subscribers access to game streams paid for by advertising in the near future, but only in extremely limited circumstances.

The latest wave of rumors was set off late last week when The Verge's Tom Warren shared an Xbox Cloud Gaming loading screen with a message mentioning "1 hour of ad supported playtime per session." That leaked message comes after Windows Central reported last summer that Microsoft has been "exploring video ads for free games for quite some time," Γ  la the two-minute sponsorships that appear before free-tier game streams on Nvidia's GeForce Now service.

Don't get your hopes up for easy, free, ad-supported access to the entire Xbox Cloud Gaming library, though. Windows Central now reports that Microsoft will be using ads merely to slightly expand access to its "Stream your own game" program. That program currently offers subscribers to the Xbox Game Pass Essentials tier (or higher) the privilege of streaming versions of some of the Xbox games they've already purchased digitally. Windows Central's unnamed sources suggest that a "session-based ad-supported access tier" to stream those purchased games will be offered to non-subscribers as soon as "this year."

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TV Remote Uses Floppy Disks

19 January 2026 at 04:00

Famously, the save icon on most computer user interfaces references a fairly obsolete piece of technology: the venerable floppy disk. It’s likely that most people below the age of about 30 have never interacted with one of these once-ubiquitous storage devices, so much so that many don’t recognize the object within the save icon itself anymore. [Mads Chr. Olesen]’s kids might be an exception here, though, as he’s built a remote control for them that uses real floppy disks to select the programming on the TV.

This project partially began as a way to keep the children from turning into zombies as a result of the modern auto-play brainrot-based economies common in modern media. He wanted his kids to be able to make meaningful choices and then not get sucked into these types of systems. The floppy disk presents a perfect solution here. They’re tangible media and can actually store data, so he got to work interfacing a real floppy disk drive with a microcontroller. When a disk is inserted the microcontroller wakes up, reads the data, and then sends out a command to stream the relevant media to the Chromecast on the TV. When the disk is removed, the microcontroller stops play.

Like any remote, this one is battery powered as well, but running a microcontroller and floppy disk drive came with a few challenges. This one is powered by 18650 lithium cells to help with current peaks from the drive, and after working out a few kinks it works perfectly for [Mads] children. We’ve seen a few other floppy disk-based remote controls like this one which replaces the data stored on the magnetic disc with an RFID tag instead.

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