Technology

We're just a day away from the Full Moon, and it’s already starting to light up the night sky. If you look closely, you might catch some of the bigger craters and dark patches on its surface.

What is today’s moon phase?

As of Friday, Jan. 2, the moon phase is Waxing Gibbous. According to The Sky Live, 98.9% of the moon will be lit up tonight.

When is the next full moon?

The next full moon will be on Jan. 3. The last full moon was on Dec. 4.

What are moon phases?

According to NASA, the Moon takes roughly 29.5 days to complete a full cycle. This cycle is known as the lunar cycle. Throughout this period, the Moon moves through a series of phases as it orbits the Earth. While the same side of the Moon always faces our planet, the amount of sunlight illuminating its surface changes over time. This is why the Moon appears fully lit, partially illuminated, or not visible at all at different stages of the cycle. The lunar cycle is divided into eight main phases:

New Moon - The moon is between Earth and the sun, so the side we see is dark (in other words, it's invisible to the eye).

Waxing Crescent - A small sliver of light appears on the right side (Northern Hemisphere).

First Quarter - Half of the moon is lit on the right side. It looks like a half-moon.

Waxing Gibbous - More than half is lit up, but it’s not quite full yet.

Full Moon - The whole face of the moon is illuminated and fully visible.

Waning Gibbous - The moon starts losing light on the right side. (Northern Hemisphere)

Third Quarter (or Last Quarter) - Another half-moon, but now the left side is lit.

Waning Crescent - A thin sliver of light remains on the left side before going dark again.

If you like playing daily word games like Wordle, then Hurdle is a great game to add to your routine.

There are five rounds to the game. The first round sees you trying to guess the word, with correct, misplaced, and incorrect letters shown in each guess. If you guess the correct answer, it'll take you to the next hurdle, providing the answer to the last hurdle as your first guess. This can give you several clues or none, depending on the words. For the final hurdle, every correct answer from previous hurdles is shown, with correct and misplaced letters clearly shown.

An important note is that the number of times a letter is highlighted from previous guesses does necessarily indicate the number of times that letter appears in the final hurdle.

If you find yourself stuck at any step of today's Hurdle, don't worry! We have you covered.

SEE ALSO: Hurdle: Everything you need to know to find the answers Hurdle Word 1 hint

Insulting.

SEE ALSO: Apple’s new M3 MacBook Air is $300 off at Amazon. And yes, I’m tempted. Hurdle Word 1 answer

SNIDE

Hurdle Word 2 hint

___ and bone.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for January 2, 2026 Hurdle Word 2 Answer

FLESH

Hurdle Word 3 hint

Convulsion.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for January 2 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for January 2, 2026 Hurdle Word 3 answer

SPASM

Hurdle Word 4 hint

Out of shape.

SEE ALSO: NYT Strands hints, answers for January 2 Hurdle Word 4 answer

RUSTY

Final Hurdle hint

Foliage.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Games available on Mashable Hurdle Word 5 answer

FLORA

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Our PCs often cost thousands of dollars, and yet, we don't always treat them with enough respect. Something many of us are guilty of can be a silent PC killer in more ways than one, and it has everything to do with where your PC lives on a daily basis.

Documentaries don't always have to be big, behind-the-scenes collages or dark tales of true crime. This weekend's lineup of documentaries on Prime Video will hopefully inspire and delight you with their in-depth profiles on some of the world's most fascinating and life-changing people, and a peek inside the quiet decline and resurgence of the rare book world.

Fans of the 1930s character Betty Boop can rejoice as a precursor of the iconic cartoon is now in the public domain, as of Jan. 1, 2026.

That means anyone can adapt that specific version of Betty Boop, which appeared in the Dizzy Dishes cartoon, into their own creative work without being subject to copyright laws.

This version of Betty Boop featured her characteristic large eyes and pout but also had elongated dog ears. Her romantic interest at the time was a dog chef, hence her surreal canine appearance.

SEE ALSO: Yes, Popeye can eat spinach: Everything you need to know about Public Domain Day 2025

In 2026, Betty Boop is joined in the public domain by other popular characters, books, films, and songs, including new Mickey Mouse cartoons and comics; the Blondie comic strip characters Blondie and Dagwood; William Faulkner's novel As I Lay Dying, the illustrated version of Watty Piper's children's book The Little Engine That Could; the film All Quiet on the Western Front; and the standards "Dream a Little Dream of Me" and "Georgia on My Mind," previously recorded by famous acts like The Mamas & the Papas and Ray Charles, respectively.

These and other creative works now in the public domain can be used without permission or payment. However, people should pay close attention to what version of the work is eligible for use.

Fleischer Studios, which appears to own the copyright to the fully developed Betty Boop character, pointed out that the expiration of that copyright does not apply to other Betty Boop copyrights and trademarks still in effect.

While nine early Mickey Mouse cartoons are now in the public domain, the Mickey Mouse character is still subject to enduring rights. (For more on these legal complexities, check out Mashable's story on the arrival of Popeye to the public domain in 2025.)

Here's some of the notable and beloved works entering the public domain in 2026, according to Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain:

Comics, character, and cartoons

• Dizzy Dishes-era Betty Boop

• Rover (aka Pluto) from Disney's animated 1930 film The Chain Gang

• Original Blondie comic strip characters Blondie and Dagwood

• Nine Mickey Mouse cartoons from 1930, plus the first Mickey Mouse comic strips published in 1930

Films

• All Quiet on the Western Front, directed by Lewis Milestone

• Hell's Angels, directed by Howard Hughes

• The Big Trail, directed by Raoul Walsh

• Anna Christie, directed by Clarence Brown

Literature

• William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying

• Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon

• T.S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday

• Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness

Musical Compositions

• "Georgia on My Mind," written by Stuart Gorrell and Hoagy Carmichael

• "Dream a Little Dream of Me," written by Fabian Andre, Wilbur Schwandt, and Gus Kahn

• "On the Sunny Side of the Street," by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh

• "I Got Rhythm," "I've Got a Crush on You," "But Not for Me," and "Embraceable You," written by Ira Gershwin and George Gershwin

Weekends are perfect for documentaries. There are no spoilers to dodge, no huge commitments, and you're pretty much guaranteed to learn something fascinating or enlightening you can share with your workmates on Monday. It's a good thing, then, that Netflix has a ton of documentaries.

I know what you’re thinking—yeah, the Shield TV is old, but it’s still getting updates! While that’s true for some models, it’s not true for all of them. So, if you’ve upgraded to something new, we’ve got some ideas for that trusty NVIDIA Shield TV sitting in your media cabinet.

When Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri looks into the rapidly approaching future of AI-generated content, he sees a massive problem: how to tell authentic media apart from the kind made with AI technology.

In a recent Threads post on the topic, Mosseri said that social media platforms like Instagram will be under mounting pressure to help users tell the difference. Mosseri argued that major platforms will initially succeed at spotting and labeling AI content, but that they'll begin to falter as AI imitates reality with more precision.

"There is already a growing number of people who believe, as I do, that it will be more practical to fingerprint real media than fake media," Mosseri wrote.

SEE ALSO: The top 10 most-followed Instagram accounts

That "fingerprint" could be created from within cameras themselves, if their manufacturers "cryptographically sign images at capture, creating a chain of custody."

"We need to label AI-generated content clearly, and work with manufacturers to verify authenticity at capture — fingerprinting real media, not just chasing fake," Mosseri added.

Such labeling could help people navigate the AI slop that's flooding the internet. (Mashable's Tim Marcin has explained how we got to this moment.)

Mosseri also wrote that identifying the authenticity of creator content will shape the way people relate to that media: "We need to surface credibility signals about who's posting so people can decide who to trust."

Many people think the Enter key in Excel is just for moving down a row, and Ctrl is for shortcuts like copy or paste. But when used together, Ctrl+Enter unlocks hidden behaviors that change how data hits the grid and how you commit formulas, saving you from the repetitive workflow that slows you down.

These days, we're all yearning for an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090—but two decades ago, it was a whole different story. Some Nvidia GPUs impressed with their immense capabilities, while others turned into a laughing stock and crashed and burned.

Helpers can be very useful in Home Assistant. A Toggle helper is an easy way to turn on Guest Mode, mute notifications, track states, and more. There are plenty of other helpers beyond the Toggle helper, and they can be even more powerful.

With the holiday season comes well-deserved vacations and sometimes, highly anticipated—yet very long—flights. Jet lag is often a side effect of these trips, but with only your phone, you can help your body adjust quickly with a few simple tricks.

When you get a NAS (Network-Attached Storage), there are usually a ton of features at your disposal. In fact, I personally found it intimidating when I first opened the dashboard and started opening dialogs. Now, these are the ones that I make the most use of.

Some people assume that Linux is totally cold and utilitarian. But as a long-time user, I know that Linux can be a real looker. If you'd like to spice up your Linux machine or find a gorgeous replacement for Windows, here are the best-looking distros you can install today.

These days I have a couple Roku Sticks and a pair of Roku TVs, and they handle almost all of my daily streaming. But even after dialing in my setup, including tweaking Roku’s privacy settings to cut down on tracking, one thing still drives me up the wall: buffering. Nothing is more frustrating than sitting down to watch something and seeing that little circle spin again and again.

You've probably seen developers and power users running secondary displays vertically. To me, it always looked weird and unnecessary—we’re used to seeing monitors in landscape orientation. However, once I actually gave portrait mode a real try on my secondary monitor, it was surprisingly hard to look back.

Smartphones are an essential aspect of our lives, and that includes a slew of important apps we all use daily. But there's one app in particular we all probably use the most, and Google's slowly but surely ruining it. Of course, I'm talking about Google Messages, which I have a love-hate relationship with, and here's why.

In a world dominated by wireless accessories, it’s easy to get swept up in the trend—especially when listening to music.

Can't get enough Critical Role after finishing Season 1 of The Mighty Nein or getting all caught up on Campaign 4? Don't worry, we've got you covered.

SEE ALSO: Which Critical Role campaign is funniest? The cast weighs in.

In the latest episode of Mashable's Say More interview series, Mashable Entertainment Reporter Belen Edwards tasks Critical Role cast members Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Matthew Mercer, Liam O'Brien, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham with a daunting mission. They must draft teams of player characters from their first three Dungeons & Dragons campaigns to square off in the ultimate Critical Role battle royale. That means usual allies and even romantic pairings like Keyleth (Ray) and Vax (O'Brien) could be going up against each other in a no-holds-barred fight to the finish.

For this edition of Choose Your Squad, the rules are simple: Once you choose a character, they're off the board for good. Try not to choose your own characters unless you absolutely have to, and most importantly, try to have a good time. Just kidding — crush your opponents in any way you see fit!

Which PC will be the first pick in the Critical Role draft, and are they the same PC O'Brien believes to be the obvious choice? Most importantly, is there any world in which Bertrand Bell (Willingham) doesn't get picked last? (Sorry, Bertrand.)

Watch the video above to find out, and let us know which Critical Role squad you think would take the win.

The Mighty Nein Season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.

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Are you tired of monthly software subscriptions eating into your budget? Wondering whether free alternatives can actually match paid tools? Here are three underrated open-source apps that helped me cancel my subscriptions to TickTick, Trello, Google Drive, and Mailchimp.