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Billy on the Street is back and angrier than ever.

In the clip above actor, comedian and writer Billy Eichner (Bros) returns to his old stomping ground in New York to gleefully confuse passersby, this time yelling at them about his new audio memoir, Billy on Billy.

It's every bit as chaotic and entertaining as you'd hope.

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"Welcome to the Boroughs, where you'll have the time of your life."

That's the tagline for the titular retirement community in Netflix's new series The Boroughs, but it's also how I've been recommending this sci-fi treat to anyone who will listen. 

SEE ALSO: 2026 Summer TV preview: Every TV show you need to know about now

The series draws heavily from Ron Howard's 1985 film Cocoon, as well as Steven Spielberg's Amblin films. That emphasis on '80s nostalgia shouldn't come as a shock, given that The Boroughs is produced by Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers. Still, The Boroughs creators Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews manage to shake things up from the Stranger Things and Amblin formulas. With the help of a modern setting and a cast of formidable legends, The Boroughs tells a meaningful tale about aging and grieving, all wrapped up in an irresistible adventure.

What is The Boroughs about? Denis O'Hare, Alfred Molina, and Alfre Woodard in "The Boroughs." Credit: Netflix

The Boroughs doesn't hesitate to pay tribute to its inspirations. Its very first scene introduces Grace, a Boroughs resident played by E.T. star Dee Wallace. Unfortunately for E.T. fans, Wallace's character is not long for this world. As night falls over the seemingly idyllic New Mexico retirement community, a spindly legged creature sneaks into her house. Part spider, part human, all terrifying, it spirits Grace away, never to be seen again.

It's a suitably spooky opening sequence, albeit one that may give away too much of The Boroughs' monsters, too fast. (Of all the Spielberg movies for The Boroughs to draw from, Jaws and its monster-hiding tactics don't appear to be at the top of the list.) However, Grace's death also frees up a new house in the Boroughs, making way for grieving widower Sam Cooper (Alfred Molina) to move in.

SEE ALSO: 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' review: If this is the future of Star Wars, I don't want it

Sam was originally meant to move to the Boroughs with his late wife, Lilly (Jane Kaczmarek). Now, just months after her death, there's nothing he wants less than to live alone in the house they were going to spend the rest of their lives in. Despite what his uber-friendly neighbor Jack (Bill Pullman) might tell him, he doesn't view the Boroughs as a new beginning, only a dead end.

However, a shocking encounter with the creature that offed Grace might just be the new beginning Sam was so resistant to. He launches an investigation into what's truly lurking in the Boroughs, and manages to find an unlikely community along the way.

The Boroughs introduces an instantly lovable adventuring crew. Clarke Peters, Alfre Woodard, Alfred Molina, Denis O'Hare, and Geena Davis in "The Boroughs." Credit: Netflix

Played to curmudgeonly perfection by Molina, Sam is one of several irresistible retirees you'll meet in The Boroughs. As a former engineer, he bonds with former doctor Wally (Denis O'Hare) over the science of identifying and perhaps even capturing the creature.

Married couple Judy (Alfre Woodard) and Art (Clarke Peters) have different ways into the case. Once a journalist, Judy is ready to snoop on the suspicious scientific activity coming from Sam's end of their cul-de-sac. Meanwhile, yoga and weed lover Art spends his time on a spiritual quest for life's great meaning, potentially finding it in an unexplained phenomenon in the desert beyond the Boroughs' walls. Rounding out the crew is the Boroughs' community center art teacher Renee (Geena Davis), who's confused as to why her bags of quartz keeps going missing.

SEE ALSO: 'Stranger Things: Tales from '85': Ending explainer

In Stranger Things fashion, each party assembles different pieces of a vast and supernatural puzzle. It's incredibly satisfying to finally watch them come together, but even apart, these amateur sleuths shine. Each performer in this cast of legends is clearly having a blast, whether they're jerry-rigging a weapon out of vintage TVs or getting a chance to do their best Spielberg face of shock and awe. (The latter is accentuated by John Paesano's John Williams inspired-score, which evokes whimsy and adventure in spades.)

The show has that same fun right beside its cast. Even in some of its scariest moments, there's a playfulness, like in a suspenseful shadow play sequence involving a lurking monster. Elsewhere, The Boroughs delights in referencing its cast's prior work. At one point, a car drives off a cliff, Thelma and Louise-style, and yes, Davis is present at the scene.

It's also a joy to watch older characters take on adventures usually reserved for younger characters. The Boroughs' residents are certainly in conversation with groups like the Stranger Things party, Elliott and his friends in E.T., and IT's Losers Club. Yet there's a deeper pathos to their storyline, as Sam and his friends reckon with their nearing mortality, their waning health, and the losses of their friends and family becoming common occurrences.

The Boroughs' frankness about aging will leave you weepy. Alfred Molina and Denis O'Hare in "The Boroughs." Credit: Netflix

Rarely an episode of The Boroughs passed without me getting teary-eyed, especially because of its focus on Sam's grief.

Lilly may already be dead by the time The Boroughs begins, but she's a steady presence in the show. Sam is consistently haunted by memories of their last day together, and what I initially assumed to be clichéd dead wife flashbacks soon morph into something so much more, at once plot-relevant and devastating.

The evolution of Sam's painful memories is one of the many ways in which The Boroughs takes aging and loss seriously. It weaves these elements into its central mystery, right down to its sinister antagonists' anti-aging agenda (and how the monsters play into it).

One of The Boroughs' particularly affecting threads concerns the Manor, a long-term care facility for residents who need more attention. This includes dementia patients, whom the show treats with respect and empathy, even if their cruel caretakers don't. Though The Boroughs teems with spooky creatures and the occasional jump scare, its most unsettling moments are those in which older characters experience the loss of their faculties, or when their caretakers or family members dismiss them.

Between its examination of dementia and its tale of a reclusive retiree finding community, The Boroughs feels like a sci-fi version of another stellar Netflix offering: A Man on the Inside. The Boroughs may have 100 percent more monster attacks, but it also has A Man on the Inside's same compassion when it comes to telling stories of retirees living fulfilling, adventurous lives.

Yes, in terms of pure adventure, The Boroughs establishes itself as the spiritual successor to the best parts of Stranger Things. But it's the show's embrace of its older ensemble, in all their joy and grief, that sets it apart and makes it truly worthy of that Spielberg-style awe its characters experience so often.

The Boroughs is now streaming on Netflix.

AI is becoming a regular part of team meetings, with many leaders expecting it to improve collaboration and decision-making. But adding AI to a discussion without clear norms can backfire, limiting participation or shifting ownership away from the team. To make AI a productive contributor, you need to build intentional habits around how your team […]

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TL;DR: Watch Canada vs. Norway in the 2026 Ice Hockey World Championships for free on IIHF.TV. Access this free streaming platform from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.

The 2026 Ice Hockey World Championships are stacked with huge games, but Canada vs. Norway is absolutely one of the biggest on the schedule. Canada have won every game they've played in this competition, but Norway will pose a serious problem.

If you're interested in watching the 2026 Ice Hockey World Championships from anywhere in the world, we've got all the information you need.

When is Canada vs. Norway?

Canada vs. Norway in the 2026 IIHF World Championships starts at 10:20 a.m. ET on May 21. This fixture takes place at the BCF Arena in Fribourg.

How to watch Canada vs. Norway for free

Canada vs. Norway in the 2026 Ice Hockey World Championships is available to live stream for free on IIHF.TV.

IIHF.TV is not available in some locations due to regional broadcasting restrictions (blocked locations listed here), but anyone can secure access with a VPN. These tools can hide your real IP address (digital location) and connect you to a secure server in a location with access, meaning you can stream the 2026 Ice Hockey World Championships for free from anywhere in the world.

Live stream the 2026 Ice Hockey World Championships for free by following these simple steps:

1. Sign up for a streaming-friendly VPN (like ExpressVPN)

2. Download the app to your device of choice

3. Open up the app and connect to a server in a location with access

4. Connect to IIHF.TV

5. Watch the 2026 Ice Hockey World Championships for free from anywhere in the world

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The best VPNs for streaming are not free, but they do tend to offer pretty generous money-back guarantees. By leveraging these offers, you can watch the 2026 Ice Hockey World Championships without committing with your cash. This is obviously not a long-term strategy, but it gives you enough time to stream Canada vs. Norway plus every other fixture before recovering your investment.

If you want to retain permanent access to free streaming platforms from around the world, you'll need a subscription. Fortunately, the best VPN for streaming live sport is on sale for a limited time.

What is the best VPN for the Ice Hockey World Championships?

ExpressVPN is the best choice for streaming live sport on free platforms, for a number of reasons:

• Servers in 105 countries

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A two-year subscription to ExpressVPN is on sale for $68.40 and includes an extra four months for free — 81% off for a limited time. This plan includes a year of free unlimited cloud backup and a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. Alternatively, you can get a one-month plan for just $12.99 (with money-back guarantee).

Live stream Canada vs. Norway in the 2026 Ice Hockey World Championships for free with ExpressVPN.

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.

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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

To multiply.

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

BREED

Hurdle Word 2 hint

To burn.

SEE ALSO: Wordle today: Answer, hints for May 21, 2026 Hurdle Word 2 Answer

STING

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Hurdle Word 3 hint

Feminine.

SEE ALSO: NYT Connections Sports Edition today: Hints and answers for May 21 SEE ALSO: NYT Connections hints today: Clues, answers for May 21, 2026 Hurdle Word 3 answer

SISSY

Hurdle Word 4 hint

From Wales.

Hurdle Word 4 answer

WELSH

Final Hurdle hint

To manage.

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

TREAT

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

The Moon is still in its Crescent phase, but it's getting more and more illuminated each night as we work through the lunar cycle, the roughly month-long journey of the Moon’s changing phases as it orbits Earth.

What is today’s Moon phase?

As of Thursday, May 21, the Moon phase is Waxing Crescent. Tonight, 27% of the moon will be be lit up, according to NASA's Daily Moon Guide.

Tonight, without any visual aids, you'll be able to spot the Mares Crisium and Fecunditatis. Binoculars or a telescope will also bring the Endymion Crater into view.

When is the next Full Moon?

There are two Full Moons in May, with the next due to take place on May 31.

What are Moon phases?

According to NASA, the Moon takes around 29.5 days to orbit Earth completely, passing through eight phases during that time. While the same side of the Moon always faces Earth, the way sunlight hits its surface changes throughout its orbit, creating the familiar full, half, and crescent appearances we see in the night sky. Altogether, the lunar cycle consists of 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.

AMD might have the solution if you like the idea of Nvidia's DGX Spark as an AI workstation, but balk at having to use a specialized ARM chip — and the $4,699 starting price. The company has introduced the Ryzen AI Halo, a mini PC that's not only optimized for AI development, but promises to save money both up front and by avoiding costly subscriptions.

The three-row SUV world is packed with big names like the Toyota Grand Highlander, Honda Pilot, Kia Telluride, and Hyundai Palisade. Somehow, the Volkswagen Atlas keeps flying under the radar even though it nails the stuff most families actually care about: space, comfort, visibility, and everyday usability.

Google previewed new Gemini-powered features coming to Android Auto and Google Built-in at I/O 2026. The updates are designed to make in-car interactions more helpful while keeping drivers focused on the road. Here’s an early look at Google’s expanding AI ambitions in vehicles.

Whether you like it or not, the 2026 FIFA World Cup is bicycle-kicking its way to North America in a few weeks, bringing with it endless soccer chatter and swamped social media feeds. For my money, the excitement of the World Cup is best experienced in a pub among fans losing the plot over free kicks and absolute missiles screaming past goalkeepers. If 90 minutes of ping-ponging midfield action makes your eyes glaze over, fair play.

Despite the availability of electric vehicles, most Americans won't give up gasoline. A 2025 AAA survey found that only 16 percent of U.S. adults say they are likely to purchase an electric vehicle as their next car, the lowest since 2019. Meanwhile, EV sales in the United States fell by 4% in 2025, marking the first decline in a decade.

I've used Android since almost the beginning, and the control and customization it offered were among the features that attracted me most. But over the years, that openness has been reduced. I’m not especially paranoid about privacy, but I was curious about how much of Android I could use without relying on Google’s apps and services. It turns out that it is entirely possible.

CNET Editor at Large Andrew Lanxon hosts a panel discussion about the latest generative AI demos we saw at Google I/O 2026. Who is this for and why does Google think it's so important?

Google unveiled its Android XR intelligent eyewear at I/O 2026, but major details remain unknown. CNET’s Andrew Lanxon leads a discussion on what Google revealed, what’s still missing, and what consumers can realistically expect from the upcoming glasses.

Spotify recently released a new feature that is not surprising, given its recent string of updates, but it is still something overdue since last year. With the Spotify-Claude integration, Spotify may be setting up for a better overall listening and discovery experience for users.

Sam Altman's OpenAI may be losing money to the tune of $1 billion a month. It may be struggling to convert more than 5% of ChatGPT users to paid customers. And it may be losing ground to rivals like Anthropic (makers of the highly-teased Claude Mythos) and Google (makers of the freshly updated Gemini).

But OpenAI investors still believe they can cash in — perhaps to the tune of $1 trillion — if the company launches on the stock market soon.

And now that Elon Musk's lawsuit (which claimed OpenAI defrauded him during its conversion to a for-profit company) has been dismissed at trial on a technicality, the launch window appears to be opening.

Sources at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley told reporters at the Wall Street Journal that the OpenAI IPO would be filed with regulators as early as this Friday. And though plans remain "fluid," the Journal warned, that would mean you'll likely see OpenAI shares debut on the NYSE as soon as September.

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SEE ALSO: 'The AI Doc' director says ‘F*ck you’ to AI companies stealing artists’ IP

Musk, meanwhile, says he plans to appeal the trial verdict; a bonanza IPO for a company still nominally governed by a nonprofit board may help bolster his case. Ironically, Musk is currently distracted by his own pending IPO bonanza; SpaceX, fresh off its acquisition of xAI, is also reportedly ready to file paperwork with regulators this week.

So, Altman, increasingly Musk's AI nemesis, may be taking a little of his rival's thunder here. But exactly how much Altman will take home from an OpenAI IPO remains a mystery.

The CEO confirmed in the courtroom what has been an open secret for some time — that Altman does have investments in the company, via a fund at the Silicon Valley incubator he used to run, YCombinator.

In 2023, Altman told the U.S. Senate he had no financial stake in the company, per The Atlantic. He's now the target of a probe led by GOP members of the House Oversight Committee, which is looking into OpenAI's habit of making deals with other companies Altman has investments in.

In other words, Altman's long-documented reputation for telling people what they want to hear may be catching up with him, while the wheels are wobbling a bit on the OpenAI bandwagon. And yet, at the same time, a payday of unknown magnitude approaches.

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Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

Google I/O 2026 gave us plenty to talk about, but what about the things Google didn't say? Join CNET Editor at Large Andrew Lanxon and a panel of top tech experts as they dig into the biggest missing pieces, delayed features and skipped announcements from this year's keynote.

I have used Docker for over half a decade now, and the vast majority of that time I've used Docker Run commands. I recently switched to Docker Compose, and it made my homelab so much easier to manage.

Kickstarter is walking back recent changes to its content guidelines, which users lambasted as blanket censorship.

Kickstarter announced the new adult-oriented content guidelines last week, prohibiting pornographic imagery, projects and reward tiers tied to sexual pleasure or gratification, and marketing of products designed for "insertion and penetration."

SEE ALSO: Child safety organizations accuse Roblox of violating FTC rules

The changes were made to better reflect policies set by Stripe, the platform's payment processor.

Kickstarter had previously come under fire for similar restrictions on sex toy companies, which were later amended. But as of last week, those policies were back on the table. Indie companies and artists who rely on the crowdfunding site decried the move, arguing that the new guidelines limited creative expression and impacted their businesses. Many suggested moving to competitor sites like Patreon.

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"Honestly? We botched it. The rules didn't land the way we intended, and the response from our community let us know loud and clear that we got it wrong," wrote Kickstarter COO Sean Leow in a May 19 blog post. "The decision we made was an abandonment of the core counterculture, f*ck the establishment spirit of Kickstarter, and it left our community vulnerable."

According to Leow, the new guidelines — which merged existing Kickstarter rules and Stripe prohibitions — were intended to provide a more streamlined experience for users who may eventually face roadblocks in their campaigns due to Stripe's e-commerce constraints. "Over the past several months, we've seen a growing number of campaigns that had already been approved by Kickstarter get suspended by Stripe mid-funding," he wrote.

However, in the face of widespread criticism, Leow said the platform would reverse course, reinstating former policies that simply prohibit pornography and illegal content — but this also means campaigns can once again face suspension at any point in time, Leow explained.

While Kickstarter goes back to the drawing board, users can consult the platform's mature content review guide, which includes an explanation of common suspension triggers and ways to request an exception.

At last year's Google I/O event, we (and most outlets) modestly declared that the Google Search we had known for the past 20 years was dead. Fast forward a year, and it's still really, really dead. Not to beat on a dead horse or anything, but with I/O 2026, Google firmly established that Search is and will be built on Gemini and artificial intelligence.

SEE ALSO: Google’s Project Aura is a wild pair of supercharged Xreal glasses

Search is no longer a place you go to find a link. It's becoming a place you go to have an AI handle the whole thing for you. Based on everything Google announced at I/O 2026, the way people find information on the internet is about to look fundamentally different. Whether any of this is actually useful depends on the person being asked, but Google wants to fundamentally change how we navigate the internet.

Publishers are in trouble

AI Overviews have been chipping away at web traffic since they launched, and everything Google announced this week accelerates that trend. When Search agents are scanning the web 24/7 on your behalf, when AI Mode is handling your follow-up questions, when the search box is expanding to accept entire paragraphs of context — the implicit promise is that you won't need to click through to anyone's website to get what you need.

Google gets the query, Google surfaces the answer, and the publisher who wrote the piece that informed that answer gets nothing.

This fight between online content publishers and Google has been raging since last year, when the whole thing was dubbed the "traffic apocalypse." Google, of course, has pushed back on the framing that publishers are getting the short end of the stick, arguing that users who do click links after seeing AI Overviews engage more deeply with those sites. That may be true in a narrow sense, but it sidesteps the larger issue — fewer people are clicking at all.

SEE ALSO: Common Crawl accused of feeding paywalled content to AI companies

That pushback comes from a Wall Street Journal report from June 2025. In it, Neil Vogel, CEO of Dotdash Meredith — the company behind People and Southern Living — told the Journal that Google search went from driving roughly 60 percent of their traffic at the time of their 2021 merger down to about a third. The floor, based on everything announced at I/O this week, hasn't been found yet.

Publishers are responding by pivoting toward direct relationships with readers — newsletters, events, apps, subscriptions — anything that doesn't depend on Google as a middleman. That's a reasonable long-term strategy, but a fundamental restructuring of how digital media works.

A new search box

The AI Search Box — the first redesign of Google's search bar in over 25 years — is built for conversations now. You can drop in images, files, videos, and Chrome tabs alongside a long-form prompt and let Google figure out what you're actually asking.

Obviously, this is a massive shift in how we search on the internet. Google searching used to be about compression. To ask our questions in the fewest possible words. The entire discipline of SEO was built around the assumption that people type short, imprecise fragments into a box, and that it's Google's job to interpret them. "Flights NYC to LA." "Best running shoes 2026." "Symptoms of strep throat."

Now Google is actively dismantling that habit. With the expanded search box, Google wants you to stop translating your thoughts into keyword-ese and just talk to it. Tell it you're planning a trip, attach your calendar, upload a photo of the hotel you're considering, and let Gemini piece it all together. The idea being that the more context you give it, the more helpful the AI is.

And that's true to an extent, but it's more information you're giving Google, and more data for them to collect. The company spent $68 million earlier this year settling a lawsuit after it was alleged that Google's Google Assistant recorded "private conversations without permission."

Whether users are ready to hand over that level of context — and whether Google has earned that trust — is a question the keynote didn't really address.

The hallucination problem isn't going away

For all the polish Google put on its AI features at I/O, one thing conspicuously absent from the keynote was any serious reckoning with accuracy. AI Overviews have a documented history of surfacing confidently wrong information, and the new conversational follow-up feature essentially lets you go deeper into an AI-generated summary without necessarily verifying the foundation it's built on.

Gmail VP Blake Barnes touched on this in his conversation with Mashable's Haley Henschel, noting that Gmail Live is being built with sourcing so users can check which emails informed the AI's response. That's a reasonable approach for a personal inbox tool. But for a broader search across the entire web, the bar for scrutiny needs to be higher due to the risk of misinformation and disinformation. As Google hands over more of the search experience to AI, the burden of fact-checking shifts more squarely onto users. That's worth keeping in mind every time an AI Overview tells you something with complete confidence.

The agentic push across everything Google announced this week, like Spark running your life in the background, Search agents monitoring the web on your behalf, and AI that can call businesses, make purchases, and book reservations, is the early infrastructure of something that looks a lot like what the AI research community means when it talks about AGI-adjacent systems.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis described Gemini Omni at I/O as a meaningful step toward AGI — artificial general intelligence, the theoretical point at which an AI system can perform any intellectual task a human can. That framing was almost a throwaway line in the context of a video generation demo, which is exactly what makes it worth paying attention to.

Google's answer to the obvious concern about that — what stops it from doing something you didn't want — is the Agent Payments Protocol and a set of configurable limits that give administrators ultimate control over the AI. Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs, described the philosophy as being like handing a teenager their first debit card. That's a candid framing, and in some ways a reassuring one. But it also acknowledges that the trajectory is toward more autonomy, not less. The guardrails are explicitly described as temporary.

Right now, when Gemini gets something wrong in a search summary, the stakes are relatively low. As these systems take on more — scheduling, purchasing, monitoring, acting — the cost of a confident wrong answer goes up considerably. Google wasn't having that conversation on stage at I/O. That's the one worth having now.