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Back in 1997, a few years after video game consoles and computers had fully embraced CD-ROM technology, a new optical format standard known as DVD-RAM was finalized.

Paying a monthly fee to stream movies and shows you already own that sit on drives in your house sounds silly when you think about it. Plex built its reputation on solving the home media problem, but it quietly put the best features behind a subscription. Jellyfin does everything Plex does, like remote streaming, mobile apps, offline downloads, metadata, and collections, and it doesn't charge you for any of it.

I spent years fighting Excel's default behavior before realizing many of its biggest annoyances could be fixed in minutes. These buried settings changed the way I work and let me customize Excel to behave exactly how I want. Best of all, I only had to change them once, and Excel remembers my preferences every time I open the program.

I spend a lot of time at my desk in my home office, and I use my smart speaker multiple times during the day. I wanted a more reliable way to interact with my voice assistant, so I decided to go old school and add a phone to my desk.

True to its source material, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is headed for an epic opening weekend at the box office.

SEE ALSO: 'The Odyssey' review: Christopher Nolan turns an epic myth into a movie masterpiece

According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Odyssey raked in $17.6 million from domestic Thursday night previews and is on track for a $117 million opening weekend. That would make it the best domestic opening for a live-action film this year, surpassing Michael, which took in $97 million and went on to cross the $1 billion mark worldwide in July. The two best domestic openings of the year belong to animated films: Toy Story 5 ($160 million) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131.7 million).

A $117 million opening would also be the best opening for an R-rated film in 2026, overtaking Backrooms ($81.4 million). It would also be the best opening for an R-rated movie from Universal Pictures, a record formerly held by Fifty Shades of Grey ($85.1 million).

The Odyssey's opening weekend box office is also set to surpass that of Nolan's prior film, Oppenheimer ($82.4 million), making it his biggest since The Dark Knight Rises, which still holds a commanding lead with $160 million.

Based on The Odyssey's reported production cost of $250 million and reported marketing cost of $125 million, Forbes estimates that after theaters take their cuts, it will take between $625 to $750 million for The Odyssey to break even. However, given Nolan's track record, The Odyssey is sure to have massive legs, especially in premium, if exclusive, formats like IMAX 70mm. Screenings for that format in particular are sold out for weeks into the future, and have been since tickets for The Odyssey went on sale last year.

Clearly, the demand for The Odyssey is there. Could it be Nolan's third film to break $1 billion, following in the footsteps of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises?

The Odyssey is now in theaters.

True to its source material, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is headed for an epic opening weekend at the box office.

SEE ALSO: 'The Odyssey' review: Christopher Nolan turns an epic myth into a movie masterpiece

According to The Hollywood Reporter, The Odyssey raked in $17.6 million from domestic Thursday night previews and is on track for a $117 million opening weekend. That would make it the best domestic opening for a live-action film this year, surpassing Michael, which took in $97 million and went on to cross the $1 billion mark worldwide in July. The two best domestic openings of the year belong to animated films: Toy Story 5 ($160 million) and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131.7 million).

A $117 million opening would also be the best opening for an R-rated film in 2026, overtaking Backrooms ($81.4 million). It would also be the best opening for an R-rated movie from Universal Pictures, a record formerly held by Fifty Shades of Grey ($85.1 million).

The Odyssey's opening weekend box office is also set to surpass that of Nolan's prior film, Oppenheimer ($82.4 million), making it his biggest since The Dark Knight Rises, which still holds a commanding lead with $160 million.

Based on The Odyssey's reported production cost of $250 million and reported marketing cost of $125 million, Forbes estimates that after theaters take their cuts, it will take between $625 to $750 million for The Odyssey to break even. However, given Nolan's track record, The Odyssey is sure to have massive legs, especially in premium, if exclusive, formats like IMAX 70mm. Screenings for that format in particular are sold out for weeks into the future, and have been since tickets for The Odyssey went on sale last year.

Clearly, the demand for The Odyssey is there. Could it be Nolan's third film to break $1 billion, following in the footsteps of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises?

The Odyssey is now in theaters.

I bounce between Linux programs like a bad habit. I'm constantly trying new applications, suites of programs, and replacements—especially when I'm trying to find something that "just feels right." In my search for the perfect file manager, I've used GNOME Files (Nautlius), Thunar, PCManFM, Nemo, Krusader, and more.

3D printers can take a while to prove their worth around the house. You can have all sorts of fun printing toys, but it’s household repairs and objects that feel like quality-of-life improvements that’ll have you coming back for more.

When Wear OS 7 landed on my Pixel Watch last month, there wasn’t much that caught my eye. To be honest, I pretty much forgot about it entirely. Recently, though, I’ve noticed something, and I realized this update was more important than I thought.

Summer is the perfect season for outdoor fun, especially if you have a pool and plan on hosting friends and family. This year, entertaining feels even grander with the FIFA World Cup happening alongside classic backyard barbecues. While you're busy preparing, the last thing you want to worry about is a dirty pool. Luckily, Beatbot has you covered with its smart, hands-free pool maintenance devices, and now many of its top models are discounted during its Backyard Bash Sale. So, you can pick up a robotic pool cleaner more affordably.

When it comes to buying power tools for DIY projects around the house, many people instantly think of hardware stores like Home Depot or Lowe's, but Walmart is quietly becoming a go-to destination with more affordable options. While Ryobi and Milwaukee are great, Walmart's popular hand tool brand, Hyper Tough, is slowly but surely becoming a solid option for power tools.

The beauty of Android is the huge ecosystem of awesome open-source apps available for the platform. There is an entire app store called F-Droid that exclusively features free and open-source apps. Some of these apps are so good that I would pay for them if they weren’t free. I’m sharing a few here.

There are only so many Wi-Fi tweaks we can try before finally buying a new router. The good thing about that purchase is that once you get a router, it'll be good for years and years.

If you look at the back of your TV, there are many ports that you probably never use. Some older TVs include an RS-232 serial port similar to those that you'd find on the back of old PCs. While the main uses of this port include professional diagnostics and servicing, there are several ways you can use your TV's serial port for other things.

If you've been waiting for Obsession to hit streaming this summer, your wish has been granted. The supernatural horror movie is now streaming on Peacock.

Water leak sensors are the smart home upgrade for everyone. Whether you live in a house or apartment, own or rent, these tiny devices can save you money and hassle.

In my daily life, I like to take things slow. I take my time, weigh the pros and cons of various decisions, and stop to smell the roses whenever possible (despite being allergic to them). But when it comes to working or doing projects, I like to be efficient. I use shortcuts, custom key bindings, self-hosting, and many other tools that improve my workflow. Here are 6 applications that make my workflow run extremely well.

Can wildfire smoke get into your house?

Yes. It won't be visibly hazy like it is outside, but particulate matter like wildfire smoke — 20 to 30 times smaller than a human hair — can seep into your home in several different ways. Many air purifiers have sensors that provide live air quality metrics from the room they're in, including PM2.5 (particulate matter).

Indoor air still isn't innately clean when there's not a major air quality event happening. Indoor air pollution can be caused by cleaning products, cooking smoke, or microplastics embedded into dust or pet dander. It's all the more reason to keep an air purifier running 24/7 at home, regardless of whether you have allergies or not.

Just how bad is wildfire smoke for our health?

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wildfire smoke can cause breathing issues, headaches, lethargy, coughing, and wheezing, to name a few ill effects. This applies to everyone after repeated exposure, not just "sensitive groups."

Even if you feel fine, smoke particles are small enough to get into our bloodstream. According to Yale Medicine, that means they also have access to other organs like the heart and the liver. Over time, exposure to PM 2.5 might lead to an increased risk of cancers, heart attack, and cognitive issues. Particulate matter like smoke can also mess with your skin barrier and trigger oxidative stress, actively working against your skincare routine.

Those who have asthma, heart disease, or diabetes are at an increased risk of getting sick. Kids and pregnant people are also considered high-risk when it comes to getting sick from wildfire smoke.

Wildfire smoke also affects the health of our pets. It can irritate their eyes, make it hard for them to breathe, or damage their tiny respiratory systems. The American Veterinary Medical Association says that if we can see or feel the effects from smoke, our pets can as well. That's especially true for pets with cardiovascular or respiratory issues.

The benefits of an air purifier

If your neighborhood gets socked in with wildfire smoke, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends you keep windows and doors closed. Even still, it’s possible smoke can seep in under doors, through cracks, or from vents in the kitchen and bathroom. Running a portable air purifier can help cut down on harmful particles that might enter your home. 

Air purifiers work by sucking in the room’s air and sending it through a filtration system.

Most high-quality air purifiers do so with a HEPA filter (High Efficiency Particulate Air) in addition to a few other filters. A pre-filter is a great addition, and it looks similar to a screen with a fine weave. These help capture dust and hair, which leaves the more-important HEPA filter cleaner and less clogged up from larger debris that can float around in the air. A HEPA filter is capable of removing 99.97% of tiny particulate matter in the air that we can’t see, but can cause us discomfort, according to the EPA. That includes wildfire smoke, cigarette smoke, pollution from nearby traffic, pollen, and dust.

A briefing on particulate matter: PM 10 and PM 2.5

When shopping for an air purifier, you’ll see many models explain that they capture particulate matter, or PM. For the most part, that’s stuff in the air that you don’t really want to inhale. We measure PM by its diameter. Either with an on-unit display or in the app, most air purifiers will track the level of PM 10 and PM 2.5 in the air. To help get a baseline of understanding, a single strand of human hair measures between 50 and 70 microns in diameter, according to measurements from the EPA.

• PM 10: Particulate matter that measures 10 microns in diameter includes dust, pollen, mold, and some wildfire smoke particles.

• PM 2.5: These tiny particles measure 2.5 microns in diameter, which is true of the majority of particles emitted from wildfire smoke. 

Since PM is so small, it can enter our bloodstream and nestle itself deep in the lungs, according to Yale Medicine.

Do air purifiers help with allergies and viruses?

Since HEPA filters are designed to scrub the air of potentially harmful particles, they can also help cut down on pollen, dust, and even viruses. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America says using a HEPA filter can reduce airborne allergens that wind up indoors. That can be from an open window, your clothes you wore to the park, or even when the dog comes home from a walk.

An air purifier with a HEPA filter can also be helpful during cold and flu season. Not all virus particles are large enough to get captured by HEPA filters. However, many are launched into the air via a cough or sneeze so those virus particles are traveling within a larger particle (what the CDC calls a respiratory droplet) which can get filtered out by a HEPA. By no means does using an air purifier mean you won’t get ill if you hang out in a room with a sick person all day, but it might reduce the likelihood.

TL;DR: The 2026 Nations Championship is available to watch for free on ITVX. Access these free live streams from anywhere in the world with ExpressVPN.

This is shaping up to be a special year for sport.

The schedule has been ridiculously busy this year. We've hardly had time to breathe between the Winter Olympics, T20 World Cup, and World Cup, and now the world of rugby has dropped a totally new competition to grab its share of the spotlight.

The Nations Championship is changing the game. This fresh tournament promises to deliver six rounds of elite matchups between top international sides followed by a blockbuster Finals Weekend. It feels like the Rugby World Cup without the filler.

If you're interested in watching the 2026 Nations Championship from anywhere in the world, we've got all the information you need.

What is the Nations Championship?

The 2026 Nations Championship is an international rugby union competition featuring 12 men's teams. The teams are divided into two pools of six (Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere). Over two international windows, each team plays all the teams in the opposite pool once. Every team plays three games at home and three away.

After six rounds, a finals series will be contested over three days with each team matched against the same ranked team in the other pool to decide final placements.

When is the 2026 Nations Championship?

The 2026 Nations Championship is the first edition of this competition. This year's tournament runs from the first round of fixtures on July 4 to the final on Nov. 29.

How to watch the 2026 Nations Championship for free

The 2026 Nations Championship is available to live stream for free on ITVX.

ITVX is geo-restricted to the UK, 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 the UK, meaning you can livestream the 2026 Nations Championship for free from anywhere in the world.

Livestream the 2026 Nations Championship for free by following these simple steps:

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

2. Download the app to your device of choice

3. Open up the app and connect to a server in the UK

4. Visit ITVX

5. Watch the 2026 Nations Championship for free from anywhere in the world

Opens in a new window Credit: ExpressVPN ExpressVPN (1-Month Plan) $12.99 only at ExpressVPN Get Deal

The best VPNs for streaming are not free, but they do tend to offer generous money-back guarantees. By leveraging these offers, you can watch the 2026 Nations Championship without committing your cash. This is obviously not a long-term strategy, but it gives you enough time to stream multiple weekends before recovering your investment.

ExpressVPN's regular 30-day money-back guarantee is not available for any subscriptions purchased during the FIFA World Cup between June 10 and July 11. ExpressVPN remains our top pick for sport, but you will need to pay the monthly rate until that offer comes back into play. Alternatively, Proton VPN still offers that all-important money-back guarantee.

What is the best VPN for ITVX?

ExpressVPN is the best choice for bypassing geo-restrictions to stream live sport on ITVX, for a number of reasons:

• Servers in 105 countries

• Easy-to-use app available on all major devices including iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, and more

• Strict no-logging policy so your data is secure

• Fast connection speeds free from throttling

• Up to 10 simultaneous connections

• 30-day money-back guarantee (after FIFA World Cup)

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 usually offers a generous 30-day money-back guarantee. Alternatively, you can get a one-month plan for just $12.99.

Live stream the 2026 Nations Championship for free with ExpressVPN.

Here at Mashable, we're constantly testing the best laptops based on an exhaustive in-house methodology that combines real-world use with performance benchmarking. In the past two years alone, we've tried over 80 different models across a range of price points.

To determine which of them fit the bill for college students, specifically, I researched the top 10 public universities' hardware recommendations for the upcoming fall 2026 semester. These include processor types, operating system support, RAM and storage minimums, and other spec requirements for different majors. I honed my guidance based on the common threads I noticed.

I also gave special preference to laptops that are long-lasting and portable enough to be toted around campus, and those that are competitively priced for the current market. Laptops aren't cheap right now, but a solid splurge can last you well past graduation. (Take advantage of student discounts whenever possible.)

Based on this analysis, I eventually settled on six top picks that make the best laptops for college students. Whether you're a humanities student, a STEM major, or still undeclared, I'm confident that at least one of my options will be your ideal machine. You can read more about these picks and my research below.

What to look for in a college laptop, based on my research A Windows laptop with a mid-tier Intel Core or AMD Ryzen 7 processor is suitable for most college students. Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

Six of this year's 10 top-ranking public universities tell their incoming students to purchase Windows 11 laptops or MacBooks that are less than two years old. I wouldn't go any older than that for the sake of future-proofing.

Most of those schools tell their students to purchase laptops with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage at minimum. (Liberal arts majors might be able to get away with 256GB of storage, but you'll probably have to supplement that with an external hard drive.) More RAM and storage is better if your budget allows; more is mandatory if you're an engineering, design, or computer science major. Students in those fields are generally advised to get a laptop with at least 24GB to 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.

SEE ALSO: Laptop specs explained: A jargon-free guide to what's inside your computer

You can approach your processor options in a similar way. For Windows laptops, most schools suggest a mid-range CPU like an Intel Core/AMD Ryzen 5 at minimum, and a mid- to high-end Intel Core/AMD Ryzen 7 or 9 chip for more demanding workloads. Several schools recommend tacking on a dedicated GPU for such coursework, too (i.e, Nvidia GeForce RTX/Radeon RX graphics). On the Apple side, the MacBook Air and Pro with the base M5 chip are go-to recs for most students.

Two schools tell their students not to buy ARM-based Windows laptops (with Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors) because they can't run certain software natively, and because they don't support older peripherals like university printers and scanners. One software example is AutoCAD, a popular 2D and 3D design app that engineering and design students rely on heavily. I love a lot of ARM laptops because they're fast and long-lasting, and I will say that their compatibility is improving every year. Still, I've opted to keep them off my list of 2026 picks out of an abundance of caution; stick with Intel and AMD CPUs for now.

Be sure to budget for an extended warranty with accidental damage protection, as suggested by over half of the top 10 public universities. For reference, AppleCare+ for Mac costs $67.99 to $139.99 a year for students, depending on the MacBook model.

What type of laptop should college students buy? Credit: Joe Maldonado / Mashable

This is a question that only your college can answer for sure, as laptop type recommendations can vary by major. For example, the University of Virginia and the University of California, Davis approve MacBooks for their general student populations, but their engineering departments tell certain tracks to avoid them. Likewise, UCLA's Anderson School of Management hardware requirement page says, "Mac computers are acceptable to use as primary computers for study at Anderson. However, please note that some elective course software is only available for Windows. Students are responsible for ensuring compatibility and configuring their Macs accordingly."

I can say for sure that you probably shouldn't buy a Chromebook. Three schools in my research pool discouraged them for some or all majors, and one school — the University of Florida — only recommended them "as supplemental devices." I included a Chromebook in a previous version of this guide as a secondary option for note-taking, but price increases amid the ongoing RAM shortage have made many of them just as expensive as Apple's budget MacBook Neo (if not more so), which is a much nicer and more powerful computer, relatively speaking.

Do you need your own laptop for college?

Yes, you should have your own laptop at college. Most universities let students temporarily borrow laptops through their libraries and/or tech desks. However, these loaners are available on a first-come, first-served basis and wiped upon return (i.e., you can't save anything on them long-term).

I wouldn't rely too heavily on your school's computer lab, either, because you can't take bring those desktops to class or your dorm. Ultimately, owning your own laptop is way more convenient and ensures you'll have the exact specs needed for your major's coursework.