I think everyone knows that when you open Netflix, what you are shown is curated to your interests and viewing history. So the home page affords you quick access to recent viewings, new releases, similar movies, and so on. There is a search function for specific titles, but no apparent way to search for all the rom-coms or all the soccer movies.
Netflix has in its deep files about 5,000 movies, and there is a way to access detailed lists of movies by category using a list of codes.
The codes reveal Netflix's complete organizational system. Instead of broad categories like "Action" or "Comedy," you get hyper-specific genres like "Martial Arts Movies" (code 8985) or "Classic Action & Adventure Films" (code 46576). Some categories contain hundreds of titles, while others might have just a handful of carefully curated selections.
What surprised me most was discovering content that never appeared in my regular browsing. Shows and movies that existed in Netflix's library but were essentially invisible due to the algorithm's assumptions about my preferences. It's like finding a hidden room in your own house.
Here are examples of how the categories are subdivided (links in the image are not clickable):
a texan professor just lost their job because a student was filmed saying “you cant be teaching this, the president said theres only 2 genders, and it also goes against my religious beliefs”, to which the professor responded with “you are free to leave the classroom if you are uncomfortable with what is being taught”, which was apparently out of line
can you fucking imagine
being a college professor
and getting fired after not humoring some fucking stupid kid
for saying
“excuse me what youre teaching is wrong, the president said so”
Great, now in addition to putting Sellotape over my webcam, tissue paper in my keyholes, and tin foil over my head, I'm going to have to whisper quietly around my gaming mouse. That's because, according to some researchers (via Igor's Lab) our optical gaming mice might be able to spy on what we're saying.
And is it a surprise that this fiendish development is aided by AI? Not to me, it's not. Judging from the video demonstration above, the real magic occurs in the last stage of the pipeline, where the neural model cleans up the speech even better than the Wiener filter does (no sniggering, that's a serious scientific term).
Apparently this method of snooping can be performed on "consumer-grade mice with high-fidelity sensors", which sounds a lot like "gaming mouse" to me. That does seem to be exactly the case, as in the full paper (pdf warning) we can see the researchers used a Razer Viper at 8 kHz polling to train the models used for this attack.
I suppose one of the key requirements is a high polling rate, as a higher polling rate means more data, which means more accurate data clean-up to isolate acoustics, ie, speech: "Attackers can exploit these sensors’ ever-increasing polling rate and sensitivity to emulate a makeshift microphone and covertly eavesdrop on unsuspecting users."
The researchers also point out that "creative software, video games, and other high performance, low latency software are ideal targets for injecting our exploit." Video games in particular are "ideal targets" because many of them "contain networking code that can be reused by our exploit without raising suspicion. Thus, using a video game as the delivery vehicle of our exploit allows us to meet the performance demands of our collection scheme."
However, it looks like the mouse might need to be on a hard, flat surface, and also remain still, for the data to be cleaned well enough to get any speech out of it. So I doubt you'd have to worry while running around in Battlefield 6. Sitting still on bomb site B, defending the entrance to Tunnels on Dust 2, might be another story, though.
Perhaps more than anything this is just another reason to keep our polling rates to 2 kHz or lower. All it does is drain your battery anyway, as you won't be able to notice the difference by bumping the polling much higher than this.
The latest Insider Preview build of Windows 11 includes a rather ominous update. Ominous, that is, for anyone who prefers to install Windows without being hooked up to the internet and signing up for a Microsoft account.
According the to accompanying Microsoft blog post (via The Verge), Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.6772 dispenses with local-only commands. To quote Microsoft directly, "we are removing known mechanisms for creating a local account in the Windows Setup experience (OOBE).
"While these mechanisms were often used to bypass Microsoft account setup, they also inadvertently skip critical setup screens, potentially causing users to exit OOBE with a device that is not fully configured for use. Users will need to complete OOBE with internet and a Microsoft account, to ensure device is setup correctly."
Yuck. This change is just the latest in a series that make it ever harder to set up Windows 11 without an internet connection and a Microsoft account. Back in March, ye olde "bypassnro" workaround was nixed.
The Verge says that this new measure means that the “start ms-cxh:localonly” command that replaced bypassnro as the weapon of choice for the internet and Microsoft-account avoidant will also no longer work. Now it will simply reset the OOBE process and fail to bypass the Microsoft account requirement.
So, does this mean you'll absolutely must have a functional internet connection and a Microsoft account to install Windows 11 once this Insider Build rolls out to the masses? Possibly not.
Oh how we yearn for the good old days of internet-free installs. (Image credit: solarseven via Getty Images / Microsoft)
According to this Reddit post, there may be another work around. "In OOBE, go through MS account creation. Tell it you were born today. It'll let you set a password for the MS account before rejecting you due to COPA requirements. At this point, you can make an offline account without having even created an MS account, let alone having to use one.
"This will not go away - it's a legal thing. MS doesn't want to deal with COPA stuff for very young kids, so this flow exists. Enjoy."
We haven't had the opportunity to try that workaround yet. But we're generally hopeful that methods to install Windows 11 without an internet connection and a Microsoft account will remain. Given the broader Swiss-cheese like qualities of Windows, it seems unlikely that Microsoft has nailed down every single possible workaround.
It's also likely that enterprise editions of Windows will continue to support initial local accounts before joining corporate domains. And there's the Rufus method, which Andy describes here, and may still work even after this update.
Speaking of which, Andy called it when he said, "I can't help but feel, however, that this may just be the beginning of a crackdown on these sorts of workarounds." That does indeed seem to be the case and the days of internet-free installs without a Microsoft account look distinctly numbered.
A history teacher at Rutgers University has been chased not only out of town, but out of the United States by a blood-thirsty MAGA mob after he dared to talk about anti-fascism to the press.
Mark Bray, author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook (2017), began teaching as an assistant professor at the university in 2019, but abruptly fled to Spain with his family this week after he was pummeled with death threats and accused of leading "antifa" by indoctrinated Trump fans. — Read the rest
Social media is awash with images from Portland, Oregon, where an addled Donald "Grandpa Pudding Brains" Trump has been misled into believing "the city is on fire." There is no fire, only peaceful citizens, abusive ICE Gestapo, and dancing.
Folks in inflatable suits are seen as threatening by the Brownshirts, for some reason. — Read the rest
Bob Ross, famous for his hair, his brushwork and his happy little trees, is rarely to be found at auction houses despite the vast number of canvases he generated producing The Joy of Painting for PBS. The warehouse owner plans to let some go, though, to help public television after the Trump administration cut off $1.1bn in funding to it. — Read the rest
"What do we do now?" "What do you mean? Now we play the game."
The limits of Minecraft's procedural-generation math become apparent the further away you get from your starting position. First you cross into the jitters, a region where movement gets all, well, jittery. Keep going and eventually you'll reach the Far Lands, an alien landscape where patterns of blocks stop resolving into pleasant hills and streams, instead forming gigantic sky-dominating structures that reach to the topmost limit of block-generation where they're sheared flat, with dark crevices running between them.
Kurt J. Mac began his long walk to the Far Lands in March of 2011, and on October 4, 2025, he finally arrived. He's been streaming his journey as Far Lands or Bust on Twitch, taking donations for charity as he goes and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Child's Play, Direct Relief, the Progressive Animal Welfare Society, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East over the years.
Finally arriving at the Far Lands, kurtjmac climbed to the top of them to take some screenshots, briefly experiencing existential horror when he saw his completely dark character model in the third-person view. "Aah! I don't exist!"
Climbing back down to the ground, he assembled a sign to memorialize the spot. "Here Farlanders First Set Foot upon Far Lands! October 4, 2025" it says. Accompanied by his dog Wolfie, kurtjmac has since continued exploring, meeting a Far Lands cow and trying not to get eaten by spiders. "Now we've gotta play Minecraft," as he put it.
As reported by The Verge, Discord has announced that one of its third-party customer service partners was recently compromised by an "unauthorized party," who Discord states was attempting to "extort a financial ransom."
While the hackers did not gain access to Discord directly, some users' data was impacted by the breach—specifically data shared with Discord's Customer Support and Trust & Safety teams, including government IDs shared for age verification.
Discord stated in a press release that anyone impacted by the breach will be contacted soon over email. The types of data potentially at risk include names, Discord usernames, email addresses, contact information, payment types, the last four digits of credit card numbers (but not CCVs or full credit card numbers), purchase history, IP addresses, messages shared with customer support, and "limited corporate data."
The most concerning data caught in the breach is a limited number of government ID images shared with Discord for age verification purposes, such as passports or driver's licenses. Discord added that, "If your ID may have been accessed, that will be specified in the email you receive." Notably, no passwords, authentication data, or messages "beyond what users may have discussed with customer support" was compromised in the breach. Discord also stated that it has revoked the impacted customer support partner's access to its systems.
If you haven't shared info with Discord's Customer Support team recently, you most likely won't be impacted by this breach. However, if you think your data may have been leaked, keep an eye out for an email from Discord. If your ID was involved in this breach, you may want to take a look at the IRS or NCSC's identity theft and data breach guides.
This data breach at Discord makes it clear why people around the world are concerned and frustrated by these policies—even beyond issues of censorship, there are clear risks involved in giving scans and photos of sensitive data like government IDs to companies that might not have the security to protect that data.
Convicted felon and liable for sexual assault, Donald Trump and his merry band of cronies didn't refuse to negotiate with Democrats over an insistence on providing undocumented people emergency health services; they did it to advance their plan to remake the United States of America into a place that sucks. — Read the rest
Men, boys, and eggs of my acquaintance, I cannot stress this enough:
Nobody worth being with will ever judge you based on your deli sandwich choices.
Sincerely, a dude who had to watch like two dozen men pretend to find vegetarian sandwiches unthinkable in order to maintain a sense of masculinity today.
The sando gender spectrum I osmoted this weekend according to a specific type of dude:
1. Roast beef is the most masculine of sandwiches. The only sandwich it is permissible to ask for by name (we did not have roast beef as an option).
2. Ham is an acceptable substitute for roast beef. There appears to be some controversy, however, over the bread options; we only had two, croissant or ancient grains roll (gluten free). Croissant is considered slightly more manly than ancient grains UNLESS you are under 20 in which case “ancient grain” sounds badass.
3. Turkey is okay, obviously not ham but if you don’t like ham it’s an option as long as you don’t show enthusiasm for it. Definitely has to have mayo however. Mustard is a bit much. (Initial field research indicates mayo is the manliest of condiments but we have not introduced barbecue sauce into the study yet.)
4. Chicken salad is woman food. Absolutely not acceptable unless you announce loudly that it’s for your wife or that she’s making you for your health.
5. Vegetarian wraps require a recoil reaction or a sheepish “oh, no, no, what meats do you have?” protest. We had the veggie wraps off to one side so vegetarians could get to them more easily, and guys would come up to the wrap boxes because there was no crowd/line, then I’d say “that’s veggie wraps” and they’d stagger back.
To be clear, most of the people of all genders at the event were totally fine, this was a small and specific set of guys – mostly older dudes and (unsurprisingly) their young sons or grandsons. Maybe 20-30 people out of the 400+ attendees. But it really was both sad and a little funny to watch them unnecessarily assert their manhood using deli meat to me, a guy in a floral shirt with neon blue hair handing out box lunches at a charity event. My indifference to your masculinity is so vast it has its own international calling code, fellas.
Friends, I have volunteered in the lunch tent once more and I have new scientific findings to share regarding the Sandwich Gender Spectrum.
We still do not serve roast beef, the most toxically manly of all sandwiches, but it turns out that there is a sandwich option almost as masculine, the mention of which will preclude a certain type of dude from even asking for roast beef:
The Italian.
For those unfamiliar, an Italian sandwich in most American sandwich shops is composed of ham, capicola, salami, and sometimes pepperoni, with provolone, the usual sandwich veggies, and a drizzle of Italian dressing.
The hierarchy from ham-downwards remains undisturbed by this revelation currently rocking sandwich discourse, but new data has indicated that the Italian sandwich occupies a special place above ham and technically below roast beef but so acceptable a substitute for roast beef that I only had one guy ask me for it this time around. I would say, “We have ham, Italian, turkey, or veggie,” and the Certain Kind Of Man would look skeptically at the ham and then ask for an Italian.
I am now working on my doctoral thesis in Sandwich Gender, where I will be examining whether there is a direct correlation between how masculine a sandwich is and how weirdly homoerotic the name is. I’m going to call it “I’d Like An Italian: Gender And Sexuality Between The Buns.”
Ahead of the Sandwich Gender Spectrum Studies Department’s annual report on the September 2025 new data release, I wanted to share some recent findings by a research colleague at a prestigious academic institution on the east coast:
ALT
My sample size is growing all the time and my research is replicable.
Field work in sandwich gender studies, sandothropology if you will, can be challenging at times. While my thesis has been supported by both independent researchers such as above and grant-holding professionals (aka “people who work in food service”), the window of time in which I perform my yearly field survey is brief.
This year a new variable was introduced. The selection of sandwiches we were given to hand out was reduced to three: ham, turkey, or vegetarian. For the first time, the vegetarian option was a sandwich and not a wrap, as well.
There seems to be something about the idea of a wrap that makes it particularly unpalatable to a Certain Kind Of Person; we didn’t have anyone getting hissy about being offered vegetables this year, and also got far fewer remarks about getting a turkey sandwich “for the wife” or “because she’s making me”. Perhaps when your options are realistically ham or turkey, rather than an array of choices that you have to navigate correctly, the social pressure eases off. Plus, ham and turkey both fall in the middle of the spectrum, so they’re a little more ambiguous than say, roast beef and chicken salad. Why bother performing gender for two almost equivalent options? (There’s a bisexuality joke in here somewhere.)
I did have one guy furiously lecture me for about two minutes because we didn’t have any sandwiches on wholegrain bread, but if we’d had more sandwich options he’d have been mad we were spending the organization’s money unwisely on sandwich fripperies (I know him of old) so that barely registered.
Announcing the September 2025 Inner Hive Drive: Join Tom the Dancing Bug's Inner Hive, and you'll not only get weekly emails with pre-publication access to each week's comic and other content, but the first year's fee (details at link) will be donated to Immigration Law & Justice New York to help fight Trump's illegal and horrific war on immigrants. — Read the rest
[ID: headline reading: “Pregnant Mother in Tennessee Denied Care for Being Unmarried. The 2025 Medical Ethics Defense Act allows physicians to deny care to patients whose lifestyles they disagree with.” End ID]
“Last Thursday, at a town hall in Jonesborough, Tennessee, a 35-year-old woman shared her story: she was denied prenatal care by her physician because they objected to the fact that she wasn’t married, nor did she plan to be. She’d been with her partner for 15 years and they have a 13-year-old child.
While going through her medical history, the physician told her that because she was unwed, they didn’t feel comfortable treating her, because it went against their values and she should seek care elsewhere. At the time of the appointment, the woman believed she was about four weeks into her pregnancy.
Now, she’s traveling out of state to Virginia to receive prenatal care.
This is the first reported case of a woman being denied prenatal care for being unmarried in the state of Tennessee.
On April 24th, Tennessee’s 2025 Medical Ethics Defense Act went into effect. It gives physicians, hospital systems and insurers, among others, the legal right to deny healthcare to patients based on religious, moral or ethical beliefs. There are no protections for people in rural areas with limited options. There’s no requirement to refer patients elsewhere. And there’s no legal recourse. The woman at the town hall explained that her representatives are not responsive to her questions, even as she repeatedly calls Sen. Marsha Blackburn. When she reached staff at Sen. Bill Hagerty’s office, they told her, “he’s not obligated to listen to his constituents.””
The mentality of “Because I don’t fuck with your personal lifestyle choices, I will not give you necessary care and fulfill my duties as a healthcare provider” is how people die of a lack of care.
The UK-based Telegraph has a long piece that describes former Marine Thomas Jacob Sanford, the man shot and killed by police after attacking a church, as a known Trump supporter. The US media doesn't seem to want to tell that part of the story. — Read the rest
At Sony's State of Play today, Eidos-Montréal and developer Aspyr announced that a remaster of classic immersive sim Deus Ex is coming to PlayStation 5 next year.
There's no mention of Xbox or PC versions in the trailer, but we've confirmed separately that Deus Ex Remastered will also come to both platforms. On PC, it'll be available on Steam, and there's a store page up now.
As beloved as Deus Ex is on PC, I wonder if this will be bigger news for the console crowd. Deus Ex is a PC classic through and through, and as such, fans have kept the original fresh themselves with mods. GOG will supply you with fan overhaul Deus Ex: Revision, for instance.
The official remaster will feature "new lighting, dynamic shadows, particle systems, and upscaled textures," according to a post from Aspyr on the PlayStation Blog. They've also rebuilt the character models, added lip-syncing to the dialogue, and thrown ragdolls into the mix. (I'll basically never say no to ragdolls, so sure, why not?)
In a press release, Aspyr and Eidos-Montréal also noted a few quality of life additions: Deus Ex Remastered will include "autosaves, faster loading, achievement tracking, and cloud saves on supported platforms," as well as ultrawide and multi-monitor support.
I also wonder if a full remake wouldn't make the most sense here: You can get the original Deus Ex for 97 cents on Steam at the moment, so this remaster might be a tough sell at $30.
Granted, it can be easier to recommend a game to friends when it comes optimized for modern PCs with the quality of life features they expect. Deus Ex Remastered is scheduled release early next year: February 5, 2026.
The Pokémon Company says the US government did not have permission to use Pikachu and other Pokémon content promotional videos for the Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection agencies posted to X—but what it's going to do about it, if anything, remains to be seen.
The first video, a montage of ICE agents and police blowing up doors and arresting people mashed up with music and video clips from the Pokémon TV show, was posted on the evening of September 22. It also features the words "Department of Homeland Security" spelled out in the Pokémon font. It's the sort of thing I would not have believed could possibly be real if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but there it is.
DHS followed with a series of Pokémon-style "cards" bearing images of people convicted of crimes in the US.
But that wasn't the end of it: A couple hours later, Customs and Border Protection got in on the act with an animated image of Pikachu, calling him "Border Patrol's newest recruit."
Support for the display in replies was widespread—it's X, after all—but there was pushback too, and calls from some for The Pokémon Company, or Nintendo, to take action against what was presumed to be unauthorized use of the property.
In a statement provided to PC Gamer, The Pokémon Company International confirmed that the US government did not have permission to use the content, but left the question of what comes next unanswered.
"We are aware of a recent video posted by the Department of Homeland Security that includes imagery and language associated with our brand," it said. "Our company was not involved in the creation or distribution of this content, and permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property."
Nintendo, one of the owners of The Pokémon Company, is notoriously litigious when it comes to dropping the hammer on people who can't effectively fight back. But former Pokémon Company chief legal officer Don McGowan thinks this is likely a fight it doesn't want: The Pokémon Company International is "INSANELY publicity-shy," he said, and perhaps more compelling in light of the US government's recent treatment of South Korean workers at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, "many of their execs in the USA are on green cards."
"Even if I was still at the company I wouldn't touch this, and I'm the most trigger-happy CLO [Chief Legal Officer] I've ever met," said McGowan, who became well-known for his aggressive pursuit of Destiny 2 abusers and cheaters during his post-Pokémon years at Bungie. "This will blow over in a couple of days and they'll be happy to let it."
For its part, Homeland Security doesn't seem inclined to change tack. In response to my inquiry about the unauthorized use of Pokémon intellectual property, a DHS spokesperson invoked lyrics from the Pokémon theme song, saying, "To arrest them is our real test. To deport them is our cause."
Yesterday, we shared images of a statue placed on the National Mall that had been approved and granted a permit to remain in place until Sunday, the 28th. I was just informed by the artists, The Secret Handshake Project, that the artwork was destroyed in the middle of the night, with no notice, by US Park police. — Read the rest
ALT
