Welcome to The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardware talk from the enthusiasts at PCWorld. Missed the latest topics on our YouTube show or the hot news from across the web? You’re in the right place. Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website! I’ve been called “process oriented” more than once in my life. I don’t mind. People take systems for granted, but their structure provides a sense of safety and security. Until they don’t. I feel a lot people missed the point last month, when news circulated about 2.5 billion Google users potentially at risk following a data leak. Everyone immediately jumped to the idea that passwords needed to be changed—not a bad instinct, as we ended up discussing on The Full Nerd this week. But as that very conversation illustrates, people usually focus on the smaller details: who got hacked, if data was leaked, and whether a password change is warranted. (Spoiler: I believe that changing a password takes so little time, you should just do it when the topic ever comes up.) What most folks don’t focus on the fact that Google’s data leak happened through a major third-party vendor—and followed on the heels of other major companies suffering data leaks through the same source. That external company is Salesforce, no small player either. When I hop on my computer or phone each day, I believe in the technology. I assume the services and apps I use won’t add extra demands to my day. But with the ever-expanding scope of data breaches and leaks, that trust is slipping. And perhaps it’s a good thing that it is. A password manager is just one part of keeping on top of security disasters that are out of our control. IDG As end users, you and I have little control over the systems we all rely on. But we do have a say over our response to chaos. Problems occur when I assume peace and tranquility, and then a huge disruption lands on my doorstep. Right now, people focus on what to do in the moment, and breathe a sigh of relief when the damage doesn’t appear to be widespread. For this example, Google ended up clarifying that no accounts were compromised as a result of the Salesforce leak—and the talk started turning to no one having to worry. I’m a contrarian on this point. I say we should keep talking about how to handle online security, especially as the largest players fall victim to exploits. Not just the thing to do at the moment, but how easily a person can enact those changes. So yes, folks should know to update their passwords any time there’s a breach. That’s still vitally important. But a user should ideally be able to rotate a password in just a few minutes, too—they should operate in a way where it can happen fast, without needing to be thought about again later on. Because what happens on the day that Google does fall to a breach? Or DNS finally folds in on itself because hackers are no longer content to mess around for sheer amusement? Most people haven’t planned for such disruption.  How well would you cope? In this episode of The Full Nerd In this episode of The Full Nerd, Alaina Yee, Brad Chacos, Will Smith, and Michael Crider chat about AM4 getting another extension on life and the current best practices for online security. At least, that’s what went on the books—in practice, we squeezed in a bonus discussion about AMD’s ROCm software, based on Will’s recent interview. I may also be sporting a very special new look this week.  (I can’t say it grew on me—at least not literally—but you know what, I’d do it again sometime after Adam returns from his IFA travels.) Welcome to this episode of The Full Beard.Willis Lai / Foundry Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd Network YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real-time! Don’t miss out on our NEW shows too—you can catch the episodes Dual Boot Diaries and The Full Nerd: Extra Edition now! And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds. This week’s wonderous nerd news A long holiday weekend in the U.S. makes for quieter news, but some nifty science, several fun projects (including a retro gaming setup that works off your PC), and a new gaming keypad got my brain going. My wallet is also lighter now, too. It’s pretty, for sure.Keychron An engineer used AI to convert ASCII art to real-time graphics: The concept definitely caught my attention. AI as a “translator” between mediums is an interesting idea. (As for how good the art looks…let’s chalk that up to matter of taste.) Car transmission fluid, the new coolant? I present to you this week’s contender for “Why? Well, why not?” (That said, this experiment netted 7 to 16 percent performance gains. Nice.) You can turn a USB flash drive into a portable games console: This fun project comes courtesy of my colleague Dominic Bayley. It leans on an inexpensive thumb drive and Batocera to work, plus whatever input (controller or keyboard) you like best. And ROMs that you have legal standing to use, of course. I’m onboard for this style of nostalgia: This LEGO concept is neat—and we should push it further. Translucent plastic cases always looked good. Give me more products like the Teenage Engineering PC case, but in original iMac candy colors! This homebrew Commodore 64 Datasette sports 1MB per tape: I can only aspire to this level of ingenuity. Keychron has a new one-handed gaming keypad: But oof, that price tag. It actually made me just bite the bullet on its far cheaper sibling, in order to try my hand at full keyboard gaming. Wish me luck, I’m gonna need it. So much cool science: I’m a simple person. Jelly ice and glowing succulents sound dope. I’m becoming more of a PC gamer for this reason: Console prices have now bucked their historical trends and gone up while aging—a result of U.S. tariffs. Meanwhile, I just bought another Steam license for Untitled Goose Game because I could afford it. (Am I a real PC gamer now?) Catch you all next week—maybe by then, I can report back on how my attempt to transition from my specialized PC gaming controller to full keyboard navigation is going. I have a feeling my initial notes will include a lot of colorful language. Alaina This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld. Read...

Test your sporting knowledge with our weekly quiz on current sports events. Read...

No professional sport has been more savvy and enthusiastic about offering new ways to present football games to fans. There are more options than ever for watching–and streaming–NFL games in 2025. Our in-depth guide will show you all the ways you can watch every game of the season without needing to pay for an expensive cable or satellite TV subscription. Watch football with an over-the-air antenna Unlike the NBA, NHL, or MLB, the NFL plays a simple 17-game schedule, with each team playing one game a week. That lends itself to predictable TV programming. The league splits the Sunday afternoon telecasts by conference: generally, AFC games air on CBS, and Fox televises the NFC games. NBC hosts the popular Sunday Night Football broadcast. Those games generally kick off each week at 8:20 p.m. ET. ABC broadcasts many Monday Night Football at 8:00 p.m. ET, but you’ll need access to ESPN to see every Monday-night game. So, if you have an over-the-air TV antenna and reasonable proximity to a broadcast tower, you should be able to watch most of the NFL action for free. We can help you find the right antenna for your needs. When I want to know which game is on which channel, I consult either 506Sports.com or Sports Media Watch. I suggest you bookmark one or the other for easy access. Amazon Prime Video will stream all Thursday Night Football games for the 2023 NFL season. Streaming services offering NFL games Even if you don’t have a cable subscription or a TV antenna, you still have plenty of options for catching all the pro pigskin action. Streaming options continue to expand each season, and you need only a smart TV or a media streamer and a subscription to access them. These are our top picks in streaming devices If you don’t already have one. Verizon is once again offering a free season of NFL Sunday Ticket to new and existing subscribers who are willing to jump through some hoops, but Sling TV offers the least-expensive means of watching NFL games if you can’t use an antenna. Its new short-term “passes” deliver access to its Orange channel bundle, which includes ESPN. A $4.99 Day Pass provides 24 hours of access, a $9.99 Weekend Pass is good Friday through Sunday, and $14.99 Week Pass covers you for seven consecutive days. Unfortunately, ESPN owner Disney has filed a lawsuit to stop Sling from including ESPN in these passes. Stay tuned. Sling also offers a more complete TV offering with its Orange and Blue packages, which include local broadcast channels (ABC, Fox, and NBC, but not CBS) in some markets. Subscribe to both for $60.99 per month, and you’ll also get ESPN and the NFL Network, while its Sports Extra add-on ($11 a month) includes NFL RedZone. I’ll cover the streaming services that compete with Sling in a moment. NBC-owned Peacock streams Sunday Night Football on its Premium ($10.99/mo) or Premium Plus ($16.99/mo) service tiers if you can’t use an antenna to receive those broadcasts. Prime Video is the home of Thursday Night Football (TNF). Amazon will stream 15 games, including the Black Friday game (Eagles vs. the Bears, in Chicago, November 28) and the Christmas night game (Broncos vs. the Chiefs, in Kansas City, December 25). You’ll need to be an Amazon Prime subscriber to watch those matches. While only the hardest of hardcore football fans will sign up solely for NFL games, membership does offer lots of other benefits, starting with free expedited shipping on Amazon purchases; Amazon music, movies, and TV shows; video games; and a Grubhub+ subscription. Subscriptions cost $14.99 per month or $139 per year. Netflix, now in the second year of its three-year Christmas deal, will exclusively stream two games on December 25: The Dallas Cowboys at the Washington Commanders at 1:00 p.m. ET, and the Detroit Lions at the Minnesota Vikings at 4:30 p.m. ET. Netflix subscriptions range from $7.99 per month for the ad-supported tier to $24.99 per month for 4K resolution and spatial audio. Together with the evening game on Prime Video, this creates a Christmas tripleheader. DirectTVStream offers CBS, NBC, Fox, and ESPN in its $84.99-per-month Entertainment package. New subscriptions come with a $35 discount for a month, before reverting to whatever the current monthly price is. Sling TV’s Day, Weekend, and Week Passes give you access to its Orange channel bundle, which includes ESPN.Sling Fubo will give you CBS, FOX, and NBC for all Sunday games, as well as ESPN for Monday Night Football and the NFL Network as part of its Pro package, which costs $84.99 per month. Currently, it’s offering $30 off the first month. For an additional $10.99 per month, you can also get NFL RedZone via the service’s Sports Plus add-on. Hosted by Scott Hanson and existing only for about a seven-hour window each Sunday, RedZone airs nothing but the day’s highlights (mostly touchdowns, as the name suggests) at a frenetic pace that perfectly evokes the adrenaline rush of a game-winning drive. Here’s an easy guide to signing up for NFL RedZone. Both Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV include ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, and NFL Network in their subscriptions for $82.99 per month each. Currently, New YouTube TV customers can get the first three months for $49.99 before the rate reverts to the regular price. YouTube TV also offers NFL RedZone as part of its Sports Plus add-on for an additional $10.99 a month. YouTube also offers NFL Sunday Ticket, which lets you stream every out-of-market NFL game on Sundays. Returning NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers can add it to their YouTube TV subscription for an additional $47.25 per month for the eight months of the regular season ($378 in total). New subscribers who sign up before September 30, however, will pay $34.50 per month for those eight months ($276 in total). If you don’t want to pay for YouTube TV, returning NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers can sign up via YouTube PrimeTime Channels for $60 per month ($480 for the season). Here again, new subscribers get a break, paying $34.50 per month ($276 for the season). Just be aware that neither of these options can be cancelled and there are no refunds. Netflix, which created the popular Quarterback documentary, has deepened its ties with the NFL through a three-year deal to host the league’s Christmas package. This year, that includes the Cowboys at Commanders at 1 p.m. ET and the Lions at Vikings at 4:30 p.m. ET. Netflix offers three paid plans: Standard with ads ($7.99 a month), Standard ($17.99 a month), and Premium ($24.99 a month), with perks such as additional device support, the ability to add members, and spatial audio tacked on as you move up the tiers. Paramount+ streams CBS’s NFL telecasts to subscribers of its $7.99-per-month Essential plan. We have another story that provides even more details about watching NFL games on Paramount+. Peacock will exclusively carry a Week 17 primetime matchup on December 27, 2025, as part of its “Peacock Holiday Exclusive.” It will also stream all NBC Sunday Night Football games, including the playoffs, and the Football Night in America studio show. A Peacock Premium plan costs $10.99 a month; a Premium Plus Plan, $16.99 per month, removes ads and enables you to download and watch select titles offline. What’s included with an NFL+ subscription? NFL+ is the NFL’s own streaming service, which replaced its popular subscription package, NFL Game Pass. A $6.99-per-month ($49.99 per season) NFL+ subscription allows you to watch local and primetime games live on your mobile devices. It also includes access to live out-of-market preseason games, live game audio, and the NFL Network. If you level up to an NFL+ Premium plan, which costs $14.99 per month ($99.99 per season), you’ll get everything in the standard NFL+ plan; plus, NFL Red Zone and the ability to replay every regular-season game after its conclusion in either full or condensed versions. The NFL+ Premium plan also gives you access to the NFL Pro platform. Targeting the league’s most rabid fans, this offering allows subscribers to dive into the games’ minutiae via the ability to search through the All-22 coaches film, which lets you watch games from different angles to analyze plays in detail. You also gain access to player and performance metrics via NFL Next Gen Stats, which uses sensors and RFID tags to collect data on everything from ball movement to player speed, acceleration, and location. It’s worth noting that you don’t need to purchase a separate subscription to get on-the-go access to live games, as that’s offered with many of the services listed above. NFL+ replaces the league’s NFL Game Pass subscription streaming service. With it, you can stream out-of-market pre-season games live on any device. You can watch live regular-season games on your smartphone or tablet.Michael Brown/Foundry What’s next for NFL streaming? Super Bowl LIX, drew more than 123 million viewers across all platforms, once again ranking as the most-watched broadcast in U.S. television history. That record audience proves fans are willing to follow the league wherever it goes. The bigger question is how far the NFL will push exclusive streaming in future seasons. With multiple platforms now claiming pieces of the schedule, fans already face juggling subscriptions—and rising costs—if they want to see every game. If the league continues down this path, it could reshape how we experience live sports in the 21st century as profoundly as the shift to broadcast television did in the 20th. Read...

If you were paying extra for ESPN+, you might not need to anymore. That’s one key takeaway from the launch of ESPN’s standalone streaming service, which includes all the network’s cable channels along with the service formerly known as ESPN+ (and now called ESPN Select). As more TV providers start bundling ESPN’s new streaming service, they’re essentially adding ESPN+ at no extra charge. So, if your TV package includes ESPN Unlimited, take a minute to make sure you’re not subscribed separately to ESPN+. You’ll only be paying more for the same exact programming. ESPN+ vs. ESPN Select vs. ESPN Unlimited First, a quick refresher on ESPN’s confusing streaming plans: ESPN+ was the previous name for ESPN’s $12-per-month subscription service. It mostly covers live sports that do not air on ESPN’s cable channels, including out-of-market NHL games, La Liga and Bundesliga soccer, and Major League Rugby. ESPN Select is the new name for the subscription with just ESPN+ content, which still costs $12 per month. (The network says it will continue to mark this content with ESPN+ branding.) ESPN Unlimited is the new $30-per-month plan for all of ESPN’s cable programming, including live sports on ABC, extra channels such as ESPN2, and the ACC and SEC college networks. It also includes the full ESPN+ catalog. ESPN Unlimited is a big deal because it means you don’t need a big pay TV bundle to access the network’s cable programming anymore. Even so, several pay TV providers have started boasting about making the service available to their customers. In practice, this just means they’re bundling ESPN+ and allowing customers to stream through the ESPN app. Which pay TV providers include ESPN Unlimited? ESPN’s website maintains a list of providers offering ESPN Unlimited. Here they are as of September 3, 2025: Spectrum TV Select Signature and Select Plus (activate here) Fubo base plans and Sports plan (activate here) Hulu + Live TV (log into the ESPN app with your MyDisney account) DirecTV MySports and Signature plans (streaming only for now, activate here) Starting on September 4, Verizon will also offer ESPN Unlimited to all customers who get ESPN as part of a Fios TV package. DirecTV says it will bring ESPN Unlimited to satellite and U-Verse customers later this fall. What if my TV package doesn’t include ESPN Unlimited? Other providers, such as YouTube TV, Comcast, and Sling TV, haven’t announced any plans to include ESPN Unlimited. But if you don’t care about ESPN+ programming, that’s not a problem. Just like before, you can access ESPN channels via your TV provider’s menu system or log into the ESPN app with your pay TV account. The only practical difference is that you won’t have access to ESPN+ content, which costs $12 per month on its own and doesn’t require a full ESPN Unlimited subscription. Just don’t pay for ESPN+ twice For TV packages that didn’t already include ESPN+, the addition of ESPN Unlimited means you’re essentially getting it for free. Spectrum, for instance, had only offered ESPN+ with its TV Select Plus package, which costs $130 per month. A spokesman confirmed that Spectrum’s $125-per-month TV Select Signature plan now includes ESPN Unlimited as well. DirecTV, Verizon, and Fubo, meanwhile, had not included ESPN+ in any of their standard streaming packages. All three companies confirmed that ESPN+ content is part of their ESPN Unlimited offerings. So if you were paying $12 per month for a standalone ESPN+ subscription, you should be able to cancel it and get the same content through the above TV providers. Likewise, if you’re paying for Disney’s “Trio” bundle with Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, you can save $6 per month by paring back to the “Duo” bundle instead. Occasionally auditing your subscriptions is always a smart idea, but it’s especially important now as programmers start re-bundling their programming in new ways. Otherwise, you might end up paying for duplicates. Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for more money-saving streaming advice. Read...

Illegal sports TV streams are popular all around the world—so much so that they’re among the most popular IPTV offerings alongside classic streaming content from Netflix, Prime Video, etc. Unsurprisingly, these streams are also a huge thorn in the sides of authorities. But yesterday, sports piracy took a huge blow after Egyptian police successfully took down Streameast, the largest known provider of illegal sports streaming content. According to the US-based Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), Streameast (and its 80+ related domains) were recently taken offline. With around 1.6 billion visitors per year and content offerings from around the globe—including Champions League matches to Formula 1 races to MMA fights to other sports like the NFL, NBA, and NHL—Streameast was the most iconic provider of pirated sports streams. The operators of Streameast were reportedly tracked down in a large-scale operation on August 24th. Two men from Cairo, who were arrested by police, were apparently responsible for running the sites and have been operating for around 15 years. They also apparently invested a large part of their income in bogus companies and property. It isn’t yet known whether revenue from the streaming portals or material assets were confiscated in the process. All existing Streameast domains will now be redirected to an ACE information page that highlights 140+ legal providers of streaming content and live broadcasts. More action against illegal providers Authorities around the world are increasingly taking action against providers of illegal streaming services, and more and more operators have been arrested in recent years. As a rule, they operate professionally and disguise their operations by distributing offers to potential users via numerous intermediaries and splitting them across several domains. However, users of such sites should be careful because piracy sites can be attack vectors for viruses and other malware. In some jurisdictions, use of illegal streams can result in steep fines and claims for damages. Even if it’s unlikely that the authorities will be able to trace every single user, the providers and their intermediaries usually keep logs of user activity and their associated payment methods, which can then be used to prosecute users after a service takedown. Read...

The take-down of the site has been championed as a major victory for live sports broadcasters. Read...

Sports editor Dan Roan assesses whether the Premier League`s unprecedented £3bn outlay during the summer transfer window, and the drama of a frenetic deadline day, raises concerns. Read...

For almost a year, the future of the world’s most popular web browser has been a question mark. After the United States declared Google an illegal monopoly in online search, federal prosecutors put forth a forced divestment of Chrome as one possible legal remedy. The case is now resolved, pending appeal, and Google won’t have to sell Chrome. (That rush of wind you just felt is a giant sigh of relief from Google’s C-suite.) Instead, Google will have to provide search index data and amalgamated user metrics to at least some of its competitors. Judge Amit Mehta ruled that the government prosecutors couldn’t prove that Google’s dominance in the browser space—just under 70 percent of market share, at the time of writing—was essential to its illegal monopoly in search, as Ars Technica reports. Ditto for Google’s operation of the Android mobile operating system, which it will also get to keep. And so the biggest shakeup in online power in decades won’t happen, at least not now. Things were starting to look interesting, too. OpenAI, the current juggernaut of the “AI” space thanks to ChatGPT, stated an interest in buying Google’s browser. Perplexity, makers of a competing “AI” search engine, made a public declaration of intent to buy Chrome if it became available, offering about $35 billion (which, incidentally, is about double the evaluation of the company, which had only 52 employees in 2024). So did Yahoo, which, yes, still exists as more than a sports betting outlet. Hey, I’m as shocked as you are. Plenty of Chrome fans would be happy enough to see Google retain control of the iconic browser. But arguably, the bigger change would have been under the hood. If Google can’t flex its dominance with Chrome, what happens to Chromium, the Google-funded open-source project that underpins both the browser and ChromeOS operating system powering Chromebook laptops? What happens to all the browsers that also rely on Chromium, and by extension Google? That includes Microsoft’s revamped Edge, Opera, Brave, and my own browser bestie Vivaldi. The only major browsers left that don’t heavily rely on Chromium are Apple’s Safari and Firefox, the lone semi-independent holdout. Google could still appeal this ruling, and previously said it would after it was declared a monopoly. But I’m wondering if it’ll carry through with that plan. Sharing search data with competitors is a loss for the company—especially as “AI” alternatives nip at the heels of its decades-long search engine dominance—but that dominance isn’t going anywhere for the time being. Mehta’s ruling is essentially a slap on the wrist at the level of power and money at which Google operates, a declaration that if you have a tech monopoly, you get to keep it. Ma Bell is rolling in its grave. Google just dodged the biggest bullet in its corporate history. I wonder how eager it is to try for another shot. Read...

A round-up of sports news from around the region, including a foul play review for Manu Samoa flanker Taleni Sua. Read...

There is a silent epidemic in our national game, and it is leaving a trail of tragedy here and overseas. Read...