Adam Epstein

Launched in the UK in 2011, Black Mirror—which some have dubbed “The Twilight Zone for the Digital Age“—reached global prominence when it appeared on Netflix in December. That’s lofty praise, given that The Twilight Zone might just be the most important television series of all time. While no show may ever achieve the same mythic status that The Twilight Zone earned, Black Mirror honors its intellectual precursor well—it is at once a biting satire of the modern era and a hugely entertaining and suspenseful anthology.

The Interview—the film lampooning North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that wasn’t, then was—will be available to stream on Netflix in the United States and Canada starting on Saturday, Jan. 24.

American Sniper made $105 million in its opening weekend, the most ever for an R-rated movie. While the box office success of Clint Eastwood’s film is significant, it’s not exactly surprising. Typically, movies about the Iraq War don’t do well financially, but American Sniper is a different kind of war movie coming at a different moment in time.

A UK space robot has been found after 11 years of hanging out—intact—on the Martian surface, while the scientists who sent it thought it was obliterated on impact.

Once again, America’s most secretive institution is making noise on Twitter. In a series of tweets, the CIA described how it snuck Russian copies of Boris Pasternak’s subversive novel Dr. Zhivago into the Soviet Union during the Cold War, where it was banned. The CIA then linked to 99 declassified documents detailing the operation, codenamed AEDINOSAUR.

Fans of the movie Selma can breathe a little easier. After being snubbed by BAFTA, the Golden Globes, and the Producers Guild of America, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to honor one of the year’s most tightly crafted films—and one with deep cultural and political resonance—with a Best Picture nod.

After years of on-again, off-again drama, one of the most coveted boxing bouts in history is inching closer to actually happening. Manny Pacquiao has agreed to fight Floyd Mayweather on May 2 (Mayweather’s desired date) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas (Mayweather’s desired venue) and will accept a 60-40 split of the purse—the 60%, obviously, going to Mayweather.

Google’s Translate app is trying even harder to turn you into a polyglot—or at least the closest thing to it. The latest update to its mobile app is basically like having a translator following you around wherever you go, whispering answers in your ear, and rewriting foreign words in front of your face.

Now you see me…

Twitter user Terence Eden (@edent) created a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story using Twitter. The popular series of children’s stories during the 1980s and 1990s, which let readers make decisions to advance the plot in different directions, allowed interactivity in a printed book. Presented with a series of options, the reader would be directed to another page with more options based on their decisions, and so on, until reaching one of many possible endings.

US Central Command, responsible for the Pentagon’s military affairs in the Middle East, was hacked Monday afternoon by a group called the “CyberCaliphate.” The group briefly took control of CENTCOM’s YouTube and Twitter accounts, before both were suspended.

Following the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris, millions tweeted using the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie to honor the 12 victims and support their commitment to free speech and expression.

Many gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas are too impractical or expensive for the average global consumer to care about. Others are merely showy concepts that no one ever actually buys. But some, like Intel’s new “compute stick,” are cool, useful, and relatively affordable.

Italian prosecco makers’ anger is bubbling over at British pubs and wine bars for serving their popular sparkling wine out of a tap instead of a bottle. They claim that a European Union regulation from 2009 makes it illegal to serve prosecco the wrong way. If the practice is not stopped, they say, the pubs should be prosecuted for fraud and fined.

NASA announced the discovery of eight Earth-like planets outside of our solar system, and one of them has perhaps the best chance scientists have found yet for harboring extraterrestrial life.

Updated at 1:02pm ET with Sony’s statement.

The surface of Venus is like a much hotter version of Mordor. The average temperature is around 900 degrees F, atmospheric pressures are 90 times that of Earth’s, and it’s full of very active volcanoes.

A team of 100 engineers from places like NASA, SpaceX, and Boeing have joined forces to try to turn Elon Musk’s ambitious Hyperloop high-speed train concept into reality. Brought together by crowdsourcing-meets-crowdfunding company JumpStartFund, they united to launch Hyperloop Transportation Technologies to develop the idea, and last week they released a 76-page report (pdf) spelling out how they propose to make it happen. According to the document, they believe they can make the Hyperloop commercially viable in just 10 years, at a cost of $16 billion.

Film, as a whole, had an up and down 2014. If the first half of the year was mostly bereft of quality movies (here’s to you, The Grand Budapest Hotel), then the second half has been absolutely packed with excellent films that justify the Academy’s decision a few years ago to expand the Best Picture nominee field to 10. The box office was uneven, too, following up its worst summer slump in eight years with a considerable rebound in the fall.

A new study in the British Medical Journal has made official something many have argued for a long time: the advice Dr. Oz gives on his famous American television show can be dangerous to follow.

With the news this week that the US and Cuba will resume diplomatic relations for the first time in over 50 years, many will want to visit Cuba for the first time. It’s important to note that while the US is indeed loosening travel restrictions to Cuba, it is not yet officially allowing tourism. In order to fully lift the embargo and permit all travel, Congress will have to get involved—and that could be a long and messy fight.

The National Film Preservation Board added the Coen brothers’ perpetually quotable cult classic The Big Lebowski to the National Film Registry this year, preserving it in the Library of Congress for all time and cementing The Dude as one of film’s most beloved characters. Among the 24 other films added were Saving Private Ryan, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Excellent selections, if I do say so myself.

Tom BetGeorge is a music teacher by day, but at night he’s a light-show Jedi. The California man has engineered a Christmas light display set perfectly to John Williams’ iconic Star Wars score. It was featured on ABC’s The Great Christmas Light Fight, a TV show that needs no explanation. Watch it below:

When was the first time you went to the doctor or ER by yourself? Or the first time you filled out your medical history form without having to ask your parents whether you’d had a meningococcal vaccination or if there’s a family history of heart disease?