Netflix’s December lineup has a little something for everyone, from familiar original series to live sports. Emily in Paris returns for a fifth season (Dec. 18), this time set in Rome. The final installment of Stranger Things is coming at the end of the month—the first half of season five premiered in November—with volume two releasing at 5 p.m. PT on Christmas Day and the finale at 5 p.m. PT on New Year’s Eve.

There’s also Love Is Blind: Italy (Dec. 1) and My Next Guest with David Letterman and Adam Sandler (Dec. 1), in which Letterman joins Adam Sandler backstage on his comedy tour, and What’s In The Box? (Dec. 17), a new game show hosted by Neil Patrick Harris.

On the film side, Daniel Craig returns as Detective Benoit Blanc in a new Knives Out mystery called Wake Up, Dead Man (Dec. 12). The standalone sequel to Glass Onion also stars Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, and Andrew Scott.

Goodbye June (Dec. 24) also has a stacked cast, including Helen Mirren, Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough, Johnny Flynn, and Kate Winslet—the film is her directorial debut. Four siblings are dealing with their mother’s nearing death over the holiday season.

Finally, the live events lineup in December includes Jake vs. Joshua: Judgment Day (Dec. 19) and two Christmas Day NFL match-ups: Cowboys vs. Commanders and Lions vs. Vikings.

Here’s everything else coming to Netflix in December, and everything that’s leaving.

What’s coming to Netflix in December 2025

Coming soon

• Cashero—Netflix Series

• Pro Bono—Netflix Series

• Robby Hoffman: Wake U—Netflix Comedy Special

Available December 1

• All The Empty Rooms—Netflix Documentary

• CoComelon Lane: Season 6—Netflix Family

• Love is Blind: Italy—Netflix Series

• My Next Guest with David Letterman and Adam Sandler—Netflix Series

• Playing Gracie Darling—Netflix Series

• Troll 2—Netflix Film

• A League of Their Own

• As Good as It Gets

• Bad Teacher

• Big Momma’s House

• Big Momma’s House 2

• Brightburn

• Burlesque

• Cheaper by the Dozen

• Cheaper by the Dozen 2

• Christmas Break-In

• Downton Abbey

• Godzilla

• Hollow Man

• Joy for Christmas

• Kung Fu Panda

• Kung Fu Panda 2

• Kung Fu Panda 3

• Little Women

• Pulp Fiction

• Stripes

• The Ugly Truth

• Victoria: Seasons 1-3

• What Lies Beneath

• The Wolf of Wall Street

• Zero Dark Thirty

Available December 2

• Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches: Season 2

• Matt Rife: Unwrapped – A Christmas Crowd Work Special—Netflix Comedy Special

Available December 3

• My Secret Santa—Netflix Film

• The Northman

• Stranded with my Mother-in-Law: Season 3—Netflix Series

• With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration—Netflix Series

Available December 4

• A Lot Like Christmas

• The Abandons—Netflix Series

• The Believers: Season 2—Netflix Series

• Forrest Gump

• Fugue State 1986—Netflix Series

• I Wish You Had Told Me—Netflix Film

• Lali: Time to Step Up—Netflix Documentary

• Mean Girls (2004)

Available December 5

• Jay Kelly—Netflix Film

• Love and Wine—Netflix Film

• The Making of Jay Kelly—Netflix Documentary

• The New Yorker at 100—Netflix Documentary

• The Night My Dad Saved Christmas 2—Netflix Film

• The Price of Confession—Netflix Series

• Owning Manhattan: Season 2—Netflix Series

Available December 7

• Babylon

• Cast Away

Available December 8

• Elmo and Mark Rober’s Merry Giftmas—Netflix Family

Available December 9

• Badly in Love—Netflix Series

• Blood Coast: Season 2—Netflix Series

• Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within—Netflix Documentary

• The West Wing: Seasons 1-7

Available December 10

• The Accident: Season 2—Netflix Series

• Record of Ragnarok: Season 3—Netflix Series

• Simon Cowell: The Next Act—Netflix Documentary

Available December 11

• The Fakenapping—Netflix Film

• Had I Not Seen the Sun: Part 2—Netflix Series

• Lost in the Spotlight—Netflix Film

• Man Vs Baby—Netflix Series

• Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft: Season 2—Netflix Series

• The Town—Netflix Series

Available December 12

• The Amazing Digital Circus: Season 1: episodes 5-7

• City of Shadows—Netflix Series

• Home for Christmas: Season 3—Netflix Series

• Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery—Netflix Film

Available December 13

• The Talented Mr. Ripley

Available December 14

• PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie

Available December 15

• A Cowboy Christmas Romance

• Christmas at the Chalet

• The Christmas Classic

• Christmas on the Alpaca Farm

• The Creature Cases: Chapter 6—Netflix Family

Available December 16

• Castle Rock: Seasons 1-2

• Culinary Class Wars: Season 2—Netflix Series

Available December 17

• The Manny: Season 3—Netflix Series

• Murder in Monaco—Netflix Documentary

• What’s In The Box?—Netflix Series

Available December 18

• 10DANCE—Netflix Film

• Emily in Paris: Season 5—Netflix Series

Available December 19

• A Time For Bravery—Netflix Film

• Breakdown: 1975—Netflix Documentary

• The Great Flood—Netflix Film

• Jake vs. Joshua: Judgment Day—Netflix Live Event

Available December 22

• The Closer: Seasons 1-7

• Elway—Netflix Documentary

• Sicily Express—Netflix Series

Available December 23

• Eden

• King of Collectibles: The Goldin Touch: Season 3—Netflix Series

Available December 24

• Downton Abbey: A New Era

• Goodbye June—Netflix Film

• Tom Segura: Teacher—Netflix Comedy Special

Available December 25

• Christmas Gameday: Cowboys vs. Commanders—Netflix Live Event

• Christmas Gameday: Lions vs. Vikings—Netflix Live Event

• Stranger Things 5: Volume 2—Netflix Series

Available December 26

• Cover-Up—Netflix Documentary

Available December 29

• Members Only: Palm Beach—Netflix Series

Available December 30

• Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story—Netflix Documentary

• Ricky Gervais: Mortality—Netflix Comedy Special

Available December 31

• Sleeping with Other People

• Stranger Things 5: The Finale—Netflix Series

What’s leaving Netflix in December 2025

Leaving December 1

• Austin Powers in Goldmember

• Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery

• Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

• Back to the Future

• Back to the Future Part II

• Back to the Future Part III

• Beverly Hills Cop

• Beverly Hills Cop II

• Beverly Hills Cop III

• Billy Madison

• Clueless

• Cold Pursuit

• The Dark Tower

• Downton Abbey

• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

• Edge of Tomorrow

• Escape Room

• Game Night

• The Goonies

• The Happytime Murders

• Inglourious Basterds

• Kicking and Screaming

• The Nutty Professor

• The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps

• Paddington

• Wonka

Leaving December 3

• How I Met Your Mother: Seasons 1-9

Leaving December 5

• Compliance

Leaving December 7

• Gods of Egypt

Leaving December 9

• Daddy’s Home

• Daddy’s Home 2

Leaving December 17

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2

Leaving December 18

• The 100: Seasons 1-7

• Arrow: Seasons 1-8

• Supernatural: Seasons 1-15

Leaving December 25

• Transformers

• Transformers: Age of Extinction

• Transformers: Dark of the Moon

• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Leaving December 29

• 10 Things I Hate About You

• Idiocracy

• Sweet Home Alabama

Leaving December 30

• Ready Player One

Leaving December 31

• Evil: Seasons 1-3

On Monday, veteran game developer Rebecca Ann Heineman died in Rockwall, Texas, at age 62 after a battle with adenocarcinoma. Apogee founder Scott Miller first shared the news publicly on social media, and her son William confirmed her death with Ars Technica. Heineman’s GoFundMe page, which displayed a final message she had posted about entering palliative care, will now help her family with funeral costs.

Rebecca “Burger Becky” Heineman was born in October 1963 and grew up in Whittier, California. She first gained national recognition in 1980 when she won the national Atari 2600 Space Invaders championship in New York at age 16, becoming the first formally recognized US video game champion. That victory launched a career spanning more than four decades and 67 credited games, according to MobyGames.

Among many achievements in her life, Heineman was perhaps best known for co-founding Interplay Productions with Brian Fargo, Jay Patel, and Troy Worrell in 1983. The company created franchises like Wasteland, Fallout, and Baldur’s Gate. At Interplay, Heineman designed The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate and Dragon Wars while also programming ports of classics like Wolfenstein 3D and Battle Chess.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Federal health officials have linked two massive US measles outbreaks, confirming that the country is about two months away from losing its measles elimination status, according to a report by The New York Times. The Times obtained a recording of a call during which officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed to state health departments that the ongoing measles outbreak at the border of Arizona and Utah is a continuation of the explosive outbreak in West Texas that began in mid- to late-January. That is, the two massive outbreaks are being caused by the same subtype of measles virus.

This is a significant link that hasn’t previously been reported despite persistent questions from journalists and concerns from health experts, particularly in light of Canada losing its elimination status last week. The loss of an elimination status means that measles will once again be considered endemic to the US, an embarrassing public health backslide for a vaccine-preventable disease.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With iPadOS 26, Apple is finally giving the iPad a software experience that’s worthy of its increasingly powerful hardware. But it’s still very much a start. Answering calls to make the iPad more like a Mac, Apple has added much-requested features like freeform window multitasking, background app processes, better file management, and more. It’s surprising how much you can now do on an iPad that was just not possible before. And for many users, especially school/college students and some business users, the new changes can actually translate to tangible productivity gains. But for most, it’s probably still worth holding onto your Mac.

The iPad’s new windowing system is good, but a bit messy

Apple now offers three different multitasking modes on the iPad. And it can be a bit overwhelming. There’s the default Full-Screen mode, the new Windowed Apps mode, and the old-school Stage Manager mode.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

But for most users, I think defaulting to the Windowed Apps mode is the best option. This is where you can use the handle icon in the bottom-right corner of any window to resize it and move it anywhere you want. Need to open another app? Just repeat the process (although I think it’s pretty jarring that every new app first opens full-screen, and then needs to be resized down).

If you have a newer, more powerful iPad, Windowed mode lets you comfortably use seven or ten apps together in the same desktop without missing a beat. That’s not a limit with iPadOS 26, to be clear, but once you go over 10 apps, things start to get a bit laggy. I can pull off opening a couple of apps together on my aging iPad Pro from 2018, but that’s about it.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

You can use the new traffic-light buttons (straight from macOS) to close, minimize, or expand your windowed apps (something I’m still not used to). You can also swipe down from the top to access a Mac-like menu bar. This will hold app-related shortcuts and offer ways to move or dock apps to the left or right.

The Windowed app mode also has a version of the classic Split View, if you just want to dock two apps side by side. Pick up a window, and flick it to the left or right. When there are just two windows on the screen, you’ll see a little handle in the middle to freely resize the windows.

Credit: Jake Peterson

With the iPadOS 26.1 update, Apple also brought back Slide Over, a crowd favorite that lets key apps slide in and out of view as needed, but it works in a slightly different manner now. From the menu bar, you can pin any window to the top of the screen to be your Slide Over app. And because this window itself is freeform, you can now resize it to any size you want (something that wasn’t possible before). Though, it’s still a downgrade in a sense because you can only pin one window at a time (before, you could pin multiple windows in Split View and switch between them like you do on the iPhone).

I’ll admit that all of this can seem like a bit much on such a small, touch-based screen, especially for the iPad users who are used to the traditional approach to Split View and Slide Over. Apple really isn’t helping the case by separating out the different modes. Though, like most things, it’s a learning curve that you can get over pretty quickly. In time, I think the gesture for resizing windows will become second nature.

How the iPad is inching closer to the Mac

Beyond Windowed mode, The iPadOS 26 update rights many other wrongs, all of which bring over key functionality from the Mac, though there are still sometimes caveats.

External monitor support is finally worth using, and doesn’t require you to use Stage Manager. Now, the display automatically adapts to the 16:9 aspect ratio of the monitor, so no more black bars. But you still can’t use the external display as the primary display, as you can on the Mac (the menu bar and Control Center still only work on the iPad). That means you always have to have the iPad display on, and you can’t connect to more than one external monitor.

Credit: Khamosh Pathak

The Files app is also much improved, combining a column layout with the ability to expand nested folders while in the same view. You can also add custom-colored icons. Plus, you can now add folders to the Dock for quick access. And finally, you can assign a default app for file extensions right in the Files app. The new Preview app makes it easy to view and mark up PDFs and images, too.

There’s also support for background tasks in the Files app and some third-party apps. That means longer actions, like moving large folders or downloading large files, can continue in the background (monitored via Live Activities). Switching to a different app won’t kill large exports of render jobs. There’s even a new Local Capture feature that lets you record professional audio from any attached microphone, and it supports independent audio capture from multiple microphones at once. A boon for podcasters and YouTubers.

How the iPad still falls behind the Mac

The iPadOS 26 update has a lot of useful, desktop-like features. But at its core, it’s still iPadOS, built on iOS. It is still sandboxed, and installing apps from outside of the App Store is not intended and requires lengthy workarounds. Many popular desktop-class apps also just won’t work on the iPad (like the full version of Adobe Premiere, the macOS version of Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, coding IDEs, and more). Even Safari on the iPad is limited, and doesn’t offer desktop-class support. A lot of heavy/dynamic sites refuse to function on the iPad, but work well on Safari on a Mac.

There’s also no Terminal, so you can’t do things like running Homebrew projects, automation scripts, and more. iPadOS 26, is still single-user focused, so you can’t create multiple accounts like you can on the Mac. As discussed above, the external display mode, while a nice addition, is also severely limited.

Can you replace a Mac with an iPad?

Can an iPad replace your MacBook? The answer to that question is more personal than ever. Subjectively, I can say not yet. While the new windowing system and background processes are a great start, it still lacks the core features that make a Mac so helpful. For someone like me who relies on desktop-class apps, dynamic websites, and loves the hundred little utilities that are only possible on the Mac, the iPad really can’t replace my MacBook.

But the iPad can be a great companion for me, and is. I love using the iPad for research, reading, taking notes, and watching media. Now, with the new features in the iPadOS 26 update, I can see podcasters and even content creators take up an iPad as their main computer. It really depends on your workflow. For light workflow like editing documents, managing PDFs, taking notes, emails, and online meetings, the iPad is very much comparable to the Mac. And thanks to its cellular connectivity, it might even have an edge for people who are always on the road. If you like the idea of a light-weight tablet that’s built-really well, or if you’re a creative, the iPad can make a lot of sense for you.

For everyone else, I would recommend you pick up at least an M4 MacBook Air, which goes on sale regularly and costs less than an iPad Pro.

Computers are extremely good with numbers, but they haven’t gotten many human mathematicians fired. Until recently, they could barely hold their own in high school-level math competitions.

But now Google’s DeepMind team has built AlphaProof, an AI system that matched silver medalists’ performance at the 2024 International Mathematical Olympiad, scoring just one point short of gold at the most prestigious undergrad math competition in the world. And that’s kind of a big deal.

True understanding

The reason computers fared poorly in math competitions is that, while they far surpass humanity’s ability to perform calculations, they are not really that good at the logic and reasoning that is needed for advanced math. Put differently, they are good at performing calculations really quickly, but they usually suck at understanding why they’re doing them. While something like addition seems simple, humans can do semi-formal proofs based on definitions of addition or go for fully formal Peano arithmetic that defines the properties of natural numbers and operations like addition through axioms.

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Tsinghua University collected 4,986 AI and machine learning patents between 2005 and the end of 2024. The Beijing institution has received more than 900 patents last year alone. The total exceeds the combined patent count from MIT, Stanford, Princeton and Harvard during the same period. China now accounts for more than half of all active patent families globally in AI and machine learning fields, according to data analytics service LexisNexis.

The university also has more AI research papers among the 100 most cited than any other school at last count. The US still holds the most influential AI patents and the top performing models. Harvard and MIT consistently rank ahead of Tsinghua in patent influence. American institutions produced 40 notable AI models in 2024 compared to 15 from Chinese organizations, according to Stanford’s AI Index Report. China’s share of the world’s elite AI researchers — the top 2% — rose from 10% in 2019 to 26% in 2022. The US share fell from 35% to 28% during the same period, according to the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ghost of Yōtei is a lengthy game with tons of activities to do. But if you’ve beaten it and are already itching to jump back in, it might be best to wait until at least November 24 to do so. That’s when developer Sucker Punch will release an update that will introduce a bunch of new features to the PS5 title, including a New Game+ mode. 

That means you’ll be able to experience Atsu’s mission for revenge from the beginning again with all of the weapons, abilities and armor sets you unlocked from your first playthrough. Those early-game enemies are about to feel the wrath of many a flaming kusarigama. 

You’ll need to finish the main story before you can unlock New Game+, which includes tougher difficulty options and a pair of new trophies to snag. The free update will introduce extra upgrades for existing weapons and armor sets, along with a new ghost flowers currency that you can swap for fresh armor sets, weapon dyes and charms while playing New Game+.

There are a number of features coming to the base game as well (i.e. for all players, not just those who dip into New Game+). Directional button remapping is one of several new accessibility options. Photo Mode will gain new filters, a shutter speed tool and a composition grid. Also, after you’ve beaten the main story, you’ll be able to replay missions and quests. With a new stats display, you’ll be able to see how long it took you to win a given duel, for instance.  

Ghost of Yōtei isn’t getting an expansion quite yet. We’re crossing our dual katana for an Iki Island-style DLC for the game. In any case, Sucker Punch has already confirmed that Ghost of Yōtei Legends — which will be akin to the multiplayer mode in Ghost of Tsushima — is on the way in 2026.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/playstation/a-ghost-of-yotei-update-will-add-a-new-game-mode-harder-difficulties-and-more-on-november-24-150750632.html?src=rss