Technologies

How to Watch His Dark Materials Season 3

Lyra and Will are back to close out with a bang.

His Dark Materials season three — the conclusion to the HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy — debuts Dec. 5 at 9 p.m. ET. There are several places online where you can stream the excitement, depending on which country you’re watching from — and whether you’ve got a reliable virtual private network.

Here are the most up-to-date streaming services where you can watch the final season of Lyra and Will’s adventures, along with ways to get around geo-blocks and streaming glitches by using a VPN.

Where to watch His Dark Materials season 3

If you want to stream His Dark Materials online from inside the US, you’ll find it exclusively on HBO Max. The season’s eight episodes will arrive weekly at 9 p.m. EST, starting Dec. 5.

HBO Max also offers a free, 7-day trial if you’re interested in test-driving the service before committing to a monthly cost.

How to watch His Dark Materials, season 3, for free

US viewers who would like to take HBO Max up on its free, 7-day trial offer will be able to stream His Dark Material, season 3, for free as part of that trial. But that only helps you watch the first two episodes of the show’s eight-episode final season, unless you wait for all eight episodes to be released before starting your trial.

Viewers in the UK, Canada and Australia have similar options to get started — but only Canadian viewers will be able to watch the premiere on Dec. 5. Viewers in Canada can watch the debut on Crave’s on-demand streaming platform. The service costs CA$20 monthly but it offers a free, 7-day trial if you’re a new subscriber.

Viewers in Australia will be able to watch the season 3 debut on Tuesday, Dec. 6 on Binge. The streaming platform costs just AU$10 monthly. Its free trial period is more generous, with a full 14 days available to new subscribers.

Finally, UK viewers won’t get to watch the season 3 premiere until Dec. 18 at 7:30 p.m. GMT, when it finally arrives on BBC iPlayer. However, the iPlayer is free to use with a valid UK television license.

We don’t recommend seeking out the TV series on fly-by-night illegal streaming or torrenting sites, but if you’re determined to do so, we strongly advise you to make sure your antivirus is up to date and your VPN is installed before you navigate to them. And remember: Never give those kinds of sites your credit card information.

Read more: Best VPN for Your Smart TV

How to watch His Dark Materials with a VPN

A well-tested, high-performing VPN can make viewing your favorite streaming platforms much easier. Even if you subscribe to a video streaming service where His Dark Materials is available, you may have problems accessing it in the catalog of movies available to you. If you’re internet service provider has issued you an IP address that’s wrong for the video library, or if you’re traveling while trying to watch your home country’s catalog, you may end up only being able to access movies and TV shows outside your normal viewing area.

Here’s how to quickly use a VPN to get access to the correct media libraries, to stream His Dark Materials when it premiers.

Read more: How We Test VPNs

1. Choose the right VPN for your needs.

If you’re choosing a VPN to stream video, you’ll want one with a few key criteria: top-notch speed test performance, a strong ability to disguise its traffic as normal traffic (a feature called obfuscation) and a network of servers that are optimized for media experiences so that your streams aren’t dropping in and out.

If you’re in a country where streaming certain content may be illegal according to local censorship laws, you’ll want to make sure your VPN provider offers well-tested security, and that you are only using the VPN on your laptop or home router — not your mobile phone. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve carefully followed any additional instructions from your VPN provider on configuring your VPN set-up for maximum privacy.

However, if you’re looking for an option that’s friendlier on your budget, we recommend a range of affordable VPNs, like Surfshark, that have also passed our security tests with flying colors.

Looking for other options? Be sure to check out some of the other great VPN deals taking place right now.

2. Connect to the correct country in your VPN.

Once you’ve installed your VPN, you’ll want to open the VPN app up and select the country where His Dark Materials is currently available for streaming on your platform of choice when season 3 premiers. In this case, HBO Max users would select and connect to a US server in your VPN’s list. Crave users would connect to Canadian servers.

After Dec. 6, Binge users would connect to Australian servers to watch the series. And, after Dec. 18, BBC iPlayer watchers would select a UK-based server when connecting.

Remember: It’s important to connect to your VPN before you log into — or create a new account for — your streaming subscription service.

3. Log into your streaming service.

You’ve installed your VPN, powered it on, and connected to the correct country. You’re nearly done!

Now all you have to do is log into your streaming media provider as normal. So navigate to HBO Max, BBC iPlayer, Crave or Binge — and then log in as you typically would. Once you’re in, you can use the platforms search bar to find His Dark Materials.

You’re ready to stream!

If you find that your streaming service still doesn’t work with your VPN running, make sure you’ve followed your VPN providers instructions and installed any browser-based plug-ins your VPN may need. If you’ve followed the directions and your settings are correct — then try closing all windows, restarting your machine, and first connecting to your VPN before doing anything else. That will ensure that your device is securely connected to your VPN and reduce the chances that your non-VPN IP address is interfering with your connection process.

Technologies

Bill Gates Has Published the Original Microsoft Source Code

It’s «the coolest code I’ve ever written,» the Microsoft co-founder says.

If you want to see the original source code that started Microsoft, Bill Gates is now sharing it. On Wednesday, the Microsoft co-founder posted it on his Gates Notes blog, reminiscing about the company’s early days for its 50th anniversary. Gates has written plenty of code in those five decades but he called this «the coolest code I’ve ever written.»

Sharing a photo of himself holding a huge pile of paper showing the code, Gates wrote that he was inspired by the January 1975 copy of Popular Electronics magazine. The magazine had featured a cover photo of an Altair 8800, a groundbreaking personal computer created by a small company called MITS.

The 19-year-old Gates and his Harvard pal Paul Allen reached out to Altair’s creators and told them they had a version of the programming language BASIC for the chip that the Altair 8800 ran on. Such software would let people program the Altair.

«There was just one problem,» Gates wrote. «We didn’t.»

Micro-Soft is born

Gates said he and friends «coded day and night for two months to create the software we said already existed.» Gates and Allen then presented the code to the president of MITS, who agreed to license the software. «Altair BASIC became the first product of our new company, which we decided to call Micro-Soft,» Gates wrote. «We later dropped the hyphen.»

And the rest, as they say, is software history. You can download that 50-year-old code from Gates’s post. «Computer programming has come a long way over the last 50 years, but I’m still super proud of how it turned out,» he wrote.

Read more: Best 16 Xbox Games Right Now

Melinda Gates: new book

Also making headlines this week was Gates’s former wife, Melinda French Gates, whose new book, The Next Day, comes out April 15. As that date approaches, she’s opening up about the end of her marriage to Gates.

The couple divorced in 2021 after 27 years and three children. According to People magazine, Melinda French Gates wrote in the book that in 2019 she was «having nightmares about a beautiful house collapsing all around her — and then waking up in a panic night after night.»

She acknowledged what Bill Gates has publicly stated — that he wasn’t always faithful in the marriage — and said she was also disturbed by Gates’s meetings with child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Bill Gates has since said he regrets meeting Epstein.

Melinda French Gates said her bad dreams would eventually change into images of her family on the edge of a cliff where she «plummeted» into a void. «I knew, in that moment, that I was going to have to make a decision — and that I was going to have to make it by myself,» she wrote, according to the People article.

Technologies

The Zelle App Has Shut Down. Here’s How You Can Still Send Money Digitally

The digital payment service has killed its free app, but many banks still support sending money with Zelle.

There are tons of digital payment apps for sending money to friends, family or for paying for services, but if you’ve been using the Zelle mobile app, you’ll need to find something new. The service decided to shutter its free app on April 1.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use Zelle altogether. Zelle has only discontinued its standalone app, so you can still send money using Zelle if your bank belongs to the Zelle network. You’ll just need to do it through your bank’s app or website. You also have other services to choose from. Here’s what you need to know about this change and your options moving forward.

TAX SOFTWARE DEALS OF THE WEEK

H&R Block Free Simple Tax Returns eFile:

$0 (save $0)
TurboTax Deluxe 2024 (Federal and State, PC/Mac Download):

$56 (save $24)
TurboTax Premier 2024 (Federal and State, PC/Mac Download):

$83 (save $32)
TaxSlayer Classic Plan:

$28 (save $10)

Deals are selected by the CNET Group commerce team, and may be unrelated to this article.

Why the Zelle app is shutting down

When Zelle launched in 2017, only about 60 US financial institutions offered the service by the end of that year. Today, that number exceeds 2,200. As a result, less than 2% of Zelle transactions occur through the standalone app. Zelle has been phasing out the ability to make transactions on its mobile app since October 2024.

«Today, the vast majority of people using Zelle to send money use it through their financial institution’s mobile app or online banking experience, and we believe this is the best place for Zelle transactions to occur,» Zelle said in an October 2024 press release.

In December, Zelle was in the spotlight when the Consumer Financial Protected Bureau sued the company and three of the largest US banks for failing to protect consumers from widespread fraud on the peer-to-peer payment network. The lawsuit has since been dropped.

Other ways to send money digitally

You can still use Zelle through your bank’s app or website if it belongs to the Zelle network, which includes Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, TD Bank, PNC Bank and Citi.

You can also switch to another digital payment app, such as:

Apple Wallet
Cash App
PayPal
Venmo

Take some basic precautions when using Zelle or any other digital payment service. These apps are a frequent target for scammers, and Chase Bank has started blocking some Zelle payments it believes could be fraudulent. Only send money to people you know and trust, and watch for red flags like an urgent message claiming to be from your bank or an online ad for concert tickets that seem impossibly cheap.