Technologies
How to Sign Up for Sling Freestream
Access hundreds of live channels and thousands of on-demand titles for free.

Sling Freestream is the rebranded free tier of Sling TV and it’s super easy to sign up for an account and begin watching free content there. It’s one of the best free streaming services available, offering over 200 ad-supported channels and over 40,000 on-demand titles to stream at no cost.
While you can watch Freestream content without the need to create an account, logging in to the service offers a more personalizable experience with the ability to mark channels as favorites, create a watchlist, initiate parental controls or continue watching content across all of your devices. You’ll need to follow the below steps to create an account if you want those features.
How to sign up for Sling Freestream
1. Head to the Sling Freestream website.
2. Click on Create a Free Account.


You’ll find a prominent button to create your free account.
Screenshot by Adam Oram/CNET
3. Enter your email address, your desired password and click Create a Free Account.


Enter your email address and create a strong, unique password.
Screenshot by Adam Oram/CNET
4. That’s it! Simply click Start Watching Now to begin streaming.


Click Start Watching Now to stream live or on-demand content.
Screenshot by Adam Oram/CNET
There’s no need to add a credit card unless you decide to upgrade to a paid Sling Orange or Blue account or opt supplement your free viewing with the occasional movie rental.
Sling
With hundreds of live channels and a library of TV shows and movies to watch on-demand for free, and no credit card required, you can check out what Sling Freestream has to offer without spending a dime.
How to use Sling Freestream without an account
If you live in the US, you can head to the Sling Freestream website and watch live or on-demand content for free without the need to create an account at all. Click Stream Free to access the live channels content catalog without the need to log in.
As mentioned at the outset, you’ll benefit from some more personalization and parental control tools if you do create an account. The service is free either way and doesn’t require a credit card.
Those outside of the US can enjoy Sling Freestream by using a VPN. With a VPN, you’re able to virtually change the location of your phone, tablet or laptop to a US server and gain access Sling Freestream from anywhere in the world. Most VPNs, like our Editors’ Choice, ExpressVPN, make this easy.
Sarah Tew/CNET
ExpressVPN is our current best VPN pick for people who want a reliable and safe VPN, and it works on a variety of devices. It’s normally $13 a month, and you can sign up for ExpressVPN and save 49% plus get three months of access for free — the equivalent of $6.67 a month — if you get an annual subscription.
Note that ExpressVPN offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
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.
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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.
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