YouTube has surprised the people of Finland today, as they have been unable to listen to their favorite songs on one of the more popular online entertainment platforms.
The world's most popular video service, sometimes used for listening to music and watching music videos, has blocked copious amounts of videos that feature music by artists represented by Teosto, a Finnish organization representing thousands of local and millions of foreign artists.
First reported by Iltalehti, Google owned streaming video service has blocked many of the videos containing music by Teosto represented artists. Block doesn't discriminate whether the content is official music videos or videos containing music by said artists, or whether the artist is Finnish or not.
According to Finnish national broadcasting company Yle, the licensing deal ran out and thus all the content was blocked by Google.
Currently if you are trying to access the videos in Finland you are prompted with a message saying: "This video contains content from TEOSTO. It is not available in your country." YouTube Help has also added a page explaining the block and its reasons for implementing it.
HDMI has been the de facto video and audio connection between TVs and digital entertainment devices for years now, but it certainly isn't the same connection it was in the early 2000s.
Now, more than a decade after the first HDMI specifications, the High-Definition Multimedia Interface has been adopted in billions of devices, and it's far more versatile that it was at version 1.0 with under 4 Gbps bandwidth.
The new HDMI 2.1 specifications have been released two days ago and they increase the speeds and compatibility even further. HDMI 2.1 supports up to 10K resolution video, which at this point in time can't be really even viewed on any device, not to mention there aren't a lot of 10K videos around. In addition it supports 8K at 60Hz and 4K at 120Hz.
Also it support dynamic HDR, a feature that is bound to be popular in the future. It allows high dynamic range, used in filming many of the films and TV shows these days, that can be altered on the fly for each frame individually.
The bandwidth has been increased to a maximum of 48 Gbps, over 10 times that of the original HDMI and nearly triple the bandwidth of previous iteration, HDMI 2.0. Also, for those wondering, HDMI 2.1 is fully backwards compatible with version 2.0.
Apple has once again sued the world's largest mobile chip manufacturer Qualcomm. As you might have guessed, it's once again another patent dispute where Apple thinks Qualcomm is breaking the law.
According to Apple, Qualcomm is using a patented technology that allows the chips to use less power and retain better battery life. The technology is used in a variety of Android phones that are powered by Qualcomm's popular Snapdragon chipsets.
Reuters reports that the feature allows the smartphones' processor to draw the minimum power needed at the time by turning off unnecessary cores. Apple says that this sleep and wake function is used in Snapdragon 800 and 820 chipsets released in 2013 and 2015 respectively.
This only the latest part in the drama between the two, as originally Apple sued Qualcomm for $1 billion in January for not paying certain royalties. According to the chip maker, they weren't required to pay after Apple had broken the contract at the time of the investigation.
Qualcomm then countersued Apple in the summer for infringing on its battery saving patents. Now the same feature has been used to turn around the tables once more.
The lawsuit was filed at U.S. District Court in San Diego, CA, where also Qualcomm's headquarters are located.
YouTube is the number one online video resource bar none, not even close. However, even the largest provider of video content has their problems (and we're not talking about demonetization here), one of which are the data requirements.
Obviously watching videos over the internet is very data intensive, and many of us understand that video is more requiring of your data connection than pictures or text. Google knows this and has been trying to develop all kinds of technologies to give access to video content to all, not just to people with unlimited LTE data.
This includes developing their own video codecs as well as better optimized versions of the service itself. The development of the latter has now taken a major leap forward as Google has finally released it to the public.
YouTube Go is meant mainly for people that do not have access to fast and unlimited internet access. It's a lighter, diet version, if you will, of YouTube app that allows the users to download videos for later viewing. It also lets you transfer videos via Bluetooth that obviously doesn't require perhaps costly internet connection.
Obviously many of us in the western world have access to unlimited, or something close to it (thanks U.S. carriers), so YouTube Go is mostly directed towards emerging markets. Thus the app has limited availability, and you'll have to jump through few hoops to get it in the U.S. or Europe.
Bitcoin has become increasingly more popular over the years but this year the cryptocurrency seems to have changed to a new gear. In less than a year Bitcoin value has skyrocketed.
The virtual, albeit no-less real, currency was valued just around a thousand US dollars at the turn of the year. Now 11 months later Bitcoin has managed to break the $10,000 milestone first time ever, ten times the January 1st price.
The trading has been heating up and the bubble is enlarging by the day. Bitcoin actually managed to barely break even $11,000 in a short-lived hike today but has since fallen clearly below. Just three days ago Bitcoin soared past the $9,000 limit and at the time of writing this, one Bitcoin costs $10,410.
Many think that the bubble is close to bursting and with such gains it is hard to argue against it, but this isn't the first time naysayers have seen doom and gloom in the near future.
However, to both economists, like Yale professor Robert Shiller, and regular observers alike this looks like a bubble of all bubbles. Even the dot com bubble seems slow and steady in comparison.
There's lot of controversy around Bitcoin coming even from inside the community. The hard fork followed by a cloned cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has divided the community apart. Some believe BCH is necessary for the evolution of Bitcoin as the future of currency, while others believe that it's a fraud and only tries to gain attention by abusing Bitcoin's name and status.
Earlier this fall Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of e-commerce giant Amazon, passed Bill Gates to become the richest man alive once again after switching places the past year. Now, having a net worth of over $93 billion is pretty good but it was still early in the year, so good ol' Jeff decided to improve the numbers a bit.
Obviously it was Black Friday that now has bumped the Amazon stock enough to increase Jeff Bezos' net worth to over $100 billion – $100,000,000,000. This is the first time anyone has boasted such a high net worth since Bill Gates nearly 20 years ago.
As Bloomberg notes, Bill Gates passed the magical $100 billion net worth in 1999 when he was at the top of his game.
While Black Friday might have taken Bezos over the milestone, and Cyber Monday will probably increase the gap to Bill Gates, it has been a steady rise all year for Amazon and its CEO. Amazon stock is up nearly 60% this year and Bezos' net worth is up nearly as much, over 50%.
Apple's iPhone X was released only three weeks ago but already Apple is catching up to the orders. This is obviously good news to anyone trying to find themselves a fresh iPhone X to celebrate the holidays, or perhaps even gift your loved one, with.
However, as Apple was rumored to be having issues with production far into 2018, reports that supply is catching up with demand might sound bad – especially if you have invested in Apple stock. It could mean that sales numbers are just not reaching quite as high as predicted.
For you with #AAPL stock, respected Apple analyst from KGI Securities, Ming-Chi Kuo, has some good news. According to Kuo Apple has managed to avoid the worst struggles with production capacity and shipping estimates or 1-2 weeks are no indication of week sales.
Kuo tells MacRumors that Apple's main supplier Foxconn is now able to produce up to 550,000 units compared to just 50,000 to 150,000 a month or two ago. The two bottlenecks, LTE antenna and Face ID dot projector, have been largely addressed.
This might result in better than expected sales in Q4, but shipments in early 2018 will be more comparable to Q4 2017 instead of solid increase predicted previously. One can expect a record-breaking Q4 from Apple.
You remember Tamagotchi, right? The Japanese virtual pet trapped in a tiny electronic device that you managed to kill by overfeeding. Well, that Tamagotchi is coming to a mobile device near you, Engadget reports.
After unveiling a 20 year anniversary edition of the original Tamagotchi last month, the company is everything but done celebrating their low-resolution pet. In fact, resolution is about to get way better, as Bandai Namco is releasing a new mobile game called My Tamagotchi Forever.
As you might imagine, in the mobile game you take care of your Tamatown virtual pets by feeding, bathing, and putting them in bed. Obviously you'll be reminded of your pets existence all too often, which is only appropriate in this day and age of notifications.
After Pokémon GO, Super Mario Run, and now Tamagotchi it seems like nostalgic Japanese franchises are making quite a comeback.
My Tamagotchi Forever is currently available only in Canada but global release seems to be imminent. The game will be available for both iOS and Android in 2018, probably fairly early in the year.
The image-sharing website Imgur has informed the public yesterday about a data breach that happened a few years back. According to a statement by Imgur, approximately 1.7 million accounts were compromised in 2014.
Imgur clarifies that hackers have seemed to have acquired email addresses and passwords of affected users, but there was no personally-identifying information to be acquired so no names, addresses or phone numbers have leaked.
However, while the passwords were encrypted, they used an older and less secure SHA-256 hash that could have been broken with brute force. Imgur updated their encryption algorithms to a more modern version last year.
If you've been affected, you should have already received an email from Imgur which prompted you to change the password immediately. Obviously changing passwords on every site that shared that password is necessary as well.
ProtonMail, the encrypted e-mail service, has now unveiled ProtonMail Contacts, which provides zero-access encryption for contact information.
Zero-access encryption means that the protected contact fields are encrypted in such a way that only you are able to decrypt and read them, not even ProtonMail can read them. While you can't encrypt the e-mail address of a contact (since ProtonMail needs to know where to send the email) you can encrypt other fields such as Address, Phone Number and Notes.
The goal of this feature is to provide another level of security for journalists and others who need to keep the identity of acquaintances (e.g. sources) as secret as possible while still being able to contact them.
In additional, digital signatures are utilizes to verify the integrity of contacts data, including the e-mail address. Verified fields are denoted with a tick. If verification fails (e.g. due to tampering), a very prominent red-background warning will display.
U.S. international trade body has prohibited Comcast Corp from importing types of set-top boxes in a patent dispute with Rovi Corp (now TiVo).
The ITC has prohibited the import and sale of Rovi's Xfinity X1 set-top box models that specifically violate two patents. It does not apply to legacy hardware that does not.
"Today's Commission Opinion reinforces the need for Comcast to take the necessary licenses to our IP," Rovi said in response to the commission's findings.
Comcast has confirmed it will appeal the body's decision. The ban could be overturned by U.S. President Donald Trump during the Presidential Review period.
Uber has fired two employees after a breach of user data was covered up last year, Dara Khosrowshahi has revealed to the public.
Khosrowshahi recently replaced co-founder Travis Kalanick as CEO at the ride-sharing giant. In a blog post, he said that the October 2016 data breach had only been revealed to him recently, and that two employees whose job it was to respond appropriatelky to a data breach have been fired as a result.
The names and driver's license numbers of around 600,000 drivers in the United States were stolen in the breach, along with some personal information of 57 million Uber users around the world which includes names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers.
The breach happened after hackers gained access to proptietary information stored on the GitHub service, which was then used to access Uber information held by a cloud-storage provider. For the record, GitHub has confirmed that its security was not breached as part of the incident.
Uber has not found any evidence of fraud or misuse tied to the incident so far, but is providing affected drivers with free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.
Uber drivers can get more information here, while Uber riders can seek information here.
Microsoft's Skype video-phone call and messaging service has disappeared from Apple's App Store in China, as well as stores for Android.
Apple confirmed to the Reuters news agency that the removal was down to the demands of Chinese authorites.
"We have been notified by the Ministry of Public Security that a number of voice over internet protocol apps do not comply with local law, therefore these apps have been removed from the App Store in China," a spokeswoman for Apple, said. "These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business."
While Google Play is not available in China at all, other app stores that cater to Android devices also removed the Skype application presumably for the same reason.
The incident is the latest setback for foreign tech companies in China, where the countries Great Firewall of censorship has caused considerable tension between the communist government and the tech industry.
WhatsApp, Facebook's encrypted messaging service, has also had recent outages in China.
The world's second largest semiconductor manufacturer, Intel, has announced a major project in mobile chips. The company has introduced a future portfolio for commercial 5G modems.
According to a press released, the XMM 8060 is the first commercial 5G modem developed by Intel and will take on major 5G suppliers, including the likes of Qualcomm and Nokia, in the next decade's fight for wireless supremacy.
In addition to the super-speedy 5G modem, Intel also announced a new XMM 7060 which improves the LTE speeds on mobile devices starting next year. As for the 5G modem, we'll have to wait a few year.
While we are waiting for the first commercial devices to equip the XMM 8060 in mid-2019, we'll have the 1.6 gigabits per second, Cat-19 LTE chip to speed our way through the last few years without 5G.
Intel also said that it is going to expand the XMM 8000 series with other modems that will bring 5G capabilities to computers and vehicles among other connected things.
This obviously solidifies Intel as a potential mobile powerhouse of the future, but it still has a long way to challenge long-running modem makers as proper competitor, and conquering the mobile sector has always been a struggle for Intel.
One of the more popular Windows cleanup tools, CCleaner, has added Avast ads on to their software. After being acquired by Avast, CCleaner wants you to install the virus protection suite along with CCleaner.
Avast bought CCleaner developer Piriform in July after which it was fairly clear that Czech security software company is going to utilize the new addition in new ways. One of these ways seems to be to try and push free Avast to CCleaner users.
In addition to CCleaner, Avast already has a similar cleanup tool called AVG TuneUp that troubleshoots and optimizes your Windows system. However, CCleaner is amongst the most popular Windows cleanup tools and certainly more known than Avast's offering.
Adding the huge user base of CCleaner to their pool of potential Avast customers is of massive value, and turning CCleaner into self-promoting adware is thus an obvious move.
The transition wasn't completely painful though – actually quite the opposite. After the acquisition CCleaner suffered from a hidden malware, according to Piriform caused by a hacker, that hit over 2 million computers.
Tesla announced yesterday two incredible products that are due in two or three years. However, you might not have the money, nor the interest, to buy either Tesla Semi or Roadster, but there is another new product that might catch your attention.
Tesla released a new battery pack, but it's not the type of battery back you charge your car from or light up your home with. It's a USB and Apple's Lightning enabled power pack for your smartphone or tablet.
The battery pack is called the Powerbank after their home battery solution Powerwall and it looks like one of those iconic Superchargers you charge you Tesla with. In fact, the Powerbank uses a single 18650 cell from a Model S or X as the battery, and it provides 3,350 milliamp hours of capacity. That means that it can top up a modern smartphone just about one time, depending on the model of course.
Unfortunately there are a few bad news if you'd like to get one. First of all, it's pretty expensive at $45. You can get a far bigger battery pack for fraction of the price on Amazon.
But you might not care about that, after all it's a Tesla product so you are expected to pay premium. Therein lies the second piece of bad news. It's already sold out. You'll just have to hope a second batch becomes available so you can gift yourself perhaps the most expensive, and most beautiful, external smartphone battery pack.
Apple has decided to push back one of the products originally revealed nearly 6 months ago in WWDC. The smart speaker, dubbed HomePod, has been delayed further and won't be seen in stores this holiday season.
Apple has not given a direct reason to delays, but it seems fairly obvious that the company would've liked to release it to the public before Christmas. Apple just said it needed more time to finish the product, and thus we do not know if the problems were in hardware or software.
One can, thought, speculate. It seems more likely that Apple wasn't happy with the Siri implementation, after all the hardware in an Echo-like smart speaker should be a breeze. However, software problems could be figured out later, at least if they are not major ones, so who knows.
No matter where the problem lies, it's a huge setback for a product that was meant to be a major player at the top of every gift list. I guess you'll now have to choose between one of the Echos and Google Home.
Apple did, however, promise that HomePod will be released in early 2018 in the U.S., UK and Australia.
Tesla has today announced two new vehicle prototypes that will bring the total number of Tesla cars, and now trucks, to six. As expected Tesla unveiled their "beastly" semi-truck the first time but not many expected a refresh to its first car, the Roadster.
With the semi-truck Tesla moves to a completely different market. Previously the company has been competing against specific small to mid-sized cars, and before the Model 3 even the production volumes have been rather low. Now the company has a new type of challenge.
According to all the specs and Elon Musk's price calculations everything seems promising, but you have to take into account that the company has never made a product even close to what they are attempting here. However, if everything goes according to the plan the first Tesla semis should hit the roads in 2019.
Now to the specs. According to Elon Musk, the Tesla semi destroys current semi-trucks in speed and acceleration both with cargo and without. Even with full load it gets to 60 mph in just 20 seconds.
Even better, Tesla semi is said to have up to 500 mile range (300 or 500 on the website), and cap top up the batteries with a supercharger in 30 minutes. The range is also calculated at full load and at highway speeds.
Apple has revealed that its upcoming patch will improve the quality of life of many 2017 iPhone owners. According to iOS 11.2 beta the iPhone 8 and iPhone X both will receive a boost to charging.
The company will increase the maximum wattage intake from wireless charging to 7.5 watts. This means that you'll be able to charge your wireless charging enabled iPhones potentially 50 percent faster with a supported charging pad.
Currently Apple only supports wireless charging up to 5 watts, which is very low considering that many pads can output up to 10, or even 15 watts. Apple's own charging pad, AirPower, is yet to be released, it should arrive early next year, but this update will improve charging with all charging pads that can charge at 7.5 watts.
One would think that Apple's AirPower is optimized for 7.5 watts (Apple hasn't disclosed details) which would perfectly explain the upgrade. Maybe Apple is even thinking of launching the product early to avoid people investing in 3rd party pads.
Currently iOS 11.2 is still in beta, but it is believed to be ready for stable release soon, perhaps in the coming weeks, or most likely at least before holiday season.
The Chinese manufacturer OnePlus has gained tremendous momentum after its initial smartphone release a few years back. The OnePlus One became a quick success with the help of the company's quirky, and obviously effective, viral marketing.
Since the first one OnePlus has unveiled a total of five other mid-range prices, but top-tier specced, smartphones. Today the company has announced their newest flagship.
The OnePlus 5T is, like the OnePlus 3T, a smaller upgrade to its predecessor. OnePlus 5T sports many of the same features as the OnePlus 5, the company's well received smartphone launched in June.
However, as rumors and leaks suggested, OnePlus has decided to release their first smartphone with a 18:9 ratio display that covers nearly the entire front panel. That means that fingerprint reader, and thus the entire home button, has been moved from the front bottom to the back.
The resolution of the screen has been upped from Full HD (1920 x 1080) to 2160 x 1080 as the size has changed from 5.5 inches to roughly six inches.
Cameras are looks on the surface to be as they were on the OnePlus 5 so you have a iPhone-like dual camera setup but there are some key differences. OnePlus tells us that the focal length has shortened and while that means optical zooming isn't possible like in the predecessor there's more light coming to the sensors which improves the photo quality, especially in low-light conditions.
For its entire history Android has had one massive problem: software fragmentation. That means that people are getting a different experience of Android depending on the country, carrier, manufacturer, or even if all of the above are same, device.
Unlike Apple, Google hasn't seemingly even been trying to solve the problem – although promising some solutions – and has just let the platform loose. This has allowed it to become by far the most adopted mobile operating system in the world, but it also means that there are now more problems of fragmentation than ever.
This is as open secret as there is about Android, and most of the Android users are pained by the fact that software updates, even when they are security related, take forever to come.
To attest to the fact a programmer by the name of Dan Luu has revealed that things might not be getting better but worse over time.
According to Luu, Google's operating system is just becoming less up-to-date, and there are only a few explanations for this: Android's slowing growth, device turnover slowing down, or devices aren't getting updates as often.
To expand on the problem, Luu compared the fragmentation data with Google's estimate of active Android devices. As nearly half of devices are running two year old software, which one can easily call outdated, and there are a total of two billion active Android devices, the math is pretty simple.
Electronic Arts, or EA, is one of the largest game developers in the world, and even though it sells more game than any other company, it has it's fair share of haters. EA like many other major developers are sometimes cutting corners, or even straight-up trying to milk the customers.
According to the gaming community, at least on Reddit, one of these instances was found earlier yesterday. On /StarWarsBattlefront subreddit a thread was created to discuss the horrific pricing of EA's Star Wars game franchise Battlefront.
Recently EA had announced new Darth Vader character to Battlefront II which could be attained by an in-game micro payment. Well, it just so happened that the price was far from micro at $80.
This lead to EA's customer support commenting on the thread, as EACommunityTeam, with explanations on why such a price would be appropriate. This included such things as to "provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment."
It appeared that the comment, claiming appreciation for candid feedback, wasn't received too well. In fact, it has been downvoted more than any other comment in Reddit history. Currently it stands at -683k points, approximately 660 000 more downvotes than the second least favorite comment in history.
Mozilla has released Firefox Quantum across platforms with a new slick UI and an overhauled core engine, providing for a speedier and lighter experience.
It's twice as fast as Firefox from six months ago, or at least Mozilla claims, and when we tested it out we noticed significant improvements under the new Photon UI, including when switching between large numbers of open tabs. Browsing was also noticeable smoother. Quantum is also less of a memory hog.
The improved experience comes from a multitude of improvements under the hood, such as the new CSS engine, Stylo, that takes better advantage of today's hardware with multiple cores that are optimized for low power consumption.
Firefox has also changed the default search provider to Google in the United States and Canada. The decision was put down to a "focus on user experience and performance," but of course Firefox still comes with more than 60 search providers pre-installed, covering 90+ languages.
Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the entire Thanksgiving weekend is a celebration of shopping, especially online shopping. Americans spend over $10 billion over the later November weekend shopping for holidays, but it's far from the largest online shop-a-palooza in the world.
While China might not yet be considered the world's largest economy, it it certainly growing fast. And online shopping is becoming hugely popular, like it is in the US – thank Amazon.
While there is no Black Friday or Cyber Monday in China, there is something similar. It's called Guanggun Jie, or Singles' Day, and it's celebrated on November 11, date which is chosen to reflect singles. People celebrating being single happens to be the largest online shopping event in China, and in the world, and this year it has amassed a record amount of money spent.
The leading online marketplace, the Amazon of China if you will, Alibaba has told that via its online network they sold over $25 billion worth of products. That's an increase of around 40 percent from last year. The closest competitor, JD.com, managed to get another $16 billion.
The massive growth is said to be a result of increase competition between retailers that has lead to ridiculously tasty deals, CNBC reports.
A week ago it was announced that that semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom has made an offer on one of the largest competitors in the same space. Known for its mobile chipsets, Qualcomm was offered $105 million for the company's acquisition.
This would have created the world's third largest chip manufacturer, after Intel and Samsung, and would have been by far the largest deal in the industry ever. However, even though Broadcom offered 30 percent over what was the current stock price for the company, Qualcomm's leadership was not having any of it, said sources.
It seems that Qualcomm was fairly swiftly able to convince shareholders that the deal was not the right one for the San Diego, California, based company. Qualcomm has officially rejected the offer now a week after deal proposed was first reported.
According to Qualcomm's executive chairman and chairman of the board Paul Jacobs, the decision, made today by the board, was unanimous in rejecting what they called a "proposal significantly undervalues Qualcomm relative to the Company's leadership position in mobile technology and our future growth prospects."
You might have heard of quantum dot, and if so it probably is thanks to Samsung. Samsung has been investing tons on their QLED television lineup that uses the quantum dot technology, and they think it's better for customers – and obviously manufacturers – than OLED.
However, Samsung is not the only company that is interested in the possibilities that the quantum dot technology provides. Now ever Apple seems to be fairly invested as it has acquired a company called InVisage Technologies, known for their QuantumFilm technology.
Found in 2006, InVisage has been researching and developing quantum dot technologies in camera sensors for over ten years. It's been funded by private equity firms, including one owned by former smartphone powerhouse Nokia.
The QuantumFilm technology created by InVisage has two benefits compared to current smartphone camera sensors. Firstly, it allows the shutter to close instantly on the entire lens which means that you won't get artifacts or distortions even with fast moving targets – everyone has seen video of plane rotors.
The second benefit is that it offers hugely increase color dynamics. High-end smartphones already have HDR modes that combine many pictures to provide better dynamic range but QuantumFilm could possibly increase the dynamics even further without the need to increased processing.
Unveiled first time officially last in September and finally released to the public exactly a week ago, the iPhone X has been the focal point of attention for media and consumers alike. As soon as the phone started selling some of the question marks surrounding the phone and its technology have been exposed.
Maybe the most questioned feature was the Face ID that replaced Touch ID as the sole biometric authentication method on iPhone X. It appears that most worries were alleviated, perhaps the range and tilt being the one problem people seem to have with it.
Obviously every single phone launch comes with its own problems and criticism. In some cases they are rather mild, like OnePlus 5 not having 4K video stabilization that was added shortly after, and in others they cause fires and cancel flights like in the case of Note7.
The new iPhone seemed to have mostly dodged the harshest criticism but a new problem has been found that does not bode well to people living certain areas. It appears that the iPhone X is really prone to not working in cold temperatures.
According to some users freezing, or even close to freezing, temperatures have caused the touch screen to interpret touches incorrectly or just flat out fail to work. One thread has been started on MacRumors forums by a Finnish user who experienced problems at -1°C (~30°F). The thread spanning now 6 pages has similar reports from other users.
We at AfterDawn followed the early days of digital music very closely, and that meant obviously reporting on the historical Metallica vs. Napster case not only inside the courthouse but perhaps especially outside.
At the turn of the millennium Napster, a music sharing service that allowed users to share music in MP3 format with others over peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, was booming. Napster was really the first service to really bring digital music into homes in large scale, but it was certainly not an industry innovation, in fact it was a reaction to industry not innovating.
This also meant that it didn't bring any money to the table, especially not to the tables of any record companies. It wasn't even designed to make money and/or share it with the artists, copyright holders, or record companies.
While this wasn't the first time piracy or even music piracy had been an issue to the industry, it was certainly the first time it got massive media coverage. This was due to the fact that Metallica, the world's leading heavy metal band, took Napster to court in a massively publicized fashion.
Facebook has released a feature in Australia that sounds more like a teenage boys' prank than a real feature. Company asks people who are worried that their intimate pictures and videos might get to wrong hands to send them all to Facebook.
The logic behind this bit unorthodox request is that Facebook would then scan all the photos, create digital fingerprints out of them and when somebody is distributing pictures with same digital fingerprint, Facebook would prevent them doing so. This could apply to all Facebook-owned properties, such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook and Instagram.
Company has seemingly good intentions: so-called revenge porn has become a major problem in online world. A situation where after an ugly breakup, the other half of the disbanded relationship distributes the couple's intimate videos and pictures is all too common nowadays. Facebook has taken steps to prevent this in the past, too: company has used facial recognition to block such behaviour and has also shut down accounts found guilty of distributing unauthorized pictures.
But to send all the intimate photos and videos to Facebook? Company claims that they'll delete the material after digital fingerprint has been created. But we only have Facebook's word for it. And obviously, if there are copies left somewhere in their servers, it opens up endless possibilities for hackers to get their hands to material that can be used for extortion.
Niantic, company behind the mega-successful Pokemon Go augmented reality mobile game, just announced that they will release a Harry Potter mobile game.
The game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will be an augmented reality mobile game, just like Pokemon Go and Niantic's previous game, Ingress, are. Basically thus means that the game will be set in real world and players must walk around the cities and towns to play the game.
Player will be one of the wizards, fighting the beats all over the world - and just like in Pokemon Go, players must join their forces in order to defeat the toughest enemies.
Expect to see lots and lots of people walking around the neighbourhood with a battery pack hooked to their phones, throwing spells at virtual beasts. Wihtout hesitation, the game has pretty good chance to be The Most Popular Game of 2018.
Niantic hasn't told yet when the release date will be, but stated tat they'll keep everyone informed.
It's no secret that Apple, among other tech giants, is very interested about virtual and augmented reality. Their ARKit, which stands for Augmented Reality Kit, is a development platform for iOS AR application that was unveiled at WWDC this June.
ARKit and apps created with it had a part in this year's iPhone unveiling and the company showed off iPhone's AR prowess on stage. Now rumors have it that the Cupertino company might be introducing soon even a dedicated AR headset.
There's still ways to go, but, according to Bloomberg, the AR headset project has been running within Apple for years and could become reality in a few years time. A final product is expected to be revealed 2019, or as soon as all the required technologies have been fully developed. According to Bloomberg's timeline the headset would hit the stores in 2020.
Next year Apple will further upgrade the ARKit to ease the use of AR apps on the iPhone but we'll have to wait a bit for a bigger update. However, the ecosystem, alongside the technology, will need to develop further before Apple joins the ranks of AR/VR headset manufacturer.
Apple has released a new feature with its latest iOS version. The new feature is called Apple Pay Cash and can be found it the OS 11.2 beta 2.
As you might imagine from the name, Apple Pay Cash is a function that allows iOS users to send cash to each other. It was yet quite ready for a stable release but considering that beta users are now able to send cash to each other it should be available to all fairly shortly.
To transfer cash from one to another you just open up your iMessage app and add the cash essentially as a attachment to the message. If another iOS users sends you a message asking for a payment with a dollar amount your device also shows the Apple Pay Cash as a quick reply option.
There are, however, few limitations, TechCrunch notes. You need a iOS device with 11.2 or later to get the beta, and you'll need two-factor authentication on your Apple ID.
Any credit or debit card added to your Apple Pay will suffice but note that credit card transfers will have a fee that Apple hasn't quantified but calls "industy standard." With debit cards there is no fee.
Google has added a new feature to its iconic search engine. Google does small, incremental changes to its search engine fairly frequently, and most of them are probably not immediately visible or easily noticeable to the wider public.
The newest addition is the ability to easily compare two smartphones and their specifications. The feature, added without much fuss, was spotted by Android Police, and seems to be currently online in at least to some demographics in the U.S., confirmed by AfterDawn as shown in the pictures.
It allows the comparing of two, and only two, devices against each other with a simple search of the two device names split by the word versus, or, as it's perhaps more commonly used, with abbreviation "vs." The Google search returns a form with pictures of the devices as well as a short list of features on the top of the search page.
You can then expand the list further and reveal approximately 15 fields worth of comparison, the amount of details depending on the devices.
We did notice a few issues with the new feature in addition to only limiting it to two devices. The search doesn't seem to require very specific names (i.e. Samsung Galaxy S8) to pull up devices but instead you can just type "s8 vs iphone 8" and you'll end up with an appropriate comparison between Samsung's Galaxy S8 as well as Apple's iPhone 8.
A leak from Appleby, a company offering tax haven services, has revealed tons of information about tax evasion practices from companies to rich individuals. The so-called Paradise Papers have also unveiled how the world's richest company has been moving money around.
The tax agreement signed between Apple and Ireland was proven hugely important for Apple's profits. After years of avoiding most of the taxes in Europe, thanks to the deal with Ireland, EU started to crack down this special relationship.
According to EU the deal is illegal and Ireland is being forced to collect the $15 billion from Apple after the fact. Obviously Ireland has wanted to retain the warm relationship with Apple and keep the business but it's becoming increasingly difficult.
The Paradise Papers now reveal that Apple has indeed been fleeing Ireland and moving much of its off-shore assets from the subsidiary in Ireland to a tax haven in the island of Jersey, off the shore of France in the English Channel.
According to the leaks around $252 billion worth of monetary assets have been relocated, and while this doesn't in itself avoid taxes, except for the fact that they aren't brought to the U.S. to be taxed, it has reassured the lowest possible rate now that Ireland became too hostile due to pressure from EU.
Broadcom, a U.S. chip manufacturer, has offered a whopping $105 million for another semiconductor company, the world's largest mobile chip makes Qualcomm. If the deal is to come to fruition this would make Broadcom the third largest chip maker in the world.
This also would be, as Bloomberg calls it, the largest takeover ever in the industry, and would fuse together the fourth and eighth largest semiconductor companies (according to 2015 revenue).
With $25 billion of net debt the acquisition would be considered to have a total value of $130 million. That is roughly twice the value of the previously largest deal made in 2015 between Dell and EMC.
The $70 a share price was nearly 30 percent above market value at the time of the first reports of the deal. The stock quickly jumped above $60 raising Qualcomm's market cap to over $90 million. After the deal Broadcom's stock had also small gains and market cap is now just above $110 million.
According to Bloomberg, the deal is far from clear-cut. Broadcom has struck the deal in a moment when Qualcomm is struggling with one of their major partners, Apple, who happens to be one of Broadcom's largest buyers. While the deal might help with the relationship with Apple, Qualcomm's execs are expected to make a case for shareholders of an opportunistic move that wouldn't benefit the shareholder in the long-term.
Intel has revealed that its developing a new type of processor, called the Core H, for ultrabooks. According to Intel with the new technology ultra-portable laptops are going to get a significant boost in perfomance that will bode well especially to gaming and VR applications.
However, the Core H itself isn't the big news here, even though it will be nice to get some dearly needed improvement to ultrabook performance. Instead its the company Intel is partnering with to produce this new chipset.
You might ask how is a partnering company news in any form? Well, in this case the partner is also a long time rival, and one could call it the archnemesis of Intel.
Yes, Intel is partnering with AMD to provide graphics knowhow, and the chipset will thus include an Intel processor and an AMD GPU for the first time ever. This might be a win-win-win. Not only does Intel get superior graphics performance in their products but AMD gets finally a proper introduction to ultraportables and, best of all, the public gets a speedy ultraportable chipset.
In addition to improved performance, Intel says that the a new technology allows them to package CPU, GPU and graphics memory (HBM2) closer together to save precious space. That obviously means slimmer products that have more room for battery among other things.
Sony has revealed a new Reward Pass program that allows PlayStation players to earn PlayStation Network (PSN) credit by playing games and achieving Trophies. The program was revealed on Sony Rewards website.
The Rewards program has been available previously but only now are you able to get PSN credit with your PlayStation Trophies, DualShockers.com notes. When you link your PlayStation Network and Sony Rewards accounts you'll be able to get credit also by renting and buying movies as well as subscribing to PSN services.
The new Trophy rewards are called Silver, Gold, and Platinum Trophy. They reward you with 100, 250, and 1000 points respectively, and they require 100 Silver Trophies, 25 Gold Trophies, and 10 Platinum Trophies.
1000 Reward points translates to $10 that can be used to any PSN Store items including games and movies. The rewards program is exclusive to the United States.
Like many other smartphone manufacturers, Apple released their quarterly earnings earlier this week. With massive gains on almost all fronts Apple posted more than $10 billion in net income.
However, it wasn't iPhone's that were leading the pack this time around, actually the opposite. Because iPhone 8 sales has been slow and iPhone X, released only this Friday, wasn't included at all in the numbers, the iPhone growth was the slowest of any division within Apple.
However, the investor call focus a lot on, at the time, upcoming iPhone X. CNBC noted, that according to CEO Tim Cook the $999 starting price tag was easily justified with just a cup of coffee.
Cook answered a question about the iPhone X price explaining that Apple doesn't try to charge as high a price as possible "or anything like that", insinuating perhaps that Apple customers would be willing to pay more to get their hands on a revolutionary iPhone X. According to Cook Apple prices the products based on the value they provide.
To further explain this he reminded that people often pay their devices on a monthly basis which is around $33/mo. According to Cook that's just a few cups of coffee a week at "one of these nice coffee places" or under a cup a day.
After rumors of Sprint and T-Mobile ending the merger talks we have finally an official statement. T-Mobile has released a statement clarifying the situation and saying the companies were unable to get an agreement in merging their operations.
T-Mobile Newsroom states: "T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) today announced that it has ceased talks to merge with Sprint, as the companies were unable to find mutually agreeable terms."
The premise for the merger was to create a larger carrier that could challenge the two largest mobile operators, AT&T and Verizon, more effectively. T-Mobile remains the third largest and Sprint the fourth largest carrier in the United States.
It remains unclear why the negotiations were ended but T-Mobile CEO John Legere said in the statement that in the end it's all about making a deal that would benefit the shareholders in the long term.
It seems fairly clear that one of the companies couldn't find the benefits with any proposed deals but nonetheless it might be a better result for the customers. Now there are still four nationwide carriers that are challenging each other.
T-Mobile has been the fastest growing carrier for years and passed Sprint for the third place in 2015. Now it has a lead of over 15 million subscribers over Sprint. Without the merge, however AT&T and Verizon stay in a league of their own with nearly 140 and 150 million subscribers respectively.
Apple finally started officially selling the iPhone X yesterday, and some elements of the device are coming to light for the first time. Some of the more important features of the phone have been reviewed over and over again in the past few days but some aren't going to unveil themselves for long time.
Face ID has been one of the more closely inspected features, and it seems that excluding a few problems with the face detection most impressions have been positive. Another important feature is of course the new 5.8 inch display, a first OLED panel in an iPhone.
Now Apple has released a document that details some of the features of an OLED display. This includes explaining the many pros of the first ever iPhone OLED but also a few cons that might affect your viewing pleasures.
According to the document you may experience shifts in colors when viewed off-angle. This is of course normal for an OLED display, and according to reports nowhere near as bad as with the Pixel 2 displays, which have been criticized heavily.
The second one is another one of OLED's typical shortcomings, "burn-in". The burn-in, or "image persistence", is a phenomenon where a static image may burn a ghost image in the display that will be permanent.
Apple released the earnings report of the last quarter of fiscal year of 2017 yesterday, and if you've seen how the stock market responded you might already have an inkling to what kind of results Apple unveiled.
The revenue increased 12% year-over-year to $52.6 billion and the Cupertino giant racked in a whopping over $10 billion in net profits, an increase of nearly 20% from fall last year.
All this after a rather slow start for the new iPhones as the iPhone X hit the stores officially only today. The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus haven't been flying off the shelves quite like its predecessors but seems like that hasn't made much of a difference. Apple still increased the iPhone numbers over last year albeit a small bump.
Apple's Mac sales improved surprisingly well. A 25% increase in Mac revenue was only topped by 34% and 36% revenue growth in services and "Other Products" respectively. Other products includes the likes of Apple TV and Apple Watch.
Also iPhone's 2% YoY growth was bested by iPad's growth numbers, 14%, but you can expect better iPhone results in the first quarter of the next fiscal year with iPhone X first sales numbers.
Expectations for the holiday quarter are high as iPhone X joins the already impressive repertoire. According to the company the revenue should be somewhere between $84 billion and $87 billion. That would be first time in Apple's history over $80 billion.
Bitcoin peaked at an all-time high of over $7000 on Thursday, following an exciting week for the cryptocurrency.
CME Group, the largest derivatives exchange operator in the world, announced that it would launch a Bitcoin futures product before the end of 2017. This news drove the surging cryptocurrency to an all time high of $6,450 on Wednesday. Today, Bitcoin soared again, jumping over $7000 on the Bitstamp exchange. Bitcoin has seen seven-fold price increase this year, doubling since September.
Back in August, the BitCoin Cash spin-off had prompted fears that it would disrupt the persistent rise of the cryptocurrency, but instead its price had risen sharply compared to the USD.
Bitcoin is growing in popularity around the world too. Coinbase, which can be used to trade BitCoin, gets between 35,000 and 50,000 new users per day. It is also in the news more often, most recently due to the interest in Bitcoin on the Korean peninsula as tensions mount.
Xbox One owners can now install an Amazon Prime Video app on the Xbox One family of consoles, including the upcoming Xbox One X.
Amazon Prime Video provides exclusive access to popular content including The Grand Tour, American Gods, Mozart in the Jungle and Transparent. Prime Video also has content available in 4K UHD resolution, which is supported by the Xbox One S and Xbox One X.
Amazon Prime Video is available in more than 200 countries around the world. Existing subscribers only need to visit the Microsoft Store to download the Prime Video app.
The world's largest social network sees profits soaring in the third quarter driven by a large increase in ad revenue.
In the three months to the end of September, Facebook brought in more than $10.1 billion in advertising revenue. Overall, revenue was up year-on-year by 47 percent to $10.3 billion. Profits jumped 80 percent compared to the same period of last year, reaching $4.7 billion.
However, an increasing focus on security and integrity of the platform will impact future profits, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He told investors that Facebook is attempting to eradicate "false news", hate speech and bullying on its platform, which will be a considerable investment.
The social network has more than 2.07 billion users as of the end of September.
It is currently facing the scrutiny of lawmakers in the United States who are eyeing more regulation in the area to prevent propaganda from being used as a tool to influence elections. Facebook has reported that over 150 million people may seen some Russian propaganda efforts on its platform.
Zuckerbeg had previously described the hypothesis that fake news on Facebook had influenced the result of the U.S. Presidential electon as "pretty crazy".
Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond return to Amazon Prime Video in The Grand Tour Season 2 next month.
The Amazon Prime Video exclusive comes back to screens on December 8. The first episode of The Grand Tour broke Amazon Prime Video's previous records in the days after it landed on the platform beginning November 18, 2016.
Earlier this year, a short teaser trailer for Season 2 was released. However, both Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson had some difficult times in 2017, with the former being involved in a vehicle accident and latter being hospitalized for a life-threating case of pneumonia.
Another trailer was released by Amazon today giving us a taste of what is to come with Season 2.
Some TV viewers in the UK are having signal problems due to atmospheric conditions, according to Freeview.
Freeview allows TV viewers to pick up TV signals in the UK using antennae. Yesterday, viewers started reporting problems with signal. One consequence for many users was the inability to watch The Great British Bake Off final because of the disruption. Freeview responded to the affected viewers today, urging them not to attempt retuning to alleviate the issue.
We're aware that high air pressure is currently affecting TV and radio signals for some viewers in England and Wales. We're unable to prevent or remedy this. We recommend that you do not retune your equipment as reception will return to normal once the weather changes.
TV and radio signals can be affected by atmospheric conditions, including high air pressure (which brings fine weather), heavy rain or snow.
YouTube has surprised the people of Finland today, as they have been unable to listen to their favorite songs on one of the more popular online entertainment platforms.
HDMI has been the de facto video and audio connection between TVs and digital entertainment devices for years now, but it certainly isn't the same connection it was in the early 2000s.
Apple has once again sued the world's largest mobile chip manufacturer Qualcomm. As you might have guessed, it's once again another patent dispute where Apple thinks Qualcomm is breaking the law.
