Disney launched their hotly anticipated streaming service just couple days ago, and already it has become a strong competitor with subscriber count in the double digit millions.
In its first day, Disney+ managed to accrue more than 10 million subscribers, a surprisingly large audience which brought along some technical issues to deal with. Many of the subscribers had already joined before the launch, of course.
10 million users is nothing to scoff at. It took four years for HBO to accumulate similar numbers for their HBO Now service. Hulu, which has support of major cable companies behind it only has 28 million users at this point.
Netflix is still fairly far away with 60 million U.S. subscribers, but it will be interesting to see how figures develop in the coming months and years.
Disney has already managed to complete its first official goal of 10 to 18 million users in its first year, assuming that customers are not going to abandon the service. While the service launched with some strong titles, it remains to be seen whether Disney's updating catalog is enough to reel in additional customers.
Google's Chrome Browser will soon show varied warnings about slow loading webpages.
At some point in the near future, users of Google's Chrome Browser will start to see various flags and warnings about slow loading webpages as they browse the web. Google engineers refer to this planned practice as "speed badging", with the ultimate goal to alert users to slow websites and give some explanation as to why they are so slow.
The warnings will vary from text to graphic warnings that reflect the reasons for the delays. A webpage could load slowly if it uses inefficient coding, for example. However, the problem with the slow loading of a webpage may not lie with the developer of that particular website at all.
These days, a lot of page load delays are caused by the inclusion of third party elements in the webpage. These can include advertisers that have to be provided by the servers of an ad network (Google Adsence, for example). Another common element is the inclusion of analytics code which can require third party services (Google Analytics, for example).
More common nowadays again is the inclusion of social media and other gadgets, which also require the web browser to connect to third party servers to load elements.
Despite technical glitches affecting the new streaming service from the entertainment giant, Disney is positive about the reasons for the disruptions.
Some users who have signed up for the new Disney+ streaming service have experienced some technical difficulties on launch day. One common problem is the appearance of a blue screen featuring an image of Mickey Mouse, accompanied by a message instructing the user to exit the app and try again.
Whatever the glitches may be, Disney has explained that the problems are down to heavier demand for the new service that was anticipated for launch day.
"The consumer demand for Disney+ has exceeded our highest expectations. ... we are aware of the current user issues and are working to swiftly resolve them," Disney said in a statement, reports Reuters.
While that's a bummer for affected customers, this is a good sign for Disney as it aims to take on rivals in space including Netflix. Disney+ costs $7 a month and provides access to a library of around 500 films and over 3,500 TV show episodes from the company's extensive catalog.
If you have an older Samsung Smart Television then Netflix might not work anymore in a few weeks' times.
Due to the technical limitations of older devices, Netflix and other such services often have to kill official support for apps on those devices. The latest roundup of devices that will not have Netflix soon include several Samsung smart televisions and older Roku set top boxes.
Specifically, Samsung has confirmed that some of its Vizio line-up of smart TVs sold from around 8-9 years ago will no longer support Netflix from December 2nd. This is an unfortunate long term cost of being an early adopter of any new product.
"Netflix has announced that due to technical limitations, as of December 2, 2019, the Netflix streaming service will no longer be supported on several consumer electronics devices, including some from Samsung. This change will impact select 2010 and 2011 Samsung Smart TV models that were sold in the U.S. and Canada. Affected devices will receive a notification reflecting this change."
It's not the end of the world if your television is affected however. Things have changed dramatically since 2010 with streaming devices like Chromecast carrying a wide range of supported services with a low cost. A new Chromecast would not only fix the Netflix problem on your old Samsung TV, it would be an upgrade compared to the old functionality.
Google has partnered with several security firms in forming a group that aims to detect and prevent malware-laden apps from getting onto the Play Store.
There are currently more than 2.5 billion Android devices in the wild. Most get their apps from Google's Play Store. While Google does have systems in place to find malicious apps and prevent them from being published to the service, some do slip through the cracks from time to time.
In order to fight back, Google has announced the App Defense Alliance. Its members include ESET, Google, Lookout, and Zimperium. Google's Play Protect detection systems will be integrated with the partner's scanning engines.
Apps queued for publishing will face intense scrutiny from the technologies of each member of the alliance. Their systems use a combination of machine learning and static/dynamic analysis to detect abusive behavior. Google's position is that more eyes are better for detecting problems ahead of time.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced when the company will show off its electric pickup truck.
Musk previously suggested that Ford's F-150 is a benchmark model for its electric pickup truck, which he says has a "cyberpunk" design. The goal, Musk said at a recent shareholder meeting, is that the Tesla pickup will meet or exceed the abilities of the Ford F-150.
The world will get a look at Tesla's take on an electric pickup on November 21 in Los Angeles. Musk announced the date and location on Twitter.
He went on to tweet that the date was strangely familiar, along with a link to the Opening Titles of the original Blade Runner, which is set in November 2019.
Disney's online streaming service is about to launch, and some of you might have already decided to subscribe, perhaps due to a persuasive deal that was in high demand.
There's going to be tons of stuff straight from day one, as the company has portrayed here in a three-hour marathon trailer spectacular. However, there's one film that will likely bring much more customers their way than all the old Disney cartoons combined.
We're of course talking about the blockbuster of all time, Avengers: Endgame.
It has now been revealed that Disney will release the movie earlier than previously suggested, perhaps to accrue more impressive early numbers for their streaming service. It was suggested earlier that the movie would hit Disney+ roughly a month after the service launched.
Avengers: Endgame joins launch titles, available immediately on November 12, alongside the likes of Star Wars show The Mandalorian and Captain Marvel. This is the case for the US and Canada, as well as the Netherlands.
A criminal investigation resulting from a data center raid almost five years ago has come to a close with no conviction.
In December 2014, police raided a data center in Sweden. The action brought down several major BitTorrent websites and pushed the notorious Pirate Bay offline for around two months. As part of the investigation, police targeted Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij.
Prosecutors reportedly had evidence against Neij, but as of now, the case is formally closed. Under Swedish law, the prosecution needed to reach Neij for "final serving", which gives a defendant a chance to review the evidence in a case.
In the five years since the December 2014 raid, the prosecution failed to reach Neij for final serving, and now the time has run out. The statute of limitations has expired and so no case related to the 2014 raid can be made against him.
"The investigation was closed because the statute of limitations expired," prosecutor Anna Ginner told TorrentFreak.
"The investigation was finished. However, we did not manage to contact the suspect to give him the possibility to review the investigation on final serving."
While the criminal case is now closed, the aftermath of the raid did result in a tug of war over the ThePirateBay.se domain, which ended up in possession of the Swedish state.
In our article series, we're digging into AfterDawn's news archive and looking what happened exactly 20 years ago. This article series also celebrates AfterDawn's 20th anniversary.
So, we're digging into our news archive and trying to figure out what was hot and what was not, back in October, 1999 when our site was only four months old. I'd like to remind you, our readers, that back then, AfterDawn was strictly focused on digital audio and video technologies and reporting events in those genres. More generic "all about tech" arrived to our site much later.
Our first ever stories about cell phones
As said, our focus back then, was strictly with digital audio and video. But the October, 1999 marks the first time in our history that cell phones were mentioned in our news. Looking at our (and everybody else's) news coverage nowadays and it seems that smartphones and related technologies are the thing that nowadays makes the headlines. Things have changed, truly.
Well, anyway, back in October, 1999 we published a press release from a Finnish mobile phone manufacturer. No, not Nokia. But another one, called Benefon. Company had just launched the first-ever GSM phone that had a built-in GPS navigation in it. Pretty revolutionary 20 years ago. It actually took several years until GPS navigation became a commonplace with phones.
Exactly 50 years ago today, on 29th of October, 1969, the first message was sent over something that we nowadays recognize as the Internet. Basically, today marks the date when the first ever message was successfully (more about that later..) was over a long distance computer network.
On 29th of October, 1969, Leonard Kleinrock, a graduate student at the UCLA, tried to send a message to Stanforrd University, to Charley Kline ja Bill Duvall.
Kleinrock tried to send a simple word from UCLA to Stanford: LOGIN.
But as these things go, the terminals crashed before the entire message was sent out.
So, the first message ever sent over the Internet was simply LO.
The team managed to sent the entire LOGIN word about an hour later, but history nowadays remembers mostly the "LO".
After that message, the development of the Internet's predecessor, ARPANET, started taking shape over the upcoming decades, finally, in 1990s, transforming into a mainstream medium that we know as the modern Internet. Nowadays, 29th of October is widely celebrated as the Internet Day.
Apple announced their smart speaker at the WWDC in 2017 in the boom created by Amazon and later Google. However, Apple's first smart home device didn't exactly take the world by storm.
Firstly, its official release date was set for December 2017, which meant that Google managed to get a much stronger hold on the market in the wake of Amazon's Echo speakers.
Secondly, Apple didn't even manage to release it in time, and had to postpone the launch until early 2018. By that time Amazon and Google had shipped tens of millions of devices.
This would seem like one of the products Apple probably should've abandoned completely, after all Siri isn't considered the best assistant to begin with.
Since HomePod's failure, we haven't heard any real news about a successor or any other smart home products.
However, Bloomberg now suggests, that Apple is far from giving up on smart home. In fact, according to their information, Apple is building up a new smart home team altogether.
In addition to Android, Google has a couple other operating systems for different type of devices.
Google has diversified their OS portfolio since the early days of Android by introducing Chrome OS for super-portable and inexpensive laptops as well as Wear OS (formerly Android Wear) for wearables, like smartwatches.
While there are actual Chromebooks by Google, ie. Pixelbook (most recent announced earlier this month), there are no official Google wearables.
For years, in fact at least ever since Android Wear was announced in 2014, we've been waiting for a Pixel watch. Now it might actually become a reality, if new rumors are indeed correct.
According to Reuters, Google – well, Alphabet, to be technically correct – has made an offer to acquire Fitbit, the pioneer of wearable tech.
The information doesn't include acquisition price, and the anonymous source notes that it's not written in stone that the acquisition will go through.
Neither of the companies have commented on the leak.
Fitbit is the leading wearable company in world. It is among the top 5 manufacturers for wearables in addition to Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and Xiaomi.
There are multitude of ways that you can differentiate Google's and Apple's mobile operating systems from each other. However, there's probably no other issue that is more dramatically in Apple's favor than the software updates.
Obviously Google has a harder time making third-party manufacturers abide by its standards of releasing software updates while Apple only has to update a few smartphone models themselves.
However, it is still amazing how Apple manages to update even the oldest devices to the degree that they do it. At some point, though, you run out of support.
That time is coming for the iPhone 5. If you own the device, and you aren't on iOS 10.3.4 you are soon running out of runway.
According to Apple, on November 3rd the iPhone 5 will go defunct if it isn't updated. After the date updating the phone requires manual restore on iTunes because the App Store and even the web browser stop working.
The problems are caused by GPS time rollover transition which prohibits the the phone to access the internet entirely. The bug is fixed in the iOS 10.3.4 version.
If you are still using an iPhone 5, you've probably already seen the dialog suggesting you update the phone right away.
As anyone familiar with the President's Twitter account knows, the tweets of Donald J. Trump are as controversial as they are all-encompassing.
While the official POTUS account rarely tweets – there's plenty of retweets of Trump himself – the personal account is full of hot takes on everything under the sun.
This time around the President of the United States has decided to give his two cents on the issue of iPhones. Trump and Tim Cook have had plenty of controversy, culminating to perhaps the funniest, most memeable moment of all, Trump calling Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tim Apple.
Now he has decided to give Tim Apple some advice on iPhone user experience. According to the serial tweeter in charge of the country, Apple should bring back the Home button.
Trump's simple tweet states that the button was "FAR better" than swiping. Some people are bound to agree with the President, but it is unlikely that Apple will bring back a feature that takes huge amount of space from the screen.
One aspect about "The Button" Trump might be getting back, though, is the fingerprint sensor. Apple might be thinking of bringing an in-screen fingerprint sensor, now that the technology has advance considerably, which could allow logging in to your phone with a simple press instead of a swipe.
The term WEB-DL relates to online piracy of movies and TV shows. It indicates the original source of the pirated movie or a TV show.
WEB-DL simply means that the pirated material in distribution was originally copied from a web download source, such as from Netflix, Hulu or similar service. As such services use various video resolutions and bitrates, the term itself doesn't tell how good or bad the quality of the pirated video is.
The WEB-DL file has been typically "ripped" or copied from a online streaming service, either by capturing the video file from stream or by copying the offline download of the video, removing its copy protections. As the source material is in a digital format, the original quality is deemed good, depending of the web download resolution and bitrate.
As mentioned, the term WEB-DL itself doesn't indicate what resolution the file is in, so the term is typically associated with another acronym, telling its video resolution. Such terms include 720p and 1080p(=FullHD).
Pirated video files in WEB-DL format are distributed either in their original file format or converted to another file format, depending on person who originally copied the material and his/her preferences for the file. If the video is distributed as-is, in the same format as it was streamed or downloaded, the resulting, distributed file is lossless (compared to the original stream/download), meaning that its quality is 1:1 to the originally downloaded file.
Disney launched their hotly anticipated streaming service just couple days ago, and already it has become a strong competitor with subscriber count in the double digit millions.
Google's Chrome Browser will soon show varied warnings about slow loading webpages.
Despite technical glitches affecting the new streaming service from the entertainment giant, Disney is positive about the reasons for the disruptions.
