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Netflix has supported Apple's AirPlay ever since 2013, but just recently dropped the support for the feature. Feature has allowed users to watch Netflix on devices such as Apple TV.

Now, that Apple has expanded the AirPlay to also 3rd party products, under a licensing deal, Netflix has decided to drop the support for it.

Netflix states that the very reason is they want to certify each Netflix-capable device on their own. With AirPlay in its current form, this is no longer possible, as the protocol doesn't let Netflix know which device it is using. Thus, the experience could be subpar with some devices - and Netflix wont allow that risk.

Surely, while Netflix doesn't admit this, the Apple's decision to get into subscription streaming business with its Apple TV+ isn't exactly helping Apple's case here.

Netflix has also dropped the option for Apple users to pay for their Netflix subscription via Apple's App Store, forcing users to pay directly to Netflix. This - and Apple TV+ service - have raised tensions between the two tech giants.

Tomorrow, 6th of April, 2019, marks a day when millions of navigation systems all over the world may go haywire, as the so-called Y2K19 bug hits them.

Satellite navigation systems (using GPS) that have been sold as recently as 2014 or so, might go nuts due a bug that makes them believe it is year 1999 again. This could cause serious problems, not only to people using GPS for navigation, but for various infrastructure that relies on GPS satellite data.

The bug is caused by the fact that GPS tracks time by weeks, as weird as it might sound. And the "week zero" has been set to year 1980, the year when the first parts of the GPS system went online. And the system was designed to allow the week numbering to go as up as 1,024 weeks. And we'll reaching that number, again, tomorrow. At that point, the counters will reset to zero again, thinking it must be year 1999 again. As you might have calculated, yes, we have already resetted the counter once, back in 1999. But back then, navigation devices were a rarity rather than a norm.

Most experts don't expect serious problems to occur because of this, but major manufacturers, such as Dutch TomTom and Garmin have all issued emergency patches to their devices - at least in TomTom's case, even to pretty ancient devices, too. Companies have reached out to their product owners and asked them to update their devices. At least in TomTom's case, the update is available to most of its old models - and the update is free. Garmin states that its devices should behave normally, although the dates shown might be off.

Microsoft has announced that the next major Windows 10 feature update will be called Windows 10 May 2019 Update and as the name suggests, will start rolling out in next month.

The new feature update, known as version 1903 and codenamed "19H1" will be available in next week for those users who have signed up to be part of the Release Preview ring of Windows 10. Rest of us will see the update arriving sometime in May, depending on each user's geographical location and various other factors. As always, Microsoft tries to balance the roll out so that not all users will get the update at the same date.

Compared to previous feature updates, the May update will be very small one, at least for regular user. The update focuses mostly on improving existing Windows 10 features, the stability of the operating system and fine-tuning some OS elements.

Most visible changes will be the new "light theme", some improvements to the Start menu and the Action Center. For full list of changes, check this list.

Netflix will increase its prices for U.S. users in May, 2019. The price hike will also affect those users in Latin American countries that are being charged in U.S. dollars.

Some of the new subscribers are already paying the increased price and some of the old users have already seen their prices rise to the new levels. However, the remaining subscription base will change to the new, increased price level in May.

The basic plan is rising from $7.99 to $8.99, the standard package from $10.99 to $12.99 and the premium plan, with UHD/4K streaming, will cost $15.99 instead of $13.99.

Netflix has been pumping money into its original content and is preparing to challenge the upcoming Disney subscription service, as well as Apple's new subscription service. Netflix poured $12 billion in content in 2018 and is expected to spend $15 billion this year on content.

Google has created some of the most popular online services and products of modern era, ranging from its namesake search engine to Gmail, YouTube and others. But company is also notorious for killing off its own products - even those that users seem to love wholeheartedly.

This killing spree that has lasted for more than a decade has made some people very, very wary of falling in love to anything that Google has produced. And it might explain - to a degree - why some of the Google's products of recent years have failed to gather significant number of users.

Looking at the list of killed products in Google portfolio, it might be fair to say that the suspicious take is pretty granted. One of the biggest outrages was caused when Google shut down its Google Reader service back in 2013. Similarly, killing off much-hyped Google Glass AR product was also a disappointment to many people.

But looking at the entire list of killed Google products over the years is mind-boggling, as there are products that most of us have never even heard about - but some, which might have been useful - and even loved - to its users. Many people have hoped that Google would simply sell the products that it doesn't want to continue, but they have never done so, but prefer killing them instead.

April Fool's Day pranks might either annoy or amuse the observer, depending on your attitude towards "real journalists" going crazy for one day. But at least there's a solid benefit out of all this: Researchers at Lancaster University are teaching an AI algorithm to detect fake news from real ones - and they're teaching the AI with April Fool's Day pranks and variety of other hoaxes.

The soon-to-be-released paper from Lancaster University, dubbed as "Fool's Errand: Looking at April Fools Hoaxes as Disinformation through the Lens of Deception and Humour" has found that April Fool's pranks from news organizations and companies (via their press releases) can be used to teach AI on how to determine if the article is "fake" or not.

Some of the characteristics that help AI to find out if the article is a prank or not, include:

• April Fool's stories are generally shorter in length
• they also use more unique words than real articles
• they're easier to read than real articles
• they tend to use more first-person pronouns than real articles

Apple has been working on a wireless power source for its wirelessly charging products for year and a half, but now the fight to get the product to the market is over. However, not in a way we expected.

After revealing the product in 2017 iPhone event (alongside iPhone 8 and iPhone X), Apple has cancelled AirPower yesterday citing high standards not being achieved. Here's the full quote from Apple:

"After much effort, we've concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project."

Simple as that. Apple has a tradition of not cancelling products, which makes this a significant step backwards. In fact, the company became known for its swift release schedule after the initial product reveal to the press.

That has slowed down in the recent years, perhaps after Steve Jobs, and products like HomePod took quite a while to be released to the public.

According to some rumors AirPower's three coil design ran too hot and they couldn't fix it due to simple laws of physics.

Making the cancellation a little bit more painful than it needed to be they just released a new set of AirPods that promote AirPower in the packaging.

YouTube TV, Google's answer to cable TV, was originally founded in February of 2017, but now just over two years ago it has officially been expanded to cover the entire United States.

The online TV service that provides both local channels as well as pay cable TV first started in April 2017 with five markets in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Now YouTube TV's official Twitter account has announced that it is available in every television market in the United States.

The last market to join the YouTube TV family is Glendive, Montana. Unfortunately YouTube TV didn't want to celebrate the occasion by revealing some subscription stats or any other interesting nuggets of information.

YouTube TV starts at $40/mo with around 70 channels, depending on the location, and additional channels increasing the cost. It includes Cloud DVR with no storage limits and works with up to 6 separate accounts within household.

Sony has revealed this week that it has sold 4.2 million PlayStation VR devices worldwide. That's a good amount of virtual reality glasses, but what is the context here?

The glasses originally came out in October 2016, so 4.2 million units in in two and half years. When you also include the fact that Sony has sold over 90 million PlayStation 4 consoles, all of which are compatible with the VR equipment, it seems like they could've done better.

However, perhaps Sony hasn't failed – and them just announcing the figures seems to confirms that they are fairly comfortable with the sales – but it reinforces the fact that virtual reality is still a niche business.

Under 5 percent of PS4 owners have made the move to virtual reality on what is undeniably one of the easier and cheaper ways to get yourself in the VR game.

Ars Technica has compared PS VR's sales to a Sega Genesis peripheral, Sega CD, which sold around 2.2 million units for a 30 million units selling Genesis.

Perhaps VR is in the same place as optical discs were for gaming consoles in the early 90s, but if the same trajectory is to be followed, there will be some amazing years ahead for future VR devices.

Spotify has started testing a new subscription tier which would allow two users simultaneously. Premium Duo offers a discounted price if you want to share the subscription with a special someone.

Currently the only official way to share your Spotify subscription with others is Premium for Family tier, which offers access for up to six people. That tier comes at $14.99, a 50% increase on the regular Spotify price of $9.99.

New Premium Duo is likely to cost a less steep $12.49, which is only a $2.50 premium on the normal pricing. Due to this very slight increase, one would imagine that couples and even friends would see much use for saving a pretty penny with combined subscription.

With Premium Duo you'll also get a new generated Duo Mix playlists which combine both of your music preferences to playlists.

Currently Duo tier is still in testing phase, including tryout periods at least in Ireland but it's not yet available in the US.

There's also no word yet on when Premium Duo would be available worldwide.

Multiple tech giants have been working closely on new technologies that would bring web content closer to being instantaneous.

While there is still clearly need for comprehensive and heavy web experiences, some types of content require lag-free consumption. Facebook has made news articles available in a fast and easy way with their Instant Articles, in a similar fashion Google's technology called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) has provided people with lightning-fast load times in both Google News and Search.

Google, however, sees potential of AMP not only in news. Now the search giant is bringing their AMP technology to email.

The company hopes to make email faster and smoother, but also to bring along more dynamic and engaging experience to currently a very static environment. The plan is to bring more of an interactive, website-like, experience to email.

It would allow newsletters to have interactive features without having to send an email or open a browser. For example, a hotel chain could promote their vacant rooms and the recipient could seek more information about them straight from the email. Or you could browse Pinterest groups and pin your favorites, like down below.

Earlier in the week the controversial Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei introduced two new smartphones, Huawei P30 and P30 Pro, in their event in Paris, France.

The introduction of these two devices focused largely on their camera prowess, and for a good reason.

The camera benchmarking firm DxOMark was recruited to be the first to test Huawei's cameras, just like they did to P30's predecessor. Turns out that the updated model took the top spot from P20 Pro with a record-setting 112 points.

The new models offer upgraded internals, which are certainly up to date technologically but offer nothing flashy, but camera tech is definitely a step up. But before we get to the cameras, lets go through the other specs quickly.

Both P30 and P30 Pro have the 7nm in-house Kirin 980 chip, found also company's Mate 20 Pro released in October, an OLED display (6.1" or 6.47"), 6 or 8 GB RAM, 128 or 256 GB storage, and an in-screen fingerprint sensor. Both also have a massive 32 MP selfie-camera.

There's also either IP53 (P30) or IP68 (P30 Pro) waterproofing and a sizable 3650 mAh (P30) or 4200 mAh (P30 Pro) battery.

Spotify has announced an update to one of its most liked features. The music streaming king has been working on improving its artificial intelligence based features, and that means that we'll get to soon enjoy even better curated playlists.

The company has made it clear a long time ago that machine learning can really help with curating music to personal needs and likes. Things like Discover Weekly were a sign of what to come, and now Spotify is bringing the technology to playlists.

Previously curated playlists have been dumb, which means that they've been the same for everyone. Now Spotify is trying to add a splash of AI to customize their editorial playlists to each individual. While the songs are still selected by hand, the algorithm will modify it slightly to fit better to the ears of each of the listeners.

They've also been testing this and are confident that this will improve the experience. The stats are with Spotify:

When we tested this new system with some of our listeners, we found that they were much more likely to listen longer. Plus, these personalized editorial playlists increase the number of artists featured on playlists by 30% and the number of songs listeners are discovering by 35%.

European Parliament voted earlier on Tuesday about the new Copyright Directive, which including the infamous Article 13. The new directive passed with a result of 348 in favor and 274 against.

The Article 17 (previously Article 13), sometimes called the "upload filter", requires web service providers to block copyrighted material to be uploaded into their service. The internet has called this the meme killer, although it's unlikely to affect memes.

Other controversial legislation include Article 15 (formerly Article 11), also known as the "link tax", which puts in place a linking fee, that services have to pay if they use content from the linked site.

Before passing the directive, Members of parliament voted to remove the upload filter article from the directive but that fell through by only five votes. Thus the directive passed with two of the most controversial articles included.

Now the member states have to adjust their legislation to comply with the new EU directive. Each state has 24 months to change their laws or face consequences in the European Court of Justice.

The Copyright Directive was first introduced to European Parliament on 20 June 2018, was revised in September 2018, and the final version presented in February 2019. It immensely criticized even in its final form, especially by digital rights groups and web companies.

Apple's event today held in Steve Jobs Theater in Apple Park climaxed to an expected introduction of a updated streaming video service. Apple TV got a couple new features.

The new Apple TV Channels offers essentially a marketplace and a hub for streaming platforms, and Apple Kids as you'd expect a family-friendly place for content, but the most interesting part of the improved service is the company's own subscription service, Apple TV+.

The service was announced with a thundering and epic video segment featuring Hollywood's cream of the crop explaining the process in which they create films and TV shows. This included the likes of Jennifer Aniston, J.J. Abrams, Reese Witherspoon, Sofia Coppola, Ron Howard, Octavia Spencer, M. Night Shyamalan, and Steven Spielberg, who expressed his excitement by promoting the service on stage.

It was revealed that the service would become available in over 100 countries this fall, but details about the pricing, release date, or scope of content were not yet shared.

What we can expect is that Apple is set to fund original programming by these and other creators with billions of dollars to compete with a modern original programming behemoth Netflix and others.