Netflix has experimented with its interface a lot over the years, but there’s always been a bit of a disconnect between how the service looks in your browser and your various apps. Now, the company is updating its web site with a huge UI change to make it more app-like. Read more…
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Netflix is Getting Its First Big Web Interface Update in Four Years
Section 215 has expired. At least for now. The law that the NSA used to authorize its collection of vast amounts of information about the telephone calls of ordinary Americans is no more. Even though it’s likely temporary, it’s a good thing and we should pause to celebrate a little. The calls and emails Congress received from people across the country and across the political spectrum changed the debate. Read more…
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from VentureBeat: Mozilla today launched Firefox 38 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Notable additions to the browser include Digital Rights Management (DRM) tech for playing protected content in the HTML5 video tag on Windows, Ruby annotation support, and improved user interfaces on Android. Firefox 38 for the desktop is available for download now on Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. As always, the Android version is trickling out slowly on Google Play. Note that there is a separate download for Firefox 38 without the DRM support. Our anonymous reader adds links to the release notes for desktop and Android. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Firefox 38 Arrives With DRM Required To Watch Netflix
iOS/Mac: In an odd move, the original version of the non-jailbreak version of Popcorn Time required a Windows computer to install it. Thankfully, Mac users can get in on the fun now with a new Mac installer. Read more…
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You Can Now Install Popcorn Time for iOS from Your Mac
If you ever thought Hulu was only half-heartedly committed to winning the streaming TV wars, think again: the online service just slapped down “just under $1 million per episode”, securing the rights to every minute of Seinfeld ever aired. Read more…
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Hulu Just Paid Nearly $180 Million For Every Episode Of Seinfeld
jfruh writes You might think that DSL lost the race to cable and fibre Internet years ago, but Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs is working on a host or projects to extract more and faster bandwidth out of existing technologies. The company’s G.fast technology aims to get hundreds of megabits a second over telephone lines. Other projects are aiming to boost speeds over fibre and cell networks as well. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Bell Labs Fighting To Get More Bandwidth Out of Copper
As the ongoing Meerkatification of humanity proves, the internet (in one form or another) is becoming more and more about video. At peak times, Netflix and YouTube alone account for half of all web traffic. That’s an understandably huge burden for ISPs to carry. But as well as making the pipes bigger, we can also shrink down what goes through them. Read more…
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Why You Should Care About VP9, Google’s Clever Video Codec
The Intel Compute Stick, a snazzy $150 dongle that can turn anything with an HDMI port into a full-fledged Windows computer, made a bit of a splash when it touched down at CES 2015. And now it’s landing for real, preorders have started at Amazon and Newegg . Read more…
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Intel’s $150 Stick That Turns a TV Into a Windows Desktop Is Now on Sale
The Wall Street Journal reports Netflix and Nintendo are in the early stages of producing a live-action series based on The Legend of Zelda . Read more…
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Report: Netflix Making Legend of Zelda TV Series
halfEvilTech writes As part of its 2015 Broadband Progress Report, the Federal Communications Commission has voted to change the definition of broadband by raising the minimum download speeds needed from 4Mbps to 25Mbps, and the minimum upload speed from 1Mbps to 3Mbps, which effectively triples the number of US households without broadband access. Currently, 6.3 percent of US households don’t have access to broadband under the previous 4Mpbs/1Mbps threshold, while another 13.1 percent don’t have access to broadband under the new 25Mbps downstream threshold. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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FCC Officially Approves Change In the Definition of Broadband