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Netflix’s US Catalog Has Shrunk by More Than 2,500 Titles in Less Than 2.5 Years

According to a report on AllFlicks, a website that lists and categorizes Netflix content, the streaming service’s library for American subscribers has shrunk by a third since 2014. The report claims that in March 2014, the US Netflix library consisted of about 6, 500 movies and 1, 600 television shows. As of this month, the same library offers 4, 330 movies and 1, 200 TV shows. An article on Quartz explains the shrinkage: The reason is that securing international streaming rights to shows and movies is exceedingly difficult — laws and regulations differ by country, as does the type of content that people around the world consume. Netflix hopes that its library in other countries will eventually rival its comprehensive selection in the US. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Netflix’s US Catalog Has Shrunk by More Than 2,500 Titles in Less Than 2.5 Years

AMOLED Displays Are Now Cheaper To Produce Than LCD

An anonymous reader quotes an article on AndroidAuthority: Optics pundits have been crowing about AMOLED destroying LCD for a while now: they are thinner, brighter, more energy efficient and arguably offer better colors, higher contrast, and deeper saturation than LCD. The biggest barrier stopping AMOLED from taking over as the smartphone display technology of choice has been price. Until now that is. As predicted two years ago, it has only taken 24 months for AMOLED production costs to fall below that of LCD. Production costs in the first quarter for a 5-inch Full HD smartphone display are $14.30 for an AMOLED panel and $14.60 for an LCD display. In the fourth quarter of 2015, these figures were $17.10 and $15.70, respectively. With AMOLED production costs dropping below LCD for the first time, AMOLED panels will soon become the default display technology choice for manufacturers on their mid-range and entry-level devices as well. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AMOLED Displays Are Now Cheaper To Produce Than LCD

CCTV DVR Vulnerabilities Traced To Chinese OEM Which Spurned Researchers’ Advice

An anonymous reader writes: RSA security researcher Rotem Kerner has identified a common vulnerability in the firmware of 70 different CCTV DVR vendors, which allows crooks to execute code and gain root privileges on the affected devices. The problem was actually in the firmware of just one DVR sold by Chinese firm TVT. The practice of “white-labeling” products helped propagate this issue to other “manufacturers” who did nothing more than to buy a non-branded DVR, tweaked its firmware, slapped their logo on top, and sold it a their own, vulnerability included. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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CCTV DVR Vulnerabilities Traced To Chinese OEM Which Spurned Researchers’ Advice

Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing Loopholes in Zero Rating

Reader Jason Koebler quotes a Motherboard article: Wikimedia and Facebook have given Angolans free access to their respective websites, but not to the rest of the internet. So, naturally, Angolans have taken to hiding pirated movies and music in Wikipedia articles and are also sharing links to these files on Facebook, creating a totally free and clandestine file sharing network in a country where mobile internet data is extremely expensive. It’s undeniably a creative use of two services that were designed to give people in the developing world some access to the internet. But now that Angolans are causing headaches for Wikipedia editors and the Wikimedia Foundation, no one is sure what to do about it. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

NVIDIA Announces New Quadro M6000 With 24GB Memory Buffer For Heavy Workloads

Reader MojoKid writes: Some might say there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to computing, and that’s especially true for workstation graphics professionals who need varying levels of performance and memory space. For that reason, NVIDIA is now offering a version of its Quadro M6000 graphics card with 24GB of GDDR5 memory, twice as much memory as much as the original model. According to NVIDIA, customers rendering datasets larger than 12GB can experience up to 5X faster performance compared to the previous Quadro M6000. Like the 12GB version, the new 24GB Quadro M6000 is based on NVIDIA’s Maxwell architecture. It has 3, 072 CUDA cores, a 384-bit memory bus, four DisplayPort 1.2 connectors, a single DVI-I connectors, and a maximum power consumption rating of 250W. In addition to the doubling the memory buffer, NVIDIA added a few other features, including more GPU clock options, greater software temperature control to keep the GPU temp below the point where throttling occurs, and a new under-power boot message if the card is ever under powered. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Cinema-Quality Unity Engine ‘Adam’ Demo Claims To Run Real-Time On GeForce GTX 980

MojoKid writes: This week at GDC 2016 the team at Unity revealed their stable release of the Unity 5.3.4 game engine along with a beta of Unity 5.4. There are a number of upgrades included with Unity 5.4 including in-editor artist workflow improvements, VR rendering pipeline optimizations, improved multithreaded rendering, customizable particles which can use Light Probe Proxy Volumes (LPPV) to add more realistic lighting models and the ability to drop in textures from tools like Quixel DDo Painter. But for a jaw-dropping look at what’s possible with the Unity 5.4 engine, check out the short film “Adam” that Unity has developed to demo it. The film showcases all of Unity Engine 5.4’s effects and gives a great look at what to expect from Unity-based games coming in 2016. Unity will showcase the full film at Unite Europe 2016 in Amsterdam. But what’s most impressive about Adam perhaps is that Unity says that this is all being run in real-time at 1440p resolution on just an upper-midrange GeForce GTX 980 card. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Cinema-Quality Unity Engine ‘Adam’ Demo Claims To Run Real-Time On GeForce GTX 980

Millions of Android Devices Vulnerable To New Stagefright Exploit

An anonymous reader writes: Security researchers have found yet another flaw in Android’s Stagefright. The researchers were able to remotely hack an Android phone by exploiting the bugs. According to their estimation, the flaw exposes devices running Android software version between 5.0-5.1, or 36% of 1.4 billion, to security attacks. “I would be surprised if multiple professional hacking groups do not have working Stagefright exploits by now. Many devices out there are still vulnerable, so Zimperium has not published the second exploit in order to protect the ecosystem, ” Zuk Avraham, chairman of Zimperium, the firm which found the first Stagefright exploit told Wired. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Millions of Android Devices Vulnerable To New Stagefright Exploit

YouTube Shows Adblock Plus Users an Error Message Instead of Ads

An anonymous reader writes: Do you use YouTube with Adblock Plus? Some users have been getting the following message instead of ads: “An error occurred. Please try again later.” The error message is only shown for the duration of the ad, meaning Adblock Plus is still technically getting the job done. But adblocking extensions typically block ads as well as remove them: For banner ads that means gaining back screen real estate on the webpage while for videos that means the content starts playing right away. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Linux Kernel 4.5 Officially Released

prisoninmate writes: Yes, you’re reading it right, after being in development for the past two months, Linux kernel 4.5 is finally here in its final production version. It is internally dubbed “Blurry Fish Butt” and received a total of seven RC builds since January 25, 2016. Prominent features of Linux kernel 4.5 include the implementation of initial support for the AMD PowerPlay power management technology, bringing high performance to the AMDGPU open-source driver for Radeon GPUs, scalability improvements in the free space handling of the Btrfs file system, and better epoll multithreaded scalability. The sources are now available for download from kernel.org. Update: 03/14 13:24 GMT by T : Reader diegocg lists some other notable features (A new copy_file_range() system call that allows to make copies of files without transferring data through userspace; support GCC’s Undefined Behavior Sanitizer (-fsanitize=undefined); Forwarded Error Correction support in the device-mapper’s verity target; support for the MADV_FREE flag in madvise(); the new cgroup unified hierarchy is considered stable; scalability improvements for SO_REUSEPORT UDP sockets; scalability improvements for epoll, and better memory accounting of sockets in the memory controller), and links to an explanation of the changes at Kernel Newbies. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Linux Kernel 4.5 Officially Released

Hertz Had Sheriffs On Hand the Day It Cut IT

dcblogs writes: About 300 Hertz IT employees, most located in Oklahoma City, are being impacted [by] a decision to expand its outsourcing to IBM. About 75 will be hired by IBM and those workers [are expected] to receive offers this week while others are facing layoffs. The news was a shock for IT employees. There was “anger, resentment, ” especially by employees who “sacrificed that work/life balance to keep things going here, ” said one employee. Hertz took precautions. On the day that IT employees learned that their work was shifting to IBM, employees noticed Oklahoma sheriff patrol vehicles in the building’s parking lot. They believed plainclothes officers were inside the building. “We consider the safety and security of our people whenever there are circumstances or events that could increase the risk of a disturbance or some form of workplace violence, ” said Bill Masterson, a Hertz spokesman. “Knowing that this was a difficult announcement, we had additional security on hand, ” said Masterson. “Going forward, Hertz IT resources will be focused on development of future products and services for customers, ” he said. The majority of services will be cloud-based. According to the Computerworld article, along with severance pay, benefits also include three months of outplacement assistance. IT employees can receive up to $4, 000 toward retraining or skill certification, said Masterson. IBM India Private Limited, a IBM subsidiary, has filed paper for H-1B visa workers for Hertz Technology offices. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Hertz Had Sheriffs On Hand the Day It Cut IT