News written by James Delahunty (June, 2019)

Apple Music has reached 60 million paying subscribers, according to services & software boss Eddy Cue.

The number was reportedly confirmed by Cue in French publication Numerama in Paris. It is up from 50 million that had been reported by Apple in May of last year, and also includes users of the service that are currently on a free trial.

Rival Spotify still holds the crown with over 100 million paying subscibers worldwide to its premium tier services. Spotify also counts users who are on a free trial of the service so long as they have provided credit card or other payment details up front.

When you include those who do not pay a subscription fee, Spotify claims more than 217 million users worldwide.

Source: Reuters

YouTube Music will save up to 500 of your favorite songs so you can access them for Offline listening.

The 'Smart Downloads' feature will automatically download as many as 500 of your favorite songs to your Android device so you can listen to them with poor or no Internet connectivity. It picks songs from the collection that you have 'liked'.

This is similar to an existing feature called Offline Mixtape which creates a mix of songs based on your tastes and downloads them, though they are not necessarily songs you have heard and liked before.

Smart Downloads will only download the songs at night time and while on Wi-Fi. You can manually set the total limit of songs you want downloaded if you have concerns about storage capacity.

Subscribers of the YouTube Music Premium service will have access to the Smart Downloads feature.

Via: The Verge

DisplayPort has gotten its first major update since March 2016, bringing support for beyond 8K resolution video at high refresh rates.

The new DisplayPort 2.0 triples the video bandwidth performance compared to DisplayPort 1.4a, from 25.92 Gbps to 77.37 Gbps. This enables the new DisplayPort revision to deliver beyond 8K resolutions at high refresh rates, and support for high-dynamic range.

Additionally, DisplayPort 2.0 brings improved support for multiple display configurations, as well as improved user experience with augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) displays, including support for 4K-and-beyond VR resolutions.

As with the previous iteration, DisplayPort 2.0 functions either over a USB-C connector, or the native DP connector.

DP 2.0 is backward compatible with previous versions of DisplayPort and incorporates all of the key features of DP 1.4a, including support for visually lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC) with Forward Error Correction (FEC), HDR metadata transport, and other advanced features.

DisplayPort 2.0 Configuration Examples

Single display resolutions:

• One 16K (15360×8460) display @60Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (with DSC)
• One 10K (10240×4320) display @60Hz and 24 bpp 4:4:4 (no compression)

• Two 8K (7680×4320) displays @120Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (with DSC)
• Two 4K (3840×2160) displays @144Hz and 24 bpp 4:4:4 (no compression)

• Three 10K (10240×4320) displays @60Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (with DSC)
• Three 4K (3840×2160) displays @90Hz and 30 bpp 4:4:4 HDR (no compression)

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates cites the dominance of Android in the mobile space as his greatest mistake in the Redmond firm's history.

Speaking with TechCruch, Gates spoke about the "winner-take-all" markets that exist in the software world, saying that there is only room for one non-Apple operating system. Of course, that operating system is Android, and Gates claims it is worth about $400 billion.

"So, you know, the greatest mistake ever is the whatever mismanagement I engaged in that caused Microsoft not to be what Android is, [meaning] Android is the standard non-Apple phone form platform," Gates told TechCruch.

"That was a natural thing for Microsoft to win."

While Gates did acknowledge that Microsoft is still very much a leader in the software space with assets like Windows and Office performing strongly, he bemoans the fact that Microsoft really messed up in the mobile space, which makes sense given that Windows Mobile precedes Android by many years.

"So this idea that just small differences can magnify themselves doesn't exist for a lot of businesses. You know, if you're a service business, it doesn't exist. But for software platforms, it's absolutely gigantic. And so that's partly where you have the mentality of every night you think, 'Am I screwing this up?' And eventually, we did screw up a super important one."

A petition doing the rounds seeking the removal of a 'blasphemous' show from Netflix is met with amusement and ridicule.

There have been many such petitions shared around social media that demand streaming services remove content that offers certain groups of people. In that sense, this is nothing new. However, when you want a streaming service to remove a show from their platform, make sure that the show is actually on their platform.

It turns out that the petition - posted by Christian group Return To Order - was demanding that Netflix remove 'Good Omens' from its platform, despite the fact that Good Omens is actually a show on Amazon Prime. At its height the petition gathered about 35,000 signatures, but unfortunately they seem to have now removed it, undoubtedly prompted by the ridicule.

"This is another step to make Satanism appear normal, light and acceptable," the organization noted on its website originally, according to BGR.

"We must show our rejection. Please sign our petition, telling Netflix that we will not stand silent as they destroy the barriers of horror we still have for evil."

A service that cleaned out objectionable material from Hollywood films and streamed them to customers is ordered to pay studios for copyright infringement.

VidAngel would buy physical DVD copies of films and then manually remove sexual content, violence, profanity and other stuff that isn't considered family-friendly. It would then offer the sanitized version of the film for streaming through its online service.

The operators of the website believed the practice was entirely legal under the Family Entertainment And Copyright Act, which provides legal safe haven for tech products and services that are used to censor aspects of films.

However, U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte had previously ruled that VidAngel's service was illegal and ordered the service shut down in December 2016. This only left a jury decision on damages up in the air.

Hollywood heavyweights Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. had requested the jury impose the maxiumum $125 million penalty for illegally streaming 819 separate movies. Meanwhile, the VidAngel defense attorney asked the jury only to impose the minimum $600,000 penalty, arguing that VidAngel CEO Neal Harmon was genuinely under the impression the service was legal under federal law.

Only a couple of days after Facebook and partners announced Libra, a U.S. Senate panel has already scheduled a hearing probing the proposed virtual currency.

Libra is a proposed permissioned blockchain virtual currency backed by Facebook and a wide range of partners that make up the Libra Association. While it doesn't have banks among its members, it does include MasterCard and PayPal.

When the virutal currency (sometimes called cryptocurrency, although it is quite different to Bitcoin and others) was announced by Facebook this week, it was immediately met with concerns over data usage and other things.

Maxine Waters, the U.S. Representative for California's 43rd congressional district, who oversees the House Financial Services Committee, called on Facebook to halt the development of the product. She wanted the U.S. congress and federal regulators to have time to examine the proposal.

Today the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs has scheduled a hearing for July 16, 2019. The hearing is described as, "Examining Facebook's Proposed Digital Currency and Data Privacy Considerations."

While the Banking Committee website says that witnesses will be announced at a later date, Reuters reports that David Marcus, who heads up Facebook's blockchain efforts, will be one of them.

Earlier this week, Samsung raised eyebrows by sharing a video instructing users of its smart TVs to run virus scans on them regularly.

Samsung's smart TVs run on the Linux-based Tizen operating system. We are all familiar with running anti-malware software and even running virus scans on your PCs if we have suspicions. Samsung posted a tweet with an embedded video to its Samsung Support USA account reminding users that the same practice should apply to their televisions.

"Scanning your computer for malware viruses is important to keep it running smoothly. This also is true for your QLED TV if it's connected to Wi-Fi," the tweet reads.

"Prevent malicious software attacks on your TV by scanning for viruses on your TV every few weeks."

An embedded 19-second video then guided users through a process using the remote control to access a sub-menu to activate virus checks. The video and tweet have since been removed by Samsung.

That is likely due to unexpected responses that ranged from users excmlaiming that this is an example of why you shouldn't connect your TV to Wi-Fi at all, to others pointing out that it's pointless advice because the TVs typically come loaded with specialized smart TV-focused McAfee security software that runs in the background.

The proposed age verification system for controlling access to adult entertainment websites (the UK's 'porn block') has reportedly been shelved indefinitely.

With the goal of attempting to protect underage Internet users from adult-oriented content, the UK government has been planning to implement an age verification system. It has already been delayed twice as it faces considerable criticism.

Sky News reports that Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Secretary Jeremy Wright will inform the Parliament that the system has been shelved for now. It was supposed to go into effect on July 15.

According to Sky sources, the issue was bureacratic, rather than technical.

Ever since it was first proposed in 2015 and has proceeded since, it has faced criticism. Understandably, it raised privacy concerns as the habits of Internet users could be tracked. It also had the potential to open people up to blackmail.

On top of that, some in the adult entertainment industry decried the fact that social media platforms like Tumblr or Twitter were to be exempt, meaning the producers of the content would be behind the block while the content could be easily accessible on those platforms.

Apple and Best Buy have announced a partnership to provide Apple-certified repairs for iPhones, iPads etc. at almost 1,000 stores across the United States.

Apple-certified repairs at an Apple store or an authorized service provider are performed by trained experts who use genuine Apple parts. Every repair is backed by Apple. With its partnership with Best Buy and authorized third party service providers, eight out of ten Apple customers will be within 20 minutes of an authorized service provider.

Best Buy's Geek Squad has nearly 7,600 newly Apple-certified technicians ready to make same-day iPhone repairs or to service other Apple products. Aside from Best Buy, there are over 1,800 third-party Apple authorized service providers in the US.

This will help Apple customers who are located hours away from the closest Apple store.

"At Apple, we're dedicated to providing the best customer service in the world," said Tara Bunch, Apple's vice president of AppleCare.

"If a customer ever needs to repair their products, we want them to feel confident those repairs are done safely and correctly. We're always looking at how we can reliably expand our network of trained technicians and we're excited to partner with every Best Buy store so it's even easier for our customers to find an authorized repair location near them."

YouTube and Universal Music Group are to remaster just under 1,000 music videos with HD picture and improved audio.

YouTube likely houses the largest collection of music videos publicly available. A lot of these music videos are older and were shot and produced for tube televisions. On top of that, some of the audio quality of older music videos lags because a lot were intended for televisions with mono speakers.

From today, over 100 music videos that have been remastered to much higher video and audio quality can be found on YouTube, with the rest of almost 1,000 videos expected to be finished by the end of the year. Every week will see new remastered videos.

They will be available from the same URL as always and will be marked with a "Remastered" label in the description.

Videos that have already been remastered and are available are from artists including titles from Billy Idol, Beastie Boys, Boyz II Men, George Strait, Janet Jackson, Kiss, Lady Antebellum, Lady Gaga, Lionel Richie, Maroon 5, Meat Loaf, No Doubt/Gwen Stefani, Smokey Robinson, The Killers, Tom Petty and more.

Here's an example of a remastered video.

The social media giant has partnered with dozens across industries in its ambitious plans to bring about a global cryptocurrency during the first half of 2020.

Along with partners that include MasterCard and PayPal, it has established the Libra Association, based in Geneva. Banks are curiously not among the listed partners for the Libra Association so far. The association will govern the global Libra cryptocurrency, while at the same time a Facebook subsidiary called Calibra will offer digital wallets.

Digital wallets allow consumers to store, receive and send cryptocurrency units.

Facebook and its partners are aiming the Libra system at both established commerce but also aim to offer financial services to some consumers in the world who previously have had no access to such services. It isn't likely to be an easy ride for Facebook and friends however, as scrutiny immediately followed the announcement of Libra.

Digital rights and privacy activists have raised concerns over how much more private data can be amassed by Facebook as it facilitates payments and transactions around the world. The social media giant has a very spotty record when it comes to the use of user data already.