News written by James Delahunty (February, 2020)

Microsoft is upgrading the icons in Windows 10 and other products with the first changes rolling out in Preview Builds already.

It has been almost five years since Microsoft released Windows 10 to the public. In the meantime, there has been plenty of feature changes and improvements made through periodic updates to the operating system, but much of its icons remain the same as they were initially. Microsoft admits that user feedback shows a desire for its core products to get a new lick of paint.

Microsoft did update the icons for its Office products in the meantime, and will now more onto other products. Updates to built-in apps like Alarms & Clock, Calculator, Mail, and Calendar will be the first. In fact, Mail and Calendar icon updates have rolled out with the latest Release Preview for those in the Fast ring.

"Research shows that people want consistency in design and connection to brand, with enough differences to aid in recognition," writes Christina Koehn on a Medium.com blog post about Microsoft's approach to updating and modernizing icons in Windows and its other products.

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Google has booted more than 600 apps from the Play Store that it accuses of violating its policies by prompting users with disruptive ads that are a detriment to experience.

The 600 apps has reportedly been installed more than 4.5 billion times before their removal this week. In addition to the expulsion from the Play Store, Google has also banned them from Google's monetization platform. Google defines disruptive ads as ads that are displayed to users in unexpected ways, including impairing or interfering with the usability of device functions.

For example, apps that displays "out of context" ads were targeted for removal. An out-of-context ad is one that pops up on a device even when the user is not actually active in the app itself.

Another practice highlighted by Google are full screen ads that pop up when users are trying to make a phone call, unlock a device, or carrying out other essential functions. These ads generate unintentional clicks which are both an annoyance for users, and a fraudulent drain on the resources of the advertiser. Google will refund advertisers who were impacted by removed apps.

"As we move forward, we will continue to invest in new technologies to detect and prevent emerging threats that can generate invalid traffic, including disruptive ads, and to find more ways to adapt and evolve our platform and ecosystem policies to ensure that users and advertisers are protected from bad behavior," a Google blog post reads.

Google's YouTube TV service has been boosted by a deal with WarnerMedia to bring new channels to the service, and retain pre-existing popular channels added in 2018.

While HBO and CineMax are on other platforms such as Amazon Prime, YouTube TV is first to get HBO Max as well. YouTube TV will also continue to retain other cable networks from WarnerMedia, such as TBS, TNT, CNN, Adult Swin, Cartoon Network, HLN, and others. Those channels have been available since 2018 through a deal with WarnerMedia.

Google's YouTube TV service provides programming from more 70 networks, along with live sports.

We're feeling pret-tay, pret-tay good about this news we have to share with you...@HBO is coming to YouTube TV this spring. Welcome to the family!

-- YouTube TV (@YouTubeTV) February 20, 2020

"Our commitment at YouTube TV is to deliver TV to our members how and when they want it," said Lori Conkling, global head of partnerships at YouTube TV, reports Variety.

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Netflix picks Valentine's Day to release a surprise teaser for Stranger Things 4 - From Russia with Love.

Fans of the Netflix hit are in for a surprise today. For Valentine's Day, a Stranger Things 4 teaser trailer showed up on Netflix channels titled "From Russia with Love". Within the teaser is a significant surprise for fans of the show which will generate buzz for the upcoming fourth season of Stranger Things, currently in production.

Be warned, the teaser below does contain a very large spoiler which we then cover the significance of.

So there it is, the question surrounding Chief Jim Hopper's fate has been answered. At the end of Season 3, Hopper is presumed dead after a significant energetic explosion in an underground base. Fans of the show had noted that the final shot before the explosion didn't seem to show Hopper at all, while others suggested he may just be out of shot. What followed was a memorable sequence of emotion-laden scenes as Hopper's death seemed to break apart the iconic group in Hawkins Indiana, with the Byers family leaving with Eleven for pastures new.

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Samsung has unveiled three new handsets in its Galaxy S- line up which support 5G wireless connectivity, and pack powerful camera features.

It unveiled the three new 5G-capable Galaxy S devices in San Francisco today, while rival Apple is still to release a 5G-capable iPhone and Chinese rival Huawei suffers from geopolitical woes. All three new handsets - Galaxy S20, Galaxy S20+, and Galaxy S20 Ultra - feature considerable camera upgrades for superior image and video capturing. It should be noted that only the Galaxy S20+ and Galaxy S20 Ultra support sub-6 and mmWave 5G technology.

Each has three camera lens on the rear (telephoto, ultra-wide angle, and wide-angle), though vary based on which S20 device it is. The standard Galaxy S20 has a 64MP telephoto lens, 12MP wide and 12MP ultrawide, which is the same arrangement as the Galaxy S20+. However, the S20+ model supplements the three lens with a depth sensor (DepthVision).

The high-end Galaxy S20 Ultra also features the depth sensor but its telephoto lens drops to 48MP, while it packs a significant 108MP (f / 1.8) wide-angle lens. New in the S20 line-up is Space Zoom, which combines the optical zoom features with artificial intelligence to provide up to 30x zoom on the S20 and S20+, and a staggering 100x zoom with the Galaxy S20 Ultra.

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