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More voices mount against proposed copyright law changes at the European Union level, with activist Cory Doctorow describing it as an 'extinction-level event'.

The European Parliament will vote on two controversial articles that it previously voted against fast-tracking amid concerns from activists. The articles - Article 11 and Article 13 - are part of a wider reform of the European Union's Copyright Directive which affects all 28 members of the bloc, soon to reduce to 27 with the departure of the United Kingdom.

Both articles mount enormous challenges to the web the way it is now. Article 11 would create a "link tax" which would ban online services from linking to news services on their platforms unless they get a license to make links to the news. Neither "news service", or "link" is defined by the Article, meaning different states will have to interpret the meaning.

Article 13 is more of a shock to the modern Internet, however. It directly affects services that allow user-generated content to be uploaded and hosted. Such uploads would have to be run through a copyright enforcement algorithm to be compared to copyrighted works and censor the material if a match is found.

According to Pew Research, American Facebook users are responding to privacy concerns on Facebook in a variety of ways right up uninstalling the app altogether.

A survey of U.S. users between May 29 and June 11 has provided a look at how American Facebook users have responded to revelations like the Cambridge Analytica affair. More than half (54 percent) of Facebook users aged 18 and older have changed their privacy settings in the past twelve months.

The share of users who have decided to take long breaks away from the service (several weeks or more) is reported at around 42 percent. Just over a quarter of the users, 26 percent, say they have deleted the Facebook app from their mobiles devices.

Almost three-quarters of surveyed users (76 percent) say they have taken at least one of the above actions in the past year.

Facebook made it easier to download the data that they have collected on users, but only around 9 percent of respondents say they have downloaded their data.

More information on the survery, including methodology, can be seen at www.pewresearch.org (PDF)

Twitter chief Jack Dorsey has admitted to U.S. lawmakers that Twitter's algorithms have not always been impartial and that the social media firm has made mistakes.

Dorsey was answering questions from U.S. Senators amid allegations that Twitter has censored or reduced the visibility of conservative users and organizations on its platform. Similar sentiments have been expressed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

While Dorsey admitted that the platform had unfairly reduced the visibility of 600,000 accounts, including members of the United States Congress, it was not the result of a political ideology. Instead, Dorsey explained that a Twitter algorithm had punished some Twitter accounts because of the behavior of their followers, and that Twitter fixed the issue when it was discovered.

He could not say whether a majority of affected users were Democrat, Republican or otherwise. "Twitter does not use political ideology to make any decisions, whether related to ranking content on our service or how we enforce our rules," said Mr. Dorsey.

Allegations of censorship have been made against Twitter for a variety of reasons. Users have claimed that shadowbanning is common, as well as tweets disappearing from search results.

Netflix has released a teaser for the new House of Cards season that will not feature Kevin Spacey in the role of Frank Underwood.

In the 19 seconds-long teaser we see the fate of the character of Frank Underwood, who rose to the office of President of the United States through sinister means. Frank's wife, Claire, is seen addressing the grave of the now-former President. His grave is located alongside that of his Frank's father - the same grave he urinated on in the second season of the show.

Allegations of misconduct against Kevin Spacey resulted in the production of House of Cards being halted, but its final season is returning without him and with his wife assuming the office of President after his death.

Here is the teaser:

You should have known. pic.twitter.com/UFGplyDSY1

-- House of Cards (@HouseofCards) September 5, 2018

Skype has added call recording to most of its latest versions enabling you to record audio and video calls.

Call recording is completely cloud-based and is now available on the latest version of Skype and on most platforms, except Windows 10. Call recording is coming to Windows 10 with the latest version of Skype releasing in the coming weeks.

As soon as you begin recording a call in Skype, all participants will be notified that the call is being recorded with a bar that appears on the app. The app also suggests that verbally notify users that they are being recorded to avoid legal hassles later.

Recorded calls are stored in the cloud for thirty days but you can download them for posterity if you wish.

On Desktop apps, the option to start recording is available when you click the + icon on the bottom right of the screen. Likewise, on mobile, tap the + icon and you get an option to Start Recording.

After the call, the recording is finalized and then posted to your chat where it is available for 30 days. You and everyone on the call can save the recording locally or share the recording to your contacts any time during the 30 days.

To save a call on Desktop, go to More Options and then select Save to Downloads. You can also select Save As if you want to choose the destination folder. It will save as an MP4 file. On mobile, just tap and hold the recorded call in the chat. When the menu is displayed, tap Save. The recording will automatically download and save to your device's camera roll as an MP4 file.

Instagram is working on a standalone shopping application according to a report by The Verge.

The Verge cites sources in reporting that the new app would let users browser collections of goods from merchants that they follow on the social network and purchase them directly within the app. According to the sources, it could be called "IG Shopping".

Instagram already started testing a shopping feature in November 2016 where merchants could tag posts with individual products and enable users to shop directly from photos.

According to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, more than 25 million businesses have Instagram accounts already with 2 million of them being advertisers.

The report did not suggest when such an application may launch as the development is still very much underway, and there is the possibility that it could be canceled outright before it is released.

Such a move would launch Instagram into the e-commerce market in direct competition with Shopify and others.

Source: The Verge

Once again, policymakers in the European Union will be voting on very controversial Copyright Directive that could drastically change the web.

During the summer, critics of the copyright reforms and advocates for free speech and expression scored a victory when Members of the European Parliament rejected plans to fast-track the new copyright directive. However, a new pivotal vote approaches on September 12 and rights' groups, tech firms, and others are sounding the alarm.

Article 13 in particular raised concerns because of its focus on content platforms that allow user-generated content to be hosted and accessed. It refers to such platforms as "information society service providers", or ISSPs.

In essence, it would turn those platforms into a kind of copyright police. Some critics go further than that in their analysis of its effects. For example, the Open Rights Group's Mike Morel says it would make those firms copyright enforcers and have them effectively policing speech.

This would happen because those platforms could become liable for user content, meaning they would have to introduce general monitoring for all user content and use automated filters. It would, undoubtedly, result in the over-blocking of user content.

Google's Chrome browser turned ten years old this past weekend, and Google is celebrating by revamping the browsers appearance and beefing it up.

New appearances for Chrome will be present across Desktop, Android and iOS. On all three, immediately evident is more rounded shapes, new icons and a new color palette. The shape of tabs has been changed so that website icons are more prominent for easier identification and switching.

On iOS, the toolbar has been relocated to the bottom of the screen. Prompts, menus and more have also been changed a bit on all platforms.

On the productivity and security side, Google Chrome now has stronger password manager functionality. Chrome can now more accurately pre-load your passwords, addresses, credit card information and so forth. This sensitive info is synced to your Google account. Chrome also will now generate a super-strong password for you when you sign up to a new website and keep the strong password in your account. This is to enhanced your security by discouraging the use of the same password for multiple services.

Another big change is to the Chrome search / url bar, which is called Omnibox. From now on, the Omnibox will display answwers to queries right in the suggestions. Searching for a website in the Omnibox that is already open in a tab will produce a "jump to tab" feature, which is wonderful news for tab hoarders.

Esports cannot be part of the Olympic Games because they are too violent, according to the President of the International Olympic Committee.

"If you have egames where it's about killing somebody, this cannot be brought into line with our Olympic values," Thomas Bach, said. He made the comments at the Asian Games, where Esports is being included as a demonstration event for the first time.

Esports has an estimated audience of 320 million and growing globally. It is projected to hit $1 billion in global revenue by 2020.

"It has to fit the spirit and the value of the Olympics. The content should not be violent," Bach said, reports the BBC News website. "Blood in video games is the problem. The line to violence can be blurry but when it comes to blood it's easy to define."

Mr Bach won a team gold medal for West Germany at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, Quebec.

Amazon has become the second firm to reach a $1 trillion market valuation after Apple reached the milestone a month ago.

The online retail giant's shares briefly reached a high of $2050.2677 as its total market value soared over $1 trillion. At the current rate, Amazon is set to overtake Apple which reached the trillion dollar valuation milestone on August 3 this year.

In the past 15 months, Amazon's stock price has doubled as investors have been impressed by the company's diverse business success. Amazon has pushed into almost every area of retail as well as digital streaming, financial services and cloud computing. Amazon's cloud services accounted for 20 percent of total revenue (55 percent of operating income) in Q2, 2018.

It took Amazon 21 years as a public company to reach a $1 trillion valuation, having gone public in 1997 at $1.50 on a split-adjusted basis. Jeff Bezos originally founded Amazon as an online book retailer in 1994 and ran it out of his garage.

Apple was a public company for 38 years before reaching last month's historic valuation. Amazon's revenue is expected to grow by 32 percent this year, ahead of a 14.9 percent prediction for Apple.

WhatsApp, the more-than-billion-users messaging app, updated its iOS version today. But this is the first update that wont be available to iPhone 4 users.

WhatsApp stated that the new update is the first that will require iOS 9 or newer, meaning that iPhone 4 is now officially one of the unsupported devices from now on.

WhatsApp has also stated that the messaging platform's support for iOS 8 and iOS 7 will cease completely by February 1st, 2020. This means that while users of iPhone 4 and earlier models can still install previous versions of WhatsApp, even those will cease working in 2020.

The latest WhatsApp for iOS version is now v2.18.90. New version adds warnings about suspicious links, bigger preview for GIF animations and ability to search from status updates.

Skype is working to simplify the user experience again by removing new social media-like features that didn't catch on with users.

Over time, Skype expanded from being a voice call service to adding support for video chats, group chats and more. It also incorporated features similar to social media giants like Snapchat and Instagram. For example, "Highlights" resembled Snapchat's Stories.

However, these features didn't really resonate with many Skype users. Those who would be interested in such features were probably already using them on other platforms and saw Skype as a messaging, voice and video chat service exclusively.

Skype has cut the features in its latest update, though users have until September 30 to download their Highlights if they want to. On Mobile, the new update focused on the fundamentals of why most people use Skype--to make a call (often with video) and/or send a message.

"Our new navigation model removes redundant and underused features that create clutter--making it much easier to find the people you want to talk to and contact them in an instant. On mobile we are moving to three buttons at the bottom of the app--Chats, Calls, and Contacts. Removing Highlights and Capture provides a cleaner and more efficient user interface (UI) that is easy to navigate while still providing all the functionality Skype customers want."

Microsoft has confirmed that the next major update for the Windows 10 operating system will arrive in October this year.

This is a month later than had been predicted, which isn't so bad. The update will be Windows 10 OS version 1809, with the official name being "Windows 10 October 2018 update", unsurprisingly.

Among the known feature changes or additions in the forthcoming Windows 10 update are a cloud-powered clipboard which will synchronize content copied to the clipboard across multiple devices.

It also introduces a dark-theme for File Explorer and improvements to the Windows Game Bar and Microsoft Edge web browser.

There will of course be fixes for common issues, such as the green screen error reported on logout or shutdown reported with some versions of the OS.

Development of the update is scheduled to finish in September.

It may be the biggest selling games console in history, but Sony Japan has finally said goodbye to the PlayStation 2.

The PlayStation 2 (PS2) console was released in Japan in March 2000. Production of the classic console ceased fully in 2012, but in Japan Sony was still servicing the aging console for its customer base at the PlayStation Clinic center in Iwate Prefecture.

Recently, Sony reached out to PS2 owners in Japan to fill out online forms by August 31 to have their console fixed one last time. Customer support for the PS2 officially ended the same date.

PS2 consoles that do not arrived by September 7 will not be serviced.

Given the PS2 is now 18 years old, it is admirable that Sony centers in Japan kept up repair and servicing operations until now.

Source: Kotaku

The music industry has its sights set on the high number of websites and mobile apps that enable users to download the music from YouTube videos.

Such sites and apps can take a YouTube URL and provide a download link directly for an MP3 file. These tools can be used to make unauthorized copies of music from music videos on the world's largest video portal. Some sites include support for others including SoundCloud, DailyMotion and Vimeo.

Last week, MP3Fiber was one such service that shut down due to legal threats, but many options are still available. Services an apps tend to carry advertising, which some in the industry say allows them to earn money by enabling copyright infringement.

"Although coordinated action by the record industry is delivering results, with major platforms like YouTube-mp3 closed down, we must continue to act against illegal sites that build huge fortunes by ripping off artists and labels," Geoff Taylor, head of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), told The Independent.

"We hope that responsible advertisers, search engines and hosting providers will also reflect on the ethics of supporting sites that enrich themselves by defrauding creators."