BardTech

Last year, the top subscription video apps like Netflix and Hulu raked in a combined $781 million , and that trend is showing no sign of slowing down in 2018. In the third quarter of 2018, U.S. consumers spent an estimated $329 million in the top 10 subscription video-on-demand apps across the App Store and Google Play — a figure that’s up 15 percent from the $285 million spent in Q1. The data is the latest in a new report from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which has been following the growth of subscription video apps for some time. Last year, for example, it found that Netflix’s app topped the charts in terms of revenue, when compared with all the other non-game apps on the market. Netflix hasn’t fallen from its top-ranked position, the new data shows. In fact, it’s continuing to grow. The app pulled in an estimated $132 million in consumer spending across the app stores in Q3, which is up 78 percent from the $74 million spent in the third quarter of 2017. However, Hulu

Twitter is adding more nuance to its spam reporting tools, the company announced today. Instead of simply flagging a tweet as posting spam, users can now specify what kind of spam you’re seeing by way of a new menu of choices. Among these is the option to report spam you believe to be from a fake Twitter account. Now, when you tap the “Report Tweet” option and choose “It’s suspicious or spam” from the first menu, you’re presented with a new selection of choices where you can pick what kind of spam the tweet contains. Here, you can pick from options that specify if the tweet is posting a malicious link of some kind, if it’s from a fake account, if it’s using the Reply function to send spam or if it’s using unrelated hashtags. These last two tricks are regularly used by spammers to increase the visibility of their tweets. Often, high-profile Twitter users will see replies to their tweets promoting the spammers’ content. For example, check any of @elonmusk’s thread for crypto scammer

Bookmarks Clean Up is a browser extension for the Google Chrome web browser that adds bookmark clean up options to the browser. Chrome users who use the browser's bookmarking functionality extensively will run into broken, redirecting or duplicate bookmarks eventually. While it may be possible to go through the list of bookmarks manually to find duplicate ones or those that are broken, automation may speed up the process significantly. Bookmarks Clean Up Bookmarks Clean Up is a well designed browser extension for Chrome to assist users when it comes to the process. Find and remove duplicated bookmarks manually and in batches, get rid of broken bookmark links and empty folders. Installation of the extension is straightforward. The extension requires permissions to read and change bookmarks, and to read and change data on all visited websites. The second permission is required for the broken link checking component of the extension as it is used to verify if a page loads and d

Canonical released a new version of the organization's Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution; Ubuntu 18.10, called Cosmic Cuttlefish, comes with a new community desktop theme, improved snap desktop integration, multi-cloud computing optimizations and other improvements. Ubuntu 18.10 will be supported for nine months; organizations and users who require long term support should stay with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS instead which is supported for five years. Desktop systems running Ubuntu 18.04 can be upgraded in the following way: Select Software & Updates in the System Settings. Switch to the Updates tab. Set "For any new version" in the "Notify me of a new Ubuntu version" menu. Use Alt-F2 to open a command box and type update-manager -c to open the Update Manager. Click Upgrade to start the upgrade process to Ubuntu 18.10 ISO images for all *buntu flavors are also available. Check the top of the release notes for direct downloads. Users should check the list of

Mozilla will start the test of a commercial VPN offering tomorrow for a subset of users in the United States. The organization has not created its own VPN network but partnered up with the Swiss VPN provider ProtonVPN to use the established network of the provider. The test starts on October 22, 2018 in the United States for a sample of users of Firefox 62. Only some users who use Firefox 62 in the United States will be invited to participate in the test. There is no surefire way to be selected for the test as criteria for selection are quite diverse. Users who connect to an Open (unencrypted) wireless network, visit privacy focused websites, or streaming sites, may see the recommendation by Firefox. The recommendation highlights the basics behind a VPN, that Mozilla selected ProtonVPN as the partner for the test, and the price of the subscription. The price of the subscription matches the price that users pay for a monthly ProtonVPN subscription when they subscribe directly on t

Titan could put an end to stock market FOMO. The app chooses the best 20 stocks by scraping top hedge fund data, adds some shorts based on your personal risk profile and puts your money to work. No worrying about market fluctuations or constantly rebalancing your portfolio. You don’t have to do anything, but can get smarter about stocks thanks to its in-app explanations and research reports. Titan wants to be the easiest way to invest in stocks for a mobile generation that wants an affordable coach to guide them through the market themselves. “Our goal is to take things that aren’t accessible [in wealth management] and make them accessible, starting with hedge funds,” says Titan co-founder Joe Percoco. That potential to democratize one of the keys to financial mobility has won Titan a $2.5 million seed round from Y Combinator’s co-founder Paul Graham, president Sam Altman and partners including Gmail creator Paul Bucheit. The rest of the capital comes from Maverick Ventures, BoxGrou

CBS is today launching another streaming network, this time focused on entertainment news. The service, which is called ET Live, was developed by CBS Interactive and CBS TV’s “Entertainment Tonight” news magazine, and will be available both as a standalone app as well as a part of the CBS streaming app aimed at cord cutters, CBS All Access. The new service will deliver 24/7 coverage of entertainment news, including breaking news, celebrity interviews, features, behind-the-scenes and red carpet coverage, plus trends stories across celebrity fashion, beauty and lifestyle. The content isn’t just a rehash of the “Entertainment Tonight” on-air broadcast, the network claims. Instead, it will feature original programming and a roster of new hosts, including Lauren Zima, Denny Directo, Cassie DiLaura, Tanner Thomason, Jason Carter and Melicia Johnson. The flagship show’s current hosts — Nancy O’Dell, Kevin Frazier, Nischelle Turner and Keltie Knight — will make regular appearances, however

Computer uses who use Symantec's NortonConnectSafe public DNS service need to switch to another service soon as Symantec announced the shutdown of the service. Symantec launched Norton DNS back in 2010 and renamed it in 2014 to Norton ConnectSafe. The service was launched at a time when many major Internet companies started to offer public and free DNS services ( Google launched Google DNS in 2009). Symantec promised that its service would make the Internet connection of user's safer, faster and more reliable than default DNS services by ISPs. The service supported multiple DNS IP addresses designed to protect users against malicious Internet traffic and activity and optionally as a blocker for adult content and other non family-friendly content. Norton ConnectSafe will be shut down on November 15, 2018 for all users. Devices that use Norton ConnectSafe DNS servers will be unable to connect to Internet sites and services starting on that day. By retiring Norton ConnectSafe

Local newspapers may be shuttering and people may be consuming most news on social media, but don’t tell Alex Mather that a subscription news publication can’t grow like a unicorn startup. His 2-year-old sports publisher The Athletic  has gained over 100,000 paid subscribers (60 percent under age 34) and has a 90 percent retention rate. Having already raised $30 million in its short life, the company announced a new $40 million Series C yesterday, led by Founders Fund and Bedrock Capital . It reportedly values The Athletic around $200 million. I interviewed Alex Mather ( The Athletic’s CEO) and Eric Stomberg (partner at Bedrock Capital) to understand what’s behind the breakout success, and why they think this publishing startup can scale to become a multi-billion dollar company. EP: Bedrock makes concentrated, contrarian bets. Explain how The Athletic fits that. ES: I first met Alex and Adam in 2016 during Y Combinator. The popular view then, as it remains now, was that people j

Influcencer marketing could get a lot more accountable if Snapchat’s PR firm wins this lawsuit. Snapchat hoped that social media stars promoting v2 of its Spectacles camera sunglasses on its biggest competitor could boost interest after it only sold 220,000 of v1 and had to take a $40 million write-off. Instead Snap comes off looking a little desperate to make Spectacles seem cool. Snap Inc comissioned its public relations firm PR Consulting (real imaginative) to buy its an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram . The firm struck a deal with Grown-ish  actor Luka Sabbat after he was seen cavorting with Kourtney Kardashian. Sabbat got paid $45,000 up front with the promise of another $15,000 to post himself donning Spectacles on Instagram. He was contracted to make one Instagram feed post and three Stories posts with him wearing Specs, plus be photographed wearing them in public at Paris and Milan Fashion Weeks. He was supposed to add swipe-up-to-buy links to two of those Story

Fitbit is slowly righting its financial ship, courtesy of a successful push into smartwatch category. The wearable company reported a profit (when adjusted for items such as stock-based compensation) thanks to growing sales in the new category.    Total revenues rose slightly to $393.6 million in the third quarter compared with the same period last year. The company did report a loss this quarter under generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). But it was rosier than in previous quarters and showed that Fitbit is moving in the right direction. Net losses narrowed considerably to $2.1 million from $113.4 million this time last year. A good deal of the company’s revenue is being driven by the shift to smartwatches, which now comprise around half of Fitbit’s total revenue. It’s a gamble that’s finally starting to pay off for the company. Fitbit launched its first smartwatch in August of last year. The Ionic was the result of three high-profile acquisitions: Pebble, Coin and Vect

Google launched an update today that make sit easier for Google users to delete the search history. The company records search activity for signed-in users and associates it with a user's account. While it was possible previously to delete certain activity, how that was done was not very straightforward or comfortable. Users had to open the My Activity page after signing in to their Google account to delete some or even all of the records. The page had no "delete all" button, however, which reduced usability quite a bit. Today's change makes things a lot easier as it requires just a click on the "Your data in Search" page to clear the entire search history that Google associates with the account. Google added a link to the data management options on its main Google Search page but Google customers may open the link directly as well if they prefer to go there directly. Load https://myactivity.google.com/privacyadvisor/search in your browser of choice

Japanese gaming website 4Gamer reports that AMD has discontinued support for 32-bit drivers for the company's graphics cards. The company put 32-bit support for AMD drivers on Windows into legacy support. AMD customers who use 32-bit Windows operating systems may continue to use the latest 32-bit driver released by the company for its video cards but won't receive any more updates for it. The only exception to the rule is that AMD may patch critical issues that are discovered in the near future. Whether that means critical security issues, stability issues, or issues with individual games is unclear at this point in time. AMD Radeon Software support for Windows operating system has been moved to a legacy support mode - we are not planning to support x32-bit Windows operating systems in future driver releases. This change enables AMD to dedicate valuable engineering resources to Developing New Features and Enhancements for Graphics Products Based on the Latest X64-Bit Windows

Microsoft implemented new functionality in Windows Defender Antivirus for Windows 10 recently that makes the antivirus solution run in a sandbox on the system. The feature, which is available in Windows 10 version 1703 and newer, needs to be enabled for the time being as it is not active by default currently. Microsoft hopes that Windows Defender Antivirus' new restrictive process execution environment helps protect the application against attacks that are targeted directly at it. Antivirus solutions often need to run with high privileges to protect the entire system against malicious attacks; the need to run with high privileges make antivirus programs high profile targets, especially if they are used widely. Microsoft stated that it is unaware of  targeted attacks "in-the-wild" against Windows Defender Antivirus but that security researchers identified ways to attack Windows Defender Antivirus successfully in the past. A sandboxed environment adds another layer of

Google unveiled a new version of the company's reCAPTCHA service yesterday that aims to make the service more user friendly and provide webmasters with better options when it comes to dealing with unwanted traffic. Chance is, that any Internet user encountered a number of captcha verification prompts in the past. These are designed to verify that the visitor is indeed human and not a bot. A sign-up page is a prime example for captcha use; websites don't want bots to register accounts automatically and to prevent that from happening, may add captchas to the page to throw bots off while keeping human visitors on the site. Captcha solutions have a number of problems associated with them: the percentage of false positives is high and it is sometimes difficult or even impossible to decipher the text that you are asked to enter; this leads to user frustration. Google reCAPTCHA v3 via xkcd Google hopes to make things better with the release of reCAPTCHA v3. When Google launched

Path Copy Copy is a free open source program for Windows that adds new context menu options to Windows Explorer and File Explorer to copy file or folder paths in different ways. While it is easy enough to copy the full path or a part of the path of the active folder in Windows Explorer, the same can't be said for copying the path of individual files. Some users help themselves by copying the path of the folder before they append the file name to the folder path manually; may work if you do this once in a year but if you need the path regularly, you might prefer a solution that is quicker and more elegant. Experienced users may know that it is possible to hold down the Shift-key before the right-click to display the copy as path option that is hidden by default. Path Copy Copy Path Copy Copy needs to be installed on the Windows system. The installer displays three presets to the user which add a certain number of copy options to the context menu by default. Any choice is fine

Dual monitor systems offer many advantages over single monitor setups. It is easy to connect two or even more displays to a computer provided that the hardware is capable of it. You can use the mouse to move freely between all displays and that is often the desired action. Sometimes, however, you may want to lock the mouse to a single display. Maybe while playing a game or running other fullscreen applications, or when you don't use the secondary display. While some games and fullscreen applications may lock the mouse to a single display, it may happen that accidental mouse movement to another screen may minimize, hang, or even crash the game you are playing. Windows users may use applications to control mouse movement between screens on a dual-monitor or multi-monitor setup. One of the programs that Windows users may use for the purpose is Dual Monitor Tools . The application adds a wealth of options to control more or less anything that has to do with running multiple monitor

The Fedora Project announced the release of Fedora 29, a new version of the open source Linux distribution, on October 30, 2018. Fedora 29 introduces the concept of Modularity across all different versions which gives users and administrators more flexibility when it comes to package versions and Fedora. The new version of the Linux distribution is available as a direct download on the official Get Fedora website. You can download ISO images that have a size of about 1.8 Gigabytes and use Fedora Media Writer. Existing installations can be upgraded to Fedora 29. The system should display a release notification on the desktop eventually; you can run the following commands from the command prompt to upgrade to Fedora 29 right away. Note that it is recommended that you back up the system before you perform the upgrade: sudo dnf upgrade --refresh sudo dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=29 sudo dnf system-upgrade reboot The install

Some supported versions of Windows 10 appear to have a bug currently that prevents the successful execution of the Registry backup task that is enabled by default on PCs running the operating system. Windows 10 includes a task that creates backups of the Windows Registry regularly when the system is idle. These backups are placed in the C:WindowsSystem32configRegBack and can be used to restore the Registry. Current versions of Windows 10, including at the very least Windows 10 version 1803 and 1809, and the latest Insider builds of version 1903, report in the Task Scheduler that the Registry backup task completed successfully when it has not in fact. Users and administrators who check the RegBack folder listed above will notice that the folder is empty despite Task Scheduler reporting that the operation completed successfully. Note that Windows 10 may notify you that the folder RegBack does not exist when you copy and paste the entire path. You may want to open C:WindowsSystem32co

Eyeo GmbH, the company behind the widely used adblocking browser extension Adblock Plus, released Adblock Plus 3.4 today. Adblock Plus 3.4 features a number of changes, most notable a promised reduction of the extension's memory use by 50%. The new version includes changes to the user interface as well. Existing users should receive the update to the new version automatically in Firefox, Chrome and Opera; those who prefer to download updates manually can do so from the browser's extensions store on the Internet or by visiting the Adblock Plus download page. The new version of the extension is available for Firefox, Chrome and Opera currently and not other supported browsers such as Safari, Microsoft Edge, or Internet Explorer. Adblock Plus 3.4 The user interface has changed quite a bit in Adblock Plus. The extension icon highlights the number of blocked ads on the activate site. Existing users may notice that the frontend interface has changed significantly in the new v