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Kids nowadays might not even remember, but most of the music was sold in physical format still back in last decade or so. Actually, in 2001, the U.S. CD sales peaked at 800 million copies sold - having collapsed to mere 89 million in 2017.

During the CD's heyday, Best Buy was one of the major CD retailers in the U.S. Now, Best Buy has decided to cease selling CDs altogether as they generate only $40 in revenue. In June, CDs will disappear from all Best Buy stores across the U.S.

At the same time, another large retail chain, Target, is pressuring record labels to agree to buy back the unsold CDs it cannot sell through its stores. Traditionally, the unsold inventory has been retailer's problem, not labels' problem, but as CD sales continue to plummet, Target wants to change that.

According to IFPI's global stats, physical records still generate appx 34 percent of the global sales and are still somewhat strong in certain geographical areas, like in Japan and Germany. But digital revenue, driven by Spotify and YouTube grew as much as 177 percent in 2016 and are unlikely to slow down.

So, the concept of owning a physical piece of plastic that has music on it, is about to end. Sure, vinyl records and CDs will be made also in future. But you wont find those from local convenience stores, supermarkets or gas stations anymore. You have to find a specialist record store - physical one or an e-commerce site - to buy one.

Ever since the mid-December peak of nearly $20 000 Bitcoin has been in somewhat disorderly decline. It has dropped under $10 000 a few times this year already but it took the lowest dip today since mid-November.

Bitcoin price dropped shortly to under $8000 which it hasn't done since November 18 according to Coindesk. The year has not been good for Bitcoin so far, as even after a short recovery to over $17 000 in early January it has lost half of its value.

The drop under $8000 only lasted for an hour though, and now Bitcoin is again closing on $9000, but it is uncertain when, if ever, it will break again even the $10 000 barrier.

The price drop is attributed to Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck being raided as well as general atmosphere around increased regulations. Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency to have had a rough start to the year.

The top dollar for Bitcoin was recorded on December 18th when it hit approximately $19 500 per coin.

Last fall Google released their new data-saving YouTube Go app. If you are fortunate enough to have an unlimited data plan on your smartphone then this probably isn't the app for you – although one could argue there's still use for it – but many do not have such privilege and that's where YouTube Go might save you a small hunk of money.

YouTube Go is obviously a YouTube app that is meant for mainly developing countries where data is more precious than in the US or especially many part of Western Europe. Thus it is increasingly important that YouTube Go is available widely, and the new announcement from Google does just that.

Google has expanded the availability of YouTube Go to over 130 countries. Most of these new additions come from Southeast Asia, Central and South America, the Caribbean, as well as Africa.

The app supports downloading YouTube videos on your smartphone or on a SD card for offline viewing and you can share videos with people nearby with the help of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct.

If you'd like to try it out and have found a reason to use a data-saving, albeit a bit dumbed-down, version of YouTube, you can head to APK Mirror to download it unofficially.

Microsoft revealed last fall that it will soon introduce a new version of its super popular office suite. The selection of office programs is called Office 2019 and includes new versions of its iconic software, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, SharePoint, Exchange, as well as Skype for Business.

Now it has been revealed that the new Office 2019 will not be available for any other version of the Windows family except for the newest iteration. This means that only Windows 10 and Windows 10S users will be able to use the latest and greatest Office tools.

No support is thus included for Windows 7 or even Windows 8.1 which is only four years old at this moment. You'll obviously still have the older version of Office to use or you can upgrade to Office 365 which offers online tools.

The preliminary version of Office 2019 will become available somewhere around summer but at this point we don't have an official, final release date. Microsoft will keep developing the tools until they're passing the company's quality checks after which they will release the final version of Office 2019.

Office for Mac is considered within Microsoft a different product and thus this restriction is not applied to products on Apple computers.

Apple has today released the latest quarterly results ending in December. The first quarter results for fiscal year 2018 have smashed both revenue and profit records of years past.

The quarter ending after the holidays resulted first time ever in revenue of more than $80 billion. The 13 percent rise in revenue meant a record-setting $88.3 billion figure largely thanks to the new high-end iPhone model, the iPhone X.

Another record was rewritten as Apple managed to break the streak of stalling profits as it first time ever passed the $20 billion mark. For three years Apple's profits have been hovering around $18 billion no matter the increase in revenue. Perhaps the introduction of a more expensive iPhone (iPhone X starting at $999) and thus improved margins were the most important factor in hiking up the profits.

This time around the profits increased almost as much as revenue – 12% vs 13%.

The revenue streams were very similar to past year's first quarter. The iPhone took approximately 70% share while the rest was divided more or less evenly (between iPad, Services, Mac, and Other) with Services leading the pack with nearly 10% and Other just topping 6%.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told that iPhone X popularity was a surprise even to them and it has managed to hold on to the title of the most popular iPhone to this day. He also revealed that the company soared past 1.3 billion devices in January, which means an increase of over 30 percent in just two years.

The past two years have been good for retro gamers. First, we got NES Classic Edition from Nintendo back in 2016. In 2017, arrived SNES Classic. And now, probably the biggest legend of them all, Commodore 64 is making a return.

USC-powered mini computer, dubbed as The C64 Mini, will be available in March, 2018 with suggested retail price of 79,90 € in Europe, appx. $70 in United States.

The retro gaming kit will include a miniature version of Commodore 64 chassis (unfortunately the keyboard is just for the authentic look and is not functional), a USB joystick (for those too young to remember, joystick is a gaming controller with one stick and two buttons..) and pre-installed 64 licensed games.

Device has HDMI output that sends out 720p video in correct 4:3 aspect ratio, two USB ports for joysticks or a USB keyboard and internal storage for saved game states and game records.

Google just updated its free (and ad-free) file manager for Android devices, Files Go.

Files Go is Google's solution to Android's ever-present problem of storage memory being full. Files Go can analyze the device's storage and find duplicate files, unused installed applications and old cache files that take up space - and allow deleting such files in order to free up some resources.

App that was originally launched back in 2017 was recently updated to a new version that now supports also SD cards for scanning and has better UI for tablet-sized devices. App is also pretty good file manager and in that area, things have improved too: users can now choose default apps for each file type (regardless of the Android's internal default selections).

You can download Files Go from here.

Just as Mozilla updated their browsers, with new Firefox 58, Google answers with a new browser version of their own. Among other things Google's new Chrome 64 is said to be offering better protection against malicious or just plain annoying websites.

The most important improvement in the new Chrome version is probably the new, improved, and more efficient popup blocker. It should take care of all annoying windows or dialogs appearing in front that you did not initiate or ask for.

Lately Google has been focusing more and more to make the web experience more enjoyable probably in the hopes that people would allow the showing of fairly innocuous ads they themselves promote.

Obviously blocking annoying ads is good for Google, if it considers none of their own ads annoying. Especially if that means people will give up the ad blockers that would otherwise block even the less eyestrain-inducing ads that the king of online advertisement uses.

Many of the other improvements to Chrome 64 are focused on developers.

Apple has released a preview to what is their next major iOS update, the iOS 11.3. Apple's mobile operating system is going to get a fairly big update later this Spring but already they have released a beta version that reveals some of the updates.

For customers angered by the "batterygate" late last year, Cupertino-based tech mammoth will introduce an upgrade that will allow users with iPhone 6 and newer iPhones to keep track fo their batteries better. You can also turn off the feature that slashes the performance to protect battery and the device itself, if you so wish.

One of the major updates to iOS 11 itself include an updated ARKit. Apple's Augmented Reality platform is updated to version 1.5 and brings along item recognition and better control over inserting objects.

Previously you've only been allowed to drop items on horizontal surfaces, like tables or floors, but now you'll be able to use vertical ones as well. Objects to be placed on vertical surfaces include paintings and posters.

ARKit will also support Full HD -resolutions as well as automatic focus.

We've also got some good news for the people that thought animojis were the best new feature of iPhone X: iOS 11.3 update brings four new animojis to iPhone X. New characters include a skull, a bear, a dragon, and a lion. Animojis are of course animated emojis that can be controlled by your facial expressions and recorded to be shared with others.

Drones have been used by the professionals, including filmmakers and military, for a long time now, and even the consumer has a myriad of choices when it comes to quadrocopters. One manufacturer, however, has been above the others on both professional grade as well as customer drones: DJI.

Now the GoPro of drones has released yet another drone. The new one is called DJI Mavic Air and as you might imagine it is a sibling to the popular semipro, prosumer, drone called Mavic Pro. DJI believes that this new version is more accessible to the normal customer while bringing along some of the more professional features.

Mavic Air is a foldable, super light weight drone that is able to film 4K video. One could easily call it a cross between the more capable Mavic Pro and recently introduced tiny Spark.

It's half the size of Mavic Pro and costs a few hundred less at $799. You'll get footage in forms of 4K@30fps and Full HD@120fps video recording, 12 megapixel stills, 32 megapixel panoramas. The remote range is around 2.5 miles but maximum flight time around 21 minutes that is obviously a little less than you get with a Mavic Pro.

The lightweight Mavic Air is a fairly speedy drone, though, as it gets up to 42 mph in Sport Mode.

Once a force to be reckoned with on the browser markets, Mozilla, has been in slow decline ever after the inception of Google Chrome. Now the Norwegian company's Firefox browser holds just over 10 percent of the desktop/laptop market but maybe they are on their way up again after the latest updates.

Firefox was recently given a huge patch to version 57 and now we've got another performance enhancing update for all you browser rebels.

The new Firefox 58 is the first update to Firefox Quantum, as the company calls its largely revamped browser. It brings along many under-the-hood upgrades that speed up many facets of browser, including a JavaScript performance boost of up to a third.

More technically Mozilla has added support for Windows' Off-Main-Thread Painting which allows rendering to be done on a separate thread. Along with better multithread support Firefox 58 includes the previously used Tracking Protection tech that speeds up loading of pages potentially even more.

The updates also added support for Progressive Web Apps (PWA) on Android.

If you want to give the new version a try, download Firefox 58 for Windows here.

Devices running the latest Android Oreo release will now give you an idea of the speed of a WiFi network before you connect to it.

Public WiFi is offered by local governments and private businesses for their customers everywhere now. However, the performance of public WiFi varies widely and sometimes public WiFi can be worse than even a poor cellular connection. Sometimes you might find yourself trying multiple public networks to find one that has enough speed for your task (streaming from youtube etc.)

Oreo will make this task a little bit easier. When it scans for nearby WiFi, it also will assess what kind of speed you can expect from it. It won't tell you a detailed result of its test, but will instead describe the speed as "slow" if its under 1Mbps, "OK" if it between 1Mbps and 1.5Mbps, "fast" if it is between 5Mbps and 20Mbps and "very fast" if it exceeds 20Mbps.

The change is rolling out now with Android Oreo 8.1.

Integral Memory will ship the largest capacity microSD card commercially available in February, with its new 512GB microSDXC V10.

That would be one hell of a storage boost for a device, granted it supports microSDXC.

"The need to provide extended memory for smartphones, tablets and a growing range of other mobile devices such as action cams and drones has been answered." said James Danton, marketing manager, Integral Memory. "As a company, we are very proud to be the first to achieve the 512GB capacity milestone in microSDXC, worldwide."

Press information about the new card cites tests with a range of smartphones showing speed of up to 80MB/s, which is certainly not the fastest you could find but should be adequate for most media tasks like recording 4K video and such.

It will be available next month but there was no information given on how much one of these babies will cost.

Streaming giant Netflix added a record number of new subscribers to its service in the fourth quarter of 2017, which it has credited to investment in original content.

Netflix now has more than 117 million paying subscribers for its service, the majority of whom are now located outside the United States. In the fourth quarter of 2017, Netflix added a record 8.3 million subscribers, of which 6.36 million were international subscribers.

The firm recorded revenue of $3.3 billion during the quarter which is up almost a third compared to the same period of 2016. Profits were reported at $186 million, up almost 300 percent year over year.

Netflix is crediting the good news with its investment in original content. New seasons of hit shows including Stranger Things, the Crown, Black Mirror and investments in new films such as Bright (starring Will Smith) provided Netflix with a strong line up for the past few months. It also has to be noted that Netflix did increase its prices during the quarter.

The service is now available in more than 190 countries around the world and is investment more in local content.

Intel is now advising customers not to install previously released patches to address serious CPU flaws that were disclosed publicly this month.

Meltdown and Spectre have been demonstrated to put sensitive and private information at risk, if exploited successfully. The flaw exists in hardware and so there was never going to be easy ways to mitigate. Meltdown is a flaw that is exclusively only to Intel CPUs, whereas Spectre affects chips from Intel, AMD or ARM-based chips.

Intel began pushing out patches to mitigate the issues earlier this month, but is now advising the users stop installing them. The new advice comes after users and firms reported reported dramatic slowdowns and unpredictable behavior, including constant reboots or a failure to boot at all.

The chipmaker says it understand what has caused the unpredicted outcomes and is now advising that customers start testing early versions of new patches that it is putting out, and has apologized publicly for the disruption its change of advice has caused.