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Netflix has been getting pricier ever so slowly. In the recent years the company has been both raising the prices in different markets as well as adding new tiers to make the platform more profitable. Now there's another price raise ahead, Mashable reports.

The streaming giant is raising its prices on two of its payment tiers in the U.S. starting next month. The subscribers that are currently paying $9.99 for the standard streaming and the ones paying $11.99 for premium tier will have to shell out some extra cash from November on.

Standard service will rise from $9.99 to $10.99 and premium from $11.99 to $13.99. Basic service, which includes only standard definition and one screen at a time, stays at $7.99 for now. Standard tier includes 2 screens at time and HD resolution and Premium 4 screen and UHD resolution, as shown below.

Customers affected will be notified shortly by email and are given at least 30 days notice about the increase.

Price increases are meant to finance the increasing content, especially the expensive original produced by Netflix themselves. The company is spending $6 billion this year on content alone. Next year the figure is expected to be closer to $7 billion.

Google has announced a new laptop product yesterday in its October event. The super slim and extremely lightweight device runs, of course, Google's own Chrome operating system.


Named Pixelbook, the new laptop has a 12.3 inch 2400 x 1600 resolution touch screen that means a nice 235 pixels per inch density. You can get it in three different configurations, with either Core i5 or i7, and 8 or 16 GB RAM. The SSD ranges from 128GB to 256GB and 512GB.

The notebook weighs only 2.4 pounds and is 0.4 inches or 10 mm thin.

One of the more hyped features of the new Pixelbook is Instant Teathering which allows moving from WiFi to smartphone teathering a breeze. When you move out of WiFi's range the laptop automatically changes to your mobile data. Unfortunately you'll need a Pixel phone to use the feature.

Google also introduced a stylus developed with Wacom to work perfectly with the Pixelbook. Pixelbook Pen is the only Google Assistant supported stylus.

Pixelbook starts at $999 (i5/8GB/128GB), and the top of the line i7/16GB/512GB configuration will retail for $1649 when it launches later on. You can order the two cheaper models starting now.

As anticipated, Google today revealed two new powerful Pixel smartphones with considerable camera improvements, Google Assistant, Google Lens and more.

Google celebrates the fact that there is essentially feature parity between its new Pixel 2 and larger Pixel 2 XL. The differences are in display, battery, color and of course, price. The Pixel 2 handset packs a 5-inch OLED screen at 1920x1080, whereas the larger Pixel 2 XL upgrades to a 6-inch pOLED display at 2880x1440. For battery, the smaller handset includes a 2,700mAh battery and XL upgrades to 3,520mAh.

Pixel 2 color options include Just Black, Clearly White and Kinda Blue, while Pixel 2 XL is available in Just Black and Black & White.

Under the hood, both pack a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip, 4GB of RAM and a choice of 64GB or 128GB internal storage. They are water and dust resistant handsets and support fast charging (15 minutes provides up to 7 hours). Both run Android 8.0 Oreo (not 8.1 as predicted). A noticeable change is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack with the new Pixels, but each does come with a USB-C adapter so you can keep using your headphones.

Another interesting feature is an always-on display which lets you see notifications at a glance on Pixel's screen without having to touch the power button, while a new "Now Playing" feature, exclusive to Pixel 2, automatically identifies the music playing around you and displays the information.

WhatsApp has released a new beta version of their world-leading messaging app. You might not immediately notice anything new after downloading the new app on to your smartphone but there's definitely something that you'll notice once you start typing messages.

See, the messaging platform has updated their emojis. Before WhatsApp has been using default emojis from Apple's iOS mobile platform. Now the company has removed the dependency and moved on to use emojis designed in-house.

Well, I say designed in-house but really they are just copied from iOS emojis with a few details changed.

Most of the emojis are very similar to the Apple's but WhatsApp has tried to make the pictures even more lighthearted. However, while in many smileys it might be hard to even notice the difference, there are definitely differences.

Emojipedia has highlighted some of the differences, like the ones in the picture attached.

Currently the new emojis are only used in the pre-production version of WhatsApp on Android but will soon come to stable versions on both Android and iPhone/iPad.

Spotify has added its streaming service another AI powered features. This time around Your Time Capsule brings you songs from the past according to your personalized music history.

The feature tries to guess what type of music you've listened when you were a teenager, basing the selections on what you've been listening lately. Your own Time Capsule is approximately two hours of music that is automatically generated for each individual users.

You can access your Time Capsule from your mobile app or visiting timecapsule.spotify.com on your browser. In my case at least a few dozen songs were spot on, or at least fairly appropriate, but there are definitely a few misses.

Anyways, check out yours and let us know how well Spotify knows you!

The company synonymous with action cameras, GoPro, has unveiled their newest HERO series camera. The new HERO6 Black is the successor of HERO5, obviously, and brings along a couple nice to have features.

The upgrades aren't anything revolutionary, though. The identical design perhaps reveals that this is definitely an iterative upgrade. There is no 6K or 5K recording, but GoPro has included an all-new GP1 custom chip that provides better performance.

HERO6 Black can now record 4K and Full HD 1080p with twice the framerate. That means you have the option to record 4K@60fps or 1080p@240fps, both of which are rare in even more expensive cameras.

One thing you have to keep in mind is that the top tier resolution and framerate combinations (4K@60fps and 1080p@240fps) do not support electronic image stabilization.

In addition if you'd like a little bit of a slow motion but need more resolution you can choose 2.7K@120fps. Of course GP1 image processor is said to improve the picture quality as well.

Like the predecessor, HERO6 Black supports voice commands, so you can start (and stop) recording without touching the camera. It also now supports touch zoom in case you don't hate digital zoom.

Apple, without fanfares or even a special announcement, released today the iOS and macOS kernels to the public as open source.

What we are talking about here are the cores of Apple's operating systems, known as XNU (which is an acronym for XNU is Not Unix), that are used in iPhones, iPads, and in the case of macOS all the Mac computers. XNU has been Apple's kernel of choice since the early 2000s.

Now all the latest kernel versions can be found straight from Github, an online repository and cloud storage mostly used for code, with the exception of the newest mobile platform version, iOS 11.

With the open source releases Apple hopes to educate developers about the relations between kernel and software working on top of it.

The software is released under Apple Public Source License 2.0, which isn't exactly a free for all. You can read more about the license here.

Earlier this week Amazon revealed a bunch of new Alexa powered smart speakers. A day before that it was also revealed that Amazon's high-end smart speaker (smart screen?) Echo Show no longer supported one of its most important features.

On Tuesday Google had blocked YouTube access from Echo Show (pictured). While Amazon claimed that Google had not issued any explanation why this had happened, Google told reporters that Amazon's experience was against the YouTube policies.

Already at that point it seemed a little fishy. After all Amazon had a product that clearly took advantage of YouTube, although one could still see why it would be in Google's interest to let it show YouTube videos.

Well, now new report from TechCrunch claims that Google is developing a Echo Show competitor that is called codename Manhattan. It's said to have a display in the same size range as Echo Show (7 inches) and feature of course YouTube viewing among other Google Home features.

Space geeks garthered this week in Adelaide, Australia as the International Astronautical Congress 2017 had its liftoff on Monday. On Thursday Elon Musk spoke in front of the media and a crowd of space travel enthusiasts.

The SpaceX frontman's speech included revisions of plans to colonize Mars and to setting up a Moon base but perhaps the most intriguing idea came in the form of intrastellar travel. This was the concept of a new rocket, named BFR – of course.

The Big Fucking Rocket is Elon Musk's newest vision of space travel but even though it could travel back and forth to the Moon, delivering ISS some mac n' cheese while at it, according to Musk it would revolutionize traveling within our planet.

Tesla and SpaceX billionaire suggested that it could be as inexpensive as a plane ticket and would travel from New York to Shanghai in 30 minutes. Or anywhere else on the same planet within an hour.

How is this all possible, you say? Well, if one chooses to believe Musk, the BFR is as reliable as an airplane and can function normally even if one of its six Raptor engines shuts off. It is also fully reusable so most of the costs would come from fuel.

Of course BFR is a far-off idea still. SpaceX has yet to launch even the Falcon Heavy, which is minuscule compared to the aptly named rocket. If, however, Musk is more correct about this than, say, about Hyperloop, then we indeed might have something that would change traveling forever.

UK Prime Minister says that the decision by TfL not to renew Uber's license to operate in London is disproportionate.

Theresa May weighed into the row over the decision by Transport for London (TfL) not to renew Uber's license to operate as a taxi service in the city, saying she felt the ban was disproportionate. May made her comments in an interview with the BBC ahead of the annual Conservative Party conference.

"Yes there are safety concerns and issues for Uber to address, but what I want to see is a level playing field between the private firms and our wonderful London taxis, our black cabs, our great national institution," May said.

"I want to see a level playing field. I think a blanket ban is disproportionate."

May went on to say that London mayor Sadiq Khan had put 40,000 jobs at risk, and disrupted the lives of an estimated 3.5 million Uber users, with the stroke of a pen. Khan, who is a member of the Labour party and chairs the TfL, had backed the decision not to renew the license over safety fears. The TfL finds that Uber is unfit to run a taxi service in the city.

Rockstar Games has released a second trailer for its upcoming Red Dead Redemption II, due to be released during the spring of 2018.

Red Dead Redemption II is the third title in the critically acclaimed Red Dead series from Rockstar Games, following 2004's Red Dead Revolver, and 2010's Red Dead Redemption. The upcoming title serves as the prequel to the latter, but rather than having a former outlaw seeking redemption (John Marston), its protagonist is outlaw Arthur Morgan as he rides with the Dutch van der Linde gang.

Red Dead Redemption was widely praised for its stunning visuals depicting life on the American Frontier in 1911. The new trailer doesn't show us much, but shows us enough to know that the game will look superb too.

The U.S. communications regulator has urged Apple to enable FM radio chips in iPhones, as it would help in emergency situations.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said he hoped that Apple would reconsider its position on FM radio chips in iPhones, citing the usefulness of FM radio in emergencies. "I hope the company will reconsider its position, given the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria," he said, reports Reuters.

However true that may be, Apple has responded by pointing out that iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 handsets don't even have FM radio chips or antennae capable of receiving FM radio signals. It went further to highlight safety solutions already incorporated in its products.

"Users can dial emergency services and access Medical ID card information directly from the Lock Screen, and we enable government emergency notifications, ranging from Weather Advisories to AMBER alerts," the Cupertino giant said in a statement.

It is unclear to the FCC if it has the regulatory power to require Apple to enable the chips in older iPhone models.

Amazon's launch event yesterday gave us plenty of new options when it comes to Echo smart speakers but Amazon didn't forget the TV crowd. Amazon's new Fire TV 4K is a direct answer to Apple TV 4K, and Google's Chromecast Ultra before that.

Fire TV 4K is exactly what you'd expect. It turns your TV into a streaming TV with exclusive support for Amazon's own services as well as the other popular streaming video and music services. As name suggests, it now supports 4K UHD resolution (3840 by 2160) just like its competitors.

While still technically still a dongle, the new Fire TV 4K isn't exactly a stick anymore. The square box is connected to a TV with a short cable like Chromecast, albeit the box itself is a little larger than Google's streaming device.

As its competitors, Fire TV 4K also supports HDR content, and you can also watch video content that's been recorded at 60 FPS. However, unlike Apple TV 4K and Chromecast Ultra, Fire TV 4K doesn't support Dolby Vision HDR experience and relies solely on HDR10 support. On the other hand there's support for Dolby Atmos surround sound that is not available on Apple TV 4K, yet.

Amazon Fire TV 4K costs $69 (like Chromecast Ultra), while Apple TV 4K is a whopping $179.

Amazon had a launch event yesterday where they updated their smart device lineups. While Alexa and Echo are still a marginal business inside the behemoth that is Amazon, they might be the future.

Amazon updated their flagship smart speaker, the Echo. Now the Alexa-wielding speaker comes in a smaller package, and cheaper than ever before. Echo (picture above) is now under six inches tall and starts at $99.99. The new Echo also comes with three different covers: Charcoal Fabric, Heather Gray Fabric, Oak Finish, Sandstone Fabric, Silver Finish, and Walnut Finish.

The traditional-looking Echo is now renamed Echo Plus, includes smart home hub functionality plus one Philips Hue Bulb (limited time offer), and retails at $149.99. Echo Plus comes in Black, White, and Silver. Both of the aforementioned Echos have dual Dolby speakers with 2.5" woofer and a tweeter.



Amazon also introduced a completely new Echo product, the Echo Spot. Spot is essentially a smaller version of Echo Show, which couple days ago lost YouTube functionality. Spot has a 2.5 inch round display that allows you to watch the same content as on Echo Show, so basically Prime Video.

Amazon was the first company to hit the smart speaker out of the park. With their newest addition, Echo Show, it tries to elevate the smart speaker with visual "answers." However, it has faced a major setback.

The main selling point of the new Echo Show is of course its beautiful screen. It displays all kinds of information but extends Alexa's skills to showing video content that is not possible to simply narrate on a traditional smart speaker.

Unfortunately it is no longer able to use the largest database of video content in the world.

Since yesterday afternoon Amazon's Echo Show has not been able to receive videos from YouTube. Amazon has told The Verge that Google removed the support for Echo Show without informing them or the customers about the reason.

Up until yesterday at around 3pm you could have searched for your favorite Chicken Alfredo video recipe on YouTube by asking Alexa but now Echo Show simply says "Currently, Google is not supporting Youtube on Echo Show." According to Google this is due to Amazon violating "terms of service, creating a broken user experience" but it's hard to say who to believe.