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The third instalment of the Duffer Brothers' sci-fi/horror series has broken Netflix viewing records in the days following its hotly-anticipated release.

Stranger Things 3 was released on July 4, more than twenty months since the sophomore season was released in October 2017. Any suggestion that the appetite for the series - which became a cultural phenomenon of sorts when it debuted with little marketing and buzz three years ago - have been rebuffed by the initial viewing figures that Netflix is only too happy to brag about.

In the four days since its release on America's Independence Day, more than 40.7 million household accounts have accessed the third season of the show. Of course, the actual number of viewers is much higher, that is simply the number of accounts that accessed episodes of the season. In that time period, 18.2 million accounts have been used already to watch all eight episodes, which are typically an hour long.

Just last month, Netflix had bragged that Murder Mystery - starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston - had racked by 30.9 million views in its first three days, which broke its movie streaming records.

.@Stranger_Things 3 is breaking Netflix records!

40.7 million household accounts have been watching the show since its July 4 global launch -- more than any other film or series in its first four days. And 18.2 million have already finished the entire season.

-- Netflix US (@netflix) July 8, 2019

Google has updated Chrome's Canary developer build with a new feature that some of us are fairly excited about. The feature is called Global Media Controls (GMC) and, as you might imagine, it allows you to control Chrome's media playback.

The new Canary v77 brings the new feature as an opt-in in the settings. If you have installed the Canary 77, you can find the feature and enable it here. Be warned, however, it is an unstable release and might crash at any point.

When enabled, the feature will add a playback icon on the right side or the address bar. Clicking the icon opens up the global media controls as a pop-up.

You can control both video and audio playback on any of the open tabs on your Chrome browser. This is a very welcome addition, considering that Google recently removed the ability to mute tab with a simple press on the speaker icon.

You can still mute by right clicking the tab and press mute site. However, this will mute all the audio coming from that site, not just the one tab.

Also the new feature allows to stop playback, not just mute it, of both audio and video playing on any Chrome tab or window.

At this moment the GMC feature is only available in the Canary build but one can assume, or at least hope, that Google is bringing it to the official Chrome builds soon.

Tesla took a page out of Apple's playbook a while ago and started developing their own chips for their cars. Previously the self-driving chips were provided by Nvidia, but Elon Musk realized they could do way better in-house.

The chip that was unveiled this April is suggested to be many times faster than the previous one, and in some tasks it is said to outperform old Nvidia's offering 21 to 1.

According to Musk the new chip finally also is powerful enough that it can provide a fully autonomous driving. Unfortunately that is not yet possible due to software among other things, like regulatory action.

However, the hardware prowess should be there, and this means that Tesla will soon be able to replace the older Tesla models with the new chip. According to Musk this will begin in late Q4 this year for the cars with previous generation HW2, or Autopilot Hardware 2.0.

The new generation, previously known as HW3, Musk calls simply FSD for Full Self-Driving.

If you've bought a Tesla with the Full Self-Driving option, costing some $6000, you'll get the new chip with installation for free. Even if you didn't opt in for full self-driving, it is still possible to get the features, however you'll obviously have to pay for it and possibly have to wait quite a bit longer.

The South Korean consumer electronics giant has vowed to defend itself after a regulator filed a lawsuit over ads related to its Galaxy smartphones.

An Australian consumer watchdog is litigating against Samsung's Australian unit for allegedly misleading advertisements related to its Galaxy-branded smartphones and their suitability for use underwater.

According to the watchdog, in more than three hundred advertisements related to its Galaxy products, Samsung falsely represents the conditions for which its smartphones would be suitable for usage.

"The ACCC alleges Samsung's advertisements falsely and misleadingly represented Galaxy phones would be suitable for use in, or for exposure to, all types of water ... when this was not the case," ACCC Chairman Rod Sims said in a statement, reports Reuters.

It's not the first time Samsung's waterproof claims have drawn scrutiny. In 2016, Consumer Reports noted that a Galaxy S7 smartphone had failed an immersion test, despite advertisements showing a model inside a fish tank.

Some consumers also reported they had damaged their phones by using them in water, and others reported that Samsung even refused to cover water damaged devices under warranty.

Microsoft has rolled out an update that will enable users to see notifications from connected Android devices on their Windows 10 Desktop.

Microsoft's Your Phone is a Windows 10 application that pairs an Android device to your PC. Once paired, users can transfer data between the devices (media files, etc.) and see and reply to messages received on their phones.

With a new update, Your Phone users can now see Android phone notifications mirrored to the Desktop. This would include new messages from apps like WhatsApp or Twitter, for example. If you dismiss the notifications on your Desktop, they are also dismissed on the phone.

In an upcoming update, users will be able to click on the notifications in Windows 10, which will then cause the Your Phone app to mirror the phone's screen to the Desktop and let you you take appropriate actions.

Your Phone is available from the Microsoft Store.

via: Thurrot

A U.S. Congress financial services committee has written to Facebook requesting that it halt its Libra digital currency plans so they can be properly scrutinized.

The House Financial Services Committee, chaired by Maxine Waters, the U.S. Representative for California's 43rd congressional district, wrote a letter addressed to Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and David Marcus on Tuesday. In it, several Democrat members of the committee ask Facebook to agree to halt the development of Libra and the Calibra digital wallet.

"It appears that these products may lend themselves to an entirely new global financial system that is based out of Switzerland and intended to rival U.S. monetary policy and the dollar," the letter reads.

"This raises serious privacy, trading, national security, and monetary policy concerns for not only Facebook's over 2 billion users, but also for investors, consumers, and the broader global economy."

The letter goes on to cite Facebook's chequered history with data privacy and highlights some potential national security risks and financial market risks.

Libra is a digital currency that Facebook is pushing and will eventually cede control of to a consortium called the Libra Association, which claims VISA, MasterCard, Spotify, PayPal and others among its members. It has insisted that Libra will be separate from Facebook.

Users of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp have been reporting problems on Wednesday that affect their picture and video uploads.

Facebook acknowledged that a technical issue was causing problems for its users when they were sending media files on its platforms. The issue seems to have stemmed from something going awry during routine maintenance operations.

"During one of our routine maintenance operations, we triggered an issue that is making it difficult for some people to upload or send photos and videos," Facebook revealed.

After a similar issue hit Facebook services back in March, the firm said it was considering refunding paying advertisers for lost exposure due the glitch, but did not confirm the same consideration over this issue.

Microsoft has teased us with an introduction of the Windows 1.0 operating system, with MS-Dos Executive, a Clock and more.

A 13 second teaser of the 'forthcoming' release of Windows 1.0 - an operating system first released to the public in November 1985 - was posted on the official Windows twitter page, raising a few eyebrows. Microsoft also posted the same 13 second video to its Instagram account.

The video displays logos for older versions of Windows and stops at Windows 1.0. A noteable element is the 80s feel to the video.

While we don't know for sure what the teaser is about, there are suggestions that it has something to do with the release of Stranger Things 3 on Netflix this Thursday, which is set in 1985.

Another hint that it has to do with Netflix' megapopular Sci-Fi / Drama is a later Micosoft tweet promising that "It's going to be totally tubular!". In the second season of Stranger Things, released in 2017, several of the young characters repeatedly use the words "totally tubular" from Ghostbusters.

Introducing the all-new Windows 1.0, with MS-Dos Executive, Clock, and more!! 😲 💾 pic.twitter.com/guU4QxwsGG

-- Windows (@Windows) July 1, 2019

Electric vehicles and other forms of low emission cars are typically quiet in operation, which poses some risks to pedestrians.

From this week, all new electric vehicles sold in the European Union must be equipped with a device that sounds like a traditional engine. It must sounds when reversing or travelling below 12MPH, which is the quietest they typically would operate.

By 2021, all electric cars will have to feature an acoustic vehicle alert system (Avas), not just newly sold models.

Charity Guide Dogs had already complained that electric vehicles pose risks as they can difficult to hear approaching, and said that while it welcomes the changes, all EVs should have to emit a noise at any speed.

The UK government is hoping to stop the sale of all vehicles running on petrol or diesel by 2040.

Source: BBC News

Remedy Entertainment may bring the 2010 cult classic to non-Microsoft platforms after it regained the publishing rights from Microsoft.

Alan Wake is an Xbox 360 exclusive that was released in 2010, developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Games. It was later released on PC and was available for Xbox One through backwards compatibility.

It follows protagonist Alan Wake, a best-selling author, as he investigates his wife's disappearance in the small fictional town of Bright Falls in Washington state.

While looking for his wife, Wake begins to experience supernatural occurrences and event plots from the novel he is working on. He has no prior memory of writing the material.

"The only thing we want to clarify, now that Remedy owns the publishing rights, is that we could bring Alan Wake to different platforms if we so choose," a Remdedy spokesperson told Eurogamer after it had informed investors about regaining the publishing rights to Alan Wake, as well as its expected 2.5 million euros of royalties from previously released games as one-time income this year.

Customers who purchased ebooks from a Microsoft Store are losing access to their libraries as Microsoft pulls out of market again.

It had tried to market its Surface devices as being suitable for ebook reading when it launched its service in 2017. The Microsoft service would use the web browser rather than a dedicated app for ebook reading.

Now that Microsoft is to close the service down, customers who either downloaded free ebooks or purchased them are losing access to them.

Of course, Microsoft is offering refunds along with an additional $25 credit if highlights and notes were made on the ebooks, as those will also be lost. However, it is more the spectacle of customers losing access to books because of DRM servers going offline that is making waves.

"The fact is that you don't own e-books when you buy them with DRM [digital rights management] from Amazon or anywhere else," said Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group.

"Technical controls through DRM are said to reduce unauthorised copying, but what they are really for is putting Amazon or Microsoft in charge of the e-book ecosystem."

The United States and China have resumed trade talks at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. Huawei, of course, have been eagerly waiting for Trump and Xi to meet, and it seems that they have caught a good break.

Huawei's future lied largely in the hands of the two governments finding common ground. Fortunately Trump and Xi Jinping have managed to address Huawei's blacklisting, and Trump has allowed Huawei to resume trading with American companies.

According to Trump, the ban did not advance national security which was the sole purpose of putting it on the Commerce Department's list. Huawei is able to now continue working with the likes of Google and Qualcomm, although it still remains on the Commerce Department's Entity List.

Trump was not ready to talk about removing Huawei from the black list altogether. There are clearly still security concerns that perhaps Huawei has nefarious ties to the Chinese government.

I don't want to talk about it now, we're looking at that very carefully. Huawei is very much in play in terms of our country and in terms of intelligence and the intelligence community - we know a lot about Huawei - but I don't want to mention that right now. I just think it's inappropriate. We're not making it other than what I told you... We're going to save that for later.

While Apple has mastered some parts of the software world, you might give App Store as an example, it has been, and is still, first and foremost a hardware company.

Apple doesn't do all the manufacturing of the hardware but they do design pretty much everything themselves. One of the aspects that traditionally Apple was perhaps most successful designing was the aesthetics.

This is Jony Ive's realm. He's been leading Apple's industrial design team for years, and in 2015 became only the third C-level executive (in addition to CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri) in the company as the chief design officer.

Now Ive has decided to end his career with Apple and move aside from the company. The design guru that was named senior vice president of industrial design in 1997 soon after the return of Steve Jobs, and was behind iconic and immortal designs like the iMac, the iPod and of course the iPhone, is leaving to pursue more personal goals.

He is regarded as one of the key influences alongside the late Steve Jobs in the new rise of Apple.

Apple is holding on to Ive until the end of the year, and even after that he will likely work as a contractor for Apple with his new design studio.

Apple Music has reached 60 million paying subscribers, according to services & software boss Eddy Cue.

The number was reportedly confirmed by Cue in French publication Numerama in Paris. It is up from 50 million that had been reported by Apple in May of last year, and also includes users of the service that are currently on a free trial.

Rival Spotify still holds the crown with over 100 million paying subscibers worldwide to its premium tier services. Spotify also counts users who are on a free trial of the service so long as they have provided credit card or other payment details up front.

When you include those who do not pay a subscription fee, Spotify claims more than 217 million users worldwide.

Source: Reuters

YouTube Music will save up to 500 of your favorite songs so you can access them for Offline listening.

The 'Smart Downloads' feature will automatically download as many as 500 of your favorite songs to your Android device so you can listen to them with poor or no Internet connectivity. It picks songs from the collection that you have 'liked'.

This is similar to an existing feature called Offline Mixtape which creates a mix of songs based on your tastes and downloads them, though they are not necessarily songs you have heard and liked before.

Smart Downloads will only download the songs at night time and while on Wi-Fi. You can manually set the total limit of songs you want downloaded if you have concerns about storage capacity.

Subscribers of the YouTube Music Premium service will have access to the Smart Downloads feature.

Via: The Verge