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Netflix is fairly sneaky with different kinds of A/B testing, which we probably most of the time don't even notice. The company also can change features on a whim it seems, like it did with ratings.

Now the company is testing a feature to recommend content more efficiently. According to reports, Netflix is bringing top 10 lists to the service.

The Verge reports that Netflix is starting the test in the UK later this quarter. Each genre and category will get their own top 10, and the lists will be updated weekly.

This is one of the first ways we, the customers, get to see which shows and movies are really performing. Netflix hasn't previously shared much statistics at all, except for the odd mention of movies with 80 million viewers.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has expressed that the test will be expanded, or ended, within a few months from the start. One can only hope for the former so we can see which Netflix Original shows take the crowns.

Microsoft will release an Xbox One S console without an included Blu-ray Disc drive as has been rumored since late last year.

The new Xbox One S All-Digital Edition will be released on May 7 for $250, which is $50 less than a typical Xbox One S that has an optical disc drive. It comes with an Xbox Wireless controller, a 1TB hard drive and with three popular Microsoft-owned titles: Minecraft, Sea of Thieves and Forza Horizon 3.

Rumors that Microsoft was working on an Xbox One without a disc drive started in late 2018. It is aimed at customers who download their games, or are subscribers to the Xbox Game Pass service. It also comes ahead of Microsoft's upcoming game streaming platform, dubbed Project xCloud.

To coincide with the forthcoming release of the all-digital version of the Xbox One, Microsoft is also offering access to Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live Gold for a $15 per month fee. That cost is actually the same as if you had subscribed to Game Pass, which is $10 per month, and had an annual Xbox Live subscription at $60 per year (and so, $5 per month), though of course the latter would have to be paid in full for a year rather than monthly.

More info: Xbox.com

Most of the world knows Netflix only as a gigantic streaming service, but only few people outside the U.S. know that the company was founded as a DVD rental service back in 1998. It might come as a shock that this DVD rental service still exists - and is doing just fine.

Netflix's DVD rental service still works exactly like it used to work: the subscriber pays a flat monthly fee and for that fee receives one DVD by mail to his/her home, along with a pre-paid return envelope. Once the user is done with the DVD, he/she sends the DVD back prompting Netflix to send the user a new DVD in an envelope. The DVDs are shipped from user's "I want these" type of list, in priority order, if the DVD is available. If not, the next in line ships.

Pricing starts from $7.99 for "one DVD disc at a time" service and increases to $14.99 premier pricing, which allows user to have two DVDs rented at the same time - and to use Blu-Ray instead of DVDs. Netflix has revealed in its latest financials that a whopping 2.7 million people in the United States still use the Netflix's DVD.com service.

The reasons behind the decision for some people to stick with DVDs rather than jump the streaming service bandwagon are actually quite logical. In rural areas of the United States, there are still large areas where you can't get a fast-enough Internet connection to watch streaming content - or it simply costs too much.

Mark Cerny spoke to Wired about the hardware under the hood of the next generation PlayStation console that will replace the PS4.

The video games industry stalwart will serve as lead system architect for the next generation PlayStation console, which we will refer to as PlayStation 5 (PS5). Just how much of an upgrade will the PS5 be? When you consider that Sony has already ramped up the hardware of its current PS4 generation in the PS4 Pro, what can we realistically expect in terms of improvement?

Cerny's revelations in an interview with Wired are encouraging. Capable of producing 8K graphics output, the PS5 is not simply intended to be a minor upgrade over PS4 Pro. It will pack an AMD Rizen CPU with eight cores, based on AMD's 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. It's GPU is of AMD's Redeon Navi family, and for the first time in a console it will support ray tracing, which in gaming is limited to very expensive high-end systems.

Ray tracing mimics how light bounces across objects in an environment for much more visually accurate rendering.

PS5 also delivers improvement from the stoage device by packing an SSD. Yes, you can use an external SSD with the PS4 to improve performance, but Cerny is suggesting that the SSD in the PS5 will not be the same as one you put in your laptop.

SpaceX managed an impressive feat when the core booster from its latest Falcon Heavy rocket launch landed on a drone ship at sea, but unfortunately it did not make it back to port.

Last week's SpaceX launch was technoligically and visually stunning as the rocket firm managed a synchronized landing of two side boosters that separated from the core in SpaceX, and then managed to land the core booster on a drone ship at sea. This was only the second time SpaceX flew a Falcon Heavy rocket, and the first time it managed to land all three boosters.

The side boosters were intended to be reused with the very next Falcon Heavy launch. Given that the side boosters are essentially modified Falcon 9 boosters (in fact the first demonstration launch used two previously flown and landed Falcon 9 boosters as side boosters), the design has a track record of success in landing and re-flight.

However, the core is a more fortified, tougher version of the Falcon 9 booster and so has landed successfully only once, and therefore would likely not have been reflown but probed by SpaceX engineers instead.

Unfortunately, while the core landed upright on the drone ship, it never made it back to port. Choppy seas meant that the upright core booster eventually fell over and was lost to the sea. While this is a disappointment for SpaceX, it doesn't take away from the achievement of landing it in the first place. The rocket firm said that it would not compromise on the safety of its workers in recovery operations.

Emergency services arrived at the residence of an 80 year old lady that had taken a hard fall after her Apple Watch called for help.

The device contacts emergency services in Haidhausen, Munich, after wearer took a heavy fall and failed to tap an option on the screen of the device confirming she was OK. A dispathcer accepted the emergency call from the device which informed him that a person had falled heavily, and then transmitted the coordinates of the scene of the accident.

Additionally, the Watch also contacted the elderly lady's son as he was designated as an emergency contact.

An ambulance was dispatched and arrived at the lady's home based on the coordinates given by the Watch. When they were unable to gain entry to the residence, a fire unit was dispatched and gained entry to the home. Thankfully, the lady was not injured despite taking the fall and the ambulance crew looked her over and waited with her for her son to arrive.

Apple Watch can detect a hard fall and will prompt a message on screen giving the user the option to respond "I'm OK", or to tap "EMERGENCY SOS" to contact authorities. For over 65s, the feature is automatically enabled. If a person fails to respond to the watch after a fall, it will contact authorities and other designated contacts.

The world's leading messaging platform, WhatsApp, became known for its simple to use interface and secure encrypted message transfer.

Nowadays, however, WhatsApp offers much more features, and some of them might even not be to your liking. For example, by default the sender can see whether the recipient of the message has read it.

This might not always be optimal, and thus we've decided to give you a simple trick that some of our readers might have overlooked.

To avoid your contacts to see whether you've read their message or not you must disable the checkmark feature, called Read receipts. This feature offers three distinct checkmarks, which tell you whether the message has been a) sent, b) received, c) read.

In the same order, the first of these is the single gray checkmark, the second grey double checkmark, and the third is the blue double checkmark.

To disable this feature you'll head to the Settings menu, which is found from the three dot menu on the right top corner. Select Account -> Privacy.

You should find an option called Read receipt with a description saying "If turned off, you won't send of receive Read receipts. Read receipts are always sent for group chats." Turn this off, and you will no longer send or receive these checkmarks except for group chats.

All major Facebook-owned properties, including WhatsApp, Facebook itself, Instagram and Messenger are down all over the world.

The problem seems to be worst in Asia, but reports also from South American countries and Europe are pouring to Twitter about the issue.

Uptime detection site, DownDetector shows that the problems started sometime around 11am UTC today and are currently ongoing.

current status of Facebook at DownDetector.com

Facebook has had its own Messenger app for mobile devices for nearly 8 years now, but it was five years ago they made one of the oddest and most criticized moves in the company's history.

In 2014, Facebook removed the Messenger function from its core Facebook app, and after that you had to download a separate app if you wanted to chat with your Facebook friends inside Messenger.

Many probably predicted doom and gloom for Messenger after that, but it has went on to increase its reach to over a billion people. However, it hasn't managed to gain as much traction as another messaging app owned by Facebook, WhatsApp.

Now it seems that Facebook is planning on bringing chat back to Facebook's own app. According to unreleased app feature guru Jane Manchun Wong, Facebook update is bringing Messenger functionality back to the Facebook app.

In pictures posted on Twitter, Wong shows that the Messenger icon in the top right corner of the Facebook app would open a new Chat section of the app instead of the separate Messenger app.

However, Facebook isn't planning. at least not yet, to move Messenger entirely back under its core app, since the Chat feature is fairly limited. There's no file transfer option nor is there voice or video calls.

Disney has been working on a streaming platform for its wide-ranging content portfolio from children's programming to Marvel franchises and more.

Late last year it finally revealed that it was going to launch their streaming service, Disney+, in 2019. Today Disney has confirmed the launch date and given us some other dearly needed details about the service.

Disney+ will be launched on November 12 and will cost $6.99 a month or if you commit to a year's subscription, you'll get a little cheaper at $69.99. That gives you access to Disney+ content in 4K and HDR on multitude of platforms including game consoles, smart TVs and mobile devices.

The service will obviously offer tons of content for children, but other Disney-owned brands include The Simpsons, National Geographics, Star Wars, and Marvel. New exclusive shows and movies include the likes WandaVision, The Sandlot, Lady and the Tramp, The World According to Jeff Goldblum, High School Musical The Series, and The Phineas and Ferb Movie.

Already previously Disney has shared information about Star Wars spinoffs, including The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and a Rogue One series with Cassian Andor.

Disney also revealed that it will likely be bundled with other services, such as ESPN+ and Hulu.

SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time since its demonstration flight last year, and this time landed all three boosters.

This was also the first time that the so-called "block V" Falcon Heavy launched, referring to the version of the side boosters compared to the demonstration flight last February. The mission launched the Arabsat-6A communications satellite owned by Arabsat, a Saudi Arabian firm, and built by Lockheed Martin. It is heading for a highly eliptical Geostationary Transfer Orbit.

The demonstration flight of the Falcon Heavy last year was a success in that it demonstrated that the rocket could deliver its payload (a Tesla Roadster atop a platform), but the shot that received the most media attention was the synchronized landing of the two side boosters on land. It wasn't a perfect demonstration however, as the center core crashed into the sea right beside the automonous drone ship meant to be its landing pad.

Last night, SpaceX nailed the landing on all three boosters: the two side boosters lansing upright at land on two landing zones, and the the center core landing on the automonous drone ship "Of course I still love you."

The video quality from the Falcon Heavy from launch to landings was also noticeably better than previous launches, though the vibrations on the drone ship caused the video feed to freeze before the center core landed.

Streaming services are killing the traditional TV industry slowly, although not as slowly as cable companies would like, and surely. Services like Sling TV and YouTube TV are gaining traction as people are cutting cables.

Customers are tired of three figure cable costs, and for a good reason. You can get very adequate channel selection from online TV for half the price, or less.

Now YouTube TV has decided to increase the price, though. The reason behind that is the recent addition of new channels. YouTube TV now costs $10 more but has eight new channels.

$49.99/mo now buys you Discover Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, and MotorTrend, in addition to the 70+ other channels.

However, the new price gets awfully close to what cable companies offer you. In 2017, YouTube TV offered 50 channels for $35. Last year the price went up to $39.99 as they added more channels, and now the $10 price hike takes is one notch closer to no-thanks-land.

Spectrum for example offers a 120 channel lineup, including the likes of Discover Channel, HGTV, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery, and Animal Planet, for $44.99/mo. One thing YouTube TV, however, has going for it still is unlimited cloud DVR as well as YouTube Originals.

Apple's supremacy in the music distribution world ended as downloading music became obsolete to streaming it, and as paying per song or album lost to the subscription model.

The company still has the infrastructure of an undeniably decrepit and inadequate iTunes, which you use to control much more than your tunes. Apparently finally now in Cupertino they've realized that things need to change.

9to5Mac reports that Apple is planning on splitting iTunes into smaller and more specific apps within macOS, and they even have some leaked icons to prove it. The change in expected to happen with the next macOS update, which is due in the summer.

According to the report, iTunes will be split into Music, Podcasts, and TV apps. There's also a new Books app in the works for macOS.

While iTunes is being stripped of most of its functionality, it won't be dead quite yet. Apple is still keeping iTunes for synchronization purposes.

Perhaps this will save iTunes from dying altogether, although a name change to iSync would probably be appropriate.

To end the year, streaming giant Netflix released their first ever interactive movie. For Netflix Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was a trial of sorts, which confirmed the concept a success. Others are now following Netflix's lead.

Just yesterday Netflix released their new interactive TV show, You vs. Wild, where the viewer guides survival expert Bear Grylls through survival situations. Now it has been reported, that YouTube is also bringing interactive content to their platform.

YouTube has previously experimented with interactive advertisement but the interactive programming is a completely different beast. They are also planning to use the interactive elements in both unscripted as well as scripted programming.

According to Bloomberg, YouTube is working on several projects under its new interactive programming unit.

At this point there's not much other details but fortunately we might not have to wait long for more information. YouTube is announcing new content in New York in a couple of weeks.

Amazon's Echo is considered the first smart speaker that sparked the interest of Google, Apple, Samsung, and others to pursue this new type of AI enabled home tech.

Alexa has thus become nearly an eponym of voice assistants, and is referred often in both good and bad of what the technology has to potentially offer.

However, the success of Alexa's listening skills is more than super advanced machine learning algorithms and computer AI. In fact, Bloomberg's report tells that Amazon has employees all over the world listening to Alexa conversations to help enhance Alexa.

The employees listen to commands given by Alexa users, and while Amazon would deny that they listen to actual conversations or the content, they do record private conversations with customers to improve their service.

Not only are Alexa commands recorded, but according to Bloomberg's sources they also hear noises that aren't meant for Alexa's eletronic ears at all, including things like singing in the shower, children crying for help.

Some employees have reported hearing noises that they've suspected were part of a sexual assault. Amazon's internal policies however dictate that they shouldn't intervene.