An anonymous reader shares a report: "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." That's Netflix executive Ted Sarandos in 2013, shortly before his company made its jump into original content with House of Cards. And not just original content -- glossy big-budget content made by a famous director, featuring (at the time) a famous actor. HBO-style content. Even if you don't follow the media business closely, you probably know what happened after that: With House of Cards, Netflix proved, quite quickly, that it could make shows as good as the stuff the fabled pay TV network makes. And then Netflix started making a lot more stuff, and consumers liked that, too. And now Netflix is the company that every other media company wants to emulate -- and it's the chief reason every big media company is trying to decide whether it needs to buy or sell to every other big media company.

But it didn't have to go that way. In 2005, two years before Netflix got into the streaming business, some HBO executives were pushing the company to do the same thing. They wanted HBO to use the internet to sell subscriptions directly to consumers instead of wholesaling their product to the big cable TV distributors. A year later, after passing on that idea, HBO considered another move that would have rewritten media history: Some of its executives wanted HBO to buy Netflix, which at the time was a DVD rent-by-mail business worth around $1 billion. Netflix is now worth some $300 billion.

This week, following successful tests on Android smartphones and tablets, Netflix has announced that it will bring AV1 to TVs. 9to5Google reports: In a blog post this week, Netflix confirms it will start using the AV1 codec on some TVs. AV1, which has been available since 2018, allows for the more efficient encoding and decoding of data for streaming, leading to higher quality for the end user and better use of bandwidth for providers. However, the codec relies on hardware support. To ensure that TVs using AV1 streams will provide a good experience, Netflix says it analyzes the steam to ensure the device is spec-compliant for AV1 decoding.

For the time being, Netflix isn't specifically announcing which devices will support AV1 outside of the Netflix app on Sony's PS4 Pro console. On other TVs, support is only specified as working on "a number of AV1 capable TVs." In theory, this should include a considerable number of Android TV models.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: Electronic monitoring of home workers by companies is rising sharply, a survey suggests. The government is being urged to toughen the rules -- and ban most webcam use. "It was creepy," says Chris. "One of my managers was watching people's personal computers to monitor what we were doing at home -- all the time, not just when we were working. It was a bizarre way to carry on." When the first lockdown started, the firm that employed Chris -- a 31-year-old engineer from Sheffield -- sent most of its staff home. They were ordered to connect their private laptop and desktop computers to more powerful office machines so they could continue their high-tech operations. "We didn't mind," says Chris, "but I found loads of screens switched on one day when I came in to the office, and everybody's desktops were there, on display. "One of the managers wasn't just looking at our work. He could see exactly what we were doing all the time -- what we were watching on YouTube, that kind of thing."

Chris, who changed companies after he found out one of his managers was monitoring his home activities, thinks "excessive" surveillance is counter-productive. "My productivity didn't go down when I started working from home," he says, "and when I knew what was happening it made me more nervous. A lot of the time in my job is spent designing things on paper, away from the screen, so that doesn't register if someone is simply looking at what's going on on my desktop. It probably looked to that guy like I was downstairs watching Netflix or something, but I wasn't. It's a very blunt, depersonalizing way of trying to ensure people behave in the way a company wants."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Markets Insider: Binance, one of the largest crypto exchanges, said on Thursday it has created a team of investigators to try and track down the Squid Game token scammers. The SQUID token which was inspired by the hit Korean-language series "Squid Game" on Netflix, rose from as little as $0.01 over the past weekend to almost $3,000 before crashing to $0 by Monday. The websites and socials that came with it also went offline, which indicated at the time that any potential scam was over.

The Binance team will be exploring options to support the community such as blacklisting affiliated addresses and "deploying blockchain analytics to identify the bad actors," a spokesperson told Insider. Binance will also provide its findings to law enforcements in the relevant jurisdictions. "Our security team has launched an investigation -- as a gesture of goodwill," a Binance spokesperson told Insider in an emailed response. The scammers apparently fled with around $3 million. "The truth is, SQUID won't be the first or last DeFi scam," said Binance CEO and co-founder Changpeng Zhao. "We're entering a period of peak speculation-people are looking for the next get-rich-quick scheme, or 100X opportunity. The truth is, those 100X don't come along often. And when they do, they usually come with a ton of risk, sometimes so much so that the lines get blurred between investing and gambling."

Netflix, the video-streaming giant, began its expected foray into video games with the introduction of five mobile games to its users worldwide, playable initially on Android devices. From a report: The titles are included in a Netflix subscription, and there'll be no advertising or additional purchases required, Mike Verdu, Netflix's vice president of game development, said Tuesday. The streaming company has targeted video games as its next big thing -- it's an industry that's larger than the movie and TV businesses. Players logging in will see a dedicated games row and tab where they can choose which titles to play. Games for Apple's iPhone are also planned. The initial offering includes titles linked to Netflix shows, such as Stranger Things: 1984 and Stranger Things 3: The Game. Also included are Shooting Hoops, Card Blast and Teeter Up.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Tim De Chant: Over the last year and a half, as the pandemic has everyone turned to their screens, demand has surged for devices (phones and laptops) and cloud services (Netflix and Zoom), all powered by a range of advanced semiconductors. Manufacturers have raced to squeeze more chips out of their fabs, but many were running near their limits before the pandemic. Still, Intel and its competitors didn't rush to build new fabs -- fabs are startlingly expensive, and without continued demand, semiconductor firms are loath to build more. But now, as the global pandemic continues to disrupt supply chains, chipmakers have decided that the current spike in demand isn't going away. Intel's $20 billion investment [to build two new chip factories in Chandler, Arizona] is only one example. Samsung announced in May that it would spend $151 billion over the next decade to boost its semiconductor capacity. TSMC made a similar announcement in April, pledging to invest $100 billion in the next three years alone.

The investments required to stay at the leading edge -- where the most advanced chips are made -- has whittled down the number of semiconductor competitors from more than 20 in 2001 to just two today. "There's really only so much room at the leading edge, just because of the huge capital costs involved," said Will Hunt, a research analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. That cost is driven by the price of the equipment that's required to etch ever-smaller features onto chips. A few years ago, the industry began to use extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) to shrink transistor sizes. EUV machines are marvels of physics and engineering, and one tool costs upwards of $120 million. To stay relevant, companies will need to buy a dozen or more annually for the next several years. For those sorts of investments to make sense, semiconductor manufacturers must produce and sell an enormous volume of chips. "When you have volume orders, then you can do yield experiments, you can improve your yield, and yield is everything because that's how you cover your costs," said Willy Shih, a professor of management at Harvard Business School. Which is why Intel, under [Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger], is doing something now that it historically has shunned. "We are now a foundry," Gelsinger said at the Arizona groundbreaking. In the coming years, he said, Intel will "open the doors of our fab wide for the community at large to serve the foundry needs of our customers -- many of them US companies that are dependent on solely having foreign supply sources today."

But becoming a leading-edge foundry isn't just about building fabs and telling customers you've got space to make their chips. Gelsinger will have to change Intel's culture and, to some extent, its technology, both of which are deep-seated. "He has to turn a huge ship around," said Robert Maire, president of Semiconductor Advisors. In the coming years, Intel has several challenges to master at once. As the company rolls out a new business model, it also needs to redouble its R&D efforts while still being careful with cash flow. (Intel has fallen so far behind that it now plans to outsource production of its most advanced chips -- and a portion of the profits that accompany them -- to TSMC.) The transition will demand intense focus. "The foundry business could be a distraction," Shih said. At the same time, he added, Apple, Google, Amazon, and other companies are moving away from Intel's standardized chips toward their own customized designs. If Intel doesn't change with the times, it risks being left behind. "There will be many challenges, and there will be tests that will face them," Shih said. "It's going to be hard."

ISPs around the world claim the unprecedented bandwidth demands Netflix's Squid Game is placing on their broadband networks means they should be getting more money. From a report: But experts say that's not how telecom networks work, suggesting that already cash-flush telecom giants are just positioning themselves for an underserved hand out. The popular South Korean thriller, a not so thinly-veiled critique of late-stage capitalism, tracks a group of indebted people who compete in deadly children's games for cash. According to Netflix, Squid Game is the most popular show in company history, the number one program in 94 countries, and has been watched by 142 million households. ISPs around the world also claim the show's popularity is driving a massive surge in bandwidth consumption, and they want their cut.

In South Korea, Internet service provider SK Broadband sued Netflix earlier this month, claiming that between May and September the ISP's network traffic jumped 24 times to 1.2 trillion bits of data processed every second. This surge is Netflix's fault, the ISP insists, and Netflix should be held financially responsible. In the UK, British Telecom executives have been making similar complaints, insisting that Netflix should be forced to help pay for the surge in network traffic caused by the show. But broadband experts say that's not how broadband networks actually work. "It makes no sense for ISPs to cry victim because they provide a popular service, and are expected to provide it," John Bergmayer, telecom expert at consumer group Public Knowledge told Motherboard. "People subscribe to broadband to do things like stream video, and it's broadband customers who are requesting all these Squid Game streams. They are not somehow imposed on ISPs by Netflix."

Netflix just released an action-packed teaser for its live-action adaptation of the 1998 Japanese anime series "Cowboy Bebop." From a report: A 10-episode series -- which chronicles a group of cosmos-hopping bounty-hunters and is based on the cartoon of the same name -- will premiere on Netflix next month [...]. The 2 1/2-minute trailer, titled "The Lost Session," featured characters Spike Spiegel (voiced by John Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir) and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) running after a runaway target while squabbling about how to best catch the enemy. The trailer also teased the show's main villain, Vicious (Alex Hassell), as well as a snippet of the song "Green Bird" from the original series episode "Ballad for Fallen Angels." The group's spaceship, the Bebop, was also featured in the clip. A full trailer will be released on Oct. 26, just ahead of the Nov. 19 debut on Netflix.

A contract with a tech giant can put a startup on the map with venture capitalists and the market at large. That's what happened for Netskope, a cloud-based data security provider. Founded in 2012, the company was able to quickly scale up and secure multiple rounds of funding -- in part because it had a top-tier customer right out of the gate: Netflix. From a report: There was just one catch to landing that deal: It had to hire the streaming company's vice president of IT operations, Michael Kail, as a consultant and an advisor, and pay him with fees and stock options. Netskope (not to be confused with the now-defunct Netscape) wasn't the only startup confronted with that proposition. At least nine firms that worked for Netflix entered into similar arrangements, according to the U.S. Justice Department. Other companies drawn into Kail's web included software, cloud-storage and analytics companies Docurated, Numerify, NetEnrich, Platfora, VistaraIT, ElasticBox, Maginatics and Sumo Logic. The shady-sounding plot was described by the government during a criminal trial earlier this year in San Jose federal court. Kail was found guilty of more than two dozen fraud and money laundering counts. At his sentencing Oct. 19, prosecutors will ask that he get a stiff punishment of seven years in prison as well as be ordered to pay fines, restitution, and forfeit a $3.3 million home in Los Gatos, California.

The former Netflix VP, who also briefly served as chief information officer at Yahoo, "leveraged his status as a leader of the IT community in Silicon Valley to subvert the trust of Netflix and others to profit at their expense," prosecutors said in a recent court filing. They added that the similar schemes are "almost certainly" common among high-level tech executives, but that in no way excuses the behavior. The startups that paid to play, and possibly many others, believed this was how Netflix did business." A disturbing element of this narrative is the unequal playing field startups are on when they negotiate with big companies. As the government suggested, the crimes also seem relatively easy for an influential executive to carry out -- especially since the founders of fledgling firms have little if any incentive to blow the whistle, and may feel they have no choice but to go along with a pay-to-play scheme. In his own memorandum to the court, requesting that he be sentenced to a year of house arrest, Kail, 49, described himself as a "global power leader, top dev ops influencer and a thought leader." He appeared to minimize the impact of the crimes, describing them as "regrettable flaws in communication and transparency," and asserting that his undisclosed business relationships were more helpful than harmful to all involved. Yet many startup founders already have ample complaints about overly-generous advisor compensation and messy cap tables, even without the added corporate bribery wrinkle.

Netflix's hugely popular series Squid Game has become its biggest title ever at launch, the company said Monday. The Verge reports: The company's Netflix Geeked account tweeted Monday that Hwang Dong-Hyuk's survival thriller reached 111 million global accounts in its first 17 days on the service. Additionally, Squid Game is the first Netflix series to surpass 100 million in its first 28 days on the service, a spokesperson told The Verge. Netflix typically uses 28-day windows to measure the performance of a title on its platform. The spokesperson confirmed to The Verge that the figures it shared are based on the number of accounts that watched the series for at least two minutes, its standard metric for ranking titles (though it has used additional measurements to track the success of titles in the past).

Since debuting on Netflix on September 17th, Squid Game has reached the no. 1 position on the streaming service in 94 countries -- every country in the world where the service features a top 10 list, the company spokesperson said. Additionally, the show has held the no. 1 position for 21 days in the US, shattering the record for a non-English language title. Squid Game was previously announced as the first Korean title to reach the top spot in the US.

Telkom SA said Netflix will no longer be available on the South African phone and internet company's set-top box from October. From a report: A deal between the parties has come to an end and will not be renewed, Content Executive Wanda Mkhize said in a statement, without giving a specific reason. Other content partnerships will be announced in due course, she said. The move comes after MultiChoice, Africa's largest pay-TV provider, signed deals with Netflix and Amazon.com to offer their streaming services through its new decoder. The continent is a small market for paid streaming video, with just a few million subscribers out of a population of more than 1 billion, and the U.S. giants have targeted it for future growth.

"I'm done with paying for a virtual private network," writes the New York Times' lead consumer technology writer. [Alternate URLs here and here.] The reality is that web security has improved so much in the last few years that VPN services, which charge monthly subscription fees that cost as much as Netflix, offer superfluous protection for most people concerned about privacy, some security researchers said.

Many of the most popular VPN services are now also less trustworthy than in the past because they have been bought by larger companies with shady track records. That's a deal-breaker when it comes to using a VPN service, which intercepts our internet traffic. If you can't trust a product that claims to protect your privacy, what good is it? "Trusting these people is really critical," Matthew Green, a computer scientist who studies encryption, said about VPN providers. "There's no good way to know what they're doing with your data, which they have huge amounts of control over...."

As a mainstream privacy tool, it's no longer an ideal solution. This sent me down a rabbit hole of seeking alternatives to paying for a VPN. I ended up using some web tools to create my own private network [on the cloud] for free, which wasn't easy... Not only is it free to use, but I no longer have to worry about trust because the operator of the technology is me.
"But I also learned that many casual users may not even need a VPN anymore," the article concludes. (Unless you're living in an authoritarian country and trying to reach information beyond its firewall.) One cybersecurity firm tells the Times that journalists with sensitive contacts or business executives carrying trade secrets might also still benefit from a VPN. But (according to the firm) the rest of us can just try two-factor authentication and keeping all of our software up-to-date. (And if you'd rather not use a public wifi network — use your phone as a mobile hot spot.)

The article also notes that 95% of the top 1,000 websites are now already encrypted with HTTPS, according to W3Techs.

It also points out that one VPN company accused of developing malware nonetheless spent close to a billion dollars to buy at least four other VPN services — and then also bought several VPN review sites, which then give top ratings to VPN services it owns...

phalse phace shares a report from The Verge: British Satellite broadcaster Sky is moving away from the satellite dishes that have defined its TV service for decades. Sky Glass is launching today, an ambitious effort to sell television sets that stream Sky TV content over Wi-Fi directly to consumers. There's no external box, no satellite dish, and no need for a soundbar. Although announced for the UK today, Sky has global aspirations for Glass TV "built on technology borne of the collaboration as part of the Comcast Corporation." As such, we might be looking at the platform underpinning Comcast's rumored XClass TVs for the US. Sky Glass TVs will be available in three sizes: 43-inch, 55-inch, and 65-inch. Each 4K TV will stream Sky's TV channels, and integrates in voice control (Hello Sky) and 21 apps to access additional content like Netflix, Spotify, or Disney Plus.

Sky hasn't named the TV manufacturer it partnered with yet, but the full specifications include a UHD Quantum Dot display, support for Dolby Vision, HDR 10, HLG, three HDMI 2.1 ports, and a single USB-C port. The rather chubby TV fits six speakers for up to 215W of Dolby Atmos surround sound: 3 outward firing speakers, 2 upward, and 1 central subwoofer. There will also be five color options: white, pink, green, blue, and black. The price of a Sky Glass TV is designed to be baked into a monthly subscription to Sky's TV service, known as Sky Ultimate TV, but you can also pay for the TV upfront if you want to lower the monthly costs. Sky Ultimate TV includes access to Netflix and some basic Sky channels, but Sky Sports and Sky Cinema are separate add-ons. What you pay will depend on the size of TV and whether you want to spread payments. The report goes on to note Sky's collaboration with Microsoft to watch TV together with others. "Sky demonstrated a software experience that allows you to watch TV channels with others, and see each other's reactions to sport in real time," reports The Verge.

Furthermore, Sky claims it'll be the first TV manufacturer in the world to allow customers to "swap old Sky Glass TVs for newer models when they're available," the report adds.

According to fluent Korean speaker Youngmi Mayer, Squid Game features "botched" subtitles that have changed the show's meaning for English-speaking viewers.

For those unaware of Squid Game, it's a Korean-language drama about an alternative world where people in debt compete in deadly games. The plot sees a group of people tempted into a survival game where they have the chance to walk away with 45.6 billion Korean won ($38 million) if they win a series of six games. According to a BBC article, it's currently on track to become Netflix's biggest original series. From the report: "The dialogue was so well written and zero of it was preserved [in the subtitles]," Youngmi said in a Twitter post. In a TikTok video that's had almost nine million views, Youngmi gave several examples of mistranslation. In one scene a character tries to convince people to play the game with her, and the closed-caption subtitles read: "I'm not a genius, but I still got it worked out." But what the character actually says, Youngmi explains, is: "I am very smart, I just never got a chance to study." That translation puts more emphasis on the wealth disparity in society -- which is also a theme in the Oscar-winning 2019 Korean film, Parasite. "Almost everything she says is being botched translation-wise... the writers, all they want you to know about her is that," Youngmi said. "[It] seems so small, but it's the entire character's purpose of being in the show." Youngmi later clarifies that her initial comments were about the automatically generated closed-caption subtitles rather than the English language subtitles, which are "substantially better." But she added: "The misses in the metaphors -- and what the writers were trying to actually say -- are still pretty present."

Netflix's co-CEO revealed a list Monday showing its top shows and movies of all-time, reports NBC News. The list revealed that the 19th-century drama Bridgerton "was its most watched TV series ever, with 82 million subscribers tuning in for at least two minutes in its first 28 days on the service..." French series "Lupin: Part 1" and season one of "The Witcher," a fantasy series starring Henry Cavill, tied for second on the list, with 76 million accounts.

Among movies, the action film Extraction earned the No. 1 spot. The film about a captured CIA agent was watched by 99 million accounts in the first 28 days, Netflix said. Bird Box, a post-apocalyptic horror film, and the action-comedy Spenser Confidential were the second- and third-most popular films, according to the company.

All the films and series on the list were Netflix originals.
Using a different metric — which shows attracted the most hours of actual viewing time — Bridgerton still came in #1 for TV shows, followed by "Money Heist: Part 4" and "Stranger Things Season 3."

And the top three movies (based on hours of viewing) were Bird Box, Extraction, and Martin Scorsese's The Irishman.

South Korean Internet service provider SK Broadband has sued Netflix to pay for costs from increased network traffic and maintenance work because of a surge of viewers to the U.S. firm's content, an SK spokesperson said on Friday. From a report: The move comes after a Seoul court said Netflix should "reasonably" give something in return to the internet service provider for network usage, and multiple South Korean lawmakers have spoken out against content providers who do not pay for network usage despite generating explosive traffic. Netflix said it will review SK Broadband's claim, and seek dialogue and explore ways in the meantime to work with SK Broadband to ensure customers are not affected. The popularity of the hit series "Squid Game" and other offerings have underscored Netflix's status as the country's second-largest data traffic generator after Google's YouTube, but the two are the only ones to not pay network usage fees, which other content providers such as Amazon, Apple and Facebook are paying, SK said. Netflix's data traffic handled by SK jumped 24 times from May 2018 to 1.2 trillion bits of data processed per second as of September, SK said, riding on the success of several Netflix productions from Korea including "Squid Game" and "D.P."

Microsoft is announcing the Surface Laptop Studio today, a successor to the Surface Book line of powerful laptops. It presents a total redesign for Microsoft's flagship laptop, ditching the removable display in favor of one that pulls forward to transform from laptop into tablet (or what Microsoft calls studio mode). From a report: "Surface Laptop Studio is the most powerful Surface we've ever built," says Pete Kyriacou, vice president of devices at Microsoft. "It is the culmination of years of Surface innovation -- on hinges, display, silicon, and more -- and brings the best of the Surface heritage together in one powerhouse device."

The most immediate and obvious change to this Surface Book successor is the display and hinge. The 14.4-inch PixelSense Flow display (2400 x 1600) supports up to 120Hz and Dolby Vision. Microsoft is using a new flexible Dynamic Woven Hinge, which it says is durable and allows this laptop to transition between modes much like the larger Surface Studio. The Surface Laptop Studio supports three modes: laptop, stage, and studio. The laptop mode arranges the display just like a regular laptop, with a full keyboard and a new touchpad with haptics. The stage mode is where things get interesting, as you can pull the display forward to an angle that's designed for gaming, streaming, or presenting. This will cover the keyboard, and the angle is more suited toward watching Netflix or playing games, touching the display, or using the new Surface Slim Pen 2 for digital inking.

Comcast appears to be planning to offer TVs running its own software across at least two territories, according to recent reports from Protocol and The Financial Times. It comes a little more than a week after Amazon announced that it too will be getting into the TV set business. The Verge reports: In the US, the TVs will reportedly be branded as XClass TVs. Originally manufactured by Hisense, the 43 and 50-inch sets will run Comcast's X1 operating system, which is already found on its set-top boxes and Xfinity Flex streaming box. An Xfinity landing site confirms the "XClass TV" branding, while an FAQ spotted by Protocol says they'll aggregate "your favorite apps, live channels, and On Demand movies and shows together in one place."

Meanwhile in the UK, Comcast subsidiary Sky is reportedly planning to launch smart TVs of its own. The FT's report doesn't mention what operating system these TVs are likely to run. Sky already operates its Sky Q platform in the country, which currently runs on set-top boxes and shows satellite broadcasts alongside video streamed from services like Netflix and Disney Plus. As Protocol notes, the initiatives appear to be Comcast's attempt to insulate itself as customers turn away from traditional cable and satellite plans in favor of streaming services. By offering a platform that competes with the likes of Roku, Comcast would be able to maintain its direct relationship with customers. It could then aggregate content from other streaming providers alongside its own Peacock and Xumo streaming services. Controlling the viewing platform also gives Comcast and its subsidiaries the ability to negotiate with streaming providers to offer them better prominence on its platforms, the FT notes.

Netflix said on Monday it is launching a free mobile plan in Kenya as the global streaming giant looks to tap the East African nation that is home to over 20 million internet users. From a report: The free plan, which will be rolled out to all users in Kenya in the coming weeks, won't require them to provide any payment information during the sign-up, the company said. The new plan is available to any user aged 18 or above with an Android phone, the company said. It will also not include ads. The company told Reuters that it is making about one quarter of its movies and television shows catalog available to users in the free plan in the East African nation.

Amazon is officially in the TV set business. From a report: After years of selling Fire TV devices that plug into third-party HDTVs and teaming with TV makers for Fire TV-based products, the ecommerce giant is rolling out the first-ever Amazon-built TVs: the Amazon Fire TV Omni Series ($410 and up), which provides hands-free Alexa voice navigation, and the value-priced 4-Series smart TV line ($370 and up). They're set to ship in October.

In addition, Amazon is baking in new features to the overall Fire TV platform, including bringing TikTok content to the platform in the U.S. and Canada; letting users access Netflix's shuffle-mode feature via Alexa; and being able to ask Alexa for movie or TV show recommendations. The company also is bowing the new Fire TV Stick 4K Max ($55), which it says is more powerful than the prior-generation model and is Amazon's first streaming media player to launch with Energy Star certification and Wi-Fi 6 support.