A European government study found little evidence that piracy affects sales of anything other than “recently released blockbusters.” Despite being completed in May 2015, it appears not to have been published until now. The study has come to light on the blog of Julia Reda, the only politician from a national Pirate Party to currently […]
YouTube is to expand a program letting game streamers earn money directly from viewers. It comes across as a clear attempt to compete with the success of Twitch. Though the Sponsorships program already existed in beta form, it was largely downplayed in favour of a separate scheme for paid access to view a channel. That’s […]
Chrome is to block automatic play of videos with sound unless the user has indicated they are interested in such clips. While many will see such a move as a good thing in itself, Google is also promoting it as a way to make website display more consistent between desktop computers and mobile devices where […]
Today on Geeks are Sexy, we’re offering you “Penetration Testing – A Survival Guide” ($55 Value) from Packt Publishing for free! The need for penetration testers has grown well over what the IT industry ever anticipated. Running just a vulnerability scanner is no longer an effective method to determine whether a business is truly secure. […]
10 years ago today, a Twitter user posted a hashtag for the first time. That means a decade of a useful feature, many years of annoying advertising and several years of annoying spoken redundancy. The idea of hashtags came more than a year after the site’s launch and was suggested by user Chris Messina who […]
Facebook is to host original video content in a new section of your newsfeed. Don’t expect any blockbusters though: it isn’t paying anything up front for content. The new Watch tab on the site and app will host short form shows as well as the occasional live sporting event. The content will all be free […]
Adobe says it will ditch the Flash Player at the end of 2020. It says open standards such as HTML5 mean Flash is no longer needed. Rather than use the verb “kill”, Adobe instead says it will “end-of-life” Flash, specifically that it will stop distributing the player and issuing updates in 2020, though it will […]
22,000 WiFi users in the UK have unwittingly agreed to unblock sewers by hand. They failed to read a clause placed in terms and conditions as a stunt. Purple provides Wi-Fi services that businesses and other facilities offer as public Wi-Fi for customers. To access the connection, customers need to confirm they accept a set […]
Your Internet experience will probably suck worse than usual on Wednesday. It’s part of a coordinated “day of action” to protest planned changes that would reduce the enforcement of net neutrality. Back in May the Federal Communications Commission, which has changed both its leadership and political make-up since the last US elections, formally proposed reclassifying […]
The Internet of things: Just because it’s connected, it doesn’t mean it’s smart. Let’s make connected products based on human behavior. No one wants a Wi-Fi toothbrush. [Daniel Warwick]