Internet & Websites News - Page 30

Hulu will be livestreaming TV next year and it looks as though YouTube will be doing the same, according to people familiar with the matter.

It's said YouTube has overhauled its technical architecture to accommodate the new service which could debut as early as 2017, and that the company has discussed plans with most major media companies, including Comcast, NBC, and many more. No rights have as of yet been secured, but it's possible the Hulu deal could help grease the wheels.

The service would be called Unplugged, a nod to the ever-growing community of people commonly known as cord cutters who refuse traditional cable in favor of streaming services.

Cord cutters rejoice: live TV streaming is coming to Hulu in 2017.

Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins announced that Hulu will expand to live TV broadcasts at the company's event in New York, confirming past reports. Hopkins didn't reveal any pricing information or channels, but the Wall Street Journal claims it could cost around $40 per month and possibly include--but not limited to--Bravo, E!, MSNBC, CNBC, Oxygen, Syfy, USA, ABC, ESPN, Disney, Fox, Fox News, FX and Fox Sports.

"This means our viewers will be able to enjoy live sports, news and events all in real-time without a traditional cable or satellite subscription," Hopkins said at the event. "We're going to fuse the best of linear television and on-demand in a deeply personalized experience optimized for the contemporary, always-connected television fan."

YouTube has had a pretty similar and somewhat chaotic design for a good six years or so, but it looks like that may finally change. A fresh and clean new design based on Google's Material platform has surfaced online, indicating it's likely in testing as you read this.

If you'd like to try it yourself, open Chrome and follow the steps below as outlined by redditor giorgiomarinel:

Note you may have to be on the US region setting, in Incognito mode, and/or sign out of your account to make it work. Happy Youtubing!

As internet data cap surcharges have become more and more impactful (some providers are now charging as much $35 per month for you to 'avoid' fees associated with usage caps), more and more customers are starting to notice and even take action.

The Wall Street Journal reports data limit complaints to the Federal Communications Comission (FCC) stood at 863 in the first half of 2015 before soaring to 7,904 in the second half. More than that, some said they were canceling streaming services like Netflix, Sling TV, and Sony PlayStation Vue, which are top sources of data consumption. This year looks similar with 1,463 complaints registered as of mid-April.

While companies like Comcast publicly state caps are necessary, leaked internal documents and comments show they're quite aware that's not true, making the situation all the more absurd.

The newest episode of Game of Thrones -- "The Red Woman" -- has been pirated via BitTorrent one million times in about 12 hours, according to TorrentFreak.

Those downloading the show are fairly evenly spread out across the world: 12.5% are in Australia, 9.7% are in India, 8.5% are in the US, and 6.9% hail from the UK, with Philippines, Canada, the Netherlands, Greece, South Africa and Saudi Arabia not far behind. Mind you, time differences will favor some regions more than others; a more complete and accurate picture will unfold soon.

It's expected piracy this time is less than before in the US, as HBO was made free in the region over the weekend while the new season premiered.

Chat bots are becoming increasingly more complex with the ability to actually hold down a real(ish) conversation. Microsoft has been previewing some of their advanced AI (not the now failed Tay project) through Skype, but it has previously only been available to users of Windows, Android or even iOS. The desktop (and larger mobile) Apple crowd had been left out. That's changed, just in case you'd rather not talk to humans.

The Mac client now natively supports talking to the bots, as does the web client, of course. Bot integration is now available because sometimes talking to real humans can be a pain in the tuckus. Though this isn't an example of advanced interaction, you're able to try speaking to six different bots that are in a beta state. These six bots are able to spit out basic information to queries you make. You can ask for the latest news, weather, and other things like that. They even understand natural language, so you shouldn't have to modify how you ask questions to get the proper response.

Now, to actually make them available you'll have to take a number of steps. On your Mac in the Skype app, navigate to Contacts, then select Add Bot. Easy enough really. In the web client, all you have to do is click on the Discover Bot on the left-hand side. Then you'll be able to interact with relatively intelligent assistants, which is what it amounts to at the moment.

Back in January, Netflix began getting serious about cracking down on VPN users, which utilize various software to gain access to other countries' broader catalogues. It made good on its word which has since prompted over 40,000 people to sign a petition demanding the company back off. Despite this, it's not concerned, calling the uproar 'inconsequential' in its earnings call this week.

"It's a very small but quite vocal minority," said CEO Reed Hastings. "So it's really inconsequential to us, as you could see in the Q1 results."

That said, Netflix sympathizes strongly with that minority, having stated publicly many times it eventually wants all of its content to be globally available, thus eliminating the demand for VPNs among its users.

Streaming services like Spotify and Amazon Instant Video offer the option for offline playback -- the key benefit of which is the ability to listen to or watch content in situations where Wi-Fi is not available -- and it may only be a matter of time before Netflix offers the same. Its CEO Reed Hastings, when questioned on the prospect in an earnings call this week, clearly indicated it's not something he's opposed to.

"We should keep an open mind on all this... as we expand around the world where we see an uneven set of networks, it's something we should keep an open mind about."

Should the service one day implement it, it's likely stored content would disappear after 48 hours.

Comcast is America's cable giant and Netflix is the poster child for new wave programming, so it's only logical to compare the two in light of their recent company reports. As fate would have it, Comcast boasts 33,347,000 cable subscribers, but Netflix does them about 22 million better with 44,740,000: a 100.2% differential.

Mind you, Comcast does business by charging a lot lore to fewer customers, whereas Netflix charges a lot less to a lot more. So while the user gap is major, the revenues for the competing services would tell a different story.

Meanwhile, subscriber growth rates show Comcast doesn't really have a growth rate (not too surprising given how long cable has been around), whereas Netflix has been increasing its base steeply each year.

Facebook is currently testing a significant change to its news feed that see it take on the form of a news aggregator site in many ways.

The new design features a tabbed categories section at the bottom of the normal feed where you can choose to see all news, World & US news, Sports news, and Food news, among others. By default, all of these categories will show up, but if you like, you can disable any of them.