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Reddit has shown a growing commitment to promoting ads on its platform, especially since going public a year ago. But in the interest of not completely alienating customers with incessant, irrelevant, or personally offensive ads, the social media company is giving users the ability to block advertisers for a year.

In a Reddit post last night, a Reddit employee known as cozy_sheets said that clicking “Hide” on an unwanted ad on Reddit will soon result in Reddit automatically hiding “future ads from that advertiser account for at least a year (you can re-hide the ad after that period of time).” The change will debut on the Reddit website and Reddit’s iOS and Android app throughout “the next several weeks,” according to the announcement.

Reddit didn’t detail what limits it will use to ensure that users don’t block every single advertiser for an ad-free Reddit. Some users have already reported seeing a daily limit for hiding ads, though.

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After raising rates last June for customers on some of its older plans, T-Mobile is pushing up costs again — but it’s not entirely clear how many people are affected. From a report: According to a memo obtained by CNET and sent to T-Mobile employees early this morning, some people will see a $5 per-line increase beginning with their April or May bills.

The memo by Jon Freier, president of T-Mobile’s consumer group, states that customers affected by the price hike should be notified by the end of today, March 13. Only those who receive a notice will see the rate increase.

Freier cites the “rising costs over the past several years” as the impetus behind the price push. Other carriers are facing the same headwinds, such as Verizon last December and this January, and AT&T last January and June.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Netflix’s streaming era began way back in 2007, right around the time the company had delivered its billionth DVD by mail (a copy of Babel to a woman in Texas). That’s the year when the company began development of an app that would allow you to watch video-on-demand content on your actual TV, rather than in a window on your PC via Internet Explorer—or whatever the hell browser you happened to be using during the George W. Bush administration.

Internet speeds and interest built and, by 2011, the company had moved fully away from its DVD-by-mail business as streaming took on a life of its own. While distribution rights for streaming content were, and remain, wildly different than for physical copies, the potential of streaming was obvious: Netflix would offer something like the breadth and depth of its DVD library, minus the “mailing things back and forth” part.

There was a value proposition there, too: As cable prices skyrocketed and we were all forced to pay for endless channels that we mostly didn’t watch, Netflix (and Hulu, which grew more slowly, but debuted around the same time), the promise of a vast library of movies to watch whenever you wanted was irresistible—and cheap: In 2011, you could get an all-streaming subscription for about $8 a month. Which was a good deal, even during the Obama administration.

Despite a few caveats—you might’ve needed to bump your internet connection to a higher, pricier bandwidth, and you still needed a separate DVD subscription to watch some older movies, it seemed like the future was in sight, filled with endless possibilities.

A decade and a half later, we all know that future was a lie—especially if you’re a movie lover.

The rise of “streaming originals”

Netflix’s first foray into original programming was a straight-to-series order for the Kevin Spacey-led, David Fincher-produced political thriller House of Cards, which debuted in 2013. The decision to pursue the show—and to outbid every traditional cable and broadcast network for it—was almost entirely data-driven, and a harbinger for what would come: Netflix saw that viewers liked Kevin Spacey (it was a different era, obviously), and David Fincher movies! House of Cards had both.

Data has always been the Holy Grail of entertainment programming, but Netflix had data that was better, more specific, and more current than any focus group could hope to provide. Gone were the days of extrapolating from surveys—Netflix knew who was watching what and when with unheard-of specificity, and thus the streamer’s ability to give people what they want would become unprecedented. It would also lead them to focus more on developing their own proprietary series and films, rather than negotiating massive licensing deals for stuff other studios owned.

And the deals were massive—Netflix would spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to fill its servers with “content.” But as time went on, and other studios launched their own streaming services, chasing cash they used to make selling movies to cable, Netflix’s library started to shrink, going from 11,000 titles in 2015 to just 6,000 by 2022.

The golden age of streaming

Still, it was hard to complain too much when those Netflix rivals seemed willing to do anything to compete. Whereas Disney once kept tight control over its library, placing films into “the Disney Vault” so it could rerelease them to theaters and on video every decade or so, the launch of Disney+ in March 2020 saw the studio offering up hundreds of its classic films at once—a treat for animation buffs and a boon to parents who no longer had to endure their kids watching the same handful of DVDs on repeat (in theory, anyway).

Not to be outdone, when Warner Bros. launched what was then known as HBO Max in May 2020, it seemed like a pandemic-era gift: The studio went all-in on its massive catalogue—one of the largest and most enviable in Hollywood, encompassing classic films, more recent blockbusters, beloved animation, and shows culled from its array of cable networks. Alongside big gets—like securing the rights to all of the films from Japan’s revered Studio Ghibli, something its cranky co-founder Hayao Miyazaki swore would never happen—Warner Bros. leaned into its history, loading the service with hundreds of classics from across the decades.

For a while, perusing the lists of films coming to these services every month was a delight—sure, no one service offered every movie, but there was a decent chance what you wanted to watch was available somewhere, and monthly subscriptions were cheap enough that most people subscribed to a few of them.

But this golden age of streaming proved to be short-lived.

Shrinkflation comes for streaming

Even during this period of explosive growth, streamers started to follow the Netflix model of investing more money in original content, and leaving catalogue as an afterthought. It’s hard to build buzz around movies that are 50, 20, or even a decade old, after all, when you could instead promote something shiny and new.

Still, the reckoning didn’t truly come until 2022, when inflationary pressures, including rising interest rates, coupled with a surprising loss of subscribers, caused Netflix’s stock value to crater, dropping from more than $600 to less than $200 over the course of a few months.

Suddenly, every streaming service seemed concerned about the bottom line—and it seems the easiest way to cut costs, when it comes to digital offerings, is to reduce your library. Over the course of the next year, embattled entertainment companies announced plans to begin removing vast quantities of older content from their services—often even as they raised prices. Like spending more money for a smaller bag of chips at the grocery store, shrinkflation came for streaming too.

Where did all those movies go?

Remember the data I mentioned earlier? The downside is that the numbers apparently showed streamers that customers don’t care that much about older movies—or at least, not enough about any one movie for a lack of them to move the needle when it comes to subscriptions. So why give people free access to stuff most wouldn’t watch when you could instead make a little money?

While some of these films have gone to ad-supported services like The Roku Channel and Tubi, watching a movie with a bunch of ad breaks is no cinephile’s dream.

Enter digital rentals: For five years I’ve been writing streaming guides for Lifehacker, suggesting movies you can watch based on your mood or to fit a particular theme. And, anecdotally but undeniably, these film lists are increasingly less about “streaming” and more about reminding you of things you can pay to rent. Whereas I used to be able to point you to a few dozen films spread across the major services, these days my recommendations tend to include a lot more rentals.

Broad categories of films, usually anything more than a decade old, aren’t typically included with any streaming service. If you want to watch them, you’re going to have to pony up around $4 for a digital rental. This holds true no matter how beloved the movie: As of this writing, the likes of Citizen Kane, Double Indemnity, All About Eve, The Shining, Back to the Future, Malcolm X, and The Iron Giant are all rental-only, meaning you have to pay extra on top of whatever streaming fees you’re already paying. That list of movies is entirely off the top of my head—I looked them up based on my confidence that, being older than a decade or two, they would only be available for a fee.

Netflix still has a classic movies section, but it’s pretty anemic. While the rotation changes, the oldest movie currently in the lineup is 1957’s An Affair to Remember—not ancient by classic film standards, but certainly venerable. It’s tagged as “Leaving Soon.” Beyond that, there are but a dozen movies from the 1970s (almost all of them Bollywood classics), and a few more than that from the 1980s and ‘90s. Of the dozen or so 1980s movies offered, several are marked as “Leaving Soon,” including The Karate Kid films. (They do have a James Garner movie from 1984 that I’ve never heard of called Tank, if you have a couple of hours to kill.)

New content has pushed classic movies to the back

I’m picking on Netflix here, with its relentless focus on original “content” and newer releases that sees the streamer churning through shows and movies, often before they have time to register. But the picture at Hulu, Paramount+, MGM+, etc. is roughly the same, even if those others have slightly better libraries of current-ish movies.

Max remains a bright spot, with a reasonably well-curated selection of movies dating back to the silent era—but even that has shrunk. The streamer used to prominently feature its association with classic-movie network TCM as its own category. It’s still there, but now you have to dig. No one’s tracking exact month-to-month numbers of older (meaning, sigh, the ‘90s or earlier) movies included in streaming, but, again, anecdotally: whenever possible, I try to recommend movies from a cross-section of streaming services. I figure it’s nice if any list of suggestions includes options for everyone, and I know that for me, personally, that extra rental price (on top of all the streaming fees) is a big barrier—no matter how much I want to see a particular movie. And that’s a lot harder than it used to be.

A culture of relentless, exhausting new-ness has evolved around streaming, one in which shows and movies are considered out of date once the first-week drop window has passed. So we’re left with a (very) limited selection of old movies, or we’re stuck with rental fees on top of streaming charges.

It’s hard out there for a cinephile.

The best streamers for movie fans

Max

Though I still mourn the loss of HBO Max, Max—the app that replaced it—is still the mainstream streamer with the best classic film library, including a broad range of Warner Bros. stuff, from Casablanca to Goodfellas to Lord of the Rings; it includes popular favorites alongside some more artsy fare, including those Studio Ghibli films. A recent partnership with A24 films has also made it the destination of choice for the modern cinephile crowd. Cost: starting at $9.99/month with ads, or $99.99/year.

The Criterion Channel

An offshoot of boutique film distributor Janus Films, The Criterion Collection has billed itself as a purveyor of “important classic and contemporary films” for decades. The Criterion Channel streaming service is, thus, unsurprisingly the destination of choice for anyone who wants to watch movies older than the Reagan administration. It has a rotating library of a couple of thousand films, including many foreign and classic American films. You may never heard of many of them, which could be either a pro or a con, but it’s not all snooty art films. Last year, for example, the Channel ran a month of Razzie-nominated movies including Showgirls, Gigli, The Blair Witch Project, and even Freddy Got Fingered. Cost: $10.99/month or $99.99/year.

Mubi

Another boutique streamer, Mubi is similar in some ways to The Criterion Channel, but with a key difference: Since Mubi has more of a focus on its role as a distributor of newer films (including recent Oscar nominee The Substance), the catalog tends to be a bit newer, and a bit smaller, but with a steady and smartly curated rotation. Cost: $14.99/month or $119.88/year.

TCM (Turner Classic Movies)

TCM is the gold standard in classic film, particularly when it comes to Hollywood, and the curation is solid. TCM has introduced me to more classic films that I otherwise never might have heard of than any other service, but finding it is more complicated. Max has a limited selection of TCM-branded films but, to get the full experience, including “live” movies, interviews, host segments, etc., you need to either suck it up and subscribe to cable, or a rough equivalent: YouTube TV offers TCM as part of its lineup, including on-demand content, as do Hulu with Live TV and Sling TV. Sticker shock with these options is real, however. Cost: Sling TV: starts at $45.99/month, YouTube TV: starts at $82.99 per month; Hulu+Live TV starts at $82.99/month.

Several people have been arrested as part of a corruption investigation linked to the European Parliament and Huawei. The company is suspected of bribing European Union officials, according to the Associated Press.

A spokesperson for the federal prosecutors’ office in Belgium, where the European Parliament is located, said authorities are conducting “an ongoing investigation on preliminary charges of active corruption, forgery of documents, money laundering at the European Parliament.” Prosecutors stated that “the offences were allegedly committed by a criminal organization” and were carried out to promote “purely private commercial interests in the context of political decisions.”

“Corruption was allegedly practiced regularly and very discreetly from 2021 to the present day, under the guise of commercial lobbying and taking various forms, such as compensation for political positions or excessive gifts such as food and travel expenses, or regular invitations to [soccer] matches,” the office said in a statement. It later added that the “alleged bribery is said to have benefited Huawei.”

Police raided several addresses in Belgium and Portugal, according to reports. Two European Parliament offices linked to two assistants who are allegedly involved in the case have been sealed.

Those arrested were being questioned over their alleged involvement “in active corruption within the European Parliament,” prosecutors said. A spokesperson for the office told the BBC that no members of the parliament (MEPs) were directly targeted in these raids. However, reports suggest that around 15 current and former MEPs are “on the radar” of investigators.

Huawei said it would “urgently communicate with the investigation” to better understand the issue at hand, while the company is taking the allegations “seriously.” A spokesperson told The Guardian that “Huawei has a zero-tolerance policy towards corruption or other wrongdoing, and we are committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations at all times.”

A European Parliament spokesperson said the legislative body had “received a request for cooperation from the Belgian authorities to assist the investigation which the Parliament will swiftly honor.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/huawei-allegedly-benefited-from-european-parliament-bribery-scheme-142423000.html?src=rss

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In Gachiakuta, one man’s trash is another man’s power.

Microsoft has announced that it’s pulling the old Microsoft Remote Desktop tool that you could get in the Microsoft Store. The company is advising users to move over to the shiny new Windows App instead, which takes care of a lot of the same functions—including connecting to PCs remotely, and accessing Windows 365 computers in the cloud.

The Windows App provides several improvements over Microsoft Remote Desktop, Microsoft says, such as multi-monitor support, dynamic display resolutions, customizable home screens, and a more unified interface. It’s designed so you can access the same Windows machines remotely across multiple devices.

If you’re a user of Microsoft Remote Desktop, you need to move over by Tuesday, May 27. However, it’s not quite as easy as one app fully and completely replacing another—Microsoft has other similar tools available as well, and there are currently some caveats to using the Windows App.

What is and isn’t changing

Microsoft is retiring a single, specific utility here: Microsoft Remote Desktop in the Microsoft Store. The Windows App is essentially its new and modern replacement. However, while the Windows App does cover most of what Microsoft Remote Desktop did, it doesn’t cover everything on every platform.

What isn’t going away is the Remote Desktop Connection feature that’s included in Windows: You can still use this as normal. You can also still download and use the more advanced Remote Desktop client for Windows tool, which is aimed at IT administrators and professionals, and comes with features suitable for organizations.

The Microsoft Remote Desktop app is being retired.
Credit: Microsoft

Confused yet? While the Windows App for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and Android does allow remote desktop connections at the time of writing, the Windows App for Windows doesn’t. For Windows-to-Windows connections, Microsoft recommends using built-in Remote Desktop Connection, “until support for this connection type is available in Windows App”—though it doesn’t say when that support is going to roll out.

The Windows App is a good idea, in theory, but it’s still a work in progress: Microsoft even has an official known issues and limitations page that you should check if you’re moving over from the Microsoft Remote Desktop program (the one that’s being retired). It also requires a work or school Microsoft account, so it’s not something individual users can access (at least not for now).

How to set up remote connections

You can check out our full guide to the Windows App for more details on what this software package is and what it can do, but if you’re moving over from Microsoft Remote Desktop, then you’re likely to be most interested in setting up remote PC connections. You can do this by clicking the + (plus) button in the top-right corner of the Devices tab, then choosing Add PC from the list.

You then need to provide a host name or IP address for the computer you’re connecting to, as well as setting up the rest of the connection configuration—including how the remote PC is displayed on screen, and which folders are shared with the local PC. When all that’s done, click Add to put the computer on your Devices screen, then double-click its thumbnails to establish the connection.

The new Windows App, on Windows.
Credit: Lifehacker

There’s plenty more to the Windows App as well, including the ability to stream Windows machines running on the Windows 365 platform in the cloud. This is a feature that’s aimed at business and organization use, though, and to date Microsoft hasn’t said anything about letting ordinary consumers run Windows from the cloud.

If you’re connecting to a Windows PC from a Windows PC, then you need to use the old-school method, which is Remote Desktop Connection. First, you need to set up the computer you want to connect to, which must be running a Pro version of Windows. From Settings, choose System and Remote Desktop, then turn on the feature and make a note of the PC name displayed on screen.

The old Remote Desktop Connection tool lives on.
Credit: Lifehacker

Over on the computer you’re connecting from, type “remote desktop connection” into the search box on the taskbar, then choose the Remote Desktop Connection app when it appears. You’ll be prompted for the PC name that was displayed on the other machine, and then the connection is established.

It’s all a bit patchy, with multiple tools offering slightly different feature sets and at different stages in their development, but the Windows App is clearly going to be the future—eventually. If you find Microsoft’s approach to remote desktop access too confusing, there are plenty of third-party options around as well—including TeamViewer and Chrome Remote Desktop.

Never find yourself without a quick charge ever again with this handy portable charger.

The federal agency appeared to realize this was not a good look for Trump.

The 23,800 mAh battery is there to help power up the built-in projector and camping lights for days.

One of the best things you can do for your online security is to make sure you have a robust, unique password on every single one of your accounts. But not many of us have the ability to memorize the login details for so many different services if the credentials are as strong as they ought to be. Using a password manager can make all of that much easier. Our favorite, 1Password, is on sale for up to 50 percent off. The 1Password for Families plan is half off at $2.49 per month for one year. That’s about $30 for 12 months of access.

The solo plan, 1Password for Individuals, has dropped from $3 per month to $2.24 for a year — meaning you’d get 12 months of service for $27. So if you want an account for more than one person, the family plan is clearly the way to go.

In part due to its industry standard encryption, other security measures and how straightforward it is to use, 1Password is our pick for the best password manager overall. (Disclosure: 1Password provides journalists free access to its individual plan, an offer I’ve taken up.)

With the individual plan, you can store unlimited passwords and items, as well as 1GB of documents. A family plan includes access for up to 5 people and the same document storage capacity per person.

1Password’s tutorial makes it easy to import your credentials from other password managers. The app rates the strength of each of your passwords so you can quickly see which ones you should update. 

There’s an “open and fill” option that opens a website and plugs in your credentials to sign you in. What’s more, 1Password offers support for passkeys, login credentials that are stored on your devices and protected by a PIN or biometric authentication method such as facial recognition or a fingerprint.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/1password-subscriptions-are-up-to-50-percent-off-right-now-130020224.html?src=rss

Plus, new set pictures from Chris Nolan’s The Odyssey give us a look at Tom Holland in ancient action.

From security and privacy concerns to good old-fashioned cringe, there are all kinds of reasons you might want to delete your old social media posts. And there are plenty of tools for the job out there. The problem: most tend to focus on one or two social media networks. Redact, however, is a paid tool with support for deleting posts on 28 different services.

You can use it to scan for old posts and choose what to delete, or you can search for posts that mention specific topics. It can also be used to delete posts on a schedule—this is perfect if, for example, you wanted to delete all Bluesky posts a month after you post them. It’s a lot of power, basically, and it runs locally on your computer, meaning you’re in control.

The services supported are broad, including retro social networks you haven’t thought about in ages alongside common work tools. The complete list of supported networks is Bluesky, Bumble, Deviantart, Discord, Disqus, Facebook, Flickr, Github, Gyazo, email (anything that supports IMAP), Imgur, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Medium, MyAnimeList, Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, Skype, Slack, Stack Exchange, Steam, Telegram, Tumblr, Twitter, Vimeo, WordPress, and Yelp. That’s a broad cross-section of the social web, ranging from dating apps to business tools.

How to use Redact

To get started, you’ll need to download the application and create an account. After that you can start signing into the services you want to delete posts from, then choose which posts you want to delete. If you use Chrome, there’s support for grabbing all the sites you’re currently logged into from there.

Unless you pay for a subscription you will quickly notice all kinds of limitations—the free plan only supports Facebook, Twitter, Discord, and Reddit, and even for those networks there are limits on how far back you can scan for messages and how many message you can delete. The free version is really only useful for getting a feel for the service.

You will need a paid plan for most features—plans start at $7.99 per month, which works out to $95.88 per year (there is no annual discount). That adds up for ongoing use, granted, though if you’re just emptying out old posts from a bunch of accounts you might only need to pay for a single month. The Ultimate plan is necessary if you want to delete files from “work” accounts including Slack, Github, and Stack Exchange—that plan starts at $14.99 per month, which works out to $179.88 per year.

Credit: Justin Pot

The process works the same for most social media networks and service: You sign into your account and can then start scanning for and deleting posts. There are four main modes: Preview, which lets you scan for posts and browse them; Deletion, which deletes everything without asking any questions; Select & Delete, which lets you check off the posts you want to delete before proceeding; and Schedule Deletion, which lets you automatically delete posts on an ongoing basis. Note that, for scheduled deletion to work, you will need to leave the application installed and running on your device.

Credit: Justin Pot

It’s worth noting that every application supported has an Easy and an Advanced form. How this works depends on which social network you’re using. Reddit’s advanced form, for example, lets you filter posts by subreddit, the kind of post, keywords, the NSFW tag, and more. You can even opt to not delete posts that have a certain amount of karma. There are similar advanced rules for every network, meaning you can really take control of what you want to delete.

There are numerous options to explore here, all tailored to the specific social network you’re trying to clear out. The user interface explains what everything does and, when there are limitations, what those limitations are. If you’re looking for a way to wipe your posts from a bunch of different social networks, all with one tool, Redact is worth trying out.

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