Category Archives: Blog

Netflix just keeps on growing.

The streaming media company posted its Q4 earnings for 2018 on Thursday. Netflix shared that it added 29 million paid subscribers for the entirety of the year. That’s 33 percent higher than what the company added the previous year. 

In 2017, Netflix added 22 million paid subscribers. This put its total subscriber count at more than 117.5 million. One year later, the service now boasts about 146.5 million subscribers.

When broken down for the fourth quarter alone, Netflix blew past its own projections. The company added 8.8 million total paid memberships worldwide. U.S. subscribers accounted for 1.5 million of them. International subscribers made up the other 7.3 million. Netflix previously estimated it would add 7.6 million new subscribers total last quarter. Read more…

More about Netflix, Streaming, Streaming Services, Subscribers, and Tech

Lifetime’s creepy stalker drama You hit Netflix just over three weeks ago — and according to the streaming service, that move is working out for everyone involved. 

Per a post on one of Netflix’s official Twitter accounts, the Penn Badgley-starring drama is “on track to be viewed by more than 40 million” users in its first month of streaming. 

The striking number comes less than a month after the reported success of Bird Box, which Netflix claims was viewed by 45 million accounts in its first week. Notably, these numbers cannot be 100% confirmed by outside sources, but Nielsen ratings seemingly verified Netflix’s published Bird Box numbers shortly after they were posted.  Read more…

More about Netflix, You, Sex Education, Viewers, and Penn Badgley

I resisted the urge to get a decent VPN for my Android phone for years. Why bother with an extra app just to get online, now that internet connections are ubiquitous? 

Over time, however, the scenarios in which I needed a VPN became more common. I needed to check what this or that site looked like from another geolocation. Or I needed to test an app that wasn’t available in my country. But what finally made me cave in was being unable to watch some of my favorite TV shows while traveling. 

A VPN, or virtual private network, provides an additional layer of privacy when connecting to the internet. It’s like using a private tunnel to browse the web, keeping you safe from prying eyes and enabling you to surf as if you were connecting from a server in a different place. Typically, all you need to do as a user is install the app on your smartphone, start it up, choose a server location, and then you can just continue browsing as usual. Read more…

More about Tech, Android, Vpn, Tech, and Big Tech Companies

One of the biggest moods of 2018 was a doll. 

But not just any ol’ doll – it was Qai Qai, the rather witty and cynical companion of Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., daughter of tennis champion Serena Williams and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian.

Between engaging in memes and generally pondering life, Qai Qai has embarked upon many an adventure with her human guardian, often sitting courtside at Williams’ many matches — all of it posted to the doll’s total 106K followers on Instagram and Twitter. 

And she’s made her most recent splash in Australia, at the Australian Open and Hopman Cup tennis tournaments in January, where the G.O.A.T. has been playing. Read more…

More about Sports, Australia, Tennis, Serena Williams, and Culture

It’s time to change your password again.

More than 87GB of passwords and email addresses have been leaked and distributed in a folder dubbed “Collection #1” by hackers in a significant data breach.

As detailed by security researcher Troy Hunt, the trove of nearly 22 million unique passwords and more than 772 million email addresses was hosted on cloud storage service MEGA.

The link to the dump was posted on a hacking forum, but has been since taken down from the service.

More about Tech, Cybersecurity, Data Breach, Tech, and Cybersecurity

You probably shouldn’t feel sorry for Nicholas Truglia. It’s just that his story is so pathetic.

The 21-year old Manhattan resident was arrested last November and extradited to California in December. There, he’d face 21 felony counts relating to accusations of SIM swapping his way to a million dollars worth of stolen cryptocurrency. While Truglia’s fate remains unclear, details of his life leading up to the arrest have begun to emerge thanks to a lawsuit filled by a separate alleged victim, and oh man is it a wild ride. 

More about Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Tech, and Cryptocurrency Blockchain

Mariah Carey does not allow herself to age. 

She recently posted her take on the 10-year challenge, which has people comparing photos of themselves from 2009 and 2019. 

“I don’t get this 10-year challenge, time is not something I acknowledge,” she tweeted, along with two of the same bomb photos side by side. 

Can we just talk about this? Read more…

More about Memes, Mariah Carey, Culture, and Web Culture

Netflix’s Bird Box is inciting new outrage among viewers—and this time it has nothing to do with that dangerous viral challenge. 

The company has confirmed to Mashable that footage used in one of the film’s disaster scenes depicts the very real aftermath of a 2013 train derailment in Quebec, which resulted in a widespread fire that killed 47 people and destroyed much of the surrounding town of Lac-Mégantic. 

The clip appears early in the film, as Malorie (Sandra Bullock) flips through TV channels portraying different scenes from the apocalypse. One briefly shows the silhouette of a train engulfed in flames. Read more…

More about Netflix, Footage, Sandra Bullock, Train Derailment, and Bird Box

You ever watch something that makes you believe that maybe, just maybe, humanity isn’t a giant dumpster fire of awfulness? 

Inspired by those videos where people take pictures of themselves every day for a year, YouTuber Matt Bray created his own joyful series focused on dancing.

The project started with Bray dancing — by himself over 100 days in 2014, then in 100 different places in 2015, then with 100 different people in 2016. For his latest, Bray spent a year and a half traveling around the globe to a total of 15 different countries to create “1000 People of Dance.”

More about Youtube, Travel, Viral Video, Dance, and Web Culture

One person’s recent experience at an Airbnb has the company apologizing and clarifying its rules on surveillance devices.

Airbnb recently dismissed a privacy concern from one if its users when he discovered security cameras inside his Airbnb rental. The cameras were not mentioned in the Airbnb listing, as required by the company’s rules. After the user went public with his ordeal, Airbnb refunded the user, banned the host, and clarified that the listing did indeed break Airbnb policy.

When Jeffrey Bigham rented a home on Airbnb for himself and his family over the winter holiday break, everything seemed to check out. The Carnegie Mellon University professor detailed in a blog post how he went over the description, checked out the photos, and did his due diligence before renting the home. Read more…

More about Privacy, Airbnb, Security Camera, Tech, and Cybersecurity