Category: Technologies

  • iOS 17 Could Make Your Locked iPhone Screen a Smart Home-Esque Display

    iOS 17 Could Make Your Locked iPhone Screen a Smart Home-Esque Display

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    Apple’s upcoming iOS 17 software update for iPhones could come with a feature that lets you view more items on your locked phone screen, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The smart display would reportedly show things such as calendar appointments, weather and notifications.

    The display would appear horizontally and resemble a smart home display like those sold by Amazon and Google while your phone is locked and lying unused on your desk or nightstand, Bloomberg said, citing unidentified sources. It’ll have a “dark background with bright text,” the report says, so that you can easily read the information.

    A similar horizontal smart display would reportedly come to iPads at a later date.

    Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but the news will reportedly be revealed at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference next month.

    The smart display rumor follows Apple last year launching lock screen widgets on iPhones and a customizable lock screen under iOS 16. The smart display would be a different experience, potentially giving you information without you having to touch your phone.

    Apple’s WWDC event will kick off with a keynote on June 5, where it’s expected the tech giant will unveil iOS 17, an AR/VR mixed-reality headset and possibly a new MacBook Air. You’ll be able to watch WWDC online as well as on the Apple TV app.

    Read more: Apple WWDC 2023: Everything We Expect at the June 5 Event

  • Samsung Unveils Rollable Display Concept for Laptops and PCs

    Samsung Unveils Rollable Display Concept for Laptops and PCs

    Samsung Display has taken the wraps off its new rollable screen technology for larger screens, saying it could “revolutionize the portability of tablet PCs or laptops.”

    Unlike current slidable and foldable devices, which Samsung says only triples the size of a screen, Samsung says the Rollable Flex screen expands to five times the size — from 49mm to 254.4mm in length. It does so by rolling the display around an O-shaped axis like a scroll of paper.

    This could make larger devices like laptops and tablets smaller and easier to carry.

    It’s not the first time we’ve seen a rollable display; the Motorola Rizr concept phone was revealed this year after LG showed off a phone with a rollable screen back in 2021 before exiting the smart phone market, which came after showing off a rollable TV at CES in January 2019.

    Read more: Best Foldable Phones in 2023: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, Z Flip, Moto Razr

    Samsung is also showcasing its Sensor OLED Display, which recognizes fingerprints anywhere on a screen and can measure your blood pressure, heart rate and stress levels when you touch two fingers on the screen.

    Unlike in current smart phones, the fingerprint sensor is embedded in the smartphone panel rather than underneath it as a separate module.

    “To accurately measure a person’s blood pressure, it is necessary to measure the blood pressure of both arms,” Samsung Display said in a statement. “The Sensor OLED Display can simultaneously sense the fingers of both hands, providing more accurate health information than existing wearable devices.”

    Samsung’s new tech is currently being showcased during SID Display Week in Los Angeles. Also on display from the tech giant this week:

    • A foldable phone concept called Flex In and Out for phones that can be folded 360 degrees both inwards and outwards. This tech could lead to lighter and thinner foldable phones, Samsung Display says.
    • A combination of foldable and slidable screens, called Flex Hybrid, announced earlier this year at CES 2023.
    • A slidable display called Slidable Flex Solo that changes from a 13-inch tablet to a 17-inch screen.
  • Netflix Password-Sharing Is No Longer Free in the US: What to Know

    Netflix Password-Sharing Is No Longer Free in the US: What to Know

    Netflix said Tuesday it’s now rolling out product updates around account-sharing in the US as part of its expanded policy on borrowing passwords. It began sending emails on May 23 to customers who are sharing passwords with anyone outside of their household, Netflix said in a blog post.

    If you’re sharing your streaming account with friends and family who live at a different address, you may opt to pay a fee for the extra user or to remove them from your account.Subscribers with either a standard or premium plan can choose to pay an additional $8 per month for each extra member. At this time, the extra member option is only available for those who are billed directly by Netflix.

    There are limits to how many extra users are allowed on accounts. Only those with a premium membership can add two extra people to their account; the standard price plan allows for only one extra member. Netflix defines a household as one where everyone lives under the same roof. Members of that household are still able to watch content while traveling, and the extra fee will not apply.

    When you open the Netflix app and navigate to your account page, you’ll see an Extra Members option. From there, subscribers can purchase a slot for the person outside their household. If they accept the invitation, the extra member will receive their own separate account, profile and password, and the fee is paid for by the main subscribing household.

    The rules? Extra member accounts can only stream on one device at a time and are only permitted to have one profile. The extra member must also be located in the same country as the account holder.

    netflix account page on computer screennetflix account page on computer screen

    A peek at where to find Extra Members on your account page.

    Screenshot by Kourtnee Jackson/CNET

    Subscribers can also opt to remove users outside of their households from their account, and urge them to sign up for their own Netflix subscriptions. In this case, anyone who is removed from an account can transfer existing profiles to a new membership they pay for themselves.

    Here’s a look at the monthly cost for each subscription plan:

    Netflix plans

    Basic with ads Basic no ads Standard Premium
    Monthly price $7 $10 $15.50 $20
    Number of screens you can watch at the same time 1 1 2 4
    Number of phones or tablets you can have downloads on 0 1 2 4
    HD available No Yes Yes Yes
    Ultra HD available No No No Yes

    The streaming service rolled out its new policy in February for Canada, Spain, Portugal and New Zealand. Netflix first announced its intention to crack down on password-sharing last year. In April, Netflix said it would implement a fee for US customers by the end of the second quarter.

  • Microsoft Office 2021 License Drops to $30 for a Limited Time

    Microsoft Office 2021 License Drops to $30 for a Limited Time

    If you’re looking for productivity tools, it’s difficult to match the Microsoft Office suite of apps. Office is the industry standard when it comes to word processing, spreadsheets, mail and more — and it’s used by businesses, schools and individuals around the world, making it an essential part of most people’s lives at one time or another. You’ve probably used Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook before, but Office apps aren’t always included with computer purchases, and getting access on your own can carry a hefty price tag.

    There is technically a barebones freebie version of Office out there, but assuming that basic version of Office won’t work for you (see below), your options essentially come down to paying a rolling monthly or yearly fee for a Microsoft 365 subscription or opting instead for a one-time Office license with the full panoply of apps, which typically costs as much as $430. But right now, StackSocial is offering a Microsoft Office 2021 license for just $30. That’s around 86% off its usual price. Better yet, this license, which is available for either Windows or Mac, is a one-time purchase that grants you unlimited access with no recurring charges.

    Microsoft Office 2021Microsoft Office 2021

    Microsoft, CNET

    StackSocial’s deal is a great bargain when compared with the online Microsoft 365 subscription suite that starts at $7 a month or $70 a year for individuals. There’s a free online version of Microsoft Office that you can use as well, but it isn’t nearly as feature complete. (Separately — and notably — Apple users should note that Outlook is now a free app for the Mac.)

    Now, a deal this good comes with some caveats. First, this key is good only for a single computer, so you won’t be able to install it on various machines in your home, and if your current computer happens to die, you could run into a snag when trying to transfer it. Likewise, you’re passing up on other benefits you’d get as a 365 subscriber. You won’t get any OneDrive Cloud Storage, nor will you get the fancy new cloud-based AI features like Microsoft Copilot. And while the apps should continue to work as long as your computer does, Microsoft’s support for this version of Office ends on Oct. 13, 2026.

    To that last point: Though this is listed as a “lifetime license” — that is, the lifetime of the computer you installed it on — it’s worth noting there’s always a risk that Microsoft could terminate the license. But versions of Stack’s deal have been running for more than a year — the one we bought in early 2022, for instance, still works fine. At this cost, it takes a little over four months for you to get a full return on the investment compared with buying the subscription, so the risk factor isn’t super high here.

  • TikTok Is Suing Montana Over App Ban: What It Means For You

    TikTok Is Suing Montana Over App Ban: What It Means For You

    TikTok is striking back against Montana’s recently passed ban on the popular video app. On Monday, TikTok filed to legally challenge the ban in US district court.

    “We are challenging Montana’s unconstitutional TikTok ban to protect our business and the hundreds of thousands of TikTok users in Montana,” a representative for TikTok said in a statement sent to CNET. “We believe our legal challenge will prevail based on an exceedingly strong set of precedents and facts.”

    On May 17, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed Senate Bill 419, making his state the first in the nation to ban TikTok over concerns related to its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.

    “The Chinese Communist Party using TikTok to spy on Americans, violate their privacy, and collect their personal, private, and sensitive information is well-documented,” Gianforte said in a press release announcing the ban. “Today, Montana takes the most decisive action of any state to protect Montanans’ private data and sensitive personal information from being harvested by the Chinese Communist Party.”

    TikTok reports that it has more than 150 million monthly active users in the US. And a 2022 Pew study found that 67% of US teens aged 13 to 17 said they used the app, with 16% of all teens saying they use it almost “constantly.” So can Montana, the eighth-smallest US state by population, really ban its just over 1 million people from using the app? It’s complicated.

    For more on data privacy, check out CNET’s list of the best VPN services and how to stop iPhone apps from tracking you.

    What does TikTok say in its legal complaint?

    TikTok’s statement lists multiple reasons why the company believes the ban is unlawful, beginning by citing the First Amendment, which forbids government restrictions on free speech.

    The company says the Montana law is “unconstitutionally shutting down the forum for speech for all speakers on the app and singling these speakers out for disfavored treatment with the content-based rationale that videos on TikTok are harmful to minors.”

    TikTok also says the claims that US user data is being used by the Chinese government involve foreign affairs and national security, and should be dealt with at the federal, not state level. It argues that the state-specific ban on its national platform risks disrupting the flow of travel and commerce between states, and also says it’s unconstitutional that TikTok is singled out for harsh penalties based on speculation about its data security and content moderation.

    TikTok is seeking a declaratory judgment and order “invalidating and preliminarily and permanently enjoining Defendant from enforcing the TikTok Ban.”

    A representative for the Montana governor didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

    Is banning TikTok really going to protect data privacy?

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group, called the ban “unconstitutional” in a Twitter thread.

    And an article from March published on the EFF site pointed out that nearly all social media platforms and online businesses collect a good deal of personal data from users, while noting that the surveillance and censorship practices of China make TikTok a special case.

    “Still, the best solution to these problems is not to single out one business or country for a ban,” the EFF wrote. “Rather, we must enact comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation. By reducing the massive stores of personal data collected by all businesses, TikTok included, we will reduce opportunities for all governments, China included, to buy or steal this data.

    Jason Kelley, the EFF’s acting director for activism, told CNET in a phone interview that the ban violates the First Amendment and won’t protect data privacy, but will put an “enormous burden” on Montana as it attempts to enforce the law. But he doesn’t think that’s the point.

    “It’s not a law that is intended to be implemented,” he said. “It will waste a lot of taxpayer money and be litigated in court.”

    Why is Montana banning TikTok?

    TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is headquartered in Beijing. Some fear that data acquired by the app could be accessed by the Chinese Communist Party, and could pose a national security threat to the United States if the company is forced to share US user data with the Chinese government.

    In November, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the app could be used to “control data collection on millions of users, or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used [to] influence operations if they so choose, or to control software on millions of devices.” FCC Commissioner Brian Carr last year called the app a “sophisticated surveillance tool.”

    The ban wouldn’t take effect if TikTok is sold to a company not based in “any country designated as a foreign adversary” by the US government.

    Montana’s ban is the first of its kind by a state, but in December, US lawmakers banned the app from government devices, and other countries have also restricted the app.

    What does TikTok have to say about the China charges?

    TikTok has denied that it feeds information to the Chinese government.

    “There is no truth to the [Montana] governor’s claim that TikTok is associated with the Chinese government,” a representative for TikTok said in its first statement after the ban was announced. “The Chinese Communist Party has neither direct nor indirect control of ByteDance or TikTok. ByteDance is a private, global company, with roughly 60 percent owned by global institutional investors, 20 percent owned by the company’s founders, and 20 percent owned by employees — including thousands of Americans.”

    TikTok Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew testified before Congress back in March. He said TikTok has been working on an initiative called Project Texas, which he said would create “a firewall that seals off protected US user data from unauthorized foreign access,” and include oversight by a US company.

    What does the Montana TikTok ban involve?

    The Montana police aren’t going to break down citizens’ doors and stop Billings or Butte teens from uploading or watching quirky dances or funny cat videos. Instead of going after individual users, the state’s attempting to prohibit mobile application stores from offering TikTok within the state.

    So while the law does technically prohibit downloads of TikTok, it doesn’t mention fining regular citizens, just TikTok itself or whichever app store, Apple for iOS devices or Google for Android devices, allows Montanans access to it. The proposed fines are hefty — $10,000 per day for each time someone accesses TikTok, “is offered the ability” to access it, or downloads it. Again, those fines wouldn’t apply to the users, but the companies that allow them to get TikTok.

    However, the bill also includes even stricter rules for state employees using government devices. It says that “effective June 1, no executive agency, board, commission, or other executive branch entity, official, or employee of the State of Montana shall download or access social media applications that provide personal information or data to foreign adversaries on government-issued devices or while connected to the state network.” And third-party firms conducting business for, or on behalf of, Montana are now prohibited “from using applications with ties to foreign adversaries.”

    How will Montana enforce the TikTok ban?

    This is unclear. The prohibitions on state employees and agencies kicks in June 1, but the main part of the ban won’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2024. That gives the state some time to figure things out, and in the meantime, there will surely be lawsuits, likely from TikTok itself, and perhaps entities such as the ACLU.

    But as far as enforcement itself, there are some idea. The Associated Press reports that Montana’s attorney general has suggested the technology used to restrict online gambling apps could be used. Violations can be reported by anyone, and the state then sends a cease-and-desist letter to the company.

  • Google Chrome Now Makes It Easier to Personalize Your Desktop. Here’s How

    Google Chrome Now Makes It Easier to Personalize Your Desktop. Here’s How

    Google‘s latest update for Chrome makes it simpler to change your default desktop design from the standard white and gray color scheme. A new side panel enables you to access customization features and preview your browser design in real time, the company said Tuesday.

    You can now switch colors, background themes or other settings by clicking the Customize Chrome icon at the bottom of your screen. The side menu pops up and presents color options and the ability to upload your own image or change the theme. Roughly 13 theme collections show up in the sidebar, allowing you to select options such as “Seascapes,” “Life” and “Latino Artists Collection.” It’s a slight change, as previously you had to visit Chrome’s Web Store to choose from a series of themes. However, you can still hop over to the web store to view a variety of options not shown in the side panel.

    Chrome users can swap out different color schemes within themes, adjusting it to your taste. Additionally, Google says you don’t have to stick to just one theme. After making your selection, toggle “Refresh daily” to set up a revolving queue of backdrops.

    To make the customization process even more streamlined, Chrome automatically saves your edits, eliminating the need to click “Done” to apply your changes. Once you’ve modified your design, just close the side panel. You can always change it back to the flagship version of Chrome if you prefer.

    Learn more about how Google’s new experiment may affect your internet experience or how to keep your inactive account from disappearing.

  • Mobvoi’s New TicWatch Pro 5 Arrives With Wear OS 3, a New Chip and More

    Mobvoi’s New TicWatch Pro 5 Arrives With Wear OS 3, a New Chip and More

    Mobvoi, the company behind the popular line of TicWatch smartwatches, on Wednesday launched its latest watch, the TicWatch Pro 5. It runs on Google’s Wear OS 3 software and is powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon W5 Plus Gen 1 chip, which should increase speed and overall performance. A new version of the Mobvoi health app will launch alongside the watch, which costs $350 and is available now.

    In addition to the new chip, the TicWatch Pro 5 includes a number of other features like a rotating crown for navigating the watch’s interface and a smarter new backlight that should allow trail runners and night joggers to view the screen without illuminating their surroundings. There’s also a one-tap measurement feature to provide access to five different health metrics instantly, like heart rate, blood oxygen and more, as well as stress management and advanced sleep tracking.

    On the fitness side, there’s continuous heart-rate monitoring, a built-in barometer, improved VO2 Max tracking and tools to help you understand the proper recovery time required after your workouts. There are over 100 different workout modes, which should make it easy to match what the watch tracks to the activity you’re doing. With the redesigned app, Mobvoi is putting more focus on the health-tracking aspects of the watch to better compete with companies like Samsung, Apple and Oura.

    Mobvoi has historically focused more on lower-cost, entry-level models, which the company has had some success with. It’s also one of the only “smaller” companies that’s producing Wear OS watches. While this watch will launch with Wear OS 3, the most current version available today, it’s worth noting that Google just announced Wear OS 4 during its developer conference. When asked about that next operating system, Mobvoi did not have any announcements but said the company is working with Google on future Wear OS updates.

    Still, Mobvoi’s overall focus on health, with both its new app and the TicWatch Pro 5’s features, further show that fitness is the major area of focus for today’s wearables.

  • Here’s What I Learned Testing Photoshop’s New Generative AI Tool

    Here’s What I Learned Testing Photoshop’s New Generative AI Tool

    Adobe has bulit generative AI abilities into its flagship image-editing software, releasing a Photoshop beta version Tuesday that dramatically expands what artists and photo editors can do. The move promises to release a new torrent of creativity even as it gives us all a new reason to pause and wonder if that sensational, scary or inspirational photo you see on the internet is actually real.

    In my tests, detailed below, I found the tool impressive but imperfect. Adding it directly to Photoshop is a big deal, letting creators experiment within the software tool they’re likely already using without excursions to Midjourney, Stability AI’s Stable Diffusion or other outside generative AI tools.

    With Adobe’s Firefly family of generative AI technologies arriving in Photoshop, you’ll be able to let the AI fill a selected part of the image with whatever it thinks most fitting – for example, replacing road cracks with smooth pavement. You can also specify the imagery you’d like with a text prompt, such as adding a double yellow line to the road.

    Firefly in Photoshop also can also expand an image, adding new scenery beyond the frame based on what’s already in the frame or what you suggest with text. Want more sky and mountains in your landscape photo? A bigger crowd at the rock concert? Photoshop will oblige, without today’s difficulties of finding source material and splicing it in.

    The feature, called generative fill and scheduled to emerge from beta testing in the second half of 2023, can be powerful. In Adobe’s live demo, the tool was often able to match a photo’s tones, blend in AI-generated imagery seamlessly, infer the geometric details of perspective even in reflections and extrapolate the position of the sun from shadows and sky haze.

    Such technologies have been emerging over the last year as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and OpenAI’s Dall-Ecaptured the imaginations of artists and creative pros. Now it’s built directly into the software they’re most likely to already be using, streamlining what can be a cumbersome editing process.

    “It really puts the power and control of generative AI into the hands of the creator,” said Maria Yap, Adobe’s vice president of digital imaging. “You can just really have some fun. You can explore some ideas. You can ideate. You can create without ever necessarily getting into the deep tools of the product, very quickly.”

    But you can’t sell anything yet. With Firefly technology, including what’s produced by Photoshop’s generative fill, “you may not use the output for any commercial purpose,” Adobe’s generative AI beta rules state.

    Photoshop’s Firefly AI imperfect but useful

    In my testing, I frequently ran into problems, many of them likely stemming from the limited range of the training imagery. When I tried to insert a fish on a bicycle to an image, Firefly only added the bicycle. I couldn’t get Firefly to add a kraken to emerge from San Francisco Bay. A musk ox looked like a panda-moose hybrid.

    Less fanciful material also presents problems. Text looks like an alien race’s script. Shadows, lighting, perspective and geometry weren’t always right.

    People are hard, too. On close inspection, their faces were distorted in weird ways. Humans added into shots could be positioned too high in the frame or in otherwise unconvincingly blended in.

    Still, Firefly is remarkable for what it can accomplish, particularly with landscape shots. I could add mountains, oceans, skies and hills to landscapes. A white delivery van in a night scene was appropriately yellowish to match the sodium vapor streetlights in the scene. If you don’t like the trio of results Firefly presents, you can click the “generate” button to get another batch.

    Given the pace of AI developments, I expect Firefly in Photoshop will improve.

    It’s hard and expensive to retrain big AI models, requiring a data center packed with expensive hardware to churn through data, sometimes taking weeks for the largest models. But Adobe plans relatively frequent updates to Firefly. “Expect [about] monthly updates for general improvements and retraining every few months in all likelihood,” Adobe product chief Scott Belsky tweeted Tuesday.

    Automating image manipulation

    For years, “Photoshop” hasn’t just referred to Adobe’s software. It’s also used as a verb signifying photo manipulations like slimming supermodels’ waists or hiding missile launch failures. AI tools automate not just fun and flights of fancy, but also fake images like an alleged explosion at the Pentagon or a convincingly real photo of the pope in a puffy jacket, to pick two recent examples.

    With AI, expect editing techniques far more subtle than the extra smoke easily recognized as digitally added to photos of an Israeli attack on Lebanon in 2006.

    It’s a reflection of the double-edged sword that is generative AI. The technology is undeniably useful in many situations but also blurs the line between what is true and what is merely plausible.

    For its part, Adobe tries to curtail problems. It doesn’t permit prompts to create images of many political figures and blocks you for “safety issues” if you try to create an image of black smoke in front of the White House. And its AI usage guidelines prohibit imagery involving violence, pornography and “misleading, fraudulent, or deceptive content that could lead to real-world harm,” among other categories. “We disable accounts that engage in behavior that is deceptive or harmful.”

    Firefly also is designed to skip over styling prompts like that have provoked serious complaints from artists displeased to see their type of art reproduced by a data center. And it supports the Content Authenticity Initiative‘s content credentials technology that can be used to label an image as having been generated by AI.

    Today, generative AI imagery made with Adobe’s Firefly website add content credentials by default along with a visual watermark. When the Photoshop feature exists beta testing and ships later this year, imagery will include content credentials automatically, Adobe said.

    People trying to fake images can sidestep that technology. But in the long run, it’ll become part of how we all evaluate images, Adobe believes.

    “Content credentials give people who want to be trusted a way to be trusted. This is an open-source technology that lets everyone attach metadata to their images to show that they created an image, when and where it was created, and what changes were made to it along the way,” Adobe said. “Once it becomes the norm that important news comes with content credentials, people will then be skeptical when they see images that don’t.”

    Generative AI for photos

    Adobe’s Firefly family of generative AI tools began with a website that turns a text prompt like “modern chair made up of old tires” into an image. It’s added a couple other options since, and Creative Cloud subscribers will also be able to try a lightweight version of the Photoshop interface on the Firefly site.

    When OpenAI’s Dall-E brought that technology to anyone who signed up for it in 2022, it helped push generative artificial intelligence from a technological curiosity toward mainstream awareness. Now there’s plenty of worry along with the excitement as even AI creators fret about what the technology will bring now and in the more distant future.

    Generative AI is a relatively new form of artificial intelligence technology. AI models can be trained to recognize patterns in vast amounts of data – in this case labeled images from Adobe’s stock art business and other licensed sources – and then to create new imagery based on that source data.

    Generative AI has surged to mainstream awareness with language models used in tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, Google’s Gmail and Google Docs, and Microsoft’s Bing search engine. When it comes to generating images, Adobe employs an AI image generation technique called diffusion that’s also behind Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and Google’s Imagen.

    Adobe calls Firefly for Photoshop a “co-pilot” technology, positioning it as a creative aid, not a replacement for humans. Yap acknowledges that some creators are nervous about being replaced by AI. Adobe prefers to see it as a technology that can amplify and speed up the creative process, spreading creative tools to a broader population.

    “I think the democratization we’ve been going through, and having more creativity, is a positive thing for all of us,” Yap said. “This is the future of Photoshop.”

    Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to create some personal finance explainers that are edited and fact-checked by our editors. For more, see this post.

  • Get 3 Months of Access to Adobe’s Full Suite of Creative Apps for Just $30

    Get 3 Months of Access to Adobe’s Full Suite of Creative Apps for Just $30

    Adobe makes some of the best apps out there for all kinds of creatives, including photographers, graphic designers, animators and much more. And if you want access to it’s full suite of apps, then we’ve got a deal you won’t want to miss. Access to all 25 apps, including popular tools like Photoshop and Lightroom, would typically cost you a pricey $82 per month. But right now at StackSocial, you can get three months of access, plus 100GB of cloud storage, for just $30 total, which saves you over $200 compared to the usual cost. There’s no set expiration for this offer, so you’ll want to get signed up soon if you don’t want to miss out on these savings.

    The subscription will grant you access to the latest version of a plethora of creative tools, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, InDesign, Acrobat Pro, Lightroom, After Effects, Adobe Express and many more, so you don’t have to pick and choose. You’ll also get access to tutorials to help you through your next project, Creative Cloud libraries where you can save and share assets, and 100GB of cloud storage designed to keep your work safe, secure and easily accessible. Plus, tons of fonts, templates and stock assets. The apps will work on both Windows and Mac computers, and you can use the subscription on up to two devices.

    Note that in order to redeem your key from StackSocial, you’ll have to create an account with Adobe and select a renewal plan, so make sure you’re comfortable with that before you purchase. Note that this deal includes three stackable codes for a one-month subscription, rather than a single three-month subscription code, and you’ll have to redeem them within 30 days of the purchase.

  • Netflix Password-Sharing Is No Longer Free in the US

    Netflix Password-Sharing Is No Longer Free in the US

    Netflix said Tuesday it’s now rolling out its updated policy on account-sharing in the US. It began sending emails on May 23 to customers who are sharing passwords with anyone outside of their household, Netflix said in a blog post.

    If you’re sharing your streaming account with friends and family who live at a different address, you may opt to pay a fee for the extra user or to remove them from your account.Subscribers with either a standard or premium plan can choose to pay an additional $8 per month for each extra member. At this time, the extra member option is only available for those who are billed directly by Netflix.

    There are limits to how many extra users are allowed on accounts. Only those with a premium membership can add two extra people to their account; the standard price plan allows for only one extra member. Netflix defines a household as one where everyone lives under the same roof. Members of that household are still able to watch content while traveling, and the extra fee will not apply.

    When you open the Netflix app and navigate to your account page, you’ll see an Extra Members option. From there, subscribers can purchase a slot for the person outside their household. If they accept the invitation, the extra member will receive their own separate account, profile and password, and the fee is paid for by the main subscribing household.

    The rules? Extra member accounts can only stream on one device at a time and are only permitted to have one profile. The extra member must also be located in the same country as the account holder.

    netflix account page on computer screennetflix account page on computer screen

    A peek at where to find Extra Members on your account page.

    Screenshot by Kourtnee Jackson/CNET

    Subscribers can also opt to remove users outside of their households from their account, and urge them to sign up for their own Netflix subscriptions. In this case, anyone who is removed from an account can transfer existing profiles to a new membership they pay for themselves.

    Here’s a look at the monthly cost for each subscription plan:

    Netflix plans

    Basic with ads Basic no ads Standard Premium
    Monthly price $7 $10 $15.50 $20
    Number of screens you can watch at the same time 1 1 2 4
    Number of phones or tablets you can have downloads on 0 1 2 4
    HD available No Yes Yes Yes
    Ultra HD available No No No Yes

    The streaming service rolled out its new policy in February for Canada, Spain, Portugal and New Zealand. Netflix first announced its intention to crack down on password-sharing last year. In April, Netflix said it would implement a fee for US customers by the end of the second quarter.