Hasta La Gadget!

For a while, many users were buying Netflix’s higher tiered plans and then sharing their passwords with their friends. This made it a more affordable alternative compared to customers buying their own individual plans, but obviously this isn’t really something the company wants.

In fact, just recently, Netflix revealed that they would start testing out a paid password sharing feature where users could share accounts, but sub accounts will need to pay for it albeit at a lower cost compared to individual plans, and it turns out that this move if fully implemented could rake in a lot of money for the company.

According to U.S. analysts Cowen & Co., they have estimated that should Netflix implement this paid password sharing plan worldwide, it has the potential to bring in as much as $1.6 billion annually. However, not all analysts share that optimism. Other analysts like Benchmark Co. have suggested that it might have the opposite effect, and that it might end up cannibalizing full-ride member growth and that overall, it might only see Netflix gain a 4% revenue growth.

Either way, we’ll have to wait and see how Netflix’s test with paid password sharing works out and if customers will hop on board, but what do you think? Would you pay to share a password or would you rather just get your own account or just find an alternative entirely?

Netflix’s Paid Password Sharing Feature Could Earn Them Billions

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Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are fighting over whether their 8-year-old should be on TikTok. Here’s what child psychologists have to say.

During GDC in downtown San Francisco, I stopped by Qualcomm’s demo area to try the Lynx R-1 mixed reality headset and chat with Lynx’s CEO, Stan Larroque.

This headset made a name for itself in the past couple of years, and it was nice to finally try a demo. The app consists of a virtual trip in and out of our solar system, with basic interactions.

In the demo, you get close enough to the sun, it is an “immersive” VR experience in which the cosmos surrounds you. You can pinch-and-pull planets with your bare hand, which is recognized in real-time.

If you step back, the cosmos goes away, and the solar system seemingly floats in the demo room. The switch feels quite natural even though you see the real world through a camera.

Each eye has a 1600×1600 display resolution, which is great for the demo, and I can only imagine how better it can get into the future with 2448×2448 displays. I include some official video demos representing what I have experienced, and I’ll comment further.

I found the Lynx R1 headset highly interesting because it could easily handle VR and AR environments. In VR mode (completely immersed in the virtual world), it felt like a typical VR experience with low latency and good motion to photon reaction time.

The AR mode is excellent. Typical AR headsets and applications suffer from a very narrow field of view (~54 degrees) due to the way projective AR display technologies work. Lynx does not use projective display tech, so its AR mode feels more immersive because the field of view is better (~90 degrees), making the AR experience more natural.

Viewing the real world through the camera allows Lynx to use a Z-buffer to occlude some real objects (like your hand) if a virtual 3D object is in front of it. This increases the realism of the integration of the virtual objects to the real world and is impossible to do with a projective technology.

Finally, the cameras pipeline opens the opportunity for image filtering, so you could color-correct or change the HDR toning to display an optimal image. With different sensors, you could even get night vision. Again, not possible with a classic see-thru AR system.

The downside of looking at the real world through a camera is some loss of details, but it might well be worth it for the immersive AR gains you experience. At $600, it’s hard to complain about the image quality, and I hope a professional version will come.

The switch between VR and AR modes is exceptionally convenient depending on your use case (more use cases here). Lynx made it possible to “flip-up” the optics in a similar fashion to military night vision goggles (NVG). As a developer, it’s something I’d want to “flip up and fix code.”

The 500g weight of the headset makes it relatively comfortable, and I could imagine wearing one for extended periods, possibly as long as three hours: that’s the theoretical battery life.

Inside, it is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2, an 8-core chip with an Adreno 650 GPU backed by 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. I’m not sure how much of the Qualcomm Extended Reality SDK Lynx uses, but that kit provides many of the features seen in the demo.

Overall, that was a great demo. I didn’t have time to try games or other apps, but in another discussion with Qualcomm executives, I suggested that it’d be great to use Snapdragon XR devices with PC VR games to squeeze more value from these mobile XR headsets.

In any case, Qualcomm’s commitment to the XR industry is paying big time as its platform powers some of the biggest names, including Facebook and Lenovo.

Lynx R-1 Mixed Reality Headset Hands-On @ GDC 2022

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Since launching in 2020, Apple’s digital car key feature has only been available on a handful of BMW models. In January, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman claimed the feature would expand to include select vehicles from Hyundai brands like Genesis “by the summer.” It now looks like those plans may be ahead of schedule. In a change spotted by MacRumors, Apple has updated its CarPlay website to indicate that the 2022 Genesis GV60, 2022 G90 and 2022 Kia Niro now support the feature.

It’s unclear if CarKey functionality is already widely available on those models or if Hyundai is only now in the process of rolling it out. A spokesperson for Kia told the outlet it would “have more information about Digital Key availability in the coming weeks.” 

While car manufacturers have offered remote lock controls through smartphones for a while, CarKey is different in that it treats your iPhone and Apple Watch like a physical key. To use the feature, you simply bring your phone or wearable up to your car’s door handle to unlock it. Some vehicles also allow you to start them by placing your device near the ignition button. With more recent iPhones that come with Apple’s U1 chip, you don’t even need to remove your phone from your pocket to access your car.

Google News is the latest major service to be blocked in Russia. The country’s telecom regulator Roskomnadzor has blocked Google News, according to Reuters, which cited a report from state media outlet Interfax.

The regulator said it was blocking the news service because it “provided access to numerous publications and materials containing inauthentic and publicly important information about the course of the special military operation on the territory of Ukraine,” according to Interfax.

Russia has already blocked Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in recent weeks.

We’ve reached out to Google for comment.