27 October 2018

RIP FilmStruck, the Netflix for Classic Movies


flimstruck-classic-movies

WarnerMedia is shutting down FilmStruck, the best streaming service for classic movies. We were so impressed with what we dubbed the “Netflix for classic movies” that we previously published a guide to FilmStruck. But the streaming service is now no more.

WarnerMedia Shuts Down FilmStruck

FilmStruck was a streaming service dedicated to classic movies. For $99/year, subscribers would gain access to thousands of classic movies across a range of genres. This included The Criterion Collection, which comprises the most important films in cinematic history.

Sadly, FilmStruck is now being shut down, with a notice on the site saying, “We regret to inform you thank FilmStruck will be shutting down. Our last day of service will be November 29, 2018, and we are currently no longer enrolling new subscribers.”

The FilmStruck team then added a note saying, “We would like to thank our many fans and loyal customers who supported us. FilmStruck was truly a labor of love, and in a world with an abundance of entertainment options—THANK YOU for choosing us.”

The closure of FilmStruck is likely owed to AT&T’s acquisition of WarnerMedia. Reports suggest that WarnerMedia is launching a new streaming service in 2019 which will combine content from HBO, Turner, and Warner Bros.. Which leaves little room for a niche service such as FilmStruck.

Options for FilmStruck Fans

FilmStruck is the third entertainment service WarnerMedia has shut down in recent months. The other two being DramaFever, a streaming service dedicated to Korean dramas, and Super Deluxe, a comedy hub which launched the careers of some well-known comedians including Maria Bamford and Tim Heidecker.

Fans of classic movies have several options available to them. We have previously covered how to watch classic movies for free online, detailed how to watch classic movies for free on Kodi, and listed the best free movie streaming sites. So, take your pick!

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Big tech must not reframe digital ethics in its image


Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s visage loomed large over the European parliament this week, both literally and figuratively, as global privacy regulators gathered in Brussels to interrogate the human impacts of technologies that derive their power and persuasiveness from our data.

The eponymous social network has been at the center of a privacy storm this year. And every fresh Facebook content concern — be it about discrimination or hate speech or cultural insensitivity — adds to a damaging flood.

The overarching discussion topic at the privacy and data protection confab, both in the public sessions and behind closed doors, was ethics: How to ensure engineers, technologists and companies operate with a sense of civic duty and build products that serve the good of humanity.

So, in other words, how to ensure people’s information is used ethically — not just in compliance with the law. Fundamental rights are increasingly seen by European regulators as a floor not the ceiling. Ethics are needed to fill the gaps where new uses of data keep pushing in.

As the EU’s data protection supervisor, Giovanni Buttarelli, told delegates at the start of the public portion of the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners: “Not everything that is legally compliant and technically feasible is morally sustainable.”

As if on cue Zuckerberg kicked off a pre-recorded video message to the conference with another apology. Albeit this was only for not being there to give an address in person. Which is not the kind of regret many in the room are now looking for, as fresh data breaches and privacy incursions keep being stacked on top of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal like an unpalatable layer cake that never stops being baked.

Evidence of a radical shift of mindset is what champions of civic tech are looking for — from Facebook in particular and adtech in general.

But there was no sign of that in Zuckerberg’s potted spiel. Rather he displayed the kind of masterfully slick PR manoeuvering that’s associated with politicians on the campaign trail. It’s the natural patter for certain big tech CEOs too, these days, in a sign of our sociotechnical political times.

(See also: Facebook hiring ex-UK deputy PM, Nick Clegg, to further expand its contacts database of European lawmakers.)

And so the Facebook founder seized on the conference’s discussion topic of big data ethics and tried to zoom right back out again. Backing away from talk of tangible harms and damaging platform defaults — aka the actual conversational substance of the conference (from talk of how dating apps are impacting how much sex people have and with whom they’re doing it; to shiny new biometric identity systems that have rebooted discriminatory caste systems) — to push the idea of a need to “strike a balance between speech, security, privacy and safety”.

This was Facebook trying reframe the idea of digital ethics — to make it so very big-picture-y that it could embrace his people-tracking ad-funded business model as a fuzzily wide public good, with a sort of ‘oh go on then’ shrug.

“Every day people around the world use our services to speak up for things they believe in. More than 80 million small businesses use our services, supporting millions of jobs and creating a lot of opportunity,” said Zuckerberg, arguing for a ‘both sides’ view of digital ethics. “We believe we have an ethical responsibility to support these positive uses too.”

Indeed, he went further, saying Facebook believes it has an “ethical obligation to protect good uses of technology”.

And from that self-serving perspective almost anything becomes possible — as if Facebook is arguing that breaking data protection law might really be the ‘ethical’ thing to do. (Or, as the existentialists might put it: ‘If god is dead, then everything is permitted’.)

It’s an argument that radically elides some very bad things, though. And glosses over problems that are systemic to Facebook’s ad platform.

A little later, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai also dropped into the conference in video form, bringing much the same message.

“The conversation about ethics is important. And we are happy to be a part of it,” he began, before an instant hard pivot into referencing Google’s founding mission of “organizing the world’s information — for everyone” (emphasis his), before segwaying — via “knowledge is empowering” — to asserting that “a society with more information is better off than one with less”.

Is having access to more information of unknown and dubious or even malicious provenance better than having access to some verified information? Google seems to think so.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – OCTOBER 04: Pichai Sundararajan, known as Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google Inc. speaks during an event to introduce Google Pixel phone and other Google products on October 4, 2016 in San Francisco, California. The Google Pixel is intended to challenge the Apple iPhone in the premium smartphone category. (Photo by Ramin Talaie/Getty Images)

The pre-recorded Pichai didn’t have to concern himself with all the mental ellipses bubbling up in the thoughts of the privacy and rights experts in the room.

“Today that mission still applies to everything we do at Google,” his digital image droned on, without mentioning what Google is thinking of doing in China. “It’s clear that technology can be a positive force in our lives. It has the potential to give us back time and extend opportunity to people all over the world.

“But it’s equally clear that we need to be responsible in how we use technology. We want to make sound choices and build products that benefit society that’s why earlier this year we worked with our employees to develop a set of AI principles that clearly state what types of technology applications we will pursue.”

Of course it sounds fine. Yet Pichai made no mention of the staff who’ve actually left Google because of ethical misgivings. Nor the employees still there and still protesting its ‘ethical’ choices.

It’s not almost as if the Internet’s adtech duopoly is singing from the same ‘ads for greater good trumping the bad’ hymn sheet; the Internet’s adtech’s duopoly is doing exactly that.

The ‘we’re not perfect and have lots more to learn’ line that also came from both CEOs seems mostly intended to manage regulatory expectation vis-a-vis data protection — and indeed on the wider ethics front.

They’re not promising to do no harm. Nor to always protect people’s data. They’re literally saying they can’t promise that. Ouch.

Meanwhile, another common FaceGoog message — an intent to introduce ‘more granular user controls’ — just means they’re piling even more responsibility onto individuals to proactively check (and keep checking) that their information is not being horribly abused.

This is a burden neither company can speak to in any other fashion. Because the solution is that their platforms not hoard people’s data in the first place.

The other ginormous elephant in the room is big tech’s massive size; which is itself skewing the market and far more besides.

Neither Zuckerberg nor Pichai directly addressed the notion of overly powerful platforms themselves causing structural societal harms, such as by eroding the civically minded institutions that are essential to defend free societies and indeed uphold the rule of law.

Of course it’s an awkward conversation topic for tech giants if vital institutions and societal norms are being undermined because of your cut-throat profiteering on the unregulated cyber seas.

A great tech fix to avoid answering awkward questions is to send a video message in your CEO’s stead. And/or a few minions. Facebook VP and chief privacy officer, Erin Egan, and Google’s SVP of global affairs Kent Walker, were duly dispatched and gave speeches in person.

They also had a handful of audience questions put to them by an on stage moderator. So it fell to Walker, not Pichai, to speak to Google’s contradictory involvement in China in light of its foundational claim to be a champion of the free flow of information.

“We absolutely believe in the maximum amount of information available to people around the world,” Walker said on that topic, after being allowed to intone on Google’s goodness for almost half an hour. “We have said that we are exploring the possibility of ways of engaging in China to see if there are ways to follow that mission while complying with laws in China.

“That’s an exploratory project — and we are not in a position at this point to have an answer to the question yet. But we continue to work.”

Egan, meanwhile, batted away her trio of audience concerns — about Facebook’s lack of privacy by design/default; and how the company could ever address ethical concerns without dramatically changing its business model — by saying it has a new privacy and data use team sitting horizontally across the business, as well as a data protection officer (an oversight role mandated by the EU’s GDPR; into which Facebook plugged its former global deputy chief privacy officer, Stephen Deadman, earlier this year).

She also said the company continues to invest in AI for content moderation purposes. So, essentially, more trust us. And trust our tech.

She also replied in the affirmative when asked whether Facebook will “unequivocally” support a strong federal privacy law in the US — with protections “equivalent” to those in Europe’s data protection framework.

But of course Zuckerberg has said much the same thing before — while simultaneously advocating for weaker privacy standards domestically. So who now really wants to take Facebook at its word on that? Or indeed on anything of human substance.

Not the EU parliament, for one. MEPs sitting in the parliament’s other building, in Strasbourg, this week adopted a resolution calling for Facebook to agree to an external audit by regional oversight bodies.

But of course Facebook prefers to run its own audit. And in a response statement the company claims it’s “working relentlessly to ensure the transparency, safety and security” of people who use its service (so bad luck if you’re one of those non-users it also tracks then). Which is a very long-winded way of saying ‘no, we’re not going to voluntarily let the inspectors in’.

Facebook’s problem now is that trust, once burnt, takes years and mountains’ worth of effort to restore.

This is the flip side of ‘move fast and break things’. (Indeed, one of the conference panels was entitled ‘move fast and fix things’.) It’s also the hard-to-shift legacy of an unapologetically blind ~decade-long dash for growth regardless of societal cost.

Given the, it looks unlikely that Zuckerberg’s attempt to paint a portrait of digital ethics in his company’s image will do much to restore trust in Facebook.

Not so long as the platform retains the power to cause damage at scale.

It was left to everyone else at the conference to discuss the hollowing out of democratic institutions, societal norms, humans interactions and so on — as a consequence of data (and market capital) being concentrated in the hands of the ridiculously powerful few.

“Today we face the gravest threat to our democracy, to our individual liberty in Europe since the war and the United States perhaps since the civil war,” said Barry Lynn, a former journalist and senior fellow at the Google-backed New America Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C., where he had directed the Open Markets Program — until it was shut down after he wrote critically about, er, Google.

“This threat is the consolidation of power — mainly by Google, Facebook and Amazon — over how we speak to one another, over how we do business with one another.”

Meanwhile the original architect of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, who has been warning about the crushing impact of platform power for years now is working on trying to decentralize the net’s data hoarders via new technologies intended to give users greater agency over their data.

On the democratic damage front, Lynn pointed to how news media is being hobbled by an adtech duopoly now sucking hundreds of billion of ad dollars out of the market annually — by renting out what he dubbed their “manipulation machines”.

Not only do they sell access to these ad targeting tools to mainstream advertisers — to sell the usual products, like soap and diapers — they’re also, he pointed out, taking dollars from “autocrats and would be autocrats and other social disruptors to spread propaganda and fake news to a variety of ends, none of them good”.

The platforms’ unhealthy market power is the result of a theft of people’s attention, argued Lynn. “We cannot have democracy if we don’t have a free and robustly funded press,” he warned.

His solution to the society-deforming might of platform power? Not a newfangled decentralization tech but something much older: Market restructuring via competition law.

“The basic problem is how we structure or how we have failed to structure markets in the last generation. How we have licensed or failed to license monopoly corporations to behave.

“In this case what we see here is this great mass of data. The problem is the combination of this great mass of data with monopoly power in the form of control over essential pathways to the market combined with a license to discriminate in the pricing and terms of service. That is the problem.”

“The result is to centralize,” he continued. “To pick and choose winners and losers. In other words the power to reward those who heed the will of the master, and to punish those who defy or question the master — in the hands of Google, Facebook and Amazon… That is destroying the rule of law in our society and is replacing rule of law with rule by power.”

For an example of an entity that’s currently being punished by Facebook’s grip on the social digital sphere you need look no further than Snapchat.

Also on the stage in person: Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, who didn’t mince his words either — attacking what he dubbed a “data industrial complex” which he said is “weaponizing” people’s person data against them for private profit.

The adtech modeus operandi sums to “surveillance”, Cook asserted.

Cook called this a “crisis”, painting a picture of technologies being applied in an ethics-free vacuum to “magnify our worst human tendencies… deepen divisions, incite violence and even undermine our shared sense of what is true and what is false” — by “taking advantage of user trust”.

“This crisis is real… And those of us who believe in technology’s potential for good must not shrink from this moment,” he warned, telling the assembled regulators that Apple is aligned with their civic mission.

Of course Cook’s position also aligns with Apple’s hardware-dominated business model — in which the company makes most of its money by selling premium priced, robustly encrypted devices, rather than monopolizing people’s attention to sell their eyeballs to advertisers.

The growing public and political alarm over how big data platforms stoke addiction and exploit people’s trust and information — and the idea that an overarching framework of not just laws but digital ethics might be needed to control this stuff — dovetails neatly with the alternative track that Apple has been pounding for years.

So for Cupertino it’s easy to argue that the ‘collect it all’ approach of data-hungry platforms is both lazy thinking and irresponsible engineering, as Cook did this week.

“For artificial intelligence to be truly smart it must respect human values — including privacy,” he said. “If we get this wrong, the dangers are profound. We can achieve both great artificial intelligence and great privacy standards. It is not only a possibility — it is a responsibility.”

Yet Apple is not only a hardware business. In recent years the company has been expanding and growing its services business. It even involves itself in (a degree of) digital advertising. And it does business in China.

It is, after all, still a for-profit business — not a human rights regulator. So we shouldn’t be looking to Apple to spec out a digital ethical framework for us, either.

No profit making entity should be used as the model for where the ethical line should lie.

Apple sets a far higher standard than other tech giants, certainly, even as its grip on the market is far more partial because it doesn’t give its stuff away for free. But it’s hardly perfect where privacy is concerned.

One inconvenient example for Apple is that it takes money from Google to make the company’s search engine the default for iOS users — even as it offers iOS users a choice of alternatives (if they go looking to switch) which includes pro-privacy search engine DuckDuckGo.

DDG is a veritable minnow vs Google, and Apple builds products for the consumer mainstream, so it is supporting privacy by putting a niche search engine alongside a behemoth like Google — as one of just four choices it offers.

But defaults are hugely powerful. So Google search being the iOS default means most of Apple’s mobile users will have their queries fed straight into Google’s surveillance database, even as Apple works hard to keep its own servers clear of user data by not collecting their stuff in the first place.

There is a contradiction there. So there is a risk for Apple in amping up its rhetoric against a “data industrial complex” — and making its naturally pro-privacy preference sound like a conviction principle — because it invites people to dial up critical lenses and point out where its defence of personal data against manipulation and exploitation does not live up to its own rhetoric.

One thing is clear: In the current data-based ecosystem all players are conflicted and compromised.

Though only a handful of tech giants have built unchallengeably massive tracking empires via the systematic exploitation of other people’s data.

And as the apparatus of their power gets exposed, these attention-hogging adtech giants are making a dumb show of papering over the myriad ways their platforms pound on people and societies — offering paper-thin promises to ‘do better next time — when ‘better’ is not even close to being enough.

Call for collective action

Increasingly powerful data-mining technologies must be sensitive to human rights and human impacts, that much is crystal clear. Nor is it enough to be reactive to problems after or even at the moment they arise. No engineer or system designer should feel it’s their job to manipulate and trick their fellow humans.

Dark pattern designs should be repurposed into a guidebook of what not to do and how not to transact online. (If you want a mission statement for thinking about this it really is simple: Just don’t be a dick.)

Sociotechnical Internet technologies must always be designed with people and societies in mind — a key point that was hammered home in a keynote by Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, and the tech guy now trying to defang the Internet’s occupying corporate forces via decentralization.

“As we’re designing the system, we’re designing society,” he told the conference. “Ethical rules that we choose to put in that design [impact society]… Nothing is self evident. Everything has to be put out there as something that we think we will be a good idea as a component of our society.”

The penny looks to be dropping for privacy watchdogs in Europe. The idea that assessing fairness — not just legal compliance — must be a key component of their thinking, going forward, and so the direction of regulatory travel.

Watchdogs like the UK’s ICO — which just fined Facebook the maximum possible penalty for the Cambridge Analytica scandal — said so this week. “You have to do your homework as a company to think about fairness,” said Elizabeth Denham, when asked ‘who decides what’s fair’ in a data ethics context. “At the end of the day if you are working, providing services in Europe then the regulator’s going to have something to say about fairness — which we have in some cases.”

“Right now, we’re working with some Oxford academics on transparency and algorithmic decision making. We’re also working on our own tool as a regulator on how we are going to audit algorithms,” she added. “I think in Europe we’re leading the way — and I realize that’s not the legal requirement in the rest of the world but I believe that more and more companies are going to look to the high standard that is now in place with the GDPR.

“The answer to the question is ‘is this fair?’ It may be legal — but is this fair?”

So the short version is data controllers need to prepare themselves to consult widely — and examine their consciences closely.

Rising automation and AI makes ethical design choices even more imperative, as technologies become increasingly complex and intertwined, thanks to the massive amounts of data being captured, processed and used to model all sorts of human facets and functions.

The closed session of the conference produced a declaration on ethics and data in artificial intelligence — setting out a list of guiding principles to act as “core values to preserve human rights” in the developing AI era — which included concepts like fairness and responsible design.

Few would argue that a powerful AI-based technology such as facial recognition isn’t inherently in tension with a fundamental human right like privacy.

Nor that such powerful technologies aren’t at huge risk of being misused and abused to discriminate and/or suppress rights at vast and terrifying scale. (See, for example, China’s push to install a social credit system.)

Biometric ID systems might start out with claims of the very best intentions — only to shift function and impact later. The dangers to human rights of function creep on this front are very real indeed. And are already being felt in places like India — where the country’s Aadhaar biometric ID system has been accused of rebooting ancient prejudices by promoting a digital caste system, as the conference also heard.

The consensus from the event is it’s not only possible but vital to engineer ethics into system design from the start whenever you’re doing things with other people’s data. And that routes to market must be found that don’t require dispensing with a moral compass to get there.

The notion of data-processing platforms becoming information fiduciaries — i.e. having a legal duty of care towards their users, as a doctor or lawyer does — was floated several times during public discussions. Though such a step would likely require more legislation, not just adequately rigorous self examination.

In the meanwhile civic society must get to grips, and grapple proactively, with technologies like AI so that people and societies can come to collective agreement about a digital ethics framework. This is vital work to defend the things that matter to communities so that the anthropogenic platforms Berners-Lee referenced are shaped by collective human values, not the other way around.

It’s also essential that public debate about digital ethics does not get hijacked by corporate self interest.

Tech giants are not only inherently conflicted on the topic but — right across the board — they lack the internal diversity to offer a broad enough perspective.

People and civic society must teach them.

A vital closing contribution came from the French data watchdog’s Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, who summed up discussions that had taken place behind closed doors as the community of global data protection commissioners met to plot next steps.

She explained that members had adopted a roadmap for the future of the conference to evolve beyond a mere talking shop and take on a more visible, open governance structure — to allow it to be a vehicle for collective, international decision-making on ethical standards, and so alight on and adopt common positions and principles that can push tech in a human direction.

The initial declaration document on ethics and AI is intended to be just the start, she said — warning that “if we can’t act we will not be able to collectively control our future”, and couching ethics as “no longer an option, it is an obligation”.

She also said it’s essential that regulators get with the program and enforce current privacy laws — to “pave the way towards a digital ethics” — echoing calls from many speakers at the event for regulators to get on with the job of enforcement.

This is vital work to defend values and rights against the overreach of the digital here and now.

“Without ethics, without an adequate enforcement of our values and rules our societal models are at risk,” Falque-Pierrotin also warned. “We must act… because if we fail, there won’t be any winners. Not the people, nor the companies. And certainly not human rights and democracy.”

If the conference had one short sharp message it was this: Society must wake up to technology — and fast.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do, and a lot of discussion — across the boundaries of individuals, companies and governments,” agreed Berners-Lee. “But very important work.

“We have to get commitments from companies to make their platforms constructive and we have to get commitments from governments to look at whenever they see that a new technology allows people to be taken advantage of, allows a new form of crime to get onto it by producing new forms of the law. And to make sure that the policies that they do are thought about in respect to every new technology as they come out.”

This work is also an opportunity for civic society to define and reaffirm what’s important. So it’s not only about mitigating risks.

But, equally, not doing the job is unthinkable — because there’s no putting the AI genii back in the bottle.


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Should cash-strapped Snapchat sell out? To Netflix?


Snapchat needs a sugar daddy. Its cash reserves dwindling from giant quarterly losses. Poor morale from a battered share price and cost-cutting measures sap momentum. And intense competition from Facebook is preventing rapid growth. With just $1.4 billion in assets remaining at the end of a brutal Q3 2018 and analysts estimating it will lose $1.5 billion in 2019 alone, Snapchat could run out of money well before it’s projected to break even in 2020 or 2021.

So what are Snap’s options?

A long and lonely road

Snap’s big hope is to show a business turnaround story like Twitter, which saw its stock jump 14 percent this week despite losing monthly active users by deepening daily user engagement and producing profits. But without some change that massively increases daily time spent while reducing costs, it could take years for Snap to reach profitability. The company has already laid off 120 employees in March, or 7 percent of its workforce. And 40 percent of the remaining 3,000 employees plan to leave — up 11 percentage points from Q1 2018 according to internal survey data attained by Cheddar’s Alex Heath.

Snapchat is relying on the Project Mushroom engineering overhaul of its Android app to speed up performance, and thereby accelerate user growth and retention. Snap neglected the developing world’s Android market for years as it focused on iPhone-toting US teens. Given Snapchat is all about quick videos, slow load times made it nearly unusable, especially in markets with slower network connections and older phones.

Looking at the competitive landscape, WhatsApp’s Snapchat Stories clone Status has grown to 450 million daily users while Instagram Stories has reached 400 million dailies — much of that coming in the developing world, thereby blocking Snap’s growth abroad as I predicted when Insta Stories launched. Snap actually lost 3 million daily users in Q2 2018. Snap Map hasn’t become ubiquitous, Snap’s Original Shows still aren’t premium enough to drag in tons of new users, Discover is a clickbait-overloaded mess, and Instagram has already copied the best parts of its ephemeral messaging.

As BTIG’s Rich Greenfield points out, CEO Evan Spiegel claims Snapchat is the fastest way to communicate, but it’s not for text messaging, and the default that chats disappear makes it unreliable of utilitarian chat. And if WhatsApp were to add an ephemeral messaging feature of its own, growth for Snapchat could get even tougher. Snap will have to hope it can hold on to its existing users and squeeze more cash out of them to keep reducing losses.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 09: Evan Spiegel of Snapchat attends TechCruch Disrupt SF 2013 at San Francisco Design Center on September 9, 2013 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

All those product missteps and and market neglect have metastasized into a serious growth problem for Snapchat. It lost another 2 million users this quarter, and expects to sink further in Q4. Even with the Android rebuild, Spiegel’s assurances for renewed user growth in 2019 seem spurious. That means it’s highly unlikely that Snapchat will achieve Speigel’s goal of hitting profitability in 2019. It needs either an investor or acquirer to come to its aid.

A bailout check

Snap could sell more equity to raise money. $500 million to $1 billion would probably give it the runway necessary to get into the black. But from where? With all the scrutiny on Saudi Arabia, Snap might avoid taking money from the kingdom. Saudi’s Prince Al-Waleed Talal already invested $250 million to buy 2.5 percent of Snap on the open market.

Snap’s best bet might be to take more money from Chinese internet giant Tencent. The massive corporation already spent around $2 billion to buy a 12 percent stake in Snap from the open market. The WeChat owner has plenty of synergies with Snapchat, especially since it runs a massive gaming business and Snap is planning to launch a third-party developer gaming platform.

Tencent could still be a potential acquirer for Snap, but given President Trump’s trade war with China, he might push regulators to block a sale. The state of American social networks like Twitter and Facebook that are under siege by foreign election interference, trolls, and hackers might make the US government understandably concerned about a Chinese giant owning one of the top teen apps.

Regardless of who would invest, they’d likely demand real voting rights — something Snap has denied investors through a governance structure. Spiegel and his co-founder Bobby Murphy both get 10 votes per share. That’s estimated to amount to 89 percent of the voting rights. Shares issued in the IPO came with zero voting rights.

Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, developers of Snapchat (Photo by J. Emilio Flores/Corbis via Getty Images)

But that surely wouldn’t sit well with any investor willing to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the beleaguered company. Spiegel has taken responsibility for pushing the disastrous redesign early this year that coincided with a significant drop in its download rank. It also inspired a tweet from mega-celebrity Kylie Jenner bashing the app that shaved $1.3 billion off the company’s market cap.

Between the redesign flop, stagnant product innovation, and Spiegel laughing off Facebook’s competition only to be crushed by it, the CEO no longer has the sterling reputation that allowed him to secure total voting control for the co-founders. That means investors will want assurance that if they inject a ton of cash, they’ll have some recourse if Spiegel mismanages it. He may need to swallow his pride, issue voting shares, and commit to milestones he’s required to hit to retain his role as chief executive.

A Soft Landing Somewhere Else

Snap could alternatively surrender as an independent company and be acquired by a deep-pocketed tech giant. Without having to worry about finances or short-term goals, Snap could invest in improving its features and app performance for the long-term. Social networks are tough to kill entirely, so despite competition, Snap could become lucrative if aided through this rough spot.

Combine that with the $637 million bonus Spiegel got for taking Snap public, and he has little financial incentive or shareholder pressure compelling him to sell. Even if the company was bleeding out much worse than it is already, Spiegel could ride it into the ground.

Again, the biggest barrier to this path is Spiegel. Combine totalitarian voting control with the $637 million bonus Spiegel got for taking Snap public, and he has little financial incentive or shareholder pressure compelling him to sell. Even if the company was bleeding out much worse than it is already, Spiegel could ride it into the ground. The only way to get a deal done might be to make Spiegel perceive it as a win.

Selling to Disney could be spun as a such. It hasn’t really figured out mobile amidst distraction from super heroes and Star Wars. Its core tween audience are addicted to YouTube and Snap even if they shouldn’t be on them. They’re both LA companies. And Disney already ponied up $350 million to buy kids desktop social networking game Club Penguin. Becoming head of mobile or something like that for the most iconic entertainment company ever could a vaulted-enough position to entice Spiegel. I could see him being a Disney CEO candidate one day.

What about walking in the footsteps of Steve Jobs? Apple isn’t social. It failed so badly with efforts like its Ping music listeners network that it’s basically abdicated the whole market. iMessage and its cutesy Animoji are its only stakes. Meanwhile, it’s getting tougher and tougher to differentiate with mobile hardware. Each new iPhone seems closer to the last. Apple has resorted to questionable decisions like ditching the oft-missed headphone jack and reliable TouchID to keep the industrial design in flux.

Increasingly, Apple must rely on its iOS software to compete for customers with Android headsets. But you know who’s great at making interesting software? Snapchat. You know who has a great relationship with the next generation of phone owners? Snapchat. And do you know whose CEO could probably smile earnestly beside Tim Cook announcing a brighter future for social media unlocked by two privacy-focused companies joining forces? Snapchat. Plus, think of all the fun Snapple jokes?

There’s a chance to take revenge on Facebook if Snapchat wanted to team up with Mark Zuckerberg’s old arch nemesis Google. After Zuck declared “Carthage must be destroyed”, Google+ flopped and its messaging apps became a fragmented mess. Alphabet has since leaned away from social networking. Of course it still has the juggernaut that is YouTube — a perennial teen favorite alongside Snapchat and Instagram. And it’s got the perfect complement to Snap’s ephemerality in the form of Google Photos, the best-in-class permanent photo archiving tool. With the consume side of Google+ shutting down after accidentally exposing user data, Google still lacks a traditional social network where being a friend comes before being a fan.

What Google does have is a reputation for delivering the future. From Waymo’s self-driving cars to Calico’s plan to make you live forever, Google is an inventive place where big ideas come to fruition. Spiegel could frame Google as aligned with its philosophy of creating new ways to organize and consume information that adapt to human behavior. He surely wouldn’t mind being lumped in with Internet visionaries like Larry Page and Sergei Brin. Google’s Android expertise could reinvigorate Snap in emerging markets. And together they could take a stronger swing at Facebook.

But there are problems with all of these options. Buying Snap would be a massive bet for Disney, and Snap’s lingering bad rap as a sexting app might dissuade Mickey Mouse’s overlords. Apple rarely buys such late-stage public companies. CEO Tim Cook has been able to take the moral high ground because Apple makes its money from hardware rather than off of  personal info through ad targeting. If Apple owned Snap, it’d be in the data exploitation business just like everyone else.

And Google’s existing dominance in software might draw the attention of regulators. The prevailing sentiment is that it was a massive mistake to let Facebook acquire Instagram and WhatsApp, as it centralized power and created a social empire. With Google already owning YouTube, the government might see problems with it buying one of the other most popular teen apps.

That’s why I think Netflix could be a great acquirer for Snap. They’re both video entertainment companies at the vanguard of cultural relevance, yet have no overlap in products. Netflix already showed its appreciation for Snapchat’s innovation by adopting a Stories-like vertical video clip format for discovering and previewing what you could watch. The two could partner to promote Netflix Originals and subscriptions inside of Snapchat. Netflix could teach Snap how to win at exclusive content while gaining a place to distribute video that’s under 20 minutes long.

With a $130 billion market cap, Netflix could certainly afford it. Though since Netflix already has $6 billion in debt from financing Originals, it would have to either sell more debt or issue Netflix shares to Snapchat’s owners. But given Netflix’s high-flying performance, massive market share, and cultural primacy, the big question is whether Snap would drag it down.

So how much would it potentially cost? Snap’s market cap is hovering around $8.8 billion with a $6.28 share price. That’s around its all-time low and just over a quarter of its IPO pop share price high. Acquiring Snap would surely require paying a premium above the market cap. Remember, Google already reportedly offered to acquire Snap for $30 billion prior to its final funding round and IPO. But that was before Snap’s growth rate sunk and it started losing the Stories War to Facebook. A much smaller offer could look a lot prettier now.

Social networks are hard to kill. If Snap can cut costs, fix its product, improve revenue per users, and score some outside investment, it could survive and slowly climb. If Twitter is any indication, aging social networks can reflower into lucrative businesses given enough time and product care. But if Snapchat wants to play in the big leagues and continue having a major influence on the mobile future, it may have to snap out of the idea that it can win on its own.


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Should cash-strapped Snapchat sell out? To Netflix?


Snapchat needs a sugar daddy. Its cash reserves dwindling from giant quarterly losses. Poor morale from a battered share price and cost-cutting measures sap momentum. And intense competition from Facebook is preventing rapid growth. With just $1.4 billion in assets remaining at the end of a brutal Q3 2018 and analysts estimating it will lose $1.5 billion in 2019 alone, Snapchat could run out of money well before it’s projected to break even in 2020 or 2021.

So what are Snap’s options?

A long and lonely road

Snap’s big hope is to show a business turnaround story like Twitter, which saw its stock jump 14 percent this week despite losing monthly active users by deepening daily user engagement and producing profits. But without some change that massively increases daily time spent while reducing costs, it could take years for Snap to reach profitability. The company has already laid off 120 employees in March, or 7 percent of its workforce. And 40 percent of the remaining 3,000 employees plan to leave — up 11 percentage points from Q1 2018 according to internal survey data attained by Cheddar’s Alex Heath.

Snapchat is relying on the Project Mushroom engineering overhaul of its Android app to speed up performance, and thereby accelerate user growth and retention. Snap neglected the developing world’s Android market for years as it focused on iPhone-toting US teens. Given Snapchat is all about quick videos, slow load times made it nearly unusable, especially in markets with slower network connections and older phones.

Looking at the competitive landscape, WhatsApp’s Snapchat Stories clone Status has grown to 450 million daily users while Instagram Stories has reached 400 million dailies — much of that coming in the developing world, thereby blocking Snap’s growth abroad as I predicted when Insta Stories launched. Snap actually lost 3 million daily users in Q2 2018. Snap Map hasn’t become ubiquitous, Snap’s Original Shows still aren’t premium enough to drag in tons of new users, Discover is a clickbait-overloaded mess, and Instagram has already copied the best parts of its ephemeral messaging.

As BTIG’s Rich Greenfield points out, CEO Evan Spiegel claims Snapchat is the fastest way to communicate, but it’s not for text messaging, and the default that chats disappear makes it unreliable of utilitarian chat. And if WhatsApp were to add an ephemeral messaging feature of its own, growth for Snapchat could get even tougher. Snap will have to hope it can hold on to its existing users and squeeze more cash out of them to keep reducing losses.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – SEPTEMBER 09: Evan Spiegel of Snapchat attends TechCruch Disrupt SF 2013 at San Francisco Design Center on September 9, 2013 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch)

All those product missteps and and market neglect have metastasized into a serious growth problem for Snapchat. It lost another 2 million users this quarter, and expects to sink further in Q4. Even with the Android rebuild, Spiegel’s assurances for renewed user growth in 2019 seem spurious. That means it’s highly unlikely that Snapchat will achieve Speigel’s goal of hitting profitability in 2019. It needs either an investor or acquirer to come to its aid.

A bailout check

Snap could sell more equity to raise money. $500 million to $1 billion would probably give it the runway necessary to get into the black. But from where? With all the scrutiny on Saudi Arabia, Snap might avoid taking money from the kingdom. Saudi’s Prince Al-Waleed Talal already invested $250 million to buy 2.5 percent of Snap on the open market.

Snap’s best bet might be to take more money from Chinese internet giant Tencent. The massive corporation already spent around $2 billion to buy a 12 percent stake in Snap from the open market. The WeChat owner has plenty of synergies with Snapchat, especially since it runs a massive gaming business and Snap is planning to launch a third-party developer gaming platform.

Tencent could still be a potential acquirer for Snap, but given President Trump’s trade war with China, he might push regulators to block a sale. The state of American social networks like Twitter and Facebook that are under siege by foreign election interference, trolls, and hackers might make the US government understandably concerned about a Chinese giant owning one of the top teen apps.

Regardless of who would invest, they’d likely demand real voting rights — something Snap has denied investors through a governance structure. Spiegel and his co-founder Bobby Murphy both get 10 votes per share. That’s estimated to amount to 89 percent of the voting rights. Shares issued in the IPO came with zero voting rights.

Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy, developers of Snapchat (Photo by J. Emilio Flores/Corbis via Getty Images)

But that surely wouldn’t sit well with any investor willing to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into the beleaguered company. Spiegel has taken responsibility for pushing the disastrous redesign early this year that coincided with a significant drop in its download rank. It also inspired a tweet from mega-celebrity Kylie Jenner bashing the app that shaved $1.3 billion off the company’s market cap.

Between the redesign flop, stagnant product innovation, and Spiegel laughing off Facebook’s competition only to be crushed by it, the CEO no longer has the sterling reputation that allowed him to secure total voting control for the co-founders. That means investors will want assurance that if they inject a ton of cash, they’ll have some recourse if Spiegel mismanages it. He may need to swallow his pride, issue voting shares, and commit to milestones he’s required to hit to retain his role as chief executive.

A Soft Landing Somewhere Else

Snap could alternatively surrender as an independent company and be acquired by a deep-pocketed tech giant. Without having to worry about finances or short-term goals, Snap could invest in improving its features and app performance for the long-term. Social networks are tough to kill entirely, so despite competition, Snap could become lucrative if aided through this rough spot.

Combine that with the $637 million bonus Spiegel got for taking Snap public, and he has little financial incentive or shareholder pressure compelling him to sell. Even if the company was bleeding out much worse than it is already, Spiegel could ride it into the ground.

Again, the biggest barrier to this path is Spiegel. Combine totalitarian voting control with the $637 million bonus Spiegel got for taking Snap public, and he has little financial incentive or shareholder pressure compelling him to sell. Even if the company was bleeding out much worse than it is already, Spiegel could ride it into the ground. The only way to get a deal done might be to make Spiegel perceive it as a win.

Selling to Disney could be spun as a such. It hasn’t really figured out mobile amidst distraction from super heroes and Star Wars. Its core tween audience are addicted to YouTube and Snap even if they shouldn’t be on them. They’re both LA companies. And Disney already ponied up $350 million to buy kids desktop social networking game Club Penguin. Becoming head of mobile or something like that for the most iconic entertainment company ever could a vaulted-enough position to entice Spiegel. I could see him being a Disney CEO candidate one day.

What about walking in the footsteps of Steve Jobs? Apple isn’t social. It failed so badly with efforts like its Ping music listeners network that it’s basically abdicated the whole market. iMessage and its cutesy Animoji are its only stakes. Meanwhile, it’s getting tougher and tougher to differentiate with mobile hardware. Each new iPhone seems closer to the last. Apple has resorted to questionable decisions like ditching the oft-missed headphone jack and reliable TouchID to keep the industrial design in flux.

Increasingly, Apple must rely on its iOS software to compete for customers with Android headsets. But you know who’s great at making interesting software? Snapchat. You know who has a great relationship with the next generation of phone owners? Snapchat. And do you know whose CEO could probably smile earnestly beside Tim Cook announcing a brighter future for social media unlocked by two privacy-focused companies joining forces? Snapchat. Plus, think of all the fun Snapple jokes?

There’s a chance to take revenge on Facebook if Snapchat wanted to team up with Mark Zuckerberg’s old arch nemesis Google. After Zuck declared “Carthage must be destroyed”, Google+ flopped and its messaging apps became a fragmented mess. Alphabet has since leaned away from social networking. Of course it still has the juggernaut that is YouTube — a perennial teen favorite alongside Snapchat and Instagram. And it’s got the perfect complement to Snap’s ephemerality in the form of Google Photos, the best-in-class permanent photo archiving tool. With the consume side of Google+ shutting down after accidentally exposing user data, Google still lacks a traditional social network where being a friend comes before being a fan.

What Google does have is a reputation for delivering the future. From Waymo’s self-driving cars to Calico’s plan to make you live forever, Google is an inventive place where big ideas come to fruition. Spiegel could frame Google as aligned with its philosophy of creating new ways to organize and consume information that adapt to human behavior. He surely wouldn’t mind being lumped in with Internet visionaries like Larry Page and Sergei Brin. Google’s Android expertise could reinvigorate Snap in emerging markets. And together they could take a stronger swing at Facebook.

But there are problems with all of these options. Buying Snap would be a massive bet for Disney, and Snap’s lingering bad rap as a sexting app might dissuade Mickey Mouse’s overlords. Apple rarely buys such late-stage public companies. CEO Tim Cook has been able to take the moral high ground because Apple makes its money from hardware rather than off of  personal info through ad targeting. If Apple owned Snap, it’d be in the data exploitation business just like everyone else.

And Google’s existing dominance in software might draw the attention of regulators. The prevailing sentiment is that it was a massive mistake to let Facebook acquire Instagram and WhatsApp, as it centralized power and created a social empire. With Google already owning YouTube, the government might see problems with it buying one of the other most popular teen apps.

That’s why I think Netflix could be a great acquirer for Snap. They’re both video entertainment companies at the vanguard of cultural relevance, yet have no overlap in products. Netflix already showed its appreciation for Snapchat’s innovation by adopting a Stories-like vertical video clip format for discovering and previewing what you could watch. The two could partner to promote Netflix Originals and subscriptions inside of Snapchat. Netflix could teach Snap how to win at exclusive content while gaining a place to distribute video that’s under 20 minutes long.

With a $130 billion market cap, Netflix could certainly afford it. Though since Netflix already has $6 billion in debt from financing Originals, it would have to either sell more debt or issue Netflix shares to Snapchat’s owners. But given Netflix’s high-flying performance, massive market share, and cultural primacy, the big question is whether Snap would drag it down.

So how much would it potentially cost? Snap’s market cap is hovering around $8.8 billion with a $6.28 share price. That’s around its all-time low and just over a quarter of its IPO pop share price high. Acquiring Snap would surely require paying a premium above the market cap. Remember, Google already reportedly offered to acquire Snap for $30 billion prior to its final funding round and IPO. But that was before Snap’s growth rate sunk and it started losing the Stories War to Facebook. A much smaller offer could look a lot prettier now.

Social networks are hard to kill. If Snap can cut costs, fix its product, improve revenue per users, and score some outside investment, it could survive and slowly climb. If Twitter is any indication, aging social networks can reflower into lucrative businesses given enough time and product care. But if Snapchat wants to play in the big leagues and continue having a major influence on the mobile future, it may have to snap out of the idea that it can win on its own.


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Waymo is testing what it should charge for its robotaxi service


Self-driving startup Waymo, a Google spin-off owned by parent company Alphabet, has started to test pricing models for rides in its autonomous vehicles in Phoenix, the latest indication that the company is preparing to launch a commercial robotaxi service.

Waymo has not launched a wide-scale commercial robotaxi service in Phoenix — or anywhere — just yet. But it is getting closer.

Waymo’s early rider program, designed to give a vetted group of real people the ability to use an app to hail a self-driving vehicle, has been expanded, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat explained Thursday during the company’s quarterly earnings call. Waymo started testing pricing models within its app during the third quarter, Porat said.

The early rider program had 400 participants the last time Waymo shared figures on the program. A Waymo spokesperson declined to elaborate on how much it had grown.

“As part of our early rider program, we have recently begun testing pricing models within our app,” a Waymo spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Pricing is currently experimental and intended solely to solicit feedback from early riders and does not reflect the various pricing models under consideration for a public service.”

Waymo has been inching toward a commercial service in Phoenix since it began testing in the suburbs like Chandler in 2016. It started in earnest when Waymo launched the early rider program in April 2017. Later that year, Waymo removed employees and passengers from its test fleet, sending empty self-driving minivans onto the streets of greater Phoenix.

By May of this year, Waymo began allowing some early riders to hail a self-driving minivan without a human test driver behind the wheel. More recently, the company launched a public transit program in Phoenix focused on delivering people to bus stops and train and light-rail stations.

Testing continues in other cities as well, including Mountain View, California and Austin. The company announced earlier this month that its autonomous vehicles have driven 10 million miles on public roads in the United States.


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Twitter suspends accounts linked to mail bomb suspect


At least two Twitter accounts linked to the man suspected of sending explosive devices to more than a dozen prominent Democrats were suspended on Friday afternoon.

Facebook moved fairly quickly to suspend Sayoc’s account on the platform, though two Twitter accounts that appeared to belong to Sayoc remained online and accessible until around 2:30 p.m. Pacific. Both accounts featured numerous tweets, many of which contained far right political conspiracy theories, graphic images and specific threats.

TechCrunch was able to review the accounts extensively before they were removed. Both known accounts, @hardrockintlet and @hardrock2016, contained many tweets that appeared to threaten violence against perceived political enemies, including Keith Ellison and Joe Biden, an intended recipient of an explosive device.

In one case, those threats had been previously reported to Twitter. Democratic commentator Rochelle Ritchie tweeted that she reported a tweet from @hardrock2016 following her appearance on Fox News. According to a screenshot, Twitter received the report and on October 11 responded that it found “no violation of the Twitter rules against abusive behavior.”

The tweet stated “We will see u 4 sure. Hug your loved ones real close every time you leave home” accompanied by a photo of Ritchie, a screenshot of a news story about a body found in the everglades and the tarot card representing death.

Between the two accounts linked to Sayoc, many of the threats were depicted with graphic images in sequence. In one tweet on September 18 to former Vice President Joe Biden, the account tweeted images of an air boat, a symbol depicting an hourglass with a scythe and graphic images of a decapitated goat.

Threatening messages that emerge out of a sequence of images would likely be more difficult for machine learning moderation tools to parse, though any human content moderator would have no trouble extracting their meaning. In most cases the threatening images were paired with a verbal threat. At least one archive of a Twitter account linked to Sayoc remains online.

In a statement to TechCrunch, Twitter stated only that “This is an ongoing law enforcement investigation. We do not have a comment.” The company indicated that the accounts were suspended for violating Twitter’s rules though did not specify which.


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You Can Now Send Stickers Using WhatsApp


WhatsApp is finally adding support for stickers. While other social media platforms and messaging apps have supported stickers for a long time, WhatsApp has resisted the urge. But with competition amongst messaging apps fierce, WhatsApp has joined the party.

Gone are the days when you would just message people using words. Now, you’re expected to add emojis, GIFs, and stickers in order to jazz up your boring conversations. I personally find stickers rather annoying, but it looks like they’re here to stay.

How to Use Stickers on WhatsApp

In a post on the WhatsApp Blog, WhatsApp explains how it wants to help people “express themselves with stickers”. This is because, according to WhatsApp, “stickers help you share your feelings in a way that you can’t always express with words”.

To use stickers in WhatsApp:

  1. Open an existing chat.
  2. Tap the stickers icon.
  3. Tap the plus icon to add sticker packs.
  4. Tap the download icon next to the sticker pack you want.
  5. Find and tap the sticker you want to send.

If you tap the clock icon you can see your recently used stickers. And if you tap the star icon you can see your favorite stickers. WhatsApp is starting out with sticker packs created in-house, but third-party sticker packs should start appearing soon.

Stickers are available on WhatsApp for Android and iOS. WhatsApp has stated that stickers will be rolling out “over the coming weeks”. So, if you can’t already see the stickers icon, try manually updating WhatsApp regularly until the icon appears.

Not Everyone Appreciates Stickers

WhatsApp is right to add the option for people to send stickers to their friends. However, just as with emojis and GIFs, it’s important to consider whether the person you’re messaging will appreciate them or not. Or you may get muted or blocked.

WhatsApp is constantly adding new features, so it was only a matter of time before they added stickers. If you want to keep on top of the best new features WhatsApp has added over the years, you should bookmark that article and check it regularly for updates.

Read the full article: You Can Now Send Stickers Using WhatsApp


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How to Write a Simple Batch (BAT) File


windows-batch-files

Batch files are the computer handyman’s way of getting things done. They can automate everyday tasks, shorten the required time to do something, and translate a complex process into something anyone could operate.

In this article, you’ll learn how to write a simple batch file. You’ll learn the basics of what batch files can do and how to write them yourself. I’ll also provide you with further resources for learning to write batch (BAT) files.

How to Write a Batch File in Windows

Before going into the details, here is a quick summary

  1. Open a text file, such as a Notepad or WordPad document.
  2. Add your commands, starting with @echo [off], followed by—each in a new line—title [title of your batch script], echo [first line], and pause.
  3. Save your file with the file extension .bat, for example, test.bat.
  4. To run your batch file, double click the BAT file you just created.
  5. To edit your batch file, right-click the BAT file and select Edit.

Your raw file will look something like this:
Test Bat File written in Notepad
And here’s the corresponding command window for the example above:
Test Bast file command line output

If this was too quick or if you want to learn more about commands and how to use them, read on!

Step 1: Create a BAT File

Let’s say that you frequently have network issues; you constantly find yourself on the command prompt, typing in ipconfig and pinging Google to troubleshoot network problems. After a while, you realize that it would be a bit more efficient if you just wrote a simple BAT file, stuck it on your USB stick, and used it on the machines you troubleshoot.

Create a New Text Document

A batch file simplifies repeatable computer tasks using the Windows command prompt. Below is an example of a batch file responsible for displaying some text in your command prompt. Create a new BAT file by right-clicking an empty space within a directory and selecting New, then Text Document.

new_text_file

Add Code

Double-click this New Text Document to open your default text editor. Copy and paste the following code into your text entry.

@echo off

title This is your first batch script!
echo Welcome to batch scripting!
pause

Save As BAT File

The above script echoes back the text “Welcome to batch scripting!”. Save your file by heading to File, Save As, and then name your file what you’d like. End your file name with the added .bat extension — welcome.bat for example — and click OK. This will finalize the batch process. Now, double-click on your newly created batch file to activate it.

welcome_to_batch

Don’t assume that’s all batch scripting can do. Batch scripts parameters are tweaked versions of command prompt codes, so you are only limited to what your command prompt can do. For those unfamiliar with the program, command prompt is capable of quite a lot.

Step 2: Learn the Basics of Batch Scripting

Batch files use the same language as the command prompt. All you’re doing is telling the command prompt what you want to input through a file, rather than typing it out in the command prompt. This saves you time and effort. It also allows you to put in some logic (like simple loops, conditional statements, etc. that procedural programming is capable of conceptually).

@echo: This parameter will allow you to view your working script in the command prompt. This parameter is useful for viewing your working code. If any issues arise from the batch file, you will be able to view the issues associated with your script using the echo function. Adding a following off to this parameter will allow you to quickly close your script after it has finished.

title: Providing much of the same function as a <title> tag in HTML, this will provide a title for your batch script in your Command Prompt window.

cls: Clears your command prompt, best used when extraneous code can make what you’re accessing had to find.

rem: Shorthand for remark provides the same functionality as <!– tag in HTML. Rem statements are not entered into your code. Instead, they are used to explain and give information regarding the code.

%%a: Each file in the folder.

(“.\”): The root folder. When using the command prompt, one must direct the prompt to a particular directory before changing a files name, deleting a file, and so on. With batch files, you only need to paste your .bat file into the directory of your choosing.

pause: Allows a break in the logical chain of your .bat file. This allows for users to read over command lines before proceeding with the code. The phrase “Press any key to continue…” will denote a pause.

start “” [website]: Will head to a website of your choice using your default web browser.

ipconfig: This is a classic command prompt parameter that releases information concerning network information. This information includes MAC addresses, IP addresses, and sub-net masks.

ping: Pings an IP address, sending data packets through server routes to gauge their location and latency (response time).

The library for batch variables is huge, to say the least. Luckily there is a Wikibook entry which holds the extensive library of batch script parameters and variables at your disposal.

Step 3: Write and Run Your BAT File

We’ll create two examples of batch scripts which can simplify your daily online and offline activities.

News Script

Let’s create an immediately useful batch script. What if you wanted to open all your favorite news websites the moment you wake up? Since batch scripts use command prompt parameters, we can create a script that opens every news media outlet in a single browser window.

To re-iterate the batch-making process: first, create an empty text file. Right-click an empty space in a folder of your choosing, and select New, then Text Document. With the text file open, enter the following script. Our example will provide the main American news media outlets available online.

@echo off

start "" http://www.cnn.com
start "" http://www.abc.com
start "" http://www.msnbc.com
start "" http://www.bbc.com
start "" http://www.huffingtonpost.com
start "" http://www.aljazeera.com
start "" https://news.google.com/

The above script stacks one start “” parameter on top of the other to open multiple tabs. You can replace the links provided with ones of your choosing. After you’ve entered the script, head to File, then Save As. In the Save As window, save your file with the .bat extension and change the Save as type parameter to All Files (*.*).

save_as_bat

Once you’d saved your file, all you need to do is double-click your BAT file. Instantly, your web pages will open. If you’d like, you can place this file on your desktop. This will allow you to access all of your favorite websites at once.

File Organizer

Have you been downloading multiple files a day, only to have hundreds of files clogging up your Download folder? Create a batch file with the following script, which orders your files by file type. Place the .bat file into your disorganized folder, and double-click to run.

@echo off

rem For each file in your folder
for %%a in (".\*") do (
rem check if the file has an extension and if it is not our script
if "%%~xa" NEQ "" if "%%~dpxa" NEQ "%~dpx0" (
rem check if extension folder exists, if not it is created
if not exist "%%~xa" mkdir "%%~xa"
rem Move the file to directory
move "%%a" "%%~dpa%%~xa\"
))

Here is an example of the my desktop before, a loose assortment of image files.

assorted_files

Here are those same files afterward.

ordered_files

It’s that simple. This batch script will also work with any type of file, whether it’s a document, video, or audio file. Even if your PC does not support the file format, the script will create a folder with the appropriate label for you. If you already have a JPG or PNG folder in your directory, the script will simply move your file types to their appropriate location.

Automate the Simple Stuff With Batch Scripts

This is just a taste of what batch scripts have to offer. If you need something simple done over and over—whether it be ordering files, opening multiple web pages, renaming files en masse, or creating copies of important documents—you can make tedious tasks simple with batch scripts.

Take things even further by incorporating IF statements into your batch scripts. And if you’re really keen, you may even want to learn PowerShell scripting instead.

Read the full article: How to Write a Simple Batch (BAT) File


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7 DIY Projects You Can Make With an Old Hard Drive

The 18 Best Free Movie Streaming Sites


best-streaming-movie-sites

Although streaming movies for free might sound synonymous with piracy, there’s a bevy of free, legal streaming content on the internet. In fact, there’s almost an overabundance of streaming services.

Whether you’re looking for movies or television shows, finding streaming video is totally feasible. It just requires you to search in the right places. With that in mind, here are the best free movie streaming sites to check out.

What to Expect From These Streaming Sites

There’s a ton of free and legal video online, so you’ll find a real mix of content. A healthy portion of the movies available to stream for free are public domain. Because these films have lapsed in ownership and fallen into common property, many sites host such video treasures.

But it’s not just B-movies available to stream online; many big budget releases can also be found. Often, these are ad-supported. Like watching a movie on television, you’ll have to sit through limited commercials. Nevertheless, movies are usually presented uncut. Just don’t expect to see the latest releases.

Instead, you’ll mostly see movies dating back anywhere from a few months to many years. Additionally, you can find some original productions, such as the Snatch TV series on Crackle. Need help figuring out what to watch next? These sites will help you find what to watch next.

1. YouTube

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites - YouTube

It’s no surprise that YouTube ranks among the best free movie streaming sites you can find. There’s a ton of free films to pick from, including many public domain films from channels such as the aptly titled Public Domain Films and Public Domain Cinema. Furthermore, sites such as Popcornflix host full movies via YouTube.

There’s a fantastic mix, from gems like Plan 9 From Outer Space, to action movies such as Recoil with Danny Trejo and Steven Austin, cult classics including Curse of the Puppet Master, and more. You may have to dig for what you most want to watch, but for those with patience, YouTube is a treasure trove of free, legal streaming cinema.

2. Crackle

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites - Crackle

Boasting a solid array of syndicated content and original productions, Crackle is a must for any film buff. Its rotating selection varies, but you’ll find quality movies such as action comedy Hot Fuzz, gothic horror flick Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the masterful 1988 remake of The Blob, Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School, and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Aside from films, Crackle features television shows such as Blue Exorcist, Seinfeld, and even original programming like its Snatch original series. With its robust lineup of movies and shows, we think Crackle is one of the best free Roku channels.

3. Viewster

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites - Viewster

Although it’s anime-centric, there’s a mix of movies you can find on Viewster. Notably, Viewster features a robust line up of documentaries, films like Street Fighter II, and Lily C.A.T. Plus, you can legally stream shorts and television series including Murder Princess.

4. Vudu Movies on Us

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites - Vudu Movies on Us

While Vudu is best known for its digital video rentals and sales, the Vudu Movies on Us section makes it one of the best free movie streaming sites. With a comprehensive array of movies such as Bull Durham, Showgirls, and Return of the Living Dead, it’s a fantastic service.

Vudu Movies on Us operates in a similar way to Crackle by providing full, uncut movies with limited commercials. Through hosting films with ads, Vudu is able to offer free movies and TV shows.

You still need to register for a Vudu account to use this service, but it’s totally worth doing so. Moreover, you can use your account to activate digital copies of movies and shows, as well as buy and rent movies from Vudu.

5. SnagFilms

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites - SnagFilms

For a free Netflix alternative, check out SnagFilms. With unique categories such as “Before they were stars” and “Athletes & their triumphs,” SnagFilms specializes in fresh content. The library of more than 2,000 videos includes films, shows, and documentaries. Additionally, there’s a portion of original comedy shorts.

There’s a fantastic classic movies category as well. Don’t expect a ton of well-known fare, but for under the radar movies and more, SnagFilms is a gem.

6. PopcornFlix

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites - Popcornflix

Like Crackle, PopcornFlix presents full movies with limited ads. Here, you’ll find a range of movies in a rotating selection, from Sunset Boulevard and A Clear and Present Danger to Murder on the Orient Express and There Will Be Blood.

Flicks are segmented into categories such as popularity, genre, new arrivals, and staff picks, making PopcornFlix easy to use. With a beefy lineup and excellent navigation, PopcornFlix is an awesome choice for free, legal movie streaming.

7. Tubi TV

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites - Tubi TV

Providing free movies and shows, Tubi TV is a fantastic service. Here, you’ll be able to view newer movies including Lords of Salem, A Most Wanted Man, and Bulletproof Monk, as well as older titles such as sci-fi cult classic The Running Man.

Helpfully, Tubi TV offers a “Leaving Soon” category so you can stream movies and shows before they become unavailable, and thus prioritize your streaming queue. You will need to register to watch mature content, but creating an account is painless enough.

8. Pluto TV

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites - Pluto TV

Because Pluto TV features a live TV section, it’s easily one of the best free movie streaming sites. You can stream from the likes of Pluto Movies, Fox Sports, and specialized channels like Classic Movies and Horror 24/7. Plus, there’s an on-demand video library for instant movie watching.

With the live television aspect, Pluto TV is a must-have for cord-cutters.

9. Classic Cinema Online

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites - Classic Cinema Online

As the name suggests, Classic Cinema Online focuses on older, classic content. Even its website aesthetic captures a decidedly retro vibe with a backdrop of red theater curtains. You can find classics such as Casablanca, Jane Eyre, and The Wasp Woman.

However, the inclusion of movies such as Muscle Beach Party does call into question the definition of “classic cinema.” Nevertheless, Classic Cinema Online is pure gold for old school movies.

10. Veoh

The Best Free Movie Streaming Sites - Veoh

On Veoh, you’ll be able to stream tons of movies and shows. There are a lot of older films, such as Nosferatu. It’s akin to YouTube in that Veoh hosts user-submitted content and videos from established sources like CBS.

Since Veoh boasts a solid filtering system, you can select options such as language and video length to find what you want to watch. Veoh ranks as one of the alternatives to YouTube. Just beware of the popups.

11. Stremio

Stremio-Dash

Whereas many free movie streaming websites offer content from one site, Stremio combines several elements. It’s a content aggregator, streaming service, and torrent client all rolled into one.

Thus, Stremio is a comprehensive platform which touts a bevy of home theater PC needs. Its robust search feature is similar to JustWatch, and add-ons for the likes of Netflix, FilmOn, and YouTube mean you can sync with your favorite video-on-demand services.

Streaming channels vary from Disney Channel offerings to Unbox Therapy, and more. Stremio gets bonus points for its cross-platform clients and torrenting capabilities.

12. Yidio

Best Free Movie Streaming Websites - Yidio

Although Yidio might not be a content host, it’s an excellent aggregator of free streaming movies and TV shows.
The way Yidio works is that it redirects to third-party sites such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, and more. As such, certain films and shows do require a subscription. Thankfully, listings for free movies and TV shows provide access to video that’s mostly libre.

Unfortunately, not everything in the free categories is actually free. Clicking on some titles prompts you to sign up for a free trial. Still, Yidio makes finding free movie streams far easier than checking individual sites.

13. The Roku Channel

Best Free Movie Streaming Websites - The Roku Channel

Don’t be fooled by The Roku Channel. While it’s available for Roku streaming devices via an app, you can watch on the web too. In a few clicks, you can stream anything from Bad Boys to Ghostbusters.

The selection rotates, and there are helpful categories including Edge of Your Seat Thrillers, TV, Family Night, and LOL Hits. As expected, you’ll have to sit through ads, but ad-supported means free, right?

14. Kanopy 

Best Free Movie Streaming Websites - Kanopy

Libraries are most often associated with books, but I recall regularly renting classics on VHS from my local library. Kanopy lets you stream tons of movies for free with a library card. So long as you have a compatible library card, you can watch hundreds of free movies and TV shows including recent releases such as Loving Vincent.

15. Free Movies Cinema

Best Free Movie Streaming Websites Free Cinema Online

As the name suggests, Free Movies Cinema features, well, completely free legal streaming movies. Unlike many sites, the selection touts not only classics like Death Race 2000 and Plan 9 From Outer Space, but also short films.

There’s also a robust smattering of fanmade movies such as Uncharted, based on the video game series, Han Solo: A Smuggler’s Trade, and Voldemort: Origins of the Heir.

16. Big Five Glories

Best Free Movie Streaming Websites - Big Five Glories

With the subtitle “a tribute to classic movies,” you can probably already guess that Big Five Glories is mostly dedicated to public domain cinema. Here, you’ll find mostly older fare such as The Old Dark House, Charlie Chaplin classic The Kid, and noir gems like The Scar.

The front page features a “now playing” section, and you can sort by rating to find quality flicks to stream.

17. Retrovision

 Best Free Movie Streaming Websites - Retrovision

Over at Retrovision, you’ll find loads of content similar to what’s available on Big Five Glories or Classic Cinema Online. Essentially, it’s packed with older, public domain, free streaming films. Watch golden flicks like Bonanza – Blood of the Land, The Last Man on Earth, and The House on Haunted Hill.

Site organization is pleasant with a sidebar highlighting genres such as film noir, crime, and cartoons, as well as specific actors or characters.

18. Top Documentary Films

 Best Free Movie Streaming Websites - Top Documentary Films

If you’re looking for free documentaries online, try Top Documentary Films. Specializing in documentaries, you’ll find a varied selection including Cosmos, Hubble’s Universe, and Zeitgeist. Browse the top 100 documentaries and recently added movies, or peruse by genre.

You Just Need to Know Where to Look

If you know where to look, you can find loads of sites for (legal) free movie streaming. However, note that your ISP can secretly throttle your video streaming speeds.

In that case, you should use a VPN like ExpressVPN, CyberGhost, or Hotspot Shield to restore your video streaming speeds. A VPN is also good when you want to download videos off the internet.

Use this link to get three FREE months when you sign up for one year of ExpressVPN, our preferred VPN.

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