As streaming video chipped away at traditional cable TV subscriber bases, most cable giants like Spectrum and Comcast responded by raising prices and being difficult. When confronted with growing evidence that cord cutting (defined as cutting the TV cord but keeping broadband and streaming TV) was a growing trend, most of these same executives spent years first denying cord cutting was happening, then trying to claim the only people doing so were lame man-children living in their moms’ basements.

Stodgy old cable giants have shown some adaptation. Comcast offers its own streaming service, Peacock. Charter tries to offer users a cheaper streaming-only plan. Both companies have started bundling streaming services with traditional cable offerings.

That said, they simultaneously seem absolutely dedicated to raising prices on traditional cable TV bundles in a bid to price gouge any customers looking to stick around. Cable providers on average raised rates as high as $15 last year, with several imposing two price hikes in the same year:

“These widespread increases have drawn sharp criticism from consumer advocacy groups, who argue that the companies are exploiting their customer base, especially during a time of economic uncertainty. Many argue that the price hikes are disproportionate to the actual increase in programming costs, and that companies are simply padding their profits at the expense of their loyal subscribers.”

As a result, the cable industry lost 4 million subscribers in just the first six months of 2024 alone, as users increasingly shifted to streaming, over the air broadcasts, piracy, or free video services like YouTube and TikTok. Fortunately for giants like Comcast and Charter, they still enjoy a monopoly over broadband access (faster than 100 Mbps) across much of the domestic U.S, ensuring they get their pound of flesh.

That said, we’ve noted repeatedly how streaming TV executives (many of whom came from cable having learned nothing from experience) are now dedicated to bringing all of cable’s bad ideas and consumer -facing hostility to streaming (price hikes, annoying restrictions). So ultimately you’d have to suspect that piracy will be seeing a real resurgence in the years to come as the economy tightens under Trump 2.0.

Last January at CES, Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi declared 2024 the "year of the AI PC." And whether you believe that prediction came true or not—many new PCs come with AI-accelerating neural processing units (NPUs) onboard, but far from all of them—you can't deny that Microsoft did try very hard to make it happen.

This year, Mehdi is back with another prediction: 2025 will be "the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh." This year is also, not coincidentally, the year that most Windows 10 PCs will stop receiving new security updates.

Mehdi's post includes few if any new announcements, but it does set the tone for how Microsoft is handling the sunsetting of Windows 10, attempting to strike a balance between carrot and stick. The carrots include Windows 11's new features (both AI and otherwise), and the performance, security, and battery life benefits inherent to brand-new PC hardware. The stick is that Windows 10 support ends in October of 2025, and Microsoft is not interested in extending that date for the general public or in expanding official Windows 11 support to older PCs.

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Lukasz Olejnik writes about device fingerprinting, and why Google’s policy change to allow it in 2025 is a major privacy setback.

It's getting harder to access popular adult sites in the US South.

On Wednesday, Pornhub's owner, Aylo, kicked off the new year by blocking three more states that implemented age verification laws requiring ID to access porn. According to 404 Media, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee are now among 17 states where Aylo sites, including Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn, cannot be accessed.

The other blocked states are Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Virginia. Mapping it out, 404 Media noted that the Aylo blackout spans nearly the entire US South, with Georgia's age verification law set to take effect in July and likely to trigger another block that would almost complete the blackout.

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It's that time again, when families and friends gather and implore the more technically inclined among them to troubleshoot problems they're having behind the device screens all around them. One of the most vexing and most common problems is logging into accounts in a way that's both secure and reliable.

Using the same password everywhere is easy, but in an age of mass data breaches and precision-orchestrated phishing attacks, it's also highly unadvisable. Then again, creating hundreds of unique passwords, storing them securely, and keeping them out of the hands of phishers and database hackers is hard enough for experts, let alone Uncle Charlie, who got his first smartphone only a few years ago. No wonder this problem never goes away.

Passkeys—the much-talked-about password alternative to passwords that have been widely available for almost two years—was supposed to fix all that. When I wrote about passkeys two years ago, I was a big believer. I remain convinced that passkeys mount the steepest hurdle yet for phishers, SIM swappers, database plunderers, and other adversaries trying to hijack accounts. How and why is that?

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Apparently Hertz's purging of electric vehicles from its fleet isn't going fast enough for the car rental giant. A Reddit user posted an offer they received from Hertz to buy the 2023 Tesla Model 3 they had been renting for $17,913.

Hertz originally went strong into EVs, announcing a plan to buy 100,000 Model 3s for its fleet by the end of 2021, but 16 months later had acquired only half that amount. The company found that repair costs—especially for Teslas, which averaged 20 percent more than other EVs—were cutting into its profit margins. Customer demand was also not what Hertz had hoped for; last January, it announced plans to sell off 20,000 EVs.

Asking its customers if they want to purchase their rentals isn't a new strategy for Hertz. "By connecting our rental customers who opt into our emails to our sales channels, we're not only building awareness of the fact that we sell arsenal but also offering a unique opportunity to someone who may be in the market for the same car they have on rent," Hertz communications director Jamie Line told The Verge.

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