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While the use of legitimate film and TV streaming services has risen during the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for illegal streaming has also gone up sharply.

In some cases, it has also trebled, according to a report by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT). FACT has observed a significant increase in links to illegal streams of films that are shared online during the past couple of months, compared to February.

It reports that the FACT scanning team removed more than double the volume of film links and illegal streams in April. FACT also notes that the closure of movie theaters has resulted in movies being made available for streaming when in normal times they would be exclusively in cinemas.

While that has been seen as a success - with Trolls World Tour generating more revenue during three weeks of digital release than its prequel did during five months in cinemas - FACT also warned that it comes with a hidden cost of piracy spreading illegal copies and streams of them around the world.

"Piracy is any rights holders' biggest competitor and with content consumption set to stay digital, it's never been more important to protect content. Whenever its release; we can protect it," the FACT report reads.

Social network giant Facebook is to acquire animated GIF-sharing platform Giphy, putting it under its Instagram service.

The company announced its decision to acquire Giphy in a company blog post on Friday, though it did not disclose the financial cost of the move. However, Axios estimated the cost at around $400 million.

Facebook will make Giphy a part of its Instagram photo-sharing platform, revealing that 50 percent of GIPHY's traffic comes from the Facebook family of apps, half of that from Instagram alone.

"GIPHY will continue to operate its library (including its global content collection), and we're looking forward to investing further in its technology and relationships with content and API partners," the Facebook announcement blog reads.

"People will still be able to upload GIFs; developers and API partners will continue to have the same access to GIPHY's APIs, and GIPHY's creative community will still be able to create great content."

Read more at Facebook.

Sony has released an app that will help shoppers determine if televisions will fit comfortably in their living rooms.

The new Envision TV AR app lets potential buyers select a TV model and see how it will fit in a given space. All the user has to do is select a TV and point the phone's camera to view the TV in any space. It can show TVs mounted or on a stand.

Additionally, the app displays technical details including HDMI and other ports.

"As we continue to stay home, this app offers a new way for our customers to confidently purchase a Sony TV in the comfort of their living rooms," said Mike Fasulo, president, and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics North America. "We hope this new technology takes the guesswork out of shopping online."

The Envision TV AR app can be downloaded for Android devices from the Play Store. It is also available from Apple's App Store for iOS devices.

Epic Games online store greeted users with errors on Thursday as online shoppers sought to get a copy of Grand Theft Auto V for free.

The Rockstar Games blockbuster, released in 2013, is available for free until May 21 and can be downloaded from the Epic Games Store provided you install the store's launcher on your computer. There is currently a Mega sale going on at the store with many big titles seeing price ups up to 50 percent.

As news of the GTA V freebie spread, traffic to the Epic Games Store blew up to the point that visitors started to see a '500' error presented in a variety of languages. There were also reports that Launcher logins were affecting Fortnite players throughout the day as a result of the extra traffic.

Popular titles including Red Dead Redemption 2 and Control are available with significant discounts until June 11, while the store is also giving everyone a $10 coupon to spend on games that cost $14 or more.

President Donald Trump has extended the ban of several Chinese telecom manufacturers, namely Huawei, to May 2021.

Ban essentially bars American compnies from using telecom equipment manufactured by Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE, citing national security risk as the reason.

However, The U.S. Commerce Department has granted several extensions that have allowed U.S. companies to continue business with Huawei. Current extension is set to expre on Friday, but it is highly likely that it will be extended once again.

The trade war between United States and China is most visible with Huawei's consumer products where company has abandoned the use of Google services. Basically all new Huawei phones are sold without Google Play, Youtube and other Google products. It also means that consumers buying new Huawei phones can't access the Google Play to download new apps, but they have to rely on much more limited selection of alternative app stores.

Rooting Huawei phones has proven to be tricky, so there are no easy options for those who want to buy Huawei phone, but also want to use familiar Google services.

Several sources claim that Google is planning to retire its popular Chromecast media streaming device line and replace it with Android TV -based device.

According to rumors, the upcoming device would carry Google Nest brand, to be in line with company's other "smart home" devices. Device itself would use Android TV, like many other popular media streaming solutions, such as Roku and Android Fire TV.

Chromecast itself isn't an independent media streaming solution, but rather a playback device where user can "cast" videos from his/her phone or computer that the Chromecast would then happily output to user's TV set. Android TV-based device, however, would be completely independent device, allowing user to use a traditional remote control to watch material from select providers, such as YouTube and Netflix.

Chromecast fans wouldn't be forgotten: the rumored device would also include Google Cast support, meaning that it would still function exactly like Chromecast does, if needed.

Epic Games announced yesterday that they've released their supremely popular battle royale game, Fortnite, on Google Play.

The game has been available on Android for a while now but the company has decided not to release it via Google's app store due to high share they would have to provide Google for each purchase.

Clearly Epic Games has now grown tired of not being on the most populous app store on the planet, and have caved in under the pressure of Google's ecosystem.

The company's statement makes it clear that this move is not made without the slightest scorn. In fact, the company still believes that the 30 percent cut Google gets is unreasonable, and that they make developers outside the app store feel like criminals by issuing them similar status as malware.

You'll still be able to acquire the game outside the app store like you did before the announcement if you don't want Google to get a cut.

It is fairly certain that figures on Android haven't been satisfactory to Epic Games and this move was forced upon them. Now it remains to be seen how it can compete with a long-time Google Play favorite PUBG Mobile on Android.

You can download Fortnite from Google Play here.

It is perhaps not surprising that in these dire times people are seeking for explanations from all kinds of sources and beliefs. However, perhaps the most ludicrous conspiracy theory to unearth since the flat earth is linking 5G cellular networks and COVID-19.

Not only are some spreading this hilariously insane idea on the web, some are so sure of its validity that they are taking down 5G equipment to prevent the spread of the virus. This seems to have started in the UK but it was only a matter of time before somewhere else people were to follow suit.

The threat has been taken so seriously that the likes of YouTube are removing this specific conspiracy content from their service altogether.

Yesterday, a police report from a small town of Pedersöre in Osthrobothnia, Finland has revealed a fire in a telecommunications building next to a cellular tower. The fire managed to advance enough to cut the tower from the rest of the network.

According to the police, the fire seems to have been lit on purpose and they investigate the case as arson.

It has to be noted that there's no 5G network in the area, and likely no 5G equipment located at the site. Whether the suspect knew this or not is uncertain, as there hasn't been arrests yet.

The research arm of security company Check Point Software Technologies has released a study which takes a look at the online phishing scams.

Check Point Research Q1 2020 report reveals which brands are criminals exploiting when trying to scam people. The specific term for the type of scam that uses brand recognition and lookalike websites to hook people in is brand phishing.

The scam might use the logos, company names, designs, and domain names to fool people into thinking that the thing is for real. After the false positive identification, the scammer tries to phish usually personal or credit card information.

According to the report, Apple was the number one brand abused in brand phishing schemes, perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly. The world's leading technology brand was identified in 10 percent of global brand phishing scams.

Following Apple, 9 percent was credited to Netflix scams and the third place went to Yahoo! with 6%.

While some of the more popular technology brands made the top, the next most popular type of brands associated with brand phishing were banking and media brands.

When it comes to platform of the scams, email only constituted 18 percent of the attacks with mobile taking the second place with 23%. However, most brand phishing scams use web (59%) as the main platform for their false information.

Apple has just revealed their newest member of the iPhone family. The most affordable iPhone has been revamped for 2020, here's the new iPhone SE.

The new device, once again called iPhone SE, has improvements over the predecessor in almost every aspect. Apple has updated the CPU to their last year's A13 Bionic that runs iPhone 11 series phones.

This will bring the computational prowess to a completely new realm, when the predecessor sports A9 that is four generations behind. According to Apple, the 12 MP single camera system is the best single camera system on any iPhone.

This means that it should be better than iPhone 8, which probably rings true if it uses the main camera from last year's flagship.

Speaking of iPhone 8, the design now resembles that of those iPhone with rounder edges, and offers IP67 water and dust resistance. Like them, it also has a Touch ID fingerprint sensor rather than Face ID.

This means that display is still not without massive chin and forehead. However, display has been improved too. It's now a 4.7 inch Retina HD display with support for Dolby Vision and HDR10.

Battery-wise, there's no Qi wireless charging like the flagships, and fast wired charging provides up to 50 percent charge in 30 minutes.

Everyone is spending more time at home than ever due to the spread of COVID-19. Whether it is full on curfew, stay-at-home order, or just a suggestion, much of the nation and the world are stuck inside.

This has meant that some industries, including movie theaters, have inevitably crumbled to nothingness for the time being, and others are booming, like Microsoft's Teams and video game sales.

Game platforms are competing against each other for this newly found player base. Stadia launched finally their free tier service and also offers free two-month trial into their Premium tier.

Now Sony has decided to give some goodies to PlayStation 4 owners. The new Stay At Home campaign offers four free games starting on April 16, so tomorrow. The deal ends on May 5, so you have plenty of time to claim your gifts.

OnePlus has today announced two new smartphones. The new flagship is the OnePlus 8 Pro with its QHD+ 120 hz display and quad camera setup but if you want something more affordable and compact, you might want to stick with this one.

If OnePlus 8 Pro took on the Galaxy S20 Ultra, with the OnePlus 8 the Chinese manufacturer had its eyes on the iPhone. OnePlus 8 features a 6.55 inch Full HD+ AMOLED display with 90 Hz refresh rate. Although not as fast and high resolution as its big brother, it is still A+ rated by DisplayMate.

The company took a lot of time to compare the size of the display, and the phone, to iPhones. While OnePlus 8 boasts a larger display than iPhone 11 Pro Max, the footprint of the device is much smaller. And at nearly the same size as iPhone 11 Pro, the OnePlus display dwarfs the small 5.8 inch panel on the iPhone.

OnePlus had their streamed launch event for the OnePlus 8 Series and, as expected, announced two new smartphones. The flagship device OnePlus 8 Pro and a more affordable, more compact, sibling OnePlus 8.

OnePlus 8 Pro is packed with top tier features. Starting with the display, the OnePlus 8 Pro features a 6,78 inch QHD+ AMOLED display with 120 Hz refresh rate. Not only is it the first one to allow simultaneous QHD resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate, it also leads the market in picture quality.

In fact, DisplayMate has awarded it A+ rating as well as best-in-class in thirteen categories that include contrast, peak brightness, and native color gamut.

There's still several months before Apple planning to reveal their upcoming iPhone 12, or whatever the name might be. The company might have some production issues at hand but rest assured, you'll be getting a new iPhone later this year.

According to some new information acquired by Bloomberg, this year iPhone is going to shift to a new design language. The industrial design of iPhone 12 is said to resemble that of recent iPads.

Essentially this is a move back to a more angular design that we remember well from the iPhone 4/iPhone 5 era. The sharp corners made to the iPad Pro recently, and the same seems to be happening to the iPhone.

Apple has stuck with similar design with rounded corners for a while now. iPhone 6 was the first of its kind and it was released in 2014.

During the pandemic, Apple has had trouble traveling to China to make sure production samples are where they need to be for the mass production to start. This is one major reason some have suggested that iPhone 12 might be the first iPhone in a while not to be released in its original September schedule.

Disney has announced that the company's streaming platform has acquired already more than 50 million paid users.

The subscriber milestone is without a doubt impressive, considering that the platform has been available, and in limited fashion, for less than 5 months.

The figure was reached in the coming weeks after the launch in India as well as in much of Europe. European launch countries in the past three weeks have included UK, Germany, Ireland, France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Austria.

Netflix passed 50 million subscribers only after 15 years, although it's clearly a different sort of timeline. Currently Netflix's subscriber count is likely closing in on 200 million.

It is also worth to note that 8 million of Disney+ subscribers come from Indian service Hotstar which was rebranded Disney+ Hotstar at the launch of the Disney+.

Many would've expected subscriber growth to slow down significantly after the initial 90 days in which Disney managed to lure in nearly 30 million subscribers. However, adding another over 20 million in two months is a mighty feat.