Bytes: What’s new in tech

Google documents your getaway

Don’t have time to organize all your vacation shots? Google Photos will build the perfect album for you, said Tim Moynihan in Wired .com. Since the photo-organizing app launched 10 months ago, the Assistant feature, “which is sort of like a little robotic helper,” has been able to stitch together GIFs and collages from photo collections and to suggest enhancements and edits to improve your shots. Now Assistant can “create albums and select your best shots without any user input whatsoever.” Using machine learning, Assistant automatically recognizes when you’ve been away from home and then picks what it thinks are the “best” images from your trip. It eliminates duplicates, tags famous places, and even generates a Google Map charting your journey. Users can then “edit which photos appear in the album, fine-tune the locations in the map, and add captions.”

Streaming trumps downloads

“Streaming has officially taken over the music business,” said Victor Lucker son in Time .com. Revenue from streaming services passed digital downloads for the first time ever in 2015, according to the Recording Industry Asso cia tion of Amer i ca. Streaming accounted for 34.3 percent of industry revenue, bringing in $2.4 billion, while digital album and track downloads made up 34 percent of the market. The recording industry isn’t altogether thrilled with this development. Spotify and YouTube, the two companies most responsible for the streaming boom, both let users stream music free with advertisements, in addition to their paid-subscription services. Ad-supported platforms brought in less than $400 mil lion in revenue in 2015, compared with $1.2 billion from paid-subscription services. Even vinyl records made more money, bringing in $416 mil lion in revenue.

Netflix slows its video roll

In “a stunning admission,” Netflix has confessed to throttling, or slowing down, its video speeds for some customers, said Brian Fung in The Wash ing ton Post. The company acknowledged last week that it has been automatically capping video quality at 600 Kbps for AT&T and Ver i zon mobile customers for the past five years to prevent those customers from blowing past their mobile data limits, which would presumably prevent them from watching more Net flix. A speed connection of about 3,000 Kbps is preferable for watching a movie in standard definition on a mobile device. Netflix has fiercely criticized internet service providers in recent years for alleged throttling and has pressed for strong net neutrality rules. “It now appears that even as the company asked regulators to ban throttling by carriers, it had no qualms about reserving that tactic for itself.”