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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
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Jon Weeks

Netflix’s subscriber boost after password sharing crackdown - Tech & Science Daily podcast

It appears Netflix’s crackdown on password sharing has done what it set out to do, and helped the company rake in millions more subscribers.

Last year the streaming service changed its settings so that customers could no longer share their passwords with friends and family outside of their homes, while at the same time increasing subscription fees.

As a result, in the last three months of 2023, Netflix nabbed a whopping 13.1 million global subscribers.

The CEO of the NSPCC, Sir Peter Wanless, has told Tech & Science Daily that government officials and people in the tech industry working on AI models aren’t taking child protection measures seriously.

He told us the child protection charity’s Childline is receiving increasing numbers of calls from British youngsters, distressed about AI-generated content online.

The NSPCC said the past 12 months have seen a new, highly-worrying type of call; young people reporting AI-generated child sexual abuse material and deepfakes, as well as harm caused by the spread of misinformation and bullying.

New analysis of the 9,000-year-old remains of 24 people from the Andes mountains in Peru suggests the true diet of hunter-gatherers from that era was in fact around 80% plant-based.

Archaeologists at the University of Wyoming in the US made the discovery after taking a detailed look at the chemical composition of the human bones, as well as markings on their teeth.

The discovery goes against the conventional hypothesis that hunter-gatherers largely ate meat, and the archaeologists reckon that may be in part because ​stone tools and animal bones preserve much better than plant parts, which rapidly degrade, and are therefore ‘rarely observed in the archaeological record’.

The director at the Oxford Vaccine Group has warned the UK is “really unsafe” from future pandemic threats.

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard said he was concerned that not enough work was being done to research different viruses and bacteria which pose a threat to humans.

His team created the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab during the pandemic, but said there had already been “decades” of work into coronavirus vaccines before the 2020 pandemic struck.

He told the government’s Science and Technology Committee that “we are nowhere near the beginning of that starting gun” for other microbes which could threaten us.

Also in this episode:

Treatments that improve mood could help those with Crohn’s and colitis, a study suggests cold water swimming could be beneficial for menopause symptoms, and the world's first IVF rhino pregnancy 'could save species'.

Listen above, find us on Apple, Spotify or wherever you stream your podcasts.

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