Netflix saves you 6 days a year!

One of the benefits of watching content on Netflix is the lack of commercials; you can blissfully binge watch an entire season of House of Cards without interruption (save for those judgy "are you still watching?" alerts).

But in addition to providing a more enjoyable watching experience, the lack of ads on Netflix saves you about six days of your life each year, according to CordCutting.com.

"First of all, we know that Netflix recently passed the 75 million subscriber mark. And, at around the same time, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that Netflix subscribers stream 125 million hours of content every day," the site says. "So, with some simple arithmetic, we can calculate that 125 million hours spread across 75 million subscribers is 1 and 2/3 hours per subscriber per day."

Looking at Nielsen data, CordCutting.com estimates that people watch about 158.5 hours of commercials each year on traditional TV. "So each subscriber saves him or herself about 160 hours of commercials per year by streaming their content through Netflix," the site concludes.

What you do with those six days remains to be seen; a lot of us will probably spend it watching more (commercial-free) content, but perhaps the ambitious few will paint the garage or read another book.

As CordCutting.com notes, the trend is most troublesome to advertisers and the networks that like their money. "Hours spent watching ad-free Netflix are hours that consumers won't spend watching traditional TV, and that has advertisers feeling a little desperate."

Last month, for example, NBC Universal said it would cut commercials on Saturday Night Live by 30 percent next season, AdAge reports.

"We know one of the benefits of an ecosystem like Netflix is its lack of advertising," Howard Shimmel, chief research officer at Time Warner's Turner Broadcasting, told Bloomberg last year. "Consumers are being trained there are places they can go to avoid ads."

The recently announced YouTube Red, for example, ditches the ads for those who pay $10 per month. And Hulu, which is backed by major studios, now has a pricier, ad-free version.

What to do when you spill water (or any liquid) on your laptop...

Liquid and electricity don’t mix. When the two meet, the liquid can destroy a great deal of electronic circuits. It can also send you a serious shock if you’re not careful.

I’m going to assume here that you’re not reading this on the wet PC. Best not to use it until everything has dried up.

Immediately after the spill, make sure your hands, and the laptop’s power button, are dry. Use a towel if necessary.

Turn off the computer…and I don’t mean shutting down Windows properly. Press and hold the power button. The computer will shut down completely after five seconds.

Next, remove any source of electricity. Unplug the AC adapter from the wall socket. Then remove the battery, if the battery is removable.

You’re now safe from shock. Unplug anything else that’s plugged in—mouse, cables, flash drives, and so on. Open and remove anything that can be opened and removed with relative ease. For instance, remove the RAM and the hard drive or SSD.

If the liquid was something that dries sticky, such as alcohol or sugared drinks, send it a professional to give it a thorough cleaning.

But if you just spilled water, you have a chance of drying it out yourself.

First, dry the outside thoroughly with a towel. Then clear off a table and put a fresh towel over it. Open the laptop as wide as you can, so that the screen and keyboard are on the same plane. Then put it, face and keyboard down, on that towel-covered table. Leave it there for at least a couple of hours so that the water can drip out.

Then put it all back together and see if it works. If it doesn’t, take it to a professional.

By the way, I gave entirely different advice to the young reader who asked the question. I recommended confessing and apologizing for the mishap.

How to recover files from a dead external drive.....for those who wonder how i do it

When you store files on an external drive, it’s easy to forget my first rule of tech storage: Never have only one copy of anything. We tend to think of external drives—especially external hard drives—as a backup medium, so of course anything on the drive must be a backup.

But if files exist only on that external drive, they are not backed up. And you need to make sure they get backed up to something other than that particular drive—whether it’s an internal drive, the cloud, NAS, or another external drive.

Okay, the mistake has been made. Now let’s try to get those files back.

When you try to use the drive, does it make noises you’ve never heard before—clicking, for instance, or grinding? If so, make no attempts to recover the files yourself. Send the drive to a data recovery service.

Sorry, but I don’t recommend one data recovery service over another. I’ve never needed to use one (I back up), and there’s no practical way to test them fairly.

But if the drive doesn’t make any new sounds, remove it from the computer and give it a good look. You’re about to take it apart.

An external hard drive is really just an internal hard drive in a case, with a SATA/USB connector. Look for tiny screws on the case. If they aren’t there, use a small, flat-head screwdriver to pry the case open. Be careful not to damage the drive, but don’t sweat about the case.

When you open the case, you might find that the internal drive has come loose from the SATA and/or power connection. If so, reconnect, plug the USB cable back into your PC, and try to access the drive again.

If that doesn’t work, the problem could be in the case’s adapter. Remove the drive from the case, and use another SATA-USB adapter to connect the drive to the PC. I’ve seen them on sale for less than $10.

Walmart

If you can access the drive’s contents, move your files to your internal drive, or to another external one. Better yet, copy the files to both so you have a backup.

If you can access the drive, but there are no files on it, you can try file recovery software such as Recuva.

Beyond that, we're back to using a data recovery service. They’re expensive, but that’s the price of not backing up.

Opera browser bakes in free VPN

Opera Software today released a developer preview of its namesake browser that includes a full-featured VPN (virtual private network) client and free access to the service.

"We are the first major browser maker to integrate an unlimited and free VPN or virtual private network," boasted Krystian Kolondra, Opera's head of engineering, in a Thursday post to a company blog.

Although VPNs are most commonly used by corporate workers to access company data when they're outside their firm's network perimeter, Opera stressed the anonymous browsing they can provide.

Opera's baked-in VPN will let users access sites blocked in their countries, or by their employers or schools. It will also anonymize the user -- the VPN disguises the actual IP address of the user -- by making it appear that the browser originated elsewhere. In a public setting, such as a coffee shop's Wi-Fi network, a VPN also provides a secure "tunnel" to the destination, preventing theft of credentials and personal information like passwords.

Opera's VPN is likely based on the network of Toronto-based SurfEasy, which the Norwegian browser maker acquired last month. SurfEasy currently offers VPN subscriptions, including a plan that costs $6.49 per month when paid annually. Opera users will, in effect, be able to use a VPN without having to pay subscription fees like SurfEasy's.

The VPN addition came on the heels of the March debut of an integrated ad blocker in the developer preview of Opera.

Kolondra argued that features like the ad blocker and VPN are what today's customers want. "We realized that people need new features in order to browse the web efficiently in 2016," Kolondra said. "It also became apparent to us that what people need are not the same features that were relevant for their browsers 10 years ago."

Computerworld downloaded and installed the Mac version of Opera's preview, enabled the VPN, and successfully browsed to numerous websites. Some, however, took a very long time to load, at least on the first instance.

The inclusion of a VPN could also be set in the context of Opera's sale to a group of Chinese companies, including Beijing Kunlun Tech, a mobile game maker, and Qihoo, known for its search and anti-malware business in the People's Republic of China. That deal was urged on shareholders by Opera Software's board of directors in February. After several postponements of the deadline for a shareholder vote, a new date of May 24 was set last week. Interestingly, Opera's chief financial officer, Erik Harrell, resigned last week, and left the company immediately.

Chinese users have often tried to circumvent their country's blocking efforts using VPNs, although the Communist Party-controlled government has cracked down on the technology using both official directives and technical means.

While the VPN can now be accessed only from within the latest Opera developer build on Windows, OS X and Linux, Kolondra said that the tool and service would reach the production-grade browser in a "few weeks."

Comcast now lets some customers watch TV sans classic set-top box

As expected, Comcast will officially offer a paid television service over the Internet. For now, the new service will only allow Roku and Samsung Smart TV owners to purchase access to the cable giant’s broadcast offerings. The program likely will be expanded over time.

Two months ago, the Federal Communications Commission approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would force pay-TV companies to provide content and programming information to makers of third-party hardware and applications. This would create a software-based replacement for CableCard, allowing other companies to build set-top boxes or mobile applications that display a pay-TV subscriber's channels without a physical CableCard. (That vote has gotten support from the White House as recently as last week.)

Comcast’s new "Xfinity TV Partner Program" appears to be in direct response to that FCC move, although the company stated earlier this year in an FAQ that such a service was coming in 2016.

On Wednesday, Comcast elaborated on its offering and said the company plans to expand this offer to other device makers soon. As Mark Hess, a Comcast vice president, wrote in a blog post:

The Xfinity TV Partner App can be easily implemented by any company whose consumer electronics device supports HTML5 and other compatibility requirements. While many TV and other device manufacturers already support HTML5, for those that do not, we’re open to working together to explore customized versions of the app for their platforms as well. We have already developed award-winning app experiences on iOS and Android devices, and today we also announced a partner app agreement with Roku. This customized app will enable our customers to access their Xfinity TV cable service on their TVs via a Roku streaming player or directly on a Roku TV.

Hess continued and dubbed the new FCC proposal as "unnecessary."

The FCC’s proposed set-top box mandate threatens to undermine this highly-dynamic marketplace, create substantial costs and consumer harms, and will take years to develop—only to be likely outdated by the time it reaches the marketplace—all in an effort to achieve what apps are already delivering for consumers.

Last year, Comcast created a bit of an industry controversy when it revealed a potentially similar service called Stream TV in Boston and Chicago. That offering allowed Comcast's Internet-only customers in specific cities to stream live TV channels to computers, tablets, and phones. Comcast set up Stream TV so that it did not count against customer data caps, and it's currently unclear if the Xfinity TV Partner Program will follow suit.

While there are no rules preventing an Internet service provider from exempting its own streaming video from data caps, such a practice could disadvantage competing services that deliver video to customers over the Internet. Thus, the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules allow for complaints against so-called zero-rating schemes, with the commission judging on a case-by-case basis whether a practice "unreasonably interferes" with the ability of consumers to reach content or the ability of content providers to reach consumers. Comcast has argued Stream TV is a cable service and not an Internet service (meaning this FCC complaint opportunity does not apply), but consumer groups have disagreed.

More reason to get Amazon Prime...

That Amazon Prime subscription is becoming more and more useful, for all the wrong reasons. As discovered this morning: Amazon is now limiting sales of select movies and top-tier video game titles to Prime members. As in, if you don’t have Prime they won’t sell you a copy at all—though the restrictions appear to be somewhat in flux.

Instead of the “Add to Cart” button, this is what you’ll now see if you’re not a Prime member and you try to buy certain video games or movies:

The program doesn’t seem especially large at the moment—Grand Theft Auto V is the first big example in the U.S., as spotted by Engadget—but it remains to be seen how many titles will eventually fall under this umbrella. In the U.K., Videogamer reports that it also includes Far Cry Primal, Fifa 16, Rainbow Six: Siege, Far Cry Primal, and Battlefield Hardline. Business Insider also noticed some Blu-ray discs with the restriction, as well.

And Amazon’s response to Videogamer isn’t very reassuring:

“One of the many benefits of Amazon Prime is access to exclusive selection on a number of great products. Customers who are not Prime members can sign-up for a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime, or they can purchase those items from a Marketplace seller.”

That latter bit is important. It’s not impossible to buy these games on Amazon—you just can’t buy them from Amazon. Non-Prime members are restricted to purchasing from third parties.

It’s a dangerous move by Amazon, though. Part of Amazon’s appeal (for me at least) is the fact I can buy anything. And just like when the company stopped selling the Chromecast and Apple TV last year, it feels like a bad call for Amazon to put doubt in anyone’s mind that they won’t be able to find what they want.

At the moment it shouldn’t affect PC gamers much, I hope. After all, how many PC gamers are buying physical copies of games, except for people already cashing in on being a Prime member? But we’ll keep an eye on this trend and see if it spreads further. Since the issue first was reported, some of the U.K-based restrictions appear to have lifted, though Grand Theft Auto V and the Birdman Blu-ray are limited to Prime members only in the U.S.