Have you been trying to cast Stranger Things from your phone, only to find that your TV isn’t cooperating? It’s not the TV—Netflix is to blame for this one, and it’s intentional. The streaming app has recently updated its support for Google Cast to disable the feature in most situations. You’ll need to pay for one of the company’s more expensive plans, and even then, Netflix will only cast to older TVs and streaming dongles.

The Google Cast system began appearing in apps shortly after the original Chromecast launched in 2013. Since then, Netflix users have been able to start video streams on TVs and streaming boxes from the mobile app. That was vital for streaming targets without their own remote or on-screen interface, but times change.

Today, Google has moved beyond the remote-free Chromecast experience, and most TVs have their own standalone Netflix apps. Netflix itself is also allergic to anything that would allow people to share passwords or watch in a new place. Over the last couple of weeks, Netflix updated its app to remove most casting options, mirroring a change in 2019 to kill Apple AirPlay.

The company’s support site (spotted by Android Authority) now clarifies that casting is only supported in a narrow set of circumstances. First, you need to be paying for one of the ad-free service tiers, which start at $18 per month. Those on the $8 ad-supported plan won’t have casting support.

Even then, Casting only appears for devices without a remote, like the earlier generations of Google Chromecasts, as well as some older TVs with Cast built in. For example, anyone still rocking Google’s 3rd Gen Chromecast from 2018 can cast video in Netflix, but those with the 2020 Chromecast dongle (which has a remote and a full Android OS) will have to use the TV app. Essentially, anything running Android/Google TV or a smart TV with a full Netflix app will force you to log in before you can watch anything.

Streaming lockdown

Frequent travelers have long appreciated the prevalence of Google Cast support. You can drop into an Airbnb and begin streaming content to a big screen from your phone without typing your credentials into a TV you don’t own. Not only is logging into TVs often logistically annoying, but you must also remember to log out again later, and Netflix likes to hide that option.

Netflix has every reason to want people to log into its TV apps. After years of cheekily promoting password sharing, the company now takes a hardline stance against such things. By requiring people to log into more TVs, users are more likely to hit their screen limits. Netflix will happily sell you a more expensive plan that supports streaming to this new TV, though.

Netflix is also building a very particular kind of TV experience that pushes people to watch more content with a never-ending reel of previews and trailers. Engagement is now one of the primary metrics Netflix reports to investors. You can’t do that when people are only watching a single item at a time via casting sessions.

There are definitely Netflix subscribers up in arms about this change. Many claim to be frequent travelers who don’t want to log into new TVs in every Airbnb or hotel. However, the chorus of discontent is not as loud as it might have been in the past. Fewer people rely on casting support now that Google has retired the Chromecast brand to focus on more powerful streaming devices. At the same time, TV makers would be crazy to sell a screen without a certified Netflix app in 2025.

So Netflix may have a good reason to think it can get away with killing casting. However, trying to sneak this one past everyone without so much as an announcement is pretty hostile to its customers.

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Streaming services have a way of reviving love for old shows, and HBO Max is looking to entice old and new fans with this month’s addition of Mad Men. Instead, viewers have been laughing at the problems with the show’s 4K premiere.

Mad Men ran on the AMC channel for seven seasons from 2007 to 2015. The show had a vintage aesthetic, depicting the 1960s advertising industry in New York City.

Last month, HBO Max announced it would modernize the show by debuting a 4K version. The show originally aired in SD and HD resolutions and had not been previously made available in 4K through other means, such as Blu-ray.

However, viewers were quick to spot problems with HBO Max’s 4K Mad Men stream, the most egregious being visible crew members in the background of a scene.

The episode was “Red in the Face” (Season 1, Episode 7), which was reportedly mislabeled. In it, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) throws up oysters. In the 4K version that was streaming on HBO Max, viewers could see someone pumping a vomit hose to make the fake puke flow.

The Hollywood Reporter, citing an anonymous source, said that the error happened because Mad Men production company Lionsgate gave HBO Max the wrong file. The publication reported that Lionsgate “was working on getting HBO Max the correct file(s)” and was readying to provide them at approximately 10 a.m. PT today. Neither Lionsgate nor HBO Max has commented.

The blunder is likely to be fixed for all viewers soon. There were no problems with the HD versions of HBO Max’s Mad Men stream. However, the mix-up is a revealing look at the complexities of bringing a show or movie to a new distribution platform, how moving to wider aspect ratios or higher resolutions can affect shots, and how important human reviews are for avoiding embarrassing mistakes.

There have been other instances of show remasters inadvertently showing viewers how the sausage was made. For example, a 2020 HD remaster of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2001) that took the show from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 had episodes with visible crew and equipment in addition to “brightly lit and overexposed scenes,” Screen Rant reported at the time. When Seinfeld (1989–1998) came to Netflix, a plot-centric pothole that annoyed George Costanza (Jason Alexander) was cut from some shots, as noted by Wired.

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Jiffy corn muffins are an iconic, low-cost pantry staple introduced during the Depression. Thanksgiving is peak season for the company, which has been run by the same family for five generations.

HP Inc. said that it will lay off 4,000 to 6,000 employees in favor of AI deployments, claiming it will help save $1 billion in annualized gross run rate by the end of its fiscal 2028.

HP expects to complete the layoffs by the end of that fiscal year. The reductions will largely hit product development, internal operations, and customer support, HP CEO Enrique Lores said during an earnings call on Tuesday.

Using AI, HP will “accelerate product innovation, improve customer satisfaction, and boost productivity,” Lores said.

In its fiscal 2025 earnings report released yesterday, HP said:

Structural cost savings represent gross reductions in costs driven by operational efficiency, digital transformation, and portfolio optimization. These initiatives include but are not limited to workforce reductions, platform simplification, programs consolidation and productivity measures undertaken by HP, which HP expects to be sustainable in the longer-term.

AI blamed for tech layoffs

HP’s announcement comes as workers everywhere try to decipher how AI will impact their future job statuses and job opportunities. Some industries, such as customer support, are expected to be more disrupted than others. But we’ve already seen many tech layoffs tied to AI.

Salesforce, for example, announced in October that it had let go of 4,000 customer support employees, with CEO Marc Benioff saying that AI meant “I need less heads.” In September, US senators accused Amazon of blaming its dismissal of “tens of thousands” of employees on the “adoption of generative AI tools” and then replacing the workers with over 10,000 foreign H-1B employees. Last month, Amazon announced it would lay off about 14,000 people to focus on its most promising projects, including generative AI. Last year, Intuit said it would lay off 1,800 people and replace them with AI-focused workers. Klarna and Duolingo have also replaced significant numbers of workers with AI. And in January, Meta announced plans to lay off 5 percent of its workforce as it looks to streamline operations and build its AI business.

That’s just a handful of layoffs by tech companies that have been outrightly or presumably connected to AI investments.

According to analysis from outplacement services and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, as of October, technology firms had announced 141,159 job cuts since the year’s start, a 17 percent increase from the same period last year (120,470).

But some experts question whether or not AI is really driving corporate layoffs or if companies are using the buzzy technology as a scapegoat.

Peter Cappelli, a management professor and director of the Center for Human Resources at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told CNBC this month that “there’s very little evidence that [AI] cuts jobs anywhere near like the level that we’re talking about.” He noted that effectively using AI to replace human workers is “enormously complicated and time-consuming.”

In September, Gartner analysts predicted that all IT work will involve AI by 2030, compared to 81 percent today. However, humans will remain essential, per VP analysts Alicia Mullery and Daryl Plummer, who said that 75 percent of IT workloads will still involve people.

More broadly, there’s hope that AI will actually lead to more jobs, not fewer. In January, the World Economic Forum released its Future of Jobs Report 2025, which predicted that AI would create 78 million more jobs than it eliminates by 2030. The report was based on data from 1,000 companies with 14 million employees worldwide.

It will be years before we comprehend AI’s impact on the workforce. In the meantime, we can expect AI to be at the center of more layoff announcements —whether people believe the job cuts are solely the results of AI or not.

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Plex is starting to enforce its new rules, which prevent users from remotely accessing a personal media server without a subscription fee.

Previously, people outside of a server owner’s network could access the owner’s media library through Plex for free. Under the new rules announced in March, a server owner needs to have a Plex Pass subscription, which starts at $7 per month, to grant users remote access to their server. Alternatively, someone can remotely access another person’s Plex server by buying their own Plex Pass or a Remote Watch Pass, which is a subscription with fewer features than a Plex Pass and that Plex started selling in April for a $2/month starting price.

Plex’s new rules took effect on April 29. According to a recent Plex forums post by a Plex employee that How-To Geek spotted today, the changes are rolling out this week, with a subscription being required for people using Plex’s Roku OS app for remote access. The Plex employee added:

This requirement change for remote streaming will come to all other Plex TV apps (Fire TV, Apple TV, Android TV, etc.) and any third-party clients using the API to offer remote streaming in 2026.

Plex started as a Mac port of the Xbox Media Center project in 2009 before evolving into a media server company and, more recently, a streaming service provider. Its new remote access rules will be a test for the company, which has been challenging long-time users with numerous changes over the past year, including a Plex Pass price hike, a foray into renting out officially licensed movies, and the introduction of social features and a mobile app redesign.

Plex has previously emphasized its need to keep up with “rising costs,” which include providing support for many different devices and codecs. It has also said that it needs money to implement new features, including an integration with Common Sense Media, a new “bespoke server management app” for managing server users, and “an open and documented API for server integrations,” including custom metadata agents,” per a March blog post.

In January 2024, TechCrunch reported that Plex was nearing profitability and raised $40 million in funding (Plex raised a $50 million growth equity round in 2021). Theoretically, the new remote access rules can also increase subscription revenue and help Plex’s backers see returns on their investments.

However, Plex’s evolution could isolate long-time users who have relied on Plex as a media server for years and those who aren’t interested in subscriptions, FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels, or renting movies. Plex is unlikely to give up on its streaming business, though. In 2023, Scott Hancock, Plex’s then-VP of marketing, said that Plex had more people using its online streaming service than using its media server features since 2022. For people seeking software packages more squarely focused on media hosting, Plex alternatives, like Jellyfin, increasingly look attractive.

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