AOL, an internet pioneer that brought millions of Americans online for the first time, is discontinuing its dial-up service next month.

The company that brought the internet to the masses in the 1990s and early 2000s recently posted a notice on its website saying that it “routinely evaluates its products and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet” on September 30, ending more than three decades of operations.

Even as broadband and wireless internet became the predominant way people access the internet, AOL never stopped offering its sluggish service that connects people to its service over a landline. However, about 160,000 people connect to the internet through their landline telephone service, data from the 2023 US Census shows.

From “You’ve Got Mail” to “Sex and the City,” AOL’s internet was a mainstay in 1990s pop culture and engrained in Americans’ lives, especially for the tones, beeps and screeches it regularly provided. And the company regularly flooded people’s mailboxes with CDs offering free trials to access the internet.

But similar to dial-up internet, AOL is also a shell of itself. The brand’s popular internet messaging service, AIM, was shut down in 2017 and AOL itself has gone through many parent companies.

CNN

Spotify announced on Monday that its premium subscription prices will increase for users in multiple markets across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Over the next month, impacted subscribers will receive an email explaining that their monthly subscription cost will increase from €10,99 to €11,99.

Spotify made a similar change last year for users in the U.S., increasing prices from $10.99 to $11.99 — at the time, it marked the second instance when they had hiked prices over the last year.

These price hikes arrive after Spotify’s rough earnings report last week, when the platform missed revenue expectations, causing its stock price to drop 11%. On the corresponding earnings call with investors, CEO Daniel Ek stated that he is “unhappy with where [Spotify is] today,” but remained “confident in the ambitions we laid out for this business.”

Spotify’s shares rose 5% in premarket trading after announcing the price hikes.

TechCrunch

If you last updated your gaming PC in late 2016, Nvidia has two pieces of bad news to share with you. First, it will no longer support the Maxwell, Pascal, or Volta GPU architectures with new Game Ready graphics driver updates after October 2025. That means GeForce GPUs from the GTX 900 and 10-series, including aging but enduringly popular cards like the GeForce GTX 1060, will no longer get optimized driver releases for new games starting this fall.

Second, Nvidia says it will wind down all driver support for Windows 10 in October of 2026. This is one year past Microsoft's officially announced end-of-support date for Windows 10, but it will cover users who choose to take advantage of the year of free extended security updates (ESUs) that Microsoft is offering to home users (we have a guide on how to get those updates if you want them). After that, people who want to continue getting graphics drivers for their Nvidia GPUs, including newer models in the RTX 40- and 50-series, will need to upgrade to Windows 11.

The Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta GPUs won't be totally abandoned after 2025; Nvidia says it will release quarterly security updates for these cards through October 2028. These updates won't optimize performance or fix bugs in any new games, but if you still have an older or hand-me-down PC using one of these cards to play Minecraft or Roblox, you won't be leaving yourself open to GPU-related security exploits.

Nvidia has dropped hints that the end of support for these older GPUs was coming. The company announced back in January that CUDA support for the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta architectures was considered "feature complete" and was being frozen. This is the first time since 2021 that Nvidia has dropped support for older GPUs.

Ars Technica

Microsoft has decided not to move forward with plans for a simplified system tray in Windows 11, reports Windows Latest.

The new design would have removed the full date and time display as well as the notifications icon, with the aim of creating a more stripped-down and barebones system tray.

Although we previously lost the clock icon for notifications with Windows 11 24H2, the intended minimalist design was never finalized or fully realized. Microsoft was pretty close to rolling out these further changes, but suddenly pulled back—without offering any explanation.

According to company spokesperson Brandon LeBlanc, the decision was made after negative user feedback, with only a few people showing actual interest in the simplified system tray design. As such, Microsoft listened to its user base and ultimately scrapped the plans.

PCWorld

Microsoft has rather abruptly closed down its Movies & TV app, which is accessible on Xbox and Windows PCs via the Microsoft Store. This allowed people to rent or buy movies or TV shows natively through their console or computer’s storefront, but in a newly updated support page Microsoft said the service has ended.

"Microsoft no longer offers new entertainment content for purchase, including movies and TV shows, on Microsoft.com, Microsoft Store on Windows, and the Microsoft Store on Xbox" the statement reads. "However, you can continue to access your purchased content in the Movies & TV app on Xbox or Windows device."

Microsoft added that downloaded movies and shows will remain in your account and continue to play in their maximum supported resolution, but there’s no way of moving your purchased content to another service. However, you can sign up for Movies Anywhere, a service that lets you register movies that you purchased on different storefronts and sync them to other ones so you aren’t locked into one platform. According to the Microsoft support page, it’s still possible to do this with your Movies & TV purchases if you’re in the US.

You can also continue to install other third-party video streaming and purchasing apps on both the Xbox and Windows stores, including Prime Video and Apple TV, and right now nothing is changing with those. The company does not offer refunds on previous purchases.

Microsoft Movies & TV was first introduced as Xbox Video in 2012, which replaced the Zune Video Marketplace it had been operating since 2006. It was Microsoft’s answer to the likes of Apple’s iTunes Store and Amazon’s various on-demand offerings. Microsoft also made a concerted effort to position the ill-fated Xbox One, which first launched in 2013, as an all-in-one multimedia box, but today’s closure of the Movies & TV app is yet another sign that it has now completely moved on from that era.

Engadget