Welcome to the Tech Meme ride home for Tuesday, January 15th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough today.

Netflix raises prices. Maybe the Apple battery replacement was a big deal after all.

Cops can't force you to unlock your phone with your face and Amazon is driving its retail

competitors into the arms of Microsoft.

Here's what you miss today in the world of tech.

Your monthly Netflix bill is going up.

Netflix this morning announced it was raising prices for all US subscribers by

between 13 and 18 percent depending on which plan you subscribe to.

Their most popular plan, the HD streaming plan will go from $11 a month to 13.

The most expensive plan, the one with 4K and 4 simultaneous streams to different devices,

will go from $14 a month to 16.

And even the basic plan, which doesn't even get you HD, is going from $8 to $9 a month.

So that's the purse strings math but here's the more important math.

This is Netflix's biggest rate hike ever and it comes on the heels of Netflix's last price hike just 15 months ago.

Previous times that Netflix has raised prices, it has tended to only do so to certain

plans or certain users, but this one hits everybody across the board.

Well, specifically, it will affect new subscribers immediately and then rollout to all U.S. customers

in the next three months.

We change pricing from time to time as we continue investing in great entertainment and improving the overall Netflix

experience Netflix said in a statement.

Yes but this price hike is coming at a particularly interesting time.

All of those competing streaming services are supposedly coming online in the next 18 months

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