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Proton unveiled European alternative to Microsoft Teams: Proton Meet

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 01 Apr 2026 11:23

Proton unveiled European alternative to Microsoft Teams: Proton Meet Swiss-based Proton, known for strong encryption and privacy protection, has expanded its product range.

The company is now challenging the dominance of Microsoft Teams with its new Proton Meet video conferencing service. As with Proton Mail, Proton Meet is also promised to be end-to-end encrypted (end-to-end encryption) and that no meeting data will be collected by Proton.

Proton Meet meetings can be joined without a Proton user account, and conferences work not only with a separate application but also in a browser and on mobile.

Using Proton Meet is free, as long as meetings last a maximum of one hour and there are a maximum of 50 participants. Larger numbers require a paid Proton subscription from the organizer.

The product launch is clearly timed at the right moment, when Europe is actively considering breaking its dependency on American technology. Often, the transition is easiest to make one piece, product, and service at a time.

The Proton Meet service can be found at meet.proton.me.




AfterDawn: News

Oracle delivers brutal layoffs to 30,000 Employees - 6am email

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 01 Apr 2026 11:19

Oracle delivers brutal layoffs to 30,000 Employees - 6am email American IT giant Oracle has laid off up to 30,000 of its employees around the world in a rather brutal manner.

In countries where advance notice of dismissals is not required, the company simply sent an email at six in the morning to all employees being laid off, informing them of their termination.

The sender of the messages was only "Oracle Leadership", meaning Oracle's management, without the name of any single leader. According to news sources, the company did not inform even the supervisors or HR of those being laid off about the upcoming terminations, meaning they came as a complete surprise before morning coffee on Tuesday, March 31, 2026.

According to the Times of India, the majority of the layoffs affected the United States and India.

Those being laid off were apparently offered a severance package, but on the condition that the employee immediately signs an agreement accepting their termination.

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AfterDawn: News

Samsung raises prices of its existing phone models

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 31 Mar 2026 2:46

Samsung raises prices of its existing phone models Samsung has announced it will raise the prices of some of its high-end smartphone models in its home market, South Korea.

The price increase particularly affects the foldable display models released last year, the Galaxy Z Fold7, Galaxy Z Flip7, and the thin S25 Edge.

According to Korean sources, the new prices will take effect from April 1, 2026, and primarily target versions with larger storage capacities: for 512-gigabyte models, the price increase is approximately 100,000 Korean won (about €60 / $65), and for 1-terabyte models, it is up to 200,000 won (about €120/$130).

Typically, smartphone prices gradually decrease after their market launch to maintain demand. However, the staggering rise in prices for memory chips and storage, which began last autumn, has quite irreversibly changed the market.

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AfterDawn: News

The entire source code of the Claude Code has accidentally leaked online

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 31 Mar 2026 10:03

The entire source code of the Claude Code has accidentally leaked online Anthropic's hugely popular AI-powered coding tool, Claude Code, has had its entire source code leaked online via a source map file (source map) published in the npm registry.

The leak was discovered on March 31, 2026, when security researcher Chaofan Shou noticed (link leads to X/Twitter) that a large .map file had been accidentally included in Claude Code's npm package, which allowed anyone to restore the original, TypeScript-based source code of Claude Code. Source map files are intended for developers' debugging, but in this case, their careless publication led to over 1,900 files and over 512,000 lines of code becoming publicly available.

The leaked source code was quickly archived in a public GitHub repository, where it garnered thousands of stars and forks in just a few hours. The developer community reacted immediately to the incident: the event is considered one of the most significant AI software source code leaks in recent years. Many industry experts have called the leak a "treasure trove," as it opens an unprecedented view into the architecture and development of a production-grade AI tool.

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AfterDawn: News

GitHub Copilot to train its AI with users' prompts, code - here's how to opt out

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 30 Mar 2026 3:49

GitHub Copilot to train its AI with users' prompts, code - here's how to opt out Microsoft's GitHub, the world's largest code repository for software development projects, will start using its users' program codes as training material for its own AI.

The change begins on April 24, 2026, and it does not apply to regular GitHub usage, but only to those users who also use GitHub's own GitHub Copilot.

After the change, all conversations had with Copilot, prompts, and code generated by Copilot will be taken as part of Copilot's AI training material. According to Microsoft's statement, the change will significantly improve the quality of code generated by GitHub Copilot, as it will henceforth be based on real life and conversations developers have already had with the AI.

What makes the change unfortunate is that it is a so-called opt-out solution: all GitHub Copilot users are automatically subject to the new policy, unless they themselves refuse to share their activities as AI training material.

Forbid the use of your data for AI training in GitHub Copilot

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AfterDawn: News

Sony suspends memory card sales because memory chips are simply not available

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 28 Mar 2026 6:49

Sony suspends memory card sales because memory chips are simply not available The explosive growth in the prices of memory chips and components, which began in autumn 2025, is gradually extending to new product categories.

Now, Japanese Sony has announced (in Japanese) that it is suspending the sale of memory cards for the time being.

According to the company, the background is supply difficulties, meaning Sony is unable to acquire enough NAND memory chips, which are used as storage media in SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives.

Data centers rapidly being built around the world for the needs of AI companies are consuming almost the entire market for both operating memory (RAM) and NAND memory - and in consumer products, the situation is reflected in both rising prices and availability problems.

Sony's announcement of the sales suspension concerns both SD and CFexpress memory cards.

Already yesterday, Sony announced another change, which is also linked to the explosive growth in component prices:




AfterDawn: News

Austria plans to ban social media for under 14 year olds

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 28 Mar 2026 6:17

Austria plans to ban social media for under 14 year olds Austria has announced its plan to introduce a legislative change that would prohibit the use of social media by children under 14 years of age.

Austria's initiative is part of a widespread populist trend where several countries are considering restricting children's online use to protect young people from the harmful effects of social media. According to BBC information, the Austrian government has already held extensive negotiations on the matter, but details regarding the implementation and timeline of the law have not yet been confirmed. According to the government, the framework of the legislative initiative could be ready as early as June 2026, after which it would move to a more detailed evaluation process.

The first country to categorically ban all social media services for minors is Australia, where social media was banned for under 16s just before the start of Australian schoolchildren's summer holidays, in December 2025. Similar restrictions have either come into force or are planned elsewhere to some extent: in France, the age limit for social media services is 15 years, and Spain and Ireland are working on restrictions for under 15s.

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AfterDawn: News

TP-Link urges users to update their routers - several vulnerabilities patched

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 26 Mar 2026 1:56

TP-Link urges users to update their routers - several vulnerabilities patched Several serious security vulnerabilities have been found in many routers from the hugely popular Chinese company TP-Link.

The vulnerabilities have been found in these models, widely used even in Finland:

  • TP-Link Archer NX200
  • TP-Link Archer NX210
  • TP-Link Archer NX500
  • TP-Link Archer NX600


The most serious of the discovered vulnerabilities is CVE-2025-15517, which allows for the hijacking of router control without any user interaction. The vulnerability has a risk level of 8.6/10 and is related to a bug in the router's browser-based management panel, which uses an http connection, allowing login to be bypassed and access to the router's administration views.

Other discovered vulnerabilities also have a risk level of 8.5/10: CVE-2025-15518, CVE-2025-15519, and CVE-2025-15605.

The company has released an update for all of these, in the form of new firmware. Unfortunately, routers typically do not update themselves, so every router owner should handle the update manually.




AfterDawn: News

Google: The feared Q-Day is now expected to happen in 2029

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 25 Mar 2026 4:32

Google: The feared Q-Day is now expected to happen in 2029 Google has published a new, significantly faster - and more worrysome - timeline for the so-called encryption apocalypse. According to the company, current forms of encryption technologies will become insecure as early as 2029.

This is the so-called Q-Day (quantum day), described as the moment when the computational power of quantum computers reaches a level where public-key encryption algorithms (such as RSA) and elliptic curve-based encryption algorithms can be broken.

Previously, encryption professionals estimated that the moment would not arrive until the 2040s, but now Google estimates that this moment will arrive in just a few years. According to Google, the faster timeline is due to the rapid development of quantum computing hardware recently, and also the swift progress in solving quantum computing-related problems, such as error correction.

The situation is serious, as hostile states and criminals have very likely been collecting encrypted communications, messages, emails, and encrypted documents for years. They are just waiting in some corner of a hard drive for the moment when quantum computing reaches that dreaded "encryption apocalypse" - and then all previously collected secrets can be opened quite easily. This practice is called the Harvest now, Decrypt later method in cybersecurity circles.

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AfterDawn: News

OpenAI shuts down its AI video service Sora

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 24 Mar 2026 6:28

OpenAI shuts down its AI video service Sora OpenAI has announced that it is discontinuing its Sora service, which creates videos using AI and had become quite popular.

Sora was opened for public use only a few months ago, but it has garnered criticism from copyright owners who have accused it of stealing their characters for AI model training material. At the same time, OpenAI has increasingly found itself as an underdog in the AI race, where Google's Gemini is growing rapidly and another competitor, Anthropic, is luring developers to its Claude Code.

So for OpenAI, it's partly about concentrating resources on the company's most important products - which Sora clearly was not among. The company confirmed Sora's discontinuation in its social media post (link leads to X/Twitter).

At the same time, media giant Disney has decided to discontinue the cooperation with OpenAI announced in December. The purpose of the cooperation was specifically to focus on using the technologies behind Sora in the production of Disney's films and series.

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AfterDawn: News

United States bans foreign-made routers - only one manufacturer remains

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 24 Mar 2026 3:31

United States bans foreign-made routers - only one manufacturer remains FCC shook the technology markets this week by completely banning consumer-grade routers manufactured outside the United States.

The reasoning behind the ban is that the foreign routers pose a threat to United States' national security. American lawmakers have been suspicions about the data security of Chinese products for quite some time - and the ban reflects those fears. But instead of the FCC banning only routers made in China, it simply banned all routers manufactured outside the United States - whether they are manufactured in China, Finland, or Canada.

So, no exception is made even for routers manufactured by American companies if they are manufactured somewhere other than the United States. For example, all Google's Nest routers are manufactured outside the United States, and therefore they too will be banned in the future. The same ban also applies to American network device giant Netgear, whose products are not manufactured in China, but also not in the United States (but e.g. in Vietnam).

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AfterDawn: News

Free, privacy-respecting VPN becomes part of Firefox

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 22 Mar 2026 2:40

Free, privacy-respecting VPN becomes part of Firefox Mozilla has announced big updates to Firefox, which improve user security and privacy.

Perhaps the most interesting of the announced updates is a free, built-in VPN. All Firefox users are promised 50 gigabytes of free VPN usage monthly going forward. According to Mozilla itself, free VPN services on the market are usually at least questionable regarding privacy protection - and Firefox's built-in VPN offers a solution precisely to this problem.

The VPN will be available already by the very end of March 2026, but only in the United States, France, Germany, and Britain. No timeline estimates were given yet as to when the VPN service will expand to other countries.

Firefox also takes a significant step forward, as it becomes the first browser to support the new Sanitizer API. This is a web security standard that helps prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, which are one of the most common and harmful web vulnerabilities. With the Sanitizer API, developers can easily clean untrusted HTML content before adding it to a webpage, which reduces vulnerabilities without requiring major changes to existing websites.

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AfterDawn: News

Microsoft backs down: Copilot presence in Windows will be reduced

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 21 Mar 2026 7:10

Microsoft backs down: Copilot presence in Windows will be reduced Microsoft has announced significant changes to its Windows 11 operating system, particularly by reducing the visibility of the AI assistant Copilot in various parts of the operating system and its applications. The decision is part of a broader strategy aimed at improving Windows' quality, performance, and user experience.

The changes are a direct response to user feedback, which indicated that Copilot's integration has at times been excessive and even disruptive.For the past few years, Microsoft has focused on pushing Copilot into virtually every possible corner of Windows, starting from default Windows applications like Notepad. User reactions to these AI features have been mixed: while some appreciate the possibilities brought by AI, many have found Copilot to be too prominently displayed and difficult to remove.

Criticism has also arisen from the fact that AI is not always genuinely useful in all applications, and its addition seemed primarily to bloat the operating system. Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows and Devices, Pavan Davuluri, stated in the company's blog that Copilot will no longer be "shoved everywhere" in the future. Instead, AI functionalities will only be added to parts of Windows where they are genuinely believed to bring benefit. Initially, these changes will be visible in applications such as Windows' Photos app, Notepad, and the Snipping Tool, where its visibility will be significantly reduced.

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AfterDawn: News

Cloudflare estimates there will soon be more AI bots than humans online

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 20 Mar 2026 11:59

Cloudflare estimates there will soon be more AI bots than humans online AI bots will surpass human users on the internet by 2027, estimates Matthew Prince, CEO of web infrastructure company Cloudflare.

According to Prince, a historic change is occurring in web traffic, driven particularly by the rapid proliferation of generative AI - such as ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. This change affects both online services and who will use the internet in the future, and how.

Matthew Prince spoke about the phenomenon at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. According to him, about a fifth of internet traffic was long generated by bots, but with the advent of generative AI, the proportion of bots has begun to grow sharply. One reason for this is the operating method of AI agents: when a human shops or plans a trip, they visit a few websites, but an AI bot can easily search for information from thousands of sites in the same amount of time. As a result, a single AI agent can generate many times more web traffic compared to a human.

AI bots are also not limited to search engines or simple automated tasks. New generation AI agents perform complex tasks independently on behalf of users - comparing products, planning holidays, and compiling information from multiple sources. This significantly increases so-called agent-based traffic, which burdens the internet's underlying infrastructure, servers, and security services.

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AfterDawn: News

Sideloading apps to Android gets much more difficult

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 19 Mar 2026 7:16

Sideloading apps to Android gets much more difficult Google is bringing significant changes to installing Android applications from sources other than Google's official Play Store. According to the advertising giant, the goal is to improve user security and combat malware - but at the same time, the lives of technically savvy users will become more difficult.

The changes specifically concern situations where users install applications from alternative sources, and the applications are not available for download through official app stores. Previously, Android's openness allowed applications to be installed freely, but at the same time, it also exposed users to malware.

App developers will henceforth be required to verify their identity when registering as app distributors, which is expected to reduce the spread of scam and malware. The developer must provide Google with their name, address, email, and phone number, among other things, and pay a one-time fee of 25 dollars (approximately 20 euros).

Starting in September 2026, Google will gradually introduce a new so-called advanced flow practice, which specifically concerns more technically proficient users. If a user absolutely wants an application on their phone or tablet that has not been verified by Google, the installation must go through a new, rather complex-looking process. The process includes several steps designed to ensure that the user understands the risks - and is not, for example, acting on the instructions of a scammer.

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