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WhatsApp is preparing a significant structural change for regular users. A new WhatsApp Plus subscription service has been revealed through the app's beta testing, and it is currently being tested with a limited group of users. It is an optional paid version that is heading towards an official release.

Although the feature is still in trial use, it reveals Meta's strategy: WhatsApp is following in the footsteps of its competitors, such as Telegram and Snapchat, by introducing a "freemium" model. Previously, Meta has introduced a paid version for Instagram and Facebook.

Based on the beta versions, WhatsApp Plus does not change the basic use of the app, but adds a layer on top of it that is aimed especially at power users and those who value personalization.

Key benefits include, among other things, the ability to pin up to 20 conversations to the top of the chat list instead of the current three. The test version has shown 18 new theme colors and 14 different app icons, with which the look of the app can be changed from green to, for example, purple or black and white. The package includes new ringtones and special stickers whose animations are displayed full-screen also for the message recipient.

In movie theaters, IMAX has been a kind of industry top standard. Dedicated moviegoers have known for decades that if you want to see a film on a massive screen, in all its glory, you should head to an IMAX theater.

But there is only a relatively small number of IMAX theaters worldwide.

And this, of course, creates the problem that if two blockbuster films are coming out, at the same time, that would benefit from an IMAX-level viewing experience, there's not enough IMAX theaters available.

And this is exactly what's happening this year. Disney would have wanted the Avengers: Doomsday film to be released in IMAX theaters, but the screens are already largely booked worldwide for Dune: Part Three, arriving in theaters on December 18.

Annoyed by the situation, Disney is establishing its own competitor for IMAX certification. The certification, going by the name Infinity Vision, would be granted to movie theaters that can offer "massive screens, with the sharpest and clearest colors and the best possible sound reproduction".

According to Kotaku, who reported on the matter, more detailed information about the new Infinity Vision certification has not yet been released. But Disney plans to get Infinity Vision certification for 75 movie theaters in the United States and 300 theaters worldwide.

Consumers have jumped on board as AI users worldwide, with clear evidence such as how ChatGPT quickly became the world's fastest-growing service.

Companies have also joined the bandwagon - especially those involved in software development. The end of 2025 is generally considered a major turning point in software development, when Claude Code made such a huge leap in AI-assisted programming that it managed to win over even those coders who had previously been skeptical of AI's programming skills.

But the hype has hidden an unpleasant truth that AI companies have barely dared to speak aloud.

Almost all current AI services are, in fact, loss-making businesses for the companies offering them. This means that consumers are currently able to use AI solutions that they might not be able to afford - or be willing to pay for.

Information about this financially unsustainable situation is hidden in companies' financial figures. And digging out precise data is made more difficult by the fact that the industry's largest independent players, OpenAI and Anthropic, are not publicly listed companies.

An essential part of business culture is that only a small portion of founded companies survive. The rest go bankrupt or their business just quietly shuts down.

Now these companies, whose business never really took off, have come up with a completely new trick to make a nice slice of money for their owners (or debtors).

Financial magazine Forbes reports (paywall) how defunct companies have started selling their former employees' email messages, Slack messages, and Teams messages as training material for AI companies' language models.

Apparently, AI companies are very interested in paying quite a nice sum of money for real, company-internal discussions. Presumably, this is because there is very little public material available from real working life that could be used for training language models.

According to Forbes, actors have already emerged in the market who help in shutting down a company - and at the same time also help sell the old company-internal messages to the highest-paying AI company. According to information, payments for company message collections range between $10,000 and $100,000, depending on the size of the message history and the number of employees.

Google has decided to bring badly behaving websites under better control and has announced a new change affecting visibility in its search engine.

Starting June 15, Google will automatically reduce the visibility in its search results of sites that "hijack" the user's browser back button for themselves.

The practice is quite common on even slightly dubious sites. It works so that when you try to go back from the site - for example to the search engine results - tapping the back button instead opens the site's front page, a prompt asking "are you really leaving our site", or perhaps an advertisement.

Google describes the problem in its own blog as follows:

When a user clicks the "back" button in the browser, they have a clear expectation: they want to return to the previous page. Back button hijacking breaks this fundamental expectation. It occurs when a site interferes with a user's browser navigation and prevents them from using their back button to immediately get back to the page they came from. Instead, users might be sent to pages they never visited before, be presented with unsolicited recommendations or ads, or are otherwise just prevented from normally browsing the web.

Anyone who has ever done a clean install of Windows on their computer knows that it is not a particularly smooth or fast-moving process.

But the update released for Windows 11 in April 2026 speeds up the installation of Windows significantly compared to before.

The trick is done simply by allowing the user, during the Windows installation, to choose that Windows updates will be installed only after the computer is already up and running.

Until now, the installation process has always required that the latest software and security updates are downloaded at the same time during installation - and installed as part of the Windows installation.

According to Windows Central, which reported on the matter (link in English), Microsoft nevertheless reminds users of the risks involved (link goes to X/Twitter): for example, security updates will not be up to date immediately when the computer is taken into use if installed this way.

Only this week we reported how the European Commission was touting its new age verification app as "technically ready" and top-class in terms of privacy. Now, however, the app has come under heavy criticism after a security researcher demonstrated that its protections are almost non-existent.

Security consultant Paul Moore says he bypassed the app's protections in under two minutes. According to him, the app's technical implementation contains elementary design flaws that make it an easy target for any technically savvy user.

Moore's analysis reveals that the app's trust model is based on local files that the user can edit themselves. Although the app is open source - something Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented as a guarantee of transparency - this appears to have backfired by exposing its flimsy architecture.

According to Moore, the app stores the PIN code on the device, but it is not tied to the user's actual identity vault. By deleting certain values from the app's configuration file, an attacker can set a new PIN code and still gain access to the previous credentials.

Google has released the fourth beta version of Android 17, which is according to the company the last planned beta for Android 17.

The release of the fourth beta version signifies the operating system's development moving into the finalization phase: platform APIs are now locked, the biggest new features are already included, and all that remains is bug fixing before the stable version, which is expected to arrive in the summer for Pixel phones and later for other manufacturers.

Android 17 Beta 4 is available for all supported Pixel devices, starting from the Pixel 6 series and extending to the latest models. All foldable Pixel phones and the Pixel Tablet are also supported.

Unlike earlier betas, Android 17 Beta 4 no longer brings visible major updates to the user interface or features. The most significant changes for users came earlier: a revamped messaging system, support for large screens, improvements to privacy indicators, and several security updates. And now, with all functionalities locked down, the fourth beta allows app developers to start testing their applications in an environment that very closely resembles the final Android 17.

Microsoft has decided to discontinue its lighter Outlook Lite email app for Android. The app will stop functioning completely on May 25, 2026.

After that date, even an installed app will no longer fetch new messages, nor will its core functions be usable. Users must switch on Android to the full Outlook app or to alternative email programs, such as the open-source Thunderbird.

Like many other companies, Microsoft developed lighter versions of its apps in the 2010s (thus, the "lite"), aimed primarily at consumers using inexpensive and low-powered phones. But over the years, even budget phones have become powerful enough that demand for stripped-down, lightweight versions of apps has dwindled year by year. That said, Outlook Lite did manage to accumulate over 10 million downloads in the Google Play Store, so there was clearly demand for it at one time.

According to Microsoft's official announcement, the phase-out of Outlook Lite will proceed in two stages: no new users have been accepted for Outlook Lite since October 2025 - and now the app will be discontinued for existing users as of May. The change will not affect users' email accounts or their contents; account data will remain on the servers as normal.

A month ago we reported how the United States completely banned the sale of routers manufactured abroad.

The ban imposed by the U.S. communications authority, the FCC, applied to all new routers intended for consumers.

The ban is absolute, meaning it makes no difference if the company manufacturing the routers is itself American; even such routers have been prohibited since the decision came into force.

Thus, the FCC's ban did not target only China or other countries considered competitors of the United States, but applies to every country in the world: routers manufactured in Canada, Europe or, say, Taiwan are all prohibited.

Manufacturers can, however, apply for an exemption for their own products, in which case the exemption request is evaluated by the FCC.

Now the first router manufacturer has received such an exemption: the American company Netgear received an exemption granted by the FCC and Homeland Security (PDF) on March 14, 2026, for its own products, even though they are not manufactured in the United States.

A sequel to the iconic Spaceballs movie, has been awaited for almost 40 years.

Spaceballs, which parodies Star Wars - with permission - has garnered cult status for decades, and a sequel has been rumored for years now. And of course, the original film did allude to a sequel, albeit as a joke.

Now, however, the sequel is finally coming, as Spaceballs: The New One will premiere in a year, on April 23, 2027. So the name did not turn out to be the originally planned Spaceballs: The Search for More Money.

A small teaser for the upcoming film has already been released, in which the director of the original film, the legendary Mel Brooks, talks a little about the upcoming film - though not an awful lot..

The teaser can be watched below:

Allbirds rose to become one of the most well-known environmentally friendly shoe brands in the late 2010s. The company chose the corporate form of a public benefit corporation and recorded environmental protection as the company's mission. In US public benefit corporations, the tasks recorded in the articles of association are also legally binding on the company, meaning Allbirds was legally required to develop environmental protection in its operations.

The ethical shoe company's message worked excellently in the market, and the company was listed on the stock exchange in 2021. Unfortunately, the life after the IPO wasn't all that successful, as the company's stock price plummeted almost immediately after the IPO and never again rose close to its valuation level at the time of the IPO. The company's co-founder/CEO left the firm in 2024.

In March 2026, the company then made a perplexing decision and sold its entire shoe brand to AAmerican Exchange Group, which owns several fashion brands. After that, Allbirds remained listed on the stock exchange, but without any business operations.

The European Union approved legislation in 2022 which made USB-C a mandatory charging connector in all mobile phones sold in Europe.

The law came into force for mobile phones in 2025, and as a result, Apple switched to using the USB-C standard in its iPhones already in 2024. The requirement was an excellent example of the legislation's "stickiness," as even though there was no similar requirement in other countries around the world, Apple voluntarily adopted USB-C elsewhere as well.

Now, based on the same law, the next phase is being entered, as from April 28, 2026, all laptops must have a charging capability using a USB-C connector.

Manufacturers are still allowed to offer other charging options in their computers, but the computer must also be able to be charged with a standard USB-C charger. If the computer supports any kind of fast charging technology, it must also support the standard USB PD fast charging technology.

In practice, the change means that, for example, on a business trip, you no longer need to take more than one USB PD standard-compliant charger, as the same charger can be used to charge both a mobile phone and a computer.

The European Commission has announced that the age verification app is now technically ready. The app is part of the EU's broader effort to protect minors online and provides a way to verify age without revealing the user's identity.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and executive vice president Henna Virkkunen provided more information about the app today. The app was first heard about last summer. In a few countries, testing of the first version of the app had already begun last year.

The app is a direct response to the requirements of the Digital Services Act (DSA). In recent months, the Commission has tightened its grip especially on large adult entertainment websites and social media platforms, such as TikTok and Meta, accusing them of insufficient age verification and addictive design.

One of the app's key technical features is the so-called zero-knowledge proof. According to Virkkunen, this means that the user retains full control over their data.

Google has made its desktop application for Windows widely available. The application, Google app for Desktop, brings the search giant's AI services directly to the Windows desktop without the user needing to open a separate browser.

Unlike normally with Google's new innovations, the application is immediately available in all countries - although its user interface currently only works in English. The application works on both Windows 10 and Windows 11.

The core idea of the application is to bring the entire operating system under one search - strongly reminiscent of macOS's Spotlight. The keyboard shortcut alt + spacebar opens a small floating search bar on the screen, through which one can search simultaneously from multiple sources. From the same search field, one can, of course, perform web searches using Google, but in addition, the search can also find files on the computer's hard drive, applications installed on the computer, and information stored on the user's own Google Drive cloud storage.