News written by Petteri Pyyny (October, 2020)

Finnish VPN and antivirus provider F-Secure scored a big win in courts this week. It sued Finnish law enforcement authority over a database raid that was conducted in January, 2019.

In the raid, Germany's top law enforcement agency had asked assistance from its Finnish counterpart, National Bureau of Investigation, to get its hands to F-Secure's Freedome VPN user logs. Germany's authorities wanted to get the data to get evidence for a "serious crime case" in Germany.

As per requested, Finnish NBI confiscated F-Secure's Freedome user records and list of IP addresses used by its users - all of them, not just the ones related to the German authorities criminal case.

F-Secure sued and wanted courts to rule the confiscation of its data illegal. Lower courts have previously agreed with F-Secure's argument and ruled the case in favor of F-Secure. Now, Finnish court of appeals ruled in line with the lower court, in favor of F-Secure.

According to the ruling, authorities can't have blanket access to VPN data, as F-Secure acts simply as a "messenger" for the transmitted data. If authorities would need information about specific user, they'd have to obtain a warrant from court first in order to get a (very specific) set of data, only related to the case in question.

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Most of us probably know the annoying feeling when you have a melody of a song stuck in your head, but you can't remember the name of the song or the artist who played it.

Well, luckily, there's a solution to that. Google has added a support for humming to its voice search and knows when you're looking for a song name.

Basically, the AI-powered feature tries to recognize the patterns of your humming and compare those to the database of songs it has stored. And it works, pretty darn well, as we quickly tested the feature.

You can activate the feature by tapping the small microphone symbol in Google's search bar. Then, you simply start humming. After few seconds, Google suggests that you might want be looking for a song:

After moving to the specific song search, continue humming and you'll see an audio wave resembling what you hum to the microphone:

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Well over 50 percent of consumers watch YouTube product videos before making a purchase decision. And now, YouTube's owner, Google, wants to tap into this opportunity.

Google is testing a feature that would basically turn YouTube into a massive e-commerce site. Select YouTube channels have been participating with a test where channels are encouraged to tag the products they feature with their videos.

Eventually, the master plan for Google is to add "Buy now" buttons next to all unboxing and review videos. Instead of traditional outbound links, where clicking such link would take user to a selected e-commerce site, the purchase could be handled and completed fully within YouTube itself. Google is testing such feature with Canadian Shopify where transactions are handled inside YouTube, even tho the actual seller is Shopify. Google's plans were revealed by Bloomberg.

Monetization model of such plans is not quite clear yet, but probably Google plans to take a certain percent of all transactions' value. It is also unclear whether YouTube content creators get a cut or not.

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Huawei has been pushed to corner with U.S. export restrictions, blocking the Chinese telecom giant from using Android operating system in its phones. Furthermore, United States has made it very hard for company to develop new chips for its phones, as U.S. suppliers aren't allowed to provide any technology for the company for now.

According to Reuters report, company is now "resetting its priorities" and considers selling its youth-oriented sub-brand, Honor.

While relatively unknown in United States, Honor has been extremely successful brand on its own in many Western European countries. According to Reuters' sources, the sale would include Honor brand, R&D capabilities and supply chain management business.

Possible bidders for Honor business include three Chinese companies: Digital China which is already the distributor of Honor phones, Chinese electronics company TCL and Huawei's phone rival Xiaomi.

If Honor sale goes through, Honor would be able to use Android and other U.S. technologies in its line of phones, as the entire Chinese electronics industry isn't in U.S. crosshairs, just Huawei and handful of other players.

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Furniture giant Ikea has decided to stop selling regular, non-chargeable batteries in its stores worldwide.

The change will come into effect in October 2021 after which date, company will only sell rechargeable batteries in its stores.

"By phasing out alkaline batteries and focusing on our range of rechargeable batteries, we are taking one step on that journey, offering customers an affordable and convenient solution to prolong the life of products and materials and reduce waste."

-Ikea Sustainability Development Manager Caroline Reid

According to Ikea, by switching to rechargeable batteries, customers could help it reduce more than 5,000 tons of electrical waste, as Ikea sold about 300 million standard alkaline batteries between September 2018 and August 2019. The 5,000 figure is based on calculation where company assumes customer would charge the rechargeable battery 50 times.

Source: Ikea press release