News written by Petteri Pyyny (December, 2020)

Spotify crashed globally about ten minutes ago. Problem is widespread and neither paying customers or those using free version can't access the streaming service.

Social media is flooded with reports about Spotify going down and quick look at the DownDetector site that monitors various web and online services confirms the problem.

Just few minutes ago all major Google services went crashing down.

Social media is being flooded with reports from users who cannot access Google search, YouTube, Gmail or Google Photos.

You can see the situation in DownDetector and other similar sites monitoring web services' health.

Here's how YouTube looks like right now:

One of the consequences that very few people probably thought about when Brexit became a reality is the change in TLD domains.

One of the oldest "new-ish" TLDs is .eu top-level domain space, launched back in 2005. As per .eu domain's rules, the domain cannot be held by anyone other than a citizen or organization located within European Union.

As Britain finally exits European Union at the end of 2020 (the exit happened on 1st of January, 2020, but there has been one-year long transition period), also all .eu domains held by British nationals or British organizations are going to be suspended. That is, unless the organization has subsidiaries within the EU to whom it can transfer the ownership of the domain before the transition period is over.

This might come as a shock to some Britons owning .eu domains, but shouldn't be one: .eu domain has always been restricted to EU nationals and organizations and as Britain ceases to be within EU, the suspension of those domains is just logical one.

.eu domain authority EURid has already started notifying UK-based .eu domain owners about the upcoming deadline. EU nationals residing in the UK owning .eu domains don't need to worry - the ownership of the domain isn't restricted to where person is living at, as long as the domain owner's nationality is within EU borders.

Many Android users have experienced extremely annoying situation recently: incoming text messages (SMS) have been delayed for very long time, sometimes even half an hour.

This has caused massive problems when trying to log in to services that require SMS verification, such as logging in to Google services, many banks, etc when 2-factor authentication is enabled.

The delayed incoming SMS problem started on 23rd of November, 2020 when Google rolled out an update to Carrier Services module of Android operating system. Module is updated through Google Play store and it handles operator-specific services, such as checking your current data quota, etc.

Luckily, the problem is easy-ish to fix.

How to fix delayed incoming SMS message problem with Android

1. Open Google Play store.
2. Search for Carrier Services
3. Tap the app when it appears in the search results.li>
4. On app's description page, choose Uninstall.

The tradition of ugly holiday sweaters has grown each year and some of the biggest names in technology have joined the phenomenom.

This year, Microsoft is selling ugly holiday sweaters based on some of its most iconic products. Namely, Windows XP, Windows 95 and MS Paint all got their own sweater designs.

Both Windows-themed sweaters have been available previous years, too, but MS Paint version is new for this year.

And true to the idea, all of the sweaters are hideos - and very fitting for the holiday season.