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YouTube has surprised the people of Finland today, as they have been unable to listen to their favorite songs on one of the more popular online entertainment platforms.

The world's most popular video service, sometimes used for listening to music and watching music videos, has blocked copious amounts of videos that feature music by artists represented by Teosto, a Finnish organization representing thousands of local and millions of foreign artists.

First reported by Iltalehti, Google owned streaming video service has blocked many of the videos containing music by Teosto represented artists. Block doesn't discriminate whether the content is official music videos or videos containing music by said artists, or whether the artist is Finnish or not.

According to Finnish national broadcasting company Yle, the licensing deal ran out and thus all the content was blocked by Google.

Currently if you are trying to access the videos in Finland you are prompted with a message saying: "This video contains content from TEOSTO. It is not available in your country." YouTube Help has also added a page explaining the block and its reasons for implementing it.

HDMI has been the de facto video and audio connection between TVs and digital entertainment devices for years now, but it certainly isn't the same connection it was in the early 2000s.

Now, more than a decade after the first HDMI specifications, the High-Definition Multimedia Interface has been adopted in billions of devices, and it's far more versatile that it was at version 1.0 with under 4 Gbps bandwidth.

The new HDMI 2.1 specifications have been released two days ago and they increase the speeds and compatibility even further. HDMI 2.1 supports up to 10K resolution video, which at this point in time can't be really even viewed on any device, not to mention there aren't a lot of 10K videos around. In addition it supports 8K at 60Hz and 4K at 120Hz.

Also it support dynamic HDR, a feature that is bound to be popular in the future. It allows high dynamic range, used in filming many of the films and TV shows these days, that can be altered on the fly for each frame individually.

The bandwidth has been increased to a maximum of 48 Gbps, over 10 times that of the original HDMI and nearly triple the bandwidth of previous iteration, HDMI 2.0. Also, for those wondering, HDMI 2.1 is fully backwards compatible with version 2.0.

Apple has once again sued the world's largest mobile chip manufacturer Qualcomm. As you might have guessed, it's once again another patent dispute where Apple thinks Qualcomm is breaking the law.

According to Apple, Qualcomm is using a patented technology that allows the chips to use less power and retain better battery life. The technology is used in a variety of Android phones that are powered by Qualcomm's popular Snapdragon chipsets.

Reuters reports that the feature allows the smartphones' processor to draw the minimum power needed at the time by turning off unnecessary cores. Apple says that this sleep and wake function is used in Snapdragon 800 and 820 chipsets released in 2013 and 2015 respectively.

This only the latest part in the drama between the two, as originally Apple sued Qualcomm for $1 billion in January for not paying certain royalties. According to the chip maker, they weren't required to pay after Apple had broken the contract at the time of the investigation.

Qualcomm then countersued Apple in the summer for infringing on its battery saving patents. Now the same feature has been used to turn around the tables once more.

The lawsuit was filed at U.S. District Court in San Diego, CA, where also Qualcomm's headquarters are located.

YouTube is the number one online video resource bar none, not even close. However, even the largest provider of video content has their problems (and we're not talking about demonetization here), one of which are the data requirements.

Obviously watching videos over the internet is very data intensive, and many of us understand that video is more requiring of your data connection than pictures or text. Google knows this and has been trying to develop all kinds of technologies to give access to video content to all, not just to people with unlimited LTE data.

This includes developing their own video codecs as well as better optimized versions of the service itself. The development of the latter has now taken a major leap forward as Google has finally released it to the public.

YouTube Go is meant mainly for people that do not have access to fast and unlimited internet access. It's a lighter, diet version, if you will, of YouTube app that allows the users to download videos for later viewing. It also lets you transfer videos via Bluetooth that obviously doesn't require perhaps costly internet connection.

Obviously many of us in the western world have access to unlimited, or something close to it (thanks U.S. carriers), so YouTube Go is mostly directed towards emerging markets. Thus the app has limited availability, and you'll have to jump through few hoops to get it in the U.S. or Europe.

Bitcoin has become increasingly more popular over the years but this year the cryptocurrency seems to have changed to a new gear. In less than a year Bitcoin value has skyrocketed.

The virtual, albeit no-less real, currency was valued just around a thousand US dollars at the turn of the year. Now 11 months later Bitcoin has managed to break the $10,000 milestone first time ever, ten times the January 1st price.


The trading has been heating up and the bubble is enlarging by the day. Bitcoin actually managed to barely break even $11,000 in a short-lived hike today but has since fallen clearly below. Just three days ago Bitcoin soared past the $9,000 limit and at the time of writing this, one Bitcoin costs $10,410.

Many think that the bubble is close to bursting and with such gains it is hard to argue against it, but this isn't the first time naysayers have seen doom and gloom in the near future.

However, to both economists, like Yale professor Robert Shiller, and regular observers alike this looks like a bubble of all bubbles. Even the dot com bubble seems slow and steady in comparison.

There's lot of controversy around Bitcoin coming even from inside the community. The hard fork followed by a cloned cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has divided the community apart. Some believe BCH is necessary for the evolution of Bitcoin as the future of currency, while others believe that it's a fraud and only tries to gain attention by abusing Bitcoin's name and status.

Earlier this fall Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of e-commerce giant Amazon, passed Bill Gates to become the richest man alive once again after switching places the past year. Now, having a net worth of over $93 billion is pretty good but it was still early in the year, so good ol' Jeff decided to improve the numbers a bit.

Obviously it was Black Friday that now has bumped the Amazon stock enough to increase Jeff Bezos' net worth to over $100 billion – $100,000,000,000. This is the first time anyone has boasted such a high net worth since Bill Gates nearly 20 years ago.

As Bloomberg notes, Bill Gates passed the magical $100 billion net worth in 1999 when he was at the top of his game.

While Black Friday might have taken Bezos over the milestone, and Cyber Monday will probably increase the gap to Bill Gates, it has been a steady rise all year for Amazon and its CEO. Amazon stock is up nearly 60% this year and Bezos' net worth is up nearly as much, over 50%.

Apple's iPhone X was released only three weeks ago but already Apple is catching up to the orders. This is obviously good news to anyone trying to find themselves a fresh iPhone X to celebrate the holidays, or perhaps even gift your loved one, with.

However, as Apple was rumored to be having issues with production far into 2018, reports that supply is catching up with demand might sound bad – especially if you have invested in Apple stock. It could mean that sales numbers are just not reaching quite as high as predicted.

For you with #AAPL stock, respected Apple analyst from KGI Securities, Ming-Chi Kuo, has some good news. According to Kuo Apple has managed to avoid the worst struggles with production capacity and shipping estimates or 1-2 weeks are no indication of week sales.

Kuo tells MacRumors that Apple's main supplier Foxconn is now able to produce up to 550,000 units compared to just 50,000 to 150,000 a month or two ago. The two bottlenecks, LTE antenna and Face ID dot projector, have been largely addressed.

This might result in better than expected sales in Q4, but shipments in early 2018 will be more comparable to Q4 2017 instead of solid increase predicted previously. One can expect a record-breaking Q4 from Apple.

You remember Tamagotchi, right? The Japanese virtual pet trapped in a tiny electronic device that you managed to kill by overfeeding. Well, that Tamagotchi is coming to a mobile device near you, Engadget reports.

After unveiling a 20 year anniversary edition of the original Tamagotchi last month, the company is everything but done celebrating their low-resolution pet. In fact, resolution is about to get way better, as Bandai Namco is releasing a new mobile game called My Tamagotchi Forever.

As you might imagine, in the mobile game you take care of your Tamatown virtual pets by feeding, bathing, and putting them in bed. Obviously you'll be reminded of your pets existence all too often, which is only appropriate in this day and age of notifications.

After Pokémon GO, Super Mario Run, and now Tamagotchi it seems like nostalgic Japanese franchises are making quite a comeback.

My Tamagotchi Forever is currently available only in Canada but global release seems to be imminent. The game will be available for both iOS and Android in 2018, probably fairly early in the year.

The image-sharing website Imgur has informed the public yesterday about a data breach that happened a few years back. According to a statement by Imgur, approximately 1.7 million accounts were compromised in 2014.

Imgur clarifies that hackers have seemed to have acquired email addresses and passwords of affected users, but there was no personally-identifying information to be acquired so no names, addresses or phone numbers have leaked.

However, while the passwords were encrypted, they used an older and less secure SHA-256 hash that could have been broken with brute force. Imgur updated their encryption algorithms to a more modern version last year.

If you've been affected, you should have already received an email from Imgur which prompted you to change the password immediately. Obviously changing passwords on every site that shared that password is necessary as well.

ProtonMail, the encrypted e-mail service, has now unveiled ProtonMail Contacts, which provides zero-access encryption for contact information.

Zero-access encryption means that the protected contact fields are encrypted in such a way that only you are able to decrypt and read them, not even ProtonMail can read them. While you can't encrypt the e-mail address of a contact (since ProtonMail needs to know where to send the email) you can encrypt other fields such as Address, Phone Number and Notes.

The goal of this feature is to provide another level of security for journalists and others who need to keep the identity of acquaintances (e.g. sources) as secret as possible while still being able to contact them.

In additional, digital signatures are utilizes to verify the integrity of contacts data, including the e-mail address. Verified fields are denoted with a tick. If verification fails (e.g. due to tampering), a very prominent red-background warning will display.

More information: ProtonMail

U.S. international trade body has prohibited Comcast Corp from importing types of set-top boxes in a patent dispute with Rovi Corp (now TiVo).

The ITC has prohibited the import and sale of Rovi's Xfinity X1 set-top box models that specifically violate two patents. It does not apply to legacy hardware that does not.

"Today's Commission Opinion reinforces the need for Comcast to take the necessary licenses to our IP," Rovi said in response to the commission's findings.

Comcast has confirmed it will appeal the body's decision. The ban could be overturned by U.S. President Donald Trump during the Presidential Review period.

Source: Reuters News Agency

Uber has fired two employees after a breach of user data was covered up last year, Dara Khosrowshahi has revealed to the public.

Khosrowshahi recently replaced co-founder Travis Kalanick as CEO at the ride-sharing giant. In a blog post, he said that the October 2016 data breach had only been revealed to him recently, and that two employees whose job it was to respond appropriatelky to a data breach have been fired as a result.

The names and driver's license numbers of around 600,000 drivers in the United States were stolen in the breach, along with some personal information of 57 million Uber users around the world which includes names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

The breach happened after hackers gained access to proptietary information stored on the GitHub service, which was then used to access Uber information held by a cloud-storage provider. For the record, GitHub has confirmed that its security was not breached as part of the incident.

Uber has not found any evidence of fraud or misuse tied to the incident so far, but is providing affected drivers with free credit monitoring and identity theft protection.

Uber drivers can get more information here, while Uber riders can seek information here.

Microsoft's Skype video-phone call and messaging service has disappeared from Apple's App Store in China, as well as stores for Android.

Apple confirmed to the Reuters news agency that the removal was down to the demands of Chinese authorites.

"We have been notified by the Ministry of Public Security that a number of voice over internet protocol apps do not comply with local law, therefore these apps have been removed from the App Store in China," a spokeswoman for Apple, said. "These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business."

While Google Play is not available in China at all, other app stores that cater to Android devices also removed the Skype application presumably for the same reason.

The incident is the latest setback for foreign tech companies in China, where the countries Great Firewall of censorship has caused considerable tension between the communist government and the tech industry.

WhatsApp, Facebook's encrypted messaging service, has also had recent outages in China.

The world's second largest semiconductor manufacturer, Intel, has announced a major project in mobile chips. The company has introduced a future portfolio for commercial 5G modems.

According to a press released, the XMM 8060 is the first commercial 5G modem developed by Intel and will take on major 5G suppliers, including the likes of Qualcomm and Nokia, in the next decade's fight for wireless supremacy.

In addition to the super-speedy 5G modem, Intel also announced a new XMM 7060 which improves the LTE speeds on mobile devices starting next year. As for the 5G modem, we'll have to wait a few year.

While we are waiting for the first commercial devices to equip the XMM 8060 in mid-2019, we'll have the 1.6 gigabits per second, Cat-19 LTE chip to speed our way through the last few years without 5G.

Intel also said that it is going to expand the XMM 8000 series with other modems that will bring 5G capabilities to computers and vehicles among other connected things.

This obviously solidifies Intel as a potential mobile powerhouse of the future, but it still has a long way to challenge long-running modem makers as proper competitor, and conquering the mobile sector has always been a struggle for Intel.

One of the more popular Windows cleanup tools, CCleaner, has added Avast ads on to their software. After being acquired by Avast, CCleaner wants you to install the virus protection suite along with CCleaner.

Avast bought CCleaner developer Piriform in July after which it was fairly clear that Czech security software company is going to utilize the new addition in new ways. One of these ways seems to be to try and push free Avast to CCleaner users.

In addition to CCleaner, Avast already has a similar cleanup tool called AVG TuneUp that troubleshoots and optimizes your Windows system. However, CCleaner is amongst the most popular Windows cleanup tools and certainly more known than Avast's offering.

Adding the huge user base of CCleaner to their pool of potential Avast customers is of massive value, and turning CCleaner into self-promoting adware is thus an obvious move.

The transition wasn't completely painful though – actually quite the opposite. After the acquisition CCleaner suffered from a hidden malware, according to Piriform caused by a hacker, that hit over 2 million computers.