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Last week, the European Commission launched an investigation into the largest adult entertainment websites. The inquiry aims to determine whether these platforms have taken adequate measures to restrict minors' access to age-inappropriate content.

Hidden within the Commission's press release was an almost offhand mention of a new app planned for age verification across the European Union.

Details were scarce - so we dug in. We reached out to multiple public agencies to uncover more about this app and how it's expected to work.

Our investigation ultimately led us to Finnish authorities, who were able to shed some light on the matter.

In Finland, the initiative is being driven by the Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman, which is responsible for overseeing the processing of personal data in the country. The office confirmed to AfterDawn that an age verification solution is indeed headed to Finland.

The solution will come in the form of a smartphone app, slated for official release in June 2025 and set to be rolled out across the country in October.

European Union's new directive promoting sustainable consumer electronics, known as Ecodesign, comes into effect in June 2025. Among other things, it mandates that smartphones must receive software updates for a minimum of five years.

European Union's new Ecodesign legislation, aimed at improving repairability and extending the lifespan of electronics, partially takes effect on June 20, 2025.

Perhaps the most significant shake-up in the new rules targets budget smartphones, but the law will also ripple through the higher-end device market.

Only in recent years have Android manufacturers started gradually extending their software update commitments--that is, how many major Android version upgrades a phone receives during its lifecycle and how many years of security updates are guaranteed.

For cheaper phones, say, phones under €300, most brands have so far promised just two Android updates - with security patches for only two or three years. Some manufacturers have even launched phones in recent years with zero guaranteed Android upgrades and just two years of security updates.

That's about to change.

In a quite interesting move, Signal - the privacy-focused messaging app favored by journalists and privacy advocates - has quietly rolled out a new safeguard for its Windows desktop application. Going forward, users on Windows will no longer be able to take screenshots that include the Signal app window. Whether you're capturing the whole screen or just a portion, if Signal is visible, it'll appear as nothing more than a black box.

The feature doesn't impact macOS, iOS, or Android versions of the app - it's strictly a Windows-only measure. And there's a very specific reason behind this: Microsoft's controversial Recall feature.

Recall, which Microsoft plans to reintroduce despite backlash, automatically captures screenshots of a user's screen every few seconds in the background. The idea is that these snapshots can help users, with the assistance of Windows' Copilot AI, retrace their steps or recover forgotten actions - say, the name of that app you briefly opened or the form you accidentally closed.

But for privacy-first platforms like Signal, that kind of constant surveillance raises major red flags. And since Microsoft hasn't offered any tools for developers to opt their apps out of Recall's screenshot collection, Signal has taken matters into its own hands - creatively.

One of the biggest players in the robot vacuum market, Roborock, has been pushing the boundaries with innovation and smart ideas for several years now.

In early 2025, Roborock unveiled a fresh wave of new products, which hit store shelves that same spring. We got our hands on the company's flagship release, the Roborock Saros 10, even before it officially launched in Europe.

The big headline feature of the Roborock Saros 10? It's the lowest-profile robot vacuum currently on the market. In other words, it should fit under sofas and beds that other robot vacuums simply can't squeeze beneath.

Of course, it's also a feature-packed flagship device - a fact reflected in its hefty $1600/€1500 price tag. The Saros 10 is a mopping, self-emptying, self-washing, obstacle-dodging robot vacuum - the whole package.

We put the Saros 10 through our traditional real-world testing: the robot was tasked with cleaning the floors of a typical Nordic home over a period of two months. During that time, it was the only tool used for floor cleaning - no brooms or vacuums allowed.

The test period coincided with the tail end of the Finnish spring, meaning mud, grit, and sand were constantly being tracked indoors - the perfect storm for a proper stress test.

Few names in digital music history are as recognizable as Napster. Launched in 1999, this pioneering service completely upended the music industry by enabling users to share songs freely--an innovation that was deemed illegal but gained massive popularity.

It's worth considering that without Napster, legal streaming services such as Spotify--and even video platforms like Netflix--might not exist today.

At the peak of Napster's success around the turn of the millennium, the recording industry was thriving on CD sales. With no need to change a profitable model, record labels saw no urgency for digital transformation--until Napster came along. By popularizing MP3 files and proving that users wanted to download individual tracks, the platform forced the industry to rethink its approach.

Napster's impact was both technological and cultural. It contributed to the decline of the album as the dominant format and created an entirely new market for tech companies. MP3 players flooded stores, including those from major brands--despite widespread awareness that they were mostly used for pirated music.

Even Apple owes part of its success to Napster's disruption. Apple became the first company to successfully pair legal music downloads with its own hardware, and for a time, its iTunes store--where users could purchase individual songs--was as vital to the industry as Spotify is today.

A decade ago, in 2015, smartphones surpassed computers as the most-used YouTube platform. That year, people spent more time watching YouTube on their phones than on desktops or laptops, as confirmed by Comscore data.

Following that shift, mobile devices left computers far behind, solidifying the smartphone as the dominant way to consume YouTube content for years.

However, an unexpected competitor has steadily risen alongside smartphones and computers, now rivaling them head-to-head.

And now, at least in the United States, smartphones have officially been overtaken: YouTube is now watched more on televisions than on phones.

According to YouTube's official blog, even vertically shot YouTube Shorts are seeing strong engagement on TV screens. Despite their portrait orientation being less than ideal for a widescreen format, viewers are still consuming these minute-long clips on their big living room displays.

Naturally, YouTube's push for television dominance is also influenced by its growing YouTube TV service in the U.S. The subscription package includes ad-free YouTube Premium and a lineup of traditional, linear TV channels available via streaming.

An unexpected announcement came from the Japanese electronics giant, Sony. While the news that the company will cease production of writable, blank Blu-ray discs in February 2025 due to declining demand is less surprising, it marks a significant step in the ongoing retreat from Blu-ray technology. Sony had already signaled this move in the summer of 2024, when it revealed plans to scale down the production of recordable Blu-ray discs. A little later, South Korean tech giant LG also announced the discontinuation of Blu-ray player production at the end of the year.

What is more surprising, however, is Sony's decision to also stop the production of writable MiniDiscs and MiniDV tapes.

MiniDisc, a Sony-developed storage format introduced in 1992, was initially aimed at replacing CDs for music listening. It gained a brief period of popularity in the 1990s but was quickly overtaken by recordable CDs and, later, MP3 files at the turn of the millennium. Sony ceased production of MiniDisc players in 2013. While the MiniDisc format is largely considered a footnote in the history of digital media, the MD Data format, used for computer data storage, was even more obscure.

For the past eight years, gamers have eagerly awaited a successor to the Nintendo Switch, which was first launched in 2017. During this time, Nintendo has remained relatively silent on new console developments, focusing instead on retro releases and even launching a Nintendo alarm clock while fans waited for the next big hardware announcement.

Now, the long-anticipated successor has finally arrived, with the Nintendo Switch 2 making its debut in an official video broadcast by Nintendo. The new console is larger than the original Switch, sporting a dark gray color scheme, but it retains the same portable, handheld gaming experience that made the original so popular. Interestingly, Nintendo has chosen to stick with the "Switch 2" name, which is somewhat out of character for the company, as they typically introduce completely new names for each new console generation.

Perhaps the most exciting news for fans is that the Switch 2 will be backward compatible with the original Switch. This means that games purchased digitally or physically for the first Switch will also work on the new console, a rare move in Nintendo's history when transitioning to a new system.

Owned by the world's largest advertising company, Google, YouTube started a war against ad blockers last year, with the aim of pushing users to subscribe to the paid, ad-free YouTube Premium service.

This strategy seems to have worked, as YouTube Premium subscriptions have seen impressive growth. But, of course, Google's revenue engine demands more, so the company recently increased YouTube Premium prices significantly in most of its operating countries.

Now, however, it seems Google may be compromising on YouTube Premium's core selling point.

On social media, there has been an increasing number of comments from disgruntled YouTube Premium subscribers reporting that ads are being shown to them as well.

One user decided to reach out to YouTube support for an explanation, and indeed received a response to their question. So, why is Google showing ads to "ad-free" YouTube Premium subscribers?

Google announced today a significant shift in its update strategy for the Android operating system, moving away from the current annual update cycle. In the future, major Android updates are set to roll out more frequently.

For years, Google has released a major Android update each fall, coinciding roughly with the launch of its new Pixel smartphone models. The latest update, Android 15 launched in September 2024 and began rolling out to select devices in October.

However, according to Google's recent statement, the upcoming Android 16 is scheduled for release in the second quarter of 2025. This means users can expect it by the end of June 2025--if not sooner.

The reason for this change is rooted in Android's underlying SDK release schedule, which traditionally only updated alongside major Android versions. These SDK updates bring new system-level features for app developers, and Google now aims to provide these enhancements at a faster pace.

Potential Issues on the Horizon

One of the major nostalgia trips of fall 2024 occurred in September when the legendary music player Winamp released its source code on GitHub.

The company had promised a shift to open source back in the spring, raising high expectations.

However, when the code was finally released, the reaction from the open-source community was overwhelmingly negative. Rather than being released as a "true" open-source project, the company published the player's source code under a license that didn't align with the spirit of open-source at all.

Essentially, the company sought volunteer developers to contribute to the player's development but did not allow permission to "fork" the application into different versions or use any of its source code in other projects.

And it appears that the company realized that this move ultimately harmed its reputation--now, Winamp's source code has been removed entirely from GitHub.

With this misstep, the company has effectively ensured that the project is unlikely to regain its former popularity--or attract the open-source developer community back to the fold.

The legendary music player Winamp dominated our desktop computers for the first decade of the millennium, until Spotify and other streaming services pushed MP3 music aside.

For the last 20 years, the story of Winamp has been somewhat of a sad saga, despite having a dedicated fanbase throughout all these years. The ownership of the player has changed more often than one would expect, and little has happened to innovate or change its trajectory.

But this past spring, Winamp's current team announced that the classic would be released as open-source. The hope was that opening the source code would attract volunteers and bring completely new ideas to the program itself.

And now, that promise has finally been fulfilled - partially.

Winamp's source code is now available on Github. However, the software hasn't transformed into an open-source program in the truest sense of the term.

The license that Winamp uses actually prohibits the distribution of various custom experimental versions created from the software. In true open-source fashion, any program can be forked and developed into a completely different version that is separate from the main project. This is not the case with Winamp, as all development must occur for the purpose of enhancing the original Winamp. Of course, one can create their own forks or distinct versions from the main project, but these cannot be distributed at all, not even for free.

Try this: gently but firmly shake your phone near your ear. Do you hear a faint rattling or clattering sound?

If you do, there's no need to panic - you probably own a slightly more expensive phone. Cheaper models usually don't make this sound unless they're genuinely broken.

For most mid- to high-end phones, a bit of rattle is expected.

The light rattling sound usually comes from the fact that when you shake the phone, the rear camera inside the phone is moving around.

So, why does the rear camera move inside the phone?

If your phone is equipped with optical image stabilization (OIS), at least one of the rear cameras likely has a mechanical stabilizer built for the camera element itself. In such phones, the rear camera element typically has the ability to move a couple of millimeters inside the phone when that particular camera isn't in use.

This changes when the camera with optical image stabilization is activated, i.e. when you open the camera app and the zoom level corresponds to the OIS-equipped camera. At that point, small magnets around the camera sensor "grab" the camera, reducing its free movement.

In practice, the camera element floats inside the phone so it can move freely to counteract the phone's motion, reducing shake in your photos and especially in videos. Phones with OIS are typically more expensive because the mechanical solution is rather expensive to build.

Telegram's co-founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, has been arrested in France.

The arrest was carried out by French police at the small Le Bourget airport, located near Paris.

The reason for the arrest is linked to an investigation in France, which accuses the company of failing to sufficiently monitor the content on its messaging platform. According to French authorities, the service is used for criminal activities, such as drug trafficking, fraud, and crimes against minors.

Telegram is particularly popular in former Soviet states, and it is widely used by both Russian and Ukrainian authorities for communication with their citizens. The app also has a massive user base across Asia, including in India and Pakistan.

Durov has been in exile from Russia since 2014, and Telegram's operations have been moved out of the country years ago. However, the messaging app has been surrounded by a strong veil of suspicion regarding its privacy practices, as Telegram has not allowed its encryption algorithms to be reviewed by independent parties.

Roborock has consistently ranked among the top-selling robot vacuums globally for years. The Chinese manufacturer has distinguished itself as a leader in high-end robotic vacuums, continuously introducing innovative features year after year.

In recent years, however, competition in the innovation space has intensified, with other Chinese brands making strong pushes into the premium robot vacuum market. Despite this, Roborock has adeptly met these challenges, maintaining its position at the forefront of the industry.

This context makes it particularly intriguing to explore what Roborock currently offers to consumers who prioritize features over price. For this review, we had the opportunity to test the company's latest flagship model, the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra, which was released in the spring of 2024. This model encapsulates Roborock's vision of the ultimate robot vacuum, incorporating the company's most advanced technologies.

The S8 MaxV Ultra is a premium robot vacuum that mops, avoids obstacles, empties its own dustbin, and even wets its mop automatically. However, its price is not for the faint of heart. As of this review's publication, the Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra is priced at an astonishing €1500 / $1800.