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Duolingo is the most popular language-learning apps in the world, but its selection of languages has always been somewhat limited, currently standing at 36 different languages for those studying in English.

Now, Duolingo has added a language to its selection that it calls the most requested language ever, Finnish. Spoken mostly in Finland (the home country of AfterDawn), the language is spoken only by appx. 5.5 million people in the world.

Language itself is notoriously difficult to master for people who speak English as their mother tongue. Depending on ranking, it ranks the most difficult language to master - or at least in top ten in all such ranking lists. Duolingo explains in-depth in their blog entry why Finnish is so difficult for English speakers (or anyone speaking Latin-based languages)

Ever since Elon Musk uttered the word autopilot, completely hands-off driving has been something all of us have been expecting in our next car. Unfortunately year after year, as it gets delayed, it seems more like a pipe dream.

Sure, it probably is still coming, but as long as Tesla seems like the only one developing one, we're going to have a bad time. Not only because of the limited resources but the incentives aren't there.

Fortunately for us, others think they can resolve the problem. Now Mercedes-Benz has signed a contract with Nvidia to produce them a car computer that would handle simpler things like OTA updates as well as autonomous driving.

The aim is to finish the project by 2024 with autonomous driving level 2 and 3 and parking at level 4, similar to what Teslas are capable at the moment.

Autonomous driving experience is rated at levels from zero to 5, the latter being complete autopilot without the need of user controls, the former, well, zero autonomy.

Nvidia is an interesting partner for Mercedes. They were the provider of Tesla's self-driving chips until Tesla announced their own custom silicon last year.

Microsoft invested massive amounts of money trying to compete with Twitch as they acquired Beam in 2016 and re-introduced it as Mixer the next year.

After the initial introduction it took a couple years until 2019 before they started the real push with contracts with some of the largest streamers around. This included the likes of Ninja and Shroud, arguably two of the largest game streaming brands around on Twitch at that time.

This clearly wasn't enough to lure viewers to the service, perhaps due to the fact that many of the esports competitions that get up to hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers were mostly streamed on Twitch. This eventually resulted in failed experiment.

The company has announced that it is discontinuing Mixer and will be merging it with Facebook's similar section, Facebook Gaming. Mixer will shut down on July 22, and after that the traffic will redirect to facebook.com/gaming.

Both Ninja and Shroud have announced that they are figuring out what to do next. While Microsoft obviously makes it easy to join Facebook Gaming, they aren't stuck with any specific service from now on. This might mean they return to Twitch, although neither have decided yet what to do.

Apple announced yesterday a lot of software updates, including the major ones with iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur and smaller ones to iPadOS as well as tvOS and watchOS.

Product launches weren't really happening but Apple did tease us with one for the Apple TV+. Alongside the updates to tvOS and Apple TV, the company revealed a trailer for the upcoming Apple TV+ exclusive Foundation.

The show has been in the works for years already, but slowly and surely it is coming to a close. Unfortunately we won't see it quite yet, and even a release date is still largely unclear. However, the trailer does reveal the show is coming to Apple TV+ next year.

Foundation is of course based on the epic sci-fi book series by Isaac Asimov under the same name. There's not much that we can determine from the two minute teaser in terms of the scope of the show but it does look grandiose like one would expect.

Apple has made major changes to its two largest platforms with iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur. The iPadOS also got its update, albeit less dramatic than the two.

However, there were still more platforms to be updated, thanks to Apple's massive ecosystem. Apple Watch, i.e. watchOS, and Apple TV, i.e. tvOS, were updated too.

The former got new watch faces with the inclusion of the new tachymeter complication. Perhaps more importantly the watch faces are now more customizable, and you can even share them online and with friends.

One of the apps that got most improved is the Maps app that now brings better navigation, including cycling that was added also in iOS 14. Workout app also got significant update with the likes of Cooldown option.

Usually iOS updates are the most important news from WWDC, and iOS 14 has some big changes, this time around macOS probably takes that cake as the most influential one.

This is mainly due to the fact that Apple finally made official what had been rumored. The company revealed, in a "one last thing" fashion I might add, that its abandoning Intel and told about its plans about transitioning to its own ARM-based CPUs.

Big Sur will be the first transitionary macOS update, which means that first Apple-designed CPUs will land in Macs within this year.

Apple has been slowly inching away from chips designed by third-parties into proprietary processors. Apple's own chips can now be found in the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods.

Apple has announced a slew of software updates yesterday in its first virtual WWDC. One of the more interesting updates is the new version of iPadOS that pushes iOS towards computers.

The two operating systems are now developed separately, and this allows iPadOS to venture into more computer-like interface and functions.

The iPadOS 14 features now a side bar navigation that allows easier access to important features within apps. The menu allows the use of folders as well as well as drop down menus to group items like media albums.

While iPadOS is separate from iOS (read about the new iOS 14 here), there are of course lots of features that are added to both of them. This includes the new and improved Siri.

As you might imagine, Apple has been working on making Siri's answers better but it has also updated the UI. Siri now appears as a popup notification, which can both provide information as well as link to results.

Same kind of approach has been taken with phone calls too. They no longer take up the whole screen, instead a small window allows you to answer or decline the call.

Apple's WWDC took place today virtually in Apple Park. The company's first product announcement was perhaps unsurprisingly the new version of iOS.

The iOS version 14 brings along some interesting new features. App Library makes the iPhone home screen combines apps automatically into libraries of related apps based on

Improved widgets now have more sizes, more information and you can finally move them into the home screen in addition to the widget view.

There's also a new widget type called Smart Stack. It automatically knows what to show depending on the time of the day.

Another neat feature added is picture-in-picture, which can play video and audio on top of your app or home screen.

Siri has been updated to show results quicker and on top of your current app as a notification. There's also updates to Siri's abilities, including sending audio messages, and new app called Translate will now translate between 11 languages.

Messages has been updated with pinned conversations, which helps you get to important messages even if they haven't been updated in a while. Memojis get now more styles, stickers and options, and inline messages and mentions have been added to groups.

Google has pretty silently launched a whole new product, dubbed as Keen. At first, it seems that Keen is sophisticated attack on Pinterest, a service/app that tries to make topple Pinterest's de facto status among various hobby groups.

But looking at deeper level, Keen might be something else too. It basically is a interest-based system, where users can create interest groups, then add content (images, links and more) to those groups. Google's own search algorithms and its in-house AI will then add further content, automatically, to the group.

Keen was born out of Google's Area 120, a project where Google engineers can test and invent new products - and was then promoted as a public product, over the past weekend.

As far as the Pinterest comparisons go, Keen could be used for something entirely different too: some wonder if it could become a sophisticated, personalized, interest-based "search bubble" for specific topics, that Google feeds with new content. Bit like partially crowd-sourced version of existing Google Discover service.

It has been rumored that Apple is moving away from Intel processors in order to unify their lineup of devices, and ultimately have their own processor lineup to deploy on each of their devices.

This would make Apple more self-sufficient and improve profit margins, it also means that ARM-based apps would be available to a larger set of devices.

According to renowned Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is starting this transition as early as later this year, MacRumors reports. Information from Bloomberg said it would happen in 2021.

If Kuo's details are correct, the first ARM-based devices to replace Intel should come out in late 2020 or early 2021.

Apple's annual WWDC starts later today – the keynote is just hours away – and according to some rumors, Apple would be addressing the transition in CPUs during the conference. It might be that this happens during the keynote, although it is unlikely that they would actually reveal or at least release such a device.

Google has removed 38 popular applications from the Play Store due to alleged fraudulent activity after a combined 20 million+ downloads.

A White Ops report details how thirty-eight apps - most of which are selfie apps that add filters to users' pictures - engaged in fraudulent ad activity and made it difficult for most users to uninstall the app from their devices.
The activity, which falls afoul of Google's policies, included:

• Out-of-Context (OOC) Ads: Rendering OOC ads including native and interstitial, from major ad-networks.
• Out-of-Context Navigation: Launching out-of-context navigation intents to URLs received from the command and control server (C2).
• Removal of App Icon: Remove the app icon from the device's home and apps folder, to make it difficult for the user to uninstall the app.

Google has already removed apps from its Play Store, but what's worrying is that apps were downloaded a whopping 20 million times before removal.

In addition to showing ads on Android even when not in use and hijacking ad screens from other apps, the apps also hid in the operating system so that they could not be easily removed by less experienced users who can't navigate through Android settings easily.

AMD has unveiled some new processor hardware that might get you excited, especially if you've been waiting for new midrange gaming CPUs.

AMD's new 3000XT Series brings XT branding first time ever to Ryzen series with three new CPUs. The new 3rd gen Ryzen desktop chips are: AMD Ryzen 9 3900XT, AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT and AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT.

According to the company, these new chips provide better clock speeds and Boost performance thanks to improved Zen 2 architecture compared to their predecessors (3600X, 3800X, and 3900X). The performance has been upgraded from previous 3000 Series but TDP values stay the same.

The CPUs are meant for content creation and gaming in mind and excel in these aspects thanks to their multi-core and multi-thread capabilities. The top line Ryzen 9 3900XT provide 12 cores and 24 threads and gets up to 3.8 GHz with a Boost clock maxing at 4.7 GHz. TDP stands at 105 W.

The middle variant, Ryzen 7 3800XT, features 8 cores and 16 threads at 3.9 GHz and 4.7GHz Boost with same 105 Watt TDP and the cheapest of them all, Ryzen 5 3600XT, is a 6 core processor with 12 threads and clock speeds of 3.8 GHz and 4.5 GHz. Power consumption is slightly lower at 95 W.

European Commission has begun investigating Apple's services for violations in EU law. Two different branches of the investigation take Apple Store and Apple Pay under magnifying glass.

The investigators belief that Apple might has managed its app store and payment platform in a way that violates EU's antitrust rules sparked the investigation.

This comes after music streaming giant Spotify, shopping network Rakuten, and others claimed that App Store and Apple Pay are squashing the competition with fees and compatibility issues.

Apple's management fee for competing music platforms is a very steep 30 percent. This almost third of a cut makes it very hard for the likes of Spotify to compete against Apple Music on the App Store. Memberships bought elsewhere can bypass this fee, which is why Apple also thinks they are not in the wrong.

In fact, previously Apple has argued Spotify barely pays any fees at all. The spat has been ongoing for a while now with both sides with their own arguments.

One of the Europe's largest food delivery companies, Foodora, has confirmed that its user account data has been compromised. Company, owned by its parent, Delivery Hero, is based in Germany, but operates in 14 countries, mostly across Europe.

In data breach, more than 700'000 user accounts have been leaked. Leaked data included user names, addresses, phone numbers and full names of Foodora customers. Additionally, at least some passwords were leaked, too. Foodora maintains that none of the payment information or credit card details have been breached.

According to reports, many of the Foodora users involved with the security breach, have started getting suspicious emails, typically localized to the customer's language or country of residence. It is strongly recommended to check whether your data has been compromised - you can use services like this to see if your account was one of the compromised ones.

Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp has introduced a new payment feature to its app. The company has announced WhatsApp payments that will be introduced first in Brazil.

According to the press release, WhatsApp's new feature will allow people to send money securely and use it for making purchases with local businesses while on the chat.

This is especially important for the small and micro businesses in Brazil's communities that rely on easy and cheap payment methods.

WhatsApp has profiled itself as the messaging platform for small businesses. The app lets customers ask questions in the chat, browse catalogs, and now finally pay their purchases in-app.

The feature, however, is not only for businesses and business transactions. The company says that it can be used to sending money to loved ones, and makes it as easy as sending a message.

The backbone of WhatsApp's payment feature is Facebook Pay, and this will allow users to use the same payment information in all Facebook-owned apps in the future.

When it comes to security, the app requires a fingerprint or a six digit PIN to approve payments.