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There is some sort of social media purge going on right now. After President Donald Trump was ejected from Twitter, other platforms have followed suit with bans of their own.

In addition to several social media platforms removing Trump's accounts or restricting access, tech companies – or monopolies as the Congress addresses them – have joined in.

Google and Apple have removed the Twitter competitor Parler citing "public safety threat" and "insufficient measures to remove threats" respectively.

Parler was built to provide more free speech focused social media platform for those that do not appreciate Twitter's arguably rather selective and/or restrictive measures, or those that have no choice in the matter.

Parler CEO John Matze posted a statement to Apple banning Parler. He brought up Apple's hypocrisy with threats as Parler was banned while #HangMikePence was trending on Twitter.

In addition to the two mobile platform giants, Amazon, the provider of Parler's cloud computing, has decided to shut down their servers.

The not-so-successful short-form mobile streaming platform Quibi has found a new home. Perhaps a little surprisingly it's none of the traditional large media conglomerates, instead you can spot Chrissy Teigen now on The Roku Channel.

Roku has announced that is has acquired much of what is Quibi's show library. This includes both original shows and documentaries that were originally developed for Quibi.

The Roku Channel will be the new home to shows such as #FreeRayshawn, Chrissy's Court, Die Hart, Dummy, Flipped, Most Dangerous Game, Punk'd, Reno 911!, and Survive. There are a total of more than 75 shows and hundreds of hours of content.

Roku also namedropped some of the entertainment stars that join Roku's catalog, including Idris Elba, Kevin Hart, Liam Hemsworth, Anna Kendrick, Nicole Richie, and Chrissy Teigen.

According to the company, all this content is going to be available to you for free in the near future.

For years we've had rumors, or at least hopes, that Apple would enter the car market. Redefining the industry might not be as easy as it was before Tesla, but information that has been leaked in the past years suggests that Apple is seriously looking at the possibility of an iCar.

The Cupertino-based company bought an autonomous driving company Drive.ai in 2019 and has been seeking talent before – years before – and after that to compliment the automotive business they might engage in later on.

Even the respected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested that an Apple car might be in the making for a release in 2023 to 2025.

Now the news comes from a Korean source that Apple has been in talks with Hyundai about their EV.

Major web browser vulnerabilities have been discovered this week. The two separate security problems are found in Firefox and Chromium that is the basis for both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge.

The former is a cookie-related vulnerability that makes Firefox a hazard for the entire system. The vulnerability is known as use-after-free and was notified about couple days ago by the Firefox team.

Use-after-free is a serious liability as the abuser can take full control of the computer, tablet or phone Firefox is installed on via the browser. Fortunately Firefox has already patched the problem and released an update. However, if you are using Android version 84.1.3 or desktop version 84.0.2 the vulnerability is still present, so update with haste.

The second exploit is found in open source Chromium browser that is the basis for Microsoft's Edge as well as Google's Chrome. Both browsers were affected by the security issue.

Both have also issued a patch to their respective browsers.

This one is serious too, and can be used to control the system. While the Android version of Chrome was fixed a while back, Linux, macOS, and Windows versions still had the vulnerability as recently as last week.

Over the years, Finnish Customs service has gathered a huge pile of cryptocurrencies that have been seized from criminals and smugglers.

Customs service has kept all the bitcoins in their possession as they are, but now the organization plans to sell them and convert them into more traditional euros. The current value of seized bitcoins is now around 60 million euros (appx. $74M).

Most of the bitcoins in customs possession have been seized back in 2016 with a so-called Douppikauppa (literally "dope store") case where customs raideda an illegal drug-selling site that operated in dark web. Originally the bitcoins seized were worth appx 700 000 euros, but now the value has risen to more than 50 million euros, as the bitcoin's value has risen dramatically over the past five years.

After the sale, customs will transfer the money to Finnish government. Customs has been criticized for holding on to its bitcoins, but for taxpayers, the holding on to the bitcoins has been extremely wise move.

The weird year of 2020 is finally past us and it is time to take a look at tech news, events and phenomenons that happened during this year. Obviously, the global lockdown affected the lives of millions, maybe billions, across the world. But it also caused changes to how work is done, how we entertained ourselves and more.

Remote work

Sometime in February and March, most of the world was locked down as the global pandemic was spreading like wildfire, causing fatalities that we haven't seen in decades in most parts of the world.

As of this, virtually all of those who could do their work from home, were ordered to do so. This, obviously, changed many things in the online world. First of all, it put massive strain to networks all over the world when suddenly hundreds of millions of people started doing work from home who had been working at the offices before the lockdown.

Secondly, it also introduced many of us to new software solutions and applications that helped us to do remote meetings, collaborate with our peers and more. Perfect example of such software is Zoom, a video conferencing software that very few had heard of before the pandemic, but which quickly became a synonym for online video conferences.

The cybersecurity company Avast has released a review on web browser extensions and found out which ones might contain malware-like behavior.

The company found a total of 28 extensions for either Google's Chrome or Microsoft's Edge browsers that you should probably get rid of.

After all Avast should have plenty of experience about browser extension that need to be deleted after Mozilla pulled Avast's add-on for data collection, although they quickly met with Mozilla's guidelines.

Most of these extension redirect the user to an ad-filled page or phishing sites, which try to acquire some personal information about the user.

According to Avast, the majority of these extensions are designed for Instagram or video platforms and usually promise (and usually deliver) some kind of unofficial download function for those platforms.

Unfortunately not only do they let you download content, they also try to gain access to your attention and information.

The most anticipated game of perhaps the past decade was released eight days ago and while the sales figures and gamer stats broke records, the reception was anything but one-sided adulation.

Sony has determined that the game is in fact so broken that it needed to remove it from the PlayStation Store. This is somewhat unforeseen act from the game console maker and a harsh punishment for CD Projekt Red.

The company has also offered full refund for all those who've bought the game already.

In a statement, CD Projekt Red first notes that people can still buy the physical copies both from brick and mortar stores and online even for PlayStation. There's also a mention of working hard to repair the game and get it back to PlayStation Store as fast as possible.

Well, this one you didn't expect, did you? Netflix is adding a audio-only mode to its world-leading streaming video service.

According to Android Police, Netflix is bringing the new feature to at least the Android app.

In the new version (version 7.84.1 build 28 35243) Netflix adds a Video button on the top of the UI. By clicking the button the video turns off and you are presented with only the audio and a black screen with regular playback controls. You can tap the button again to regain the video playback.

As Android Police notes, somewhat oddly even the brightness slider stays in place when the video is turned off.

There's also an option in the settings to tweak how you'd like to use the feature. You can select the audio only to be always on, off, or only for headphones and external speakers.

Whether Netflix is trying to combat the increasing success of podcasts or just thinks you might want to listen to a less visually intense piece of entertainment is not certain but people will likely find use for the feature.

At this point there's no word on when this might land on your devices, especially if you aren't running Android. However, shouldn't take too long if some already have access to it.

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.

Tons of tweets about the problem sparked immediately:

everyone running to twitter to check if spotify is working or not #spotifydown pic.twitter.com/Z5OJ9WaWRU

-- david ❀ | restriction (@ntltcap) December 16, 2020

Signal has expanded its end-to-end encrypted communications to include video group calls.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the world to embrace video conferencing software for everything from school classrooms to corporate meetings.

Earlier in the year, Zoom came under fire after it was found its video was not subject to end-to-end encryption as had been claimed. There were also other security concerns that hit the service, which grew significantly during the pandemic.

Now, encrypted messaging app Signal has added group video chats to its line-up and like everything else it offers, it benefits from end-to-end encryption.

"Today, we're launching group calls in Signal with the latest versions of our apps. Group calls are free, private, and end-to-end encrypted," Signal's announcement reads.

A video call button will now be added to the top of group chats. When you start or join a group call, Signal will display the participants in a grid view. You can also swipe up to switch to a view that automatically focuses the screen on who is speaking, and it will update in real-time as the active speaker changes.

Free group calls are available starting today as long as the Signal app has been updated to the latest version. You won't see the call button in your legacy groups, but your legacy Signal groups will start automatically updating to New Groups in the coming weeks.

The developer of the open-world, action-adventure RPG has apologized to customers who are experience technical issues and glitches.

Most of the problems seem to be limited to users of the previous generation of gaming consoles, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, typically including choppy framerates and screen tearing. Reviewers had been given a PC version of the blockbuster, so the issues were not reported until after the release.

In an apology posted to its social media account, CD Projekt Red admitted it should have paid more attention to how the game performed on the older consoles and should have shown the game on the consoles before it premiered.

pic.twitter.com/jtF5WKCiro

-- Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) December 14, 2020

CD Projekt Red went on to promise major patches to address the issues with the first Patch #1 arriving in January. It will be followed by Patch #2 in February.

One of the largest adult entertainment websites has removed millions of videos from its platform.

Pornhub had been under fire since a New York Times report allegedly discovered illegal content mixed in with its millions of erotic videos. Following the report, MasterCard stopped processing payments for the website while rival Visa is also conducting an investigation.

PornHub had blasted the move by the payment processors at the time, pointing out that the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) had reported 118 incidents of child abuse material on PornHub, compared to 84 million reported by Facebook.

The new report did spark a major change in Pornhub policies, however. It decided that all uploaders of material would soon need to be verified. In line with that commitment, Pornhub has effectively removed millions of videos as it has suspended uploads from unverified accounts.

Most of the material on Pornhub is posted by unverified accounts.

It now says it is going further than any other platform in its trust and safety practices but also claims it is being targeted ultimately by groups that wish to abolish pornography outright.

"This means every piece of Pornhub content is from verified uploaders, a requirement that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter have yet to institute," the company said in a blog post.

Samsung has been developing MicroLED technology for a while now, and some of its first implementation have been out for while too, like the custom display called The Wall.

However, these displays have been meant for custom installations only, and thus only for the wealthy. Well, now Samsung is letting us regular folks buy MicroLED TVs to their homes for the first time, as it announces the first ever home MicroLED screen.

Perhaps some clarification is in order, though, since we don't actually mean regular folks, we mean people that have just under $100k lying around waiting to be spent on a massive television. Yes, that's how much this will cost.

Samsung anticipates that it will enter the market in early 2021 and will cost around a hundred million won which translates to around $91,500.

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:

And here's how Google search looks like:



Current monitoring status for Google Drive: