Latest news

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 discovery of a security bug that leaked user information to third parties has prompted the action.

Spotify is forcing some of its subscribers to change their passwords following the discovery of a security bug. The bug reportedly led to user information being incorrectly shared with third parties, and Spotify is contacting users of affected accounts.

Information shared unintentionally includes e-mail addresses, passwords, display names, and more. So far there is no evidence that the information has been used for nefarious purposes and Spotify has contacted third parties and ordered them to delete the data.

Affected users will have been issued a password reset, and so will be alerted by email to continue through the process to change their account password.

Affected users should also consider changing the password on other services if they had been using it for them also.

Pornhub highlights double-standards, concerns about income to models, following Mastercard, and Visa suspension.

Mastercard and Visa will no longer handle payments for massive adult entertainment platform. Coming just days after Pornhub announced strict new rules for its service, Visa and Mastercard have cut off the adult website.

Following a New York Times investigation that exposed exploitative and illegal content on the massive platform, along with deficiencies in monitoring uploaded content, Pornhub imposed new restrictions on users of the service.

It changes its policies so that users who upload content to the service will have to have their identity verified. Additionally, it banned the downloading of most content available on the service.

"Today, the use of our cards at Pornhub is being terminated. Our investigation over the past several days has confirmed violations of our standards prohibiting unlawful content.... we continue to investigate potential illegal content on other websites," a Mastercard statement received by NYT's Nicholas Kristof reads.

After Mastercard's decision was revealed, Visa suspended Pornhub's acceptance privileges pending an ongoing investigation. Naturally, Pornhub is more than miffed by the moves and seemingly wishes to highlight double standards in its defense.

Apple has been targeted by yet another lawsuit alleging wrongdoing over its device limitations.

This time the plaintiff in the case is Cydia (also known as SaurikIT), alleging that Apple illegally blocked all competition for its App Store. Cydia was founded in 2008 and became a very popular third-party alternative for users of Apple devices that had been jailbroken.

To jailbreak a device is to modify it to circumvent technical limitations and allow it to be used in ways unintended by the manufacturer.

In this case, an iPhone jailbreak would allow for the device to install applications from locations other than the App Store, among other things.

Cydia is represented by Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, which has previously represented Samsung in disputes against Apple. The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages.

It is not the first case against Apple this year over its App Store practices. Fortnite publisher Epic Games has sued Apple for removing the popular title from the App Store. In that case, Epic opted to use its own payment system to sidestep a 30 percent tally imposed by Apple.

Disney is increasing the monthly charge for access to Disney+ streaming platform.

U.S. users of the Disney+ streaming platform will have to fork out an extra dollar per month. The change will not occur until March next year and will see the Disney+ monthly price increase from $6.99 to $7.99.

This sets the annual cost of a Disney+ subscription at $79.99.

From March 26, 2021, the Disney Bundle including Hulu, ESPN+, and Disney+ will be priced at $13.99 per month. By 2024, Disney is projecting 230-260 million streaming customers and more than 350 million subscriptions across all services worldwide.

The price increase announcements came as Disney announced a whole roster of new content including Loki and Falcon series.

Federal Trace Commission, better known as FTC, is taking the largest social media platform, Facebook, to court for illegitimate antitrust practices. Joined are 48 state prosecutors.

The charges against Facebook claim that the company has been abusing their competitive advantage in the marketplace in ways that violate the antitrust laws. Some of the largest error mentioned include the acquisition of Instagram for mere $1 billion in 2012 as well as a larger acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014 for $19 billion.

The prosecution sees these as buying off the competition and protecting the company's monopolistic nature in the marketplace. The House Antitrust Subcommittee in Congress released a report earlier couple months ago that called Facebook, among other platforms, monopolies.

In the filing there are mentions other less famous cases of potential antitrust violations committed by Facebook. In 2013 Facebook acquired a small VPN service and the prosecution claims that the company went through their user data to determine that WhatsApp popularity was indeed in the rise and followed up by acquiring the company.

Apple unveiled earlier this week the new AirPods Max headphones. The company didn't have an over-ear headphones to compete with the likes of Sony 1000XM4 or Bose QC35, until now.

As you might imagine, the new AirPods Max are aiming for a luxurious feel. This is with both the price tag of $550 and with quality materials including stainless steel bands and aluminum cups.

Double the price of QC35, at least $200 more than the XM4, that is a tough ask. Apple's design, and perhaps some ecosystem-specific features, has to be what you are looking for to invest in AirPods Max, surely.

The headband with its netted middle part is a completely propriety design that is said to distribute the pressure evenly, and there are no touch controls, which is likely a good thing. However, the placement of the controls is a little odd at the top of the cup.

Spotify is ever changing and challenging the streaming music landscape. One of the more important focuses lately has been the introduction of podcasts and investing in talent.

As you can imagine, Spotify has also been working on other stuff too. XDA-developers reports that they're even testing local file support on Android, which isn't exactly what one thinks when they think about Spotify.

The world's most popular streaming service already supports downloaded songs on your mobile device so you can enjoy music or podcasts on the plane or wherever you might be without sufficient internet access but adding support for non-Spotify songs is rather odd for a company that gets money from subscriptions to their streaming service.

But perhaps they're trying to make some new customers by attracting the ones that have a MP3 catalog of their own. Maybe, just maybe, they'll see that Spotify is actually a good service.

To be fair, this isn't exactly a new feature. You've been able to get your add your music to the Spotify library by adding them via PC. So this is simply taking one annoying step out of picture for those that prefer not to touch the desktop player.

At this point the feature is not 100% official yet, and it might be axed still as it is in testing. However, we'll likely see it soon added to the stable version of the software.'

There are a few industries that have suffered in the most harsh way imaginable from the coronavirus pandemic. Hotels aren't doing well, neither are airlines, but perhaps the worst off of them all are movie theaters.

During some of the worst weeks box office figures went down 99,99997%, and still they are down something like 90-95%.

Movie studios of course know that people aren't risking it because they can get entertainment delivered to their living rooms in one form or another. Warner is the first to announce that all of their 2021 blockbuster premieres will be available online.

The premieres will be shown on HBO Max, which is owned by AT&T like Warner, at the same time as they are shown in theaters.

However, there's an interesting twist. After the first month, the movies will be removed from HBO Max during which they can only be seen in the theaters.

All titles will be available in 4K Ultra HD and HDR on HBO Max. Some of the more important titles include "The Little Things," "Judas and the Black Messiah," "Tom & Jerry," "Godzilla vs. Kong," "Mortal Kombat," "Those Who Wish Me Dead," "The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It," "In The Heights," "Space Jam: A New Legacy," "The Suicide Squad," "Reminiscence," "Malignant," "Dune," "The Many Saints of Newark," "King Richard," "Cry Macho" and "Matrix 4."

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.

As more and more companies, websites and net-based services rely on cloud computing, the risks have also increased dramatically. Yesterday, we saw what happens when such services go crashing down.

Amazon is the dominant player in cloud computing, with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) having 45 percent market share, crushing the competition, most notably, Google and Microsoft.

Yesterday, AWS experienced major outage, that lasted for several hours. The outage was mostly isolated to AWS's one U.S. region, dubbed as us-east-1 region. Despite the limited geographical scale, the services that relied only on that AWS datacenter, were hit badly.

Some of the largest services that were deeply hit included Adobe's cloud services and Roku streaming services. Amazon's biggest clients, such as Apple and Netflix, didn't experience outages - probably because they use several different AWS datacenters and were able to re-route their traffic to other locations.

Most interesting outcomes of the outage were experienced by users who had adopted various smart, connected home appliances. For example, Roomba robotic vacuums stopped working through the iRobot Home app.

Electronic payment apps and NFC shopping has been available on both major mobile platforms for a while now. Apple wasn't happy with just offering an app for payments but also introduced a credit card to replace the one you already have.

Google isn't far behind, and now wants to replace some of your bank's functions too. Improved Google Pay "helps you save money and gives you insights into your spending." In 2021, you'll be able to apply for a new digital bank account.

Spending is divided into three sets of conversation-like dialogs: people, groups, and businesses. It will make it easier to keep up with the IOUs, deal with splitting the bill, and paying for services. There's also support for coupons and promo codes.

Google's cloud storage service for photos is undoubtedly one of the better photo storing options, especially for Google phones. In fact it's such a good service, they've often used it against iPhones in ads.

One of the better aspects of the service is that you don't even have to own a Pixel phone to get unlimited storage space. You just need to set the quality to "good" instead of "original", and you are free to backup unlimited amount of photos and videos.

Even better, there isn't even any compression if they are at most 16 MP images or Full HD video. The free 15 gigabyte storage would almost never end then, although it is shared with your Gmail and Drive.

However, now it seems that people aren't buying Google's new subscription-based cloud service Google One, since Google is removing the free unlimited storage next year.

Starting on June 1, 2021, Google will start counting all the megabytes and gigabytes of even those "good quality" photos you upload. This means that you'll likely start running out of cloud storage pretty fast, depending on your rate of upload.

It is worth noting, though, that pictures and videos uploaded prior to June 1 aren't counted, so if you have to digitize your childhood photo albums, you might want to do it before the change.

Google's struggles in the subscription video business are well known. The company own the largest video platform in the world but hasn't really been able to transition from ads to more lucrative subscription model.

Obviously things like YouTube Premium, with all its predecessors, and YouTube TV are around but people seem to enjoy free YouTube a little too much.

Now Google is trying to lure you in with a bundle that combines YouTube Premium and cloud gaming platform Stadia. The deal was initially available only in the UK, but has now expanded to include the US and Canada. According to XDA, it will be available in other European countries soon too.

If you have YouTube Premium subscription and would like a free Stadia Premium package, you might have already spotted the offer on your phone's YouTube app. If not, worry not, you might be able to acquire it by visiting this link.

The deal seems to last until December 31, so you should have plenty of time to collect your reward.

It is noteworthy that according to reports, you will need to have had a YouTube Premium membership before November 7th to qualify for the deal.