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
While a faster update cadence may sound appealing, it raises two key questions--and potential concerns.
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.
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.
Twenty years ago, a battle raged over which high-definition format would dethrone DVDs: Blu-ray or HD DVD.
As history shows, Blu-ray, developed by Sony, ultimately won the war, leading to the discontinuation of the Toshiba-backed HD DVD format in 2008. The "civilian casualties" of this battle were significant, with consumers having purchased over a million HD DVD players, which subsequently became nearly obsolete.
However, Blu-ray's victory came with a bitter twist. Shortly after its rise, streaming services began to gain traction. The biggest player in this arena, Netflix, expanded rapidly to new markets in early 2010s, making consumers to quickly abandon optical media in favour of streaming.
Another side of this story is Blu-ray's use as a storage medium. DVDs were wildly popular not only as a movie format, but also for data storage. The first recordable Blu-ray discs (BD-R) hit the market in 2007, but they never reached the same heights of popularity as recordable DVDs.
OnePlus has long been known for its blazing fast charging speeds on its smartphones. However, the company's fast charging technology has always faced a challenge: OnePlus uses its own non-standard SuperVOOC charging technology. As a result, when using regular USB PD chargers, you won't achieve the same impressive charging speeds that OnePlus phones are famous for; instead, you'll get "only" around 15-20W speeds at best.
The problem has been exacerbated by the limited availability of SuperVOOC-compatible charging solutions for OnePlus phones. While there have been some improvements, such as OnePlus's own 80W SuperVOOC car charger, the options have remained relatively scarce.
Now, OnePlus has teamed up with the globally recognized brand Sharge, resulting in a SuperVOOC-compatible power bank: the Sharge x OnePlus Pouch. This 10,000 mAh power bank was designed with input from the OnePlus user community.
Beyond rapid charging, the power bank offers a few clever design features. We put it to the test in real-world scenarios for a couple of weeks before its official release. Here are our thoughts on the collaboration between Sharge and OnePlus.
Exactly 25 years ago, on 10th of June, 1999, our little site was opened to the world for the very first time. Back then, we didn't have any idea whether our site, focused solely on MP3 technology, would attract readers.
Turns out, it did. Sure, during the following years, we did shift our focus many, many times as technologies shifted. We covered the first Napster era and its lawsuits, the following P2P boom, upcoming video technologies, the golden era of DVDs, the rise and fall of various gaming consoles and much, much more.
Looking back, we had luck. Lots and lots of luck. But we had some serious misfortunes, too.
Our site's peak was sometime around 2012 - 2013, when we commanded tens of millions of monthly visitors to our site. But back then, technologies changes, user behaviour changed and, also, we did some very bad decisions.
From those years on, our site started to diminish, rapidly. Most important reason was the fact that Google started to .. not like us. Before that, Google loved our content. But after one particular update, that pushed many big discussion sites into oblivion, our site took a serious hit, too. Then, most of the online discussion started to shift to Facebook and Reddit, leaving dedicated niche sites into dust.
Iconic music/MP3 player Winamp used to be wildly popular before the advent of music streaming services. Since its heyday, the software has changed its owner many, many times - and has been sidetracked from limelight for years now.
Now, its current owners plan to change the course by making the player open source. Furthermore, Winamp team has outlined the mobile and "other platforms" as its key focus areas for the near future.
Winamp hasn't indicated under which license they will be releasing the source code, but the date is set to 24th of September, 2024. Those who are interested to know more (and possibly contribute to the project) can already join Winamp's FreeLLama mailing list.
Before opening their source code, Winammp plans to release updated versions of its mobile apps in July, 2024.
Let's rewind to the early days of the millennium -- a time when the video landscape was untamed. Back then, YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok were mere figments of the digital imagination. Streaming videos directly from websites were still taking their tentative first steps.
Instead, videos were predominantly consumed as downloaded files. Users would fetch the entire video over their internet connection and then play it using a separate video player application.
To make it even more difficult, there were tons of different video formats in use. Hundreds of different formats vied for attention. Each format required its own codec -- a kind of "driver" for the computer -- to decode and play the specific video format.
Then, in the early days of 2001, a something happened. Experimental video player known as VideoLan Client went through a complete rewrite and was launched as an open source software.
Thus, VLC, in its current incarnation, was born. Its brilliance lay in its ability to handle decoding routines for nearly all conceivable video formats internally. No more fiddling with separate codec installations--the need for that vanished.
The evolution of VLC unfolded gradually after its initial launch. Step by step, VLC added support for new video formats. But it was around the 2010s that VLC truly transformed into a video player capable of handling just about anything.
Google settled a class-action lawsuit in September 2023, which accused the company of distorting the Android app market and abusing its dominant market position in the United States. Today, the company announced the terms of the settlement.
Firstly, it will pay a total of $700 million in compensation to parties and authorities that participated in the class-action lawsuit. Of the amount, which is equivalent to approximately �637 million, 90% will go to consumers who participated in the class-action lawsuit, and the remaining 10% of the compensation amount will go to individual US states.
From the perspective of an average Android user, the bigger significance is that Google intends to simplify the so-called sideloading mechanism for Android as a result of the settlement. This mechanism is used to install applications on Android phones from outside Google's own Play Store.
Currently, the process of downloading apps (typically in .apk file format) with phone's browser and installing it includes several roadblocks that Google has added, to "protect the users". Because of the settlement, the entire process gets streamlined.
Chinese robot vacuum manufacturers have been successful in selling consumers the idea that a robot vacuum combined with a robot mop is a much better solution. However, I personally have been skeptical of this idea for years. There are essentially two reasons for this: first, a lightweight mop cannot actually remove stuck-on dirt from the floor. But more importantly, I have highlighted the fact that a mop completely ruins the idea of easy-to-use robot vacuums.
Well, the world's largest robot vacuum manufacturer, Roomba, has strongly agreed with me on this and has not released any combination device that includes a robot vacuum and mop. However, apparently the pressure from Chinese manufacturers has changed Roomba's mind and they have finally released such a device: Roomba Combo j7+ is Roomba's first robot vacuum with a mop function.
We received the new device for testing in late 2022 and the testing period lasted almost a record-breaking four months because the robot stayed in our test locations for that long. During the testing period, Roomba Combo j7+ was used as the only floor cleaning tool in the test locations, as always during our tests. The robot was used in two very different types of homes during the testing period: one with lots of carpets and obstacles, and another that was very minimalist.
Although robot vacuums have become a commonplace item in households in recent years, their story goes back much further. In fact, robotic vacuums have been around in some form for over 20 years.
For a long time, the market was dominated by a single company, iRobot, and its Roomba product line until a real contender emerged in 2005 with the American company Neato Robotics.
Especially in the 2010s, Neato Robotics gained a loyal following among technology enthusiasts as the company's products brought many innovations to the world of robot vacuums. Neato's robots were the first so-called "connected" robot vacuums, meaning they communicated their actions to the internet - and to a smartphone app. In addition, Neato courted technology enthusiasts by opening up its robots' programming interfaces and enabling the first steps towards a smart home at a time when the term "smart home" was still completely unknown. Furthermore, Neato also introduced LiDARs to the robot vacuum world - at the time when most robot vacuums did their navigation based on guesswork.
Sometime around 2015, Neato was perhaps at its peak and the company's then-current lineup was in many ways the best that the world of robot vacuums had to offer. Unfortunately, the company's development seems to have stalled since those years.
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.
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.
One of the major nostalgia trips of fall 2024 occurred in September when the legendary music player 
