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Daily updated technology newsFrance wants to get rid of the Netflix button from TV remotes 4 Feb 2022, 4:23 pm
One of them is currently debated by the French National Assembly (parliament) that proposes to ban the ubiquitous Netflix button from all TV remotes sold in the country.
Reasoning behind this is that "too easy" access to Netflix (and other American streaming services that have their own remote buttons, such as Disney+ and Amazon Prime) is harming France's TV channels. So, withouth the easy-to-access streaming button on smart TVs, people would simply sit back and enjoy local TV channels instead.
France has already made it harder for TV manufacturers to promote foreign streaming services: since January, 2022 all smart TVs must highlight French streaming services in their menus over other services.
How France is going to force TV manufacturers to obey the proposed legislation is still somewhat of a mystery. Virtually all TV sets sold in France are the very same models that are sold in other European Union countries, too. Thus, in order to comply with the new law, manufacturers would have to make separate packaging - with crippled remotes - to French markets. Alternatively, manufacturers could remove the Netflix button altogether in entire Europe.
The Netflix button first appeared in American TV sets back in 2011 and were introduced in Europe in 2015.
Word game phenomenon Wordle sold to The New York Times, remains free to play - at least for now 31 Jan 2022, 11:35 pm
Wordle has been everything that modern online services tend not to be: it doesn't have a mobile app. It doesn't have any ads. It doesn't require any registration. It doesn't sell you anything. It doesn't even try to steal all of your time.
No. Instead, the game is available at its own own website.
As far as the gameplay goes: you have to guess an English-language five-letter word. And you have exactly six chances to guess the word.
That's it. You have exactly one word for each day. So, you can't get hooked on it for the entire day. You try the one word and wait for 24 hours to get the next one.
Game has been developed and maintained solely by a British developer Josh Wardle who now announced that he has sold the game to The New York Times magazine:
An update on Wordle pic.twitter.com/TmHd0AIRLX
-- Josh Wardle (@powerlanguish) January 31, 2022
According to NYT, the price tag was "in lower end of the seven figures", meaning that despite not making a dime with the game previously, Wardle earned at least a cool million dollars out of the transaction.
As the sale has been finished, the NYT team and Wardle will now ensure that the game gets transitioned to the New York Times' website with all the user achievements and records in place. NYT has promised that the game will (so far) remain free for all existing and new players.
German court: Entire modern Internet is illegal, embedding anything breaks the GDPR 31 Jan 2022, 10:34 pm
And all this over a 100 euro fee.
Behind all the madness is a court case against an unnamed German website, a lawsuit filed by a single person. And because the website used a specific font.
The website had embedded the Google Webfont to its pages directly from Google Fonts' servers - just like appx. 50 million other sites do.
But how the Internet works, this also meant that the user's browser not only downloaded the website requested, but also the font needed to show the page as intended. And while the user had obviously given the permission to hand out his/her IP address to the website in order to be able to use it in the first place, he/she didn't give the consent to connect to Google servers (in order to get the font).
His browser - as it should - contacted the Google server in the background in order to get the font for the website. And obviously, any connection through the 'net will also reveal the users IP address. And according to the user, he/she had not given explicit permission to do that.
And court agreed.
According to the court, the website in question could have had the font stored locally on its own servers and thus, to avoid the connection to Google servers. And also, according to the ruling, now Google got the users IP address and can potentially do unholy things with it, like build a profile of the user.
Surely, Google's font library can be self-hosted, but it typically isn't, as loading it off Google's servers allows users browsers to find the very same font in cache more often, as different sites tend to use the same fonts (and cache is detected by the entire domain URL address of the font file).
But the ruling also effectively bans all kinds of embedding (without the user's explicit consent): whether it is YouTube videos embedded to news articles or to use CDN-hosted jQuery libraries on your website. Oh, obviously Instagram embeds and stuff like Google Analytics are banned, too.
Few weeks earlier an Austrian court ruled Google Analytics illegal in Europe.
Sony Xperia 1 II gets Android 12 update 27 Jan 2022, 7:26 pm
At least users in Romania and United States have reported the stable Android 12 update so far, reports AndroidUpdateTracker's page for Sony Xperia 1 II. Sony doesn't participate in official Android beta program, so there's no beta update track available, like for many other phones.
The update wont be the last one for Xperia 1 II, as Sony has promised to deliver one more major Android update (Android 13, due to be made available this year by Google, most likely in September).
Sony's flagship for year 2020, still has impressive specs and can be considered one of the best camera phones, even now, in 2022.
LOTR: Rings of Power first trailer released - watch 19 Jan 2022, 5:06 pm
One of the most longed for Amazon Prime shows has been in production since 2017 when Amazon originally bought the rights to the J.R.R.Tolkien's iconic creations and announced its plans to make a TV series based on the LOTR world.
Today, Amazon finally released the first trailer - or teaser - for the Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series. Show will be a prequel to the Tolkien's original Lord of the Rings book (and thus, to the movies made in 2000s).
The Rings of Power will be released on 2nd of September, 2022 and available to all Amazon Prime subscribers globally.
The trailer:
Ruling: Google Analytics is illegal in Europe 14 Jan 2022, 5:11 pm
But now, Austrian data protection agency has made a decision against Google Analytics, stating very bluntly, that the service is illegal in European Union.
Why, you might ask?
Behind the decision is the European Union's tight privacy legislation called GDPR that protects European users and their data. Previously, European Union and United States had a mutual agreement in place that allowed tech giants like Google and Facebook to transfer their user data freely from continent to continent.
But back in August, 2020, everything changed, as the so-called "Privacy Shield" agreement was struck down by the European court.
In its decision, court ruled that United States can't provide same level of protection for European users as mandated by the GDPR. This is because the U.S. legislation allows American law enforcement agencies (NSA, FBI, Homeland Security, ..) pretty much a free access to all data stored within the U.S. soil. Now, that obviously is against everything that GDPR stands for and thus, the court decision.
Since then, American tech giants have tried to evade the issue by encrypting their data that flows from Europe to United States. Google also half-anonymizes the user data and IP addresses it collects from the users visiting websites that use Google Analytics.
But Austrian DPA decided that the encrypted transfers and pseodo-anonymizing isn't enough to ensure that U.S. agencies don't get an access to European data.
As Google's analytics software is used by 72 percent of the world's websites, the decision obviously poses a problem for the websites, too.
Google has probably two options now: it can either properly encrypt the transferred data, in a way that not even Google itself can read the data in any way. Or alternatively, Google has to set up a separate "data silo" within the European Union that is completely cut off from rest of its data.
And obviously, the shockwaves of this decision go much wider than just Google: pretty much all the major tech giants have been circumventing the GDPR rules by encrypting the data and transferring it to United States, no matter what.
Tech year 2021 wrapped up: Awful battery life, QR code comeback, global chip shortage, .. 1 Jan 2022, 4:56 pm
Obviously, the home office work continued for millions of people, everybody is already sick and tired of Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Slack. But lets look at the other stuff that changed in the year 2021.
High-end Android phones had awful battery life - thanks to Qualcomm
One of the weirdest phenomenons for the year 2021 was the fact that top-notch Android phones got significantly worse. Well, not completely, but the battery life of average high-end Android of 2021 was significantly worse than battery life of high-end models introduced back in 2020.
The reason?
Qualcomm, the dominant chip provider for high-end Androids.
More specifically, Qualcomm's year 2021 flagship SoC, Snapdragon 888 was arguably a massive leap into worse-than-expected battery life. Year 2020's flagship SoC - Snapdragon 865 - typically managed to run for entire 24 hours (with active use), but not so with SD888.
With Snapdragon 888, either your phone has to curb its powers somehow - or you need to charge your phone during the day. No other options.
During the year 2021 we observed this with all the SD888 phones we tested: Asus, Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Sony, .. No matter what the manufacturer, the phone using SD888 had to be charged during the day.
Also, almost all SD888 phones ran significantly hotter than their predecessors. And during the summer months, this caused weird problems like phone shutting off itself during video recording, etc.
Luckily, tho, for year 2022 it seems that Qualcomm is finally getting some competition to the high-end game. MediaTek's latest high-end chips seem to challenge Qualcomm's chips quite nicely. Hopefully this means that at least one of these new high-end chips will provide better battery life, too.
Global chip shortage / supply chain issues
Unless you've lived under a very big rock during the year 2021, you've heard the term "supply chain issue".
To put it shortly: there is massive demand for products that use chips. And not enough capacity to manufacture all those chips. Reasons behind this phenomenom are quite complex, but the end result is clear: some stuff is hard to get and the prices are up.
This is best observed with high-end gaming graphics cards. In late 2020, both AMD and NVIDIA introduced their latest and best gaming GPUs. The new GPUs were cheaper and faster than their predecessors.
If you were lucky and/or smart, you managed to buy one by the end of year 2020 for a decent price - and got it delivered on time.
But if you decided to delay your purchase to year 2021 you hit a wall called supply chain issues.
GPU prices have almost doubled due chip shortage and highes-end GPUs are almost impossible to get. And because of all this, even the prices of 3-4 year old GPUs are now higher than what they were back in 2020.
The story is exactly the same for another high-demand product that was introduced back in late 2020: Playstation 5. Even now, 14 months after its launch, the console is extremely hard to get without some luck - or by buying it from gray market with ridiculous price tag.
Obviously, the supply chain issues have affected many other industries too: even old-fashioned ICE cars have delivery delayes due the chip shortage.
Windows 11
No matter if you love or hate Windows, the release of a new major Windows version is still a big thing.
This time around, the latest Windows release - Windows 11 - has been more controversial than in years.
First of all, Windows 11 changes decades-old taskbar in a way that has proven to be very, very controversial among Windows users. Some love the new taskbar - most seem to hate it.
Furthermore, Windows 11 isn't for everybody. In the past, Microsoft has always tried to persuade Windows users to use the latest version of its operating system. But this time around, Windows 11 hardware requirements are so strict that big chunk of users simply cannot upgrade their OS to Windows 11.
Sure, there are easy-ish methods to overcome the limitations, but for majority of users, they simply wont do the upgrade, as they can't hack their way around the limitations. This will eventually mean that Windows 10 will remain in use for years to come.
QR code made wild comeback!
QR codes, those 2D barcodes introduced back in 1990s. Those are back in fashion, big time.
They originally made their way to the public's eye back in 2003 or so when the first cameras appeared on mobile phones. Back then, you could see QR codes everywhere: bus stand ads, stickers, magazines, etc.
Back then, they were used as links: scan the code and your phone will go to the speicified website.
Then, they somewhat disappeared. The QR codes found their retirement home in our concert tickets and various other uses.
But come year 2021 and ... just wow! Countries all over the world introduced various Green passport mechanisms to keep the societies somewhat open, despite the global pandemic. And in most cases, the "passports" used the good old QR code.
Flip phones are back!
Samsung has developed foldable phone displays for more than a decade now. But finally, with Flip 3 they seem to have found the perfect way to implement the foldable display.
Despite its steep price tag, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 is arguably one of biggest winners of the year 2021. It finally brought foldable displays to the masses and made the clamshell phones somehow "sexy" again.
Considering how the market works, we expect pretty much every major Android manufacturer to release their own foldable phone during the year 2022. At least that will mean that the foldable prices will fall, as competition increases.
Happy new year 2022!
Sure, I probably left out tons of important stuff that happened during the year 2021. But these topics were the ones that defined the tech year 2021 for me, personally.
Anyway.. I wish very happy new year 2022 for all of you!
Best,
-Petteri Pyyny, webmaster
AfterDawn
twitter: @pyyny
Iconic platformer Prince of Persia now runs in JavaScript, in your browser 29 Dec 2021, 12:05 pm
Originally released for Apple II, but later ported to most of the available gaming / computing platforms of that era (including Commodore Amiga and Atari ST), the game became a commercial success - and an icon of its kind.
In Prince of Persia, you control the protagonist in order to save the princess who has been captured by the evil Grand Vizier Jaffar. Set in medieval Persia, the game resembles 1980s adventure movies in many ways.
Now, a Spanish developer ultrabolido has taken the 1990 MS-DOS port of the game and further ported it to... your browser!
Using purely HTML5 and JavaScript, the game is true to its MS-DOS port, using the same graphics and same music as the 31-year-old MS-DOS version.
Here's a reminder of how the game's Amiga port looked like:
Game can be played at PrinceJS.com. It doesn't work very well for mobile phones, as the controls are the same as they were back in the day: you use cursor keys to guide the protagonist through the dangers of medieval Persia. But for any modern browser and a computer can run the game smoothly.
Obviously, the game's source code has been released, too and is available at GitHub.
Nokia X20 gets official Android 12 update 14 Dec 2021, 11:23 am
Roll out includes Europe, but might also include other territories. After the disaster with Android 11 update schedule, it seems that HMD Global, the manufacturer of Nokia branded phones, tries to win back its audience. Company originally was the first major Android OEM to push speedy Android updates to its users and had a (back then) one of the longest support lifecycles for its phones.
Nokia X20 was released in April, 2021 and HMD Global has promised that the phone will get Android 12, Android 13 and Android 14 before its support runs out.
Source: HMD Global press release via email
Net traffic measuring site Alexa is shutting down after 25 years 9 Dec 2021, 7:56 pm
Alexa.com has been around since 1996 and has provided relatively accurate information on how popular each website/domain in the world is. Surely, it has always been relatively flawed metric, as the measurement data is based on various browser extensions and toolbars - thus, typically harming the rankings of sites with more security-conscious users.
Nevertheless, Alexa has provided a decent take on which websites are gaining popularity and which are declining. Alexa has been traditionally one of the key metrics that was included on Wikipedia pages about websites and web services.
Alexa.com was bought by Amazon back in 1999, but Amazon decided to keep the service running as it was for years and years, even tho it didn't exactly fit to its other businesses very well.
But now, Amazon has decided to call it quits. Alexa.com service will be discontinued as of 1st of May, 2022.
Alexa has provided professional SEO services, too and those are coming to an end as well. New subscriptions can't be bought and the old ones will cease when the Alexa itself will be shut down.
Official announcement about the closure of the Alexa.com was posted by the Alexa team.
Android 12 rollout for OnePlus 9 and OnePlus 9 Pro begins 7 Dec 2021, 8:37 am
Company hasn't announced the update officially yet, but both, XDA-Developers and Android Update Tracker confirms that the update has begun rolling out.
The changes since the previous Android 12 beta aren't big, but for those jumping directly from Android 11 to Android 12, even the visible changes are quite significant. OnePlus' OxygenOS 12 is merging slowly with its parent company's - Oppo's - ColorOS, so the design and UX changes are gearing towards that goal.
The OTA rollout is phased, as it often is, so you might not see the update available yet on your own handset. But we assume the Android 12 OTA will be available for most customers by end of the week. Those who use locked handset, the OTA might get delayed further.
OnePlus plans to release Android 12 also to several other models: OnePlus 7 series, OnePlus 8 series and many Nord models should get the update. For full list of phones promised to get the update, a href="https://www.androidupdatetracker.com/m/oneplus/12" target="_blank">refer this page.
Samsung Android 12 update timeline - when your phone will get it 30 Nov 2021, 8:42 pm
The list is based on Samsung's Nordic schedule, so it might or might not apply as it is for the rest of the world. But comparing the list to the one released about a month ago by Samsung's global division, the new list seems to be credible for global rollout, too.
So, here's the full list:
Android 12 already released
- Samsung Galaxy S21
- Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G
- Samsung Galaxy S21 5G
- Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus
- Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
- Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G
Promised before end of the year 2021
- Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3
- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3
January 2022
- Samsung Galaxy S10+ (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy S10 5G (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy S10e (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy Fold
- Samsung Galaxy Note10 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy Note 10 5G (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy Note10 Lite
- Samsung Galaxy Note10 Plus (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G
- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2
- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 5G
- Samsung Galaxy S20
- Samsung Galaxy S20+
- Samsung Galaxy S20 FE
- Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G
- Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra
- Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G
- Samsung Galaxy Note20
- Samsung Galaxy Note 20 5G
- Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra
- Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G
February 2022
- Samsung Galaxy A52
- Samsung Galaxy A52 5G
- Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
- Samsung Galaxy A72
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S7
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
March 2022
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
April 2022
- Samsung Galaxy A51
- Samsung Galaxy A71
- Samsung Galaxy A51 5G
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S6
May 2022
- Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 (2020)
- Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 3
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite
- Samsung Galaxy A32
- Samsung Galaxy A32 5G
- Samsung Galaxy Xcover Pro (last Android update)
June 2022:
- Samsung Galaxy A41 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy A12 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy A22
- Samsung Galaxy A22 5G
- Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite
July 2022
- Samsung Galaxy A21s (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy A02s (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy A03s
- Samsung Galaxy XCover 5
Other Samsung models
None of the models listed below appear in Samsung's official schedule - not in this new one or in the previous list. But based on what we know about Samsung's update policy and when each phone was released, we assume that these phones should get the Android 12 update, too. But if you have one of these phones, don't get your hopes too high - the updates below have not been officially confirmed by Samsung.
- Samsung Galaxy A01 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy A02 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy A11 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy A21 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy A31 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy A42 5G
- Samsung Galaxy A71 5G
- Samsung Galaxy A90 5G (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy A Quantum
- Samsung Galaxy F02s (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy F12
- Samsung Galaxy F41 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy F42 5G
- Samsung Galaxy F62
- Samsung Galaxy M02 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy M02s (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy M12
- Samsung Galaxy M21 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy M21s (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy M22
- Samsung Galaxy M31
- Samsung Galaxy M31 Prime Edition (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy M31s (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy M32 5G
- Samsung Galaxy M42 5G
- Samsung Galaxy M51 (last Android update)
- Samsung Galaxy M52 5G
- Samsung Galaxy M62
- Samsung Galaxy Quantum 2
For more detailed information on each models update history and how many updates they will still receive, please visit Android Update Tracker's Samsung Android 12 update tracker chart.
Failing to keep promises: Nokia 9 PureView wont get Android 11, after all 30 Nov 2021, 8:13 pm
And they actually managed to keep those promises quite nicely. Up until the Android 11 update. Ever since Android 11 rolled out back in September, 2020, HMD Global has been left behind in terms of speedy Android updates. To be fair, also several other companies have struggled with Android 11, too: OnePlus slipped badly from its glorious past and some companies, like Motorola and Asus, have simply abandoned some of their relatively recent models.
But despite delayed updates, HMD Global did state that it will keep its promises of three major Android updates for its existing lineup. And they have delivered - slowly, but still.
But with their most recent phone that could be realistically called as a flagship phone, Nokia 9 PureView, they decided to throw in the towel.
Company announced today that it wont release Android 11 to the Nokia 9 PureView, at all. Instead, company offers 50 percent discount on Nokia XR20 handset - or other level of discount for other X series Nokia models.
That offer might not find many takers, as many of the Nokia owners swicthed to Nokia's phones because of the promised long lifetime. And an idea that they'd choose yet another Nokia handset might not work very well.
Google, Spotify and many other major websites are all down across the globe 16 Nov 2021, 7:22 pm
Spotify's music services are down and even their homepage throws a 404 error when visiting their site. Furthermore, Google's services are currently unavailable, which means that all the mobile games and websites that rely on Google's services, such as login, are experiencing problems too.
DownDetector, a website that monitors the status of major web services shows that problems started about an hour ago.
And obviously, social media is full of reports about the outage with hastags such as #googledown and #spotifydown.
#SpotifyDown#Spotify #SpotifyisDown pic.twitter.com/FllAyCgDFa
-- Might (@RGsentinels) November 16, 2021
This #googledown web services problem goes to show one of the major issues with 3 companies owning servers for 90% of the internet. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google own everything we do in an invisible way
-- grant (@fitzweekly) November 16, 2021
Samsung Android 12 update timeline - Here's when your phone will get the update 15 Nov 2021, 2:56 pm
First Samsung phones will get the Android 12 update before end of November, 2021. For other phones and tablets, the timeline is quite speedy, too. Unfortunately, some of the phone models that should get the new version of Android, haven't been listed yet, so the schedule for those devices is still somewhat unclear.
But here's what we know now:
Samsung Android 12 roll-out schedule
November, 2021
December, 2021
- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3
- Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3
- Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra
- Samsung Galaxy S20+
- Samsung Galaxy S20
- Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra
- Samsung Galaxy Note20
- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold2
- Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5G
January, 2022
- Samsung Galaxy Fold
- Samsung Galaxy Z Flip
- Samsung Galaxy Note 10
- Samsung Galaxy Note 10+
- Samsung Galaxy S20 FE
- Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G
- Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G
- Samsung Galaxy A42 5G
- Samsung Galaxy Quantum 2
February, 2022
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S7
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+
April, 2022
- Samsung Galaxy A51 5G
- Samsung Galaxy A90 5G
- Samsung Galaxy A Quantum
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE 5G
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S6
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 5G
- Samsung Galaxy Jump
May, 2022
- Samsung Galaxy A12
- Samsung Galaxy A31
- Samsung Galaxy A32
- Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite
- Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 3
- Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 (2020 model)
June, 2022
- Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite
July, 2022
As per Samsung's update policy, some models not listed here should also get the Android 12 update. Obviously, the list is only an estimate and might change as Samsung begins its roll-out.
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