News written by Petteri Pyyny (September, 2021)

Popular image sharing site, Imgur, has been sold to MediaLab.

Imgur, established back in 2009, announced on 27th of September, 2021 that it has been sold to American holding company MediaLab. MediaLab is a Los Angeles-based company that has recently acquired several online brands, most of which have been slightly in decline in terms of their popularity.

Imgur has been known to host viral images and memes and has been particularly popular among Reddit users for years, until Reddit introduced its own image hosting service back in 2016.

Site has been among the most popular online destinations in the world: according to Alexa, it was 112th most popular site in the world as of end of September, 2021.

MediaLab's other acquisitions in recent years include messaging service Kik, anonymous messaging service Whisper and song lyrics database Genius.

According to the official statement by Imgur, MediaLab is committed to fund Imgur's upcoming new services and features.

European Union is getting tired of Apple's own charging cables. EU has tried to lure manufacturers to voluntarily adopt standard charging port in the past, but Apple has refused to participate.

Now, European Commission has proposed a legislation that would require not only Apple's iPhone, but tons of other product categories, too, to start using USB-C as their standard connection.

The proposal would require all smartphones, but also tablets, digital cameras, headphones, portable speakers and handheld game consoles to use USB-C for charging. Proposed legislation would also remove the need for manufacturers to ship their products with chargers. The idea is that once all products use the same, standard charging port, people need much less chargers and thus, removing mandatory chargers from products would reduce also e-waste.

Apple, unsurprisingly, opposes the proposed legislation and says that such measure would curb innovation. Then again, Apple itself uses USB-C in many of its products, including the latest iPad mini and its many of its laptops.

Baltic state Lithuania is urging its citizens to avoid Chinese phones. Country's defence ministry has published a recommendation to Lithuanian citizens advising them to get rid of Chinese phones, if they have one.

The statement was made after it was found that Xiaomi's phones sold in Europe had a built-in censorship mechanism installed in them. The censorship mechanism detects and censors terms such as "Free Tibet" and "democracy movement", Lithuanian state-run cybersecurity body told this week.

Now, Lithuanian Defence Ministry recommends consumers to avoid Chinese mobile phones and even urges them to "throw away" the phones they're currently using if they're made by Chinese brands.

According to Lithuania, even very recent Xiaomi models, such as Xiaomi Mi 10T, included the hidden censorship and detection code. According to Reuters, the detection program was turned off in phones sold in the European Union region, but was present in the phones, nevertheless.

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One of the pioneers of the 1980s home computer revolution, Sir Clive Sinclair has died. He was best known for his Sinclair home computers, released in early 1980s. Sinclair computers were extremely popular in many countries back then, even surpassing the other iconic 1980s computer, Commodore 64, in many regions.

Most notable of the 1980s Sinclair computers was - by far - the first Sinclair's color computer, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, released in 1982. It was hugely popular, especially in Sinclair's home country, the United Kingdom, but also in various other countries.

One of the interesting facts about the budget-friendly Sinclair ZX Spectrum is that the computer was so good that several unauthorized clones were made in Eastern European communist countries in 1980s and those clones became de facto home computers behind the Iron Curtain back then. Due this weird history, ZX Spectrum remains one of the most popular demoscene retro computers in Eastern Europe and Russia.

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Chrome and Safari have offered direct link suggestions for their users for years now when typing a search term into the browser's address bar. Now, the open source browser Firefox joins the party.

Firefox Suggest feature just rolled out and it does exactly what the name implies it should do. Basically, when one enters a very standard search phrase to the Firefox's address bar, say, like France, the browser automatically suggests a France's Wikipedia page link below the address bar.

However, Firefox plans to add contextual suggestions to the feature soon. This would take information like user's location and previous behaviour into account. So, in case you're looking for a specific pizza chain, like Domino's, the suggestion link could be your nearest Domino's local page rather that the corporate frontpage.

Obviously, in order to use contextual suggestions, Firefox would have to collect information about its users - and pass that information to its servers. A move that many users worried about their privacy aren't going to be happy about.

Furthermore, Firefox plans to add a possibility for companies to bid on search terms and then show those sponsored links as the suggestions. So, when you're typing Domino's pizza chain name to the address bar, you might get a suggestion for Pizza Hut's link instead.

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Long support for major Android updates is becoming an increasingly important competitive aspect in phone market nowadays. Now Chinese tech giant Xiaomi joins the bandwagon and improves its support singificantly.

For the upcoming Xiaomi's flagship model line, the company promises three major Android updates and four years worth of security updates. New flagship phones are about to be announced on 15th of September and will consist two models: Xiaomi 11T and Xiaomi 11T Pro.

As Android 12 hasn't been released yet, the phones will most likely launch with Android 11 and thus, will get Android 12, Android 13 and Android 14 over the years.

Company press statement states:

Xiaomi is committed to providing users with industry-leading hardware and lasting performance. In continuation of this commitment to users, Xiaomi is further extending the life cycle of Xiaomi's smartphones by ensuring three generations of Android operating system updates. This way, users can choose to use their current devices for a longer period, and enjoy the latest features along with it. At the same time, we will also provide users with security updates that ensure their devices operate securely for a longer period of time.

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After November 1st, 2021 WhatsApp will no longer work on millions of existing phones.

Company has announced that it will cease the support for older operating system versions for both, Android and iOS. This means that people still using rather old phones will be blocked out of the instant messaging service.

From November onwards, the support for Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich and iOS 9 versions is gone - meaning that people using phones with those operating system versions wont be able to log in to WhatsApp. Also, the messaging features will cease for users using the outdated operating systems.

The only option is to purchase a new phone - or to update the existing phone's operating system, if there's an update available, but not yet installed to the phone.

iOS 9 was originally released in September, 2015 so the WhatsApp support for that iOS version lasted for more than six years. Android 4.0.4 got even longer lifespace: it was released in March, 2012 so WhatsApp supported that particular Android version for almost a decade.

From November, 2021 onwards, the minimum OS requirements are as follows:

• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean or newer
• iOS 10 or newer

Several people in various robot vacuum related Reddit channels have spotted Roomba j7 robot vacuum. While iRobot doesn't have any details of the new model yet, its advertisements have been shown in Canadian TV and some Canadian retailers seem to already list it on their websites.

New Roomba j7 seems to be a an upgraded version of the Roomba i7, which we consider currently the best overall robot vacuum in the market.

The key new feature here is the new camera module that has been added to the device's bumper. Similarly to the Roborock S6 MaxV, the new camera is used to detect obstacles in the floor: say, clothes, wires, pets, etc. Most likely the Roomba j7 will use the camera and machine learning to understand whether the objects it spots are actually obstacles that should be avoided.

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Facebook-owned Instagram seems to be down, globally, for most of its users. Some users have reported that the service works, but very, very sluggishly.

According to various services that monitor websites' uptimes report that Instagram's problems started at around 10:30 UTC today.

Other Facebook's services, such as its namesake main site or WhatsApp aren't affected by this. At least not right now.

The above situation is the report by DownDetector, screenshot taken few minutes ago before publishing this news article.

As it has taken almost an hour by now for Instagram to get their servers working, frustrated people have started posting related memes to the social media..

This how how instagram is fixing their servers right now #instagramdown pic.twitter.com/ZMbl8Nl5cm

-- 💫𝕶𝖔𝖆𝖑𝖆💫 (@PapaKoalaYT) September 2, 2021