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One of the most controversial – and also most disliked – companies in the tech world is undoubtedly the Italian firm Bending Spoons.

The name might not mean much to the average consumer, but over the years the company has adopted a very particular growth strategy.

Bending Spoons buys well-known, often older, consumer-focused tech companies built around a single product. Typically, its shopping cart has included beloved mobile apps that the original owners failed to effectively monetize.

Its past acquisitions include the note-taking app Evernote, the digital publishing platform Issuu – used by newspapers in Finland as well - and the file-sharing service WeTransfer.

What has fueled user anger is the company's strategy of squeezing as much profit as possible out of these acquisitions. In the case of Evernote, for instance, it dramatically raised subscription prices, cut features for free users, and laid off most of the development team.

That same playbook has been repeated across several of its other deals.

Now the company has snapped up a small piece of internet history: Vimeo is now owned by Bending Spoons.

Nintendo has zero tolerance for piracy on its consoles, and the Japanese giant is well known for relentlessly taking piracy-enabling sites and companies to court.

And with rather good results.

Now, Nintendo has scored another win in its battle against piracy: a U.S. court has ruled (PDF) that a well-known site selling so-called mods must pay millions in damages.

Modded Hardware sold physical devices - "mods" - that allowed the Nintendo Switch to run games other than Nintendo's originals. The most infamous product on the site was the MIG Switch, which let users dump full images of Switch games onto a memory card and play them directly from it.

While the MIG Switch and similar products could technically be used for backing up and playing legally owned games, the court sided with Nintendo, concluding that the main audience for such devices are those who use them to play pirated titles.

The court stated, in essence:

Defendant's conduct has caused NOA significant and irreparable harm. For example, the MIG Devices, Mod Chips, Hacked Consoles, and Circumvention Services allow members of the public to create, distribute, and play pirated Nintendo games on a massive scale. Thus, the MIG devices, Mod Chips, Hacked Consoles, and Circumvention Services harm NOA's goodwill, detract from NOA's consumer base, and enable widespread illegal and difficult to detect copying.

Netflix is venturing down a somewhat unexpected path. The company is set to introduce traditional, linear TV broadcasts within its app -- across all of its supported platforms.

This move stems from a partnership deal between Netflix and French media group TF1. Under the agreement, starting summer 2026, viewers will be able to watch TF1's TV channels live through Netflix -- much like how users can watch live TV content on many of the traditional broadcasters' own apps.

The collaboration also extends into streaming: Netflix users will have access to shows and series from TF1's streaming platform, TF1+, as if they were part of Netflix's own library.

Notably, the deal won't increase Netflix's pricing in France. Instead, TF1's content will simply become part of the broader offering on Netflix France. TF1's channels are free and ad-supported, focused primarily on entertainment and news within French-speaking markets.

A step toward content consolidation?

While the shift may seem small, it could signal a larger transformation in the media landscape. Until now, every media brand has largely sought to build and maintain its own apps and distribution channels. This approach comes with steep costs -- delivering proper streaming coverage demands development and support across Android, iOS, web, and a wide array of smart TV platforms.

Today Google unveiled the final, stable build of Android 16, now available for smartphones, tablets, and other Android-powered devices.

As expected, the update is landing first on Google's own Pixel phones as well as the Pixel Tablet. At the same time, support for the oldest Pixel models is ending, with Android 16 available starting from the Pixel 6 series onward.

Arguably the most notable and user-facing change in Android 16 is the forced bundling of notifications. In practical terms, this means that if an app floods your device with alerts - say, for every single comment on your latest viral post - those notifications will no longer overwhelm your notification shade. Instead, they'll be grouped into a single expandable notification cluster.

Visually, Android 16 doesn't look all that different from Android 15. That's because the complete visual overhaul, dubbed Material 3 Expressive, is slated for release later this year as a follow-up update.

Pixel phone owners should already see the update available automatically via the software update menu. The one exception? Those running the Android 16 QPR1 beta builds. These users will need to roll back to Android 15 before upgrading to the stable Android 16 release. You can also find details on which other manufacturers' devices are slated to receive Android 16.

Time flies. Our site has shrunk quite a lot since the peak years, but but we're still here, after all these years.

So, yeah, 26 years ago today, our site officially launched - back in 1999. Since those days, lots of things have changed - in technology, culture, our personal lives and Internet. But our site is still here, having survived all these years - good times and the bad ones.

I wont go over our history and our roller-coaster years now, as I've done so back in 2019, extensively when our site turned 20 years old.

Again, I'd like to thank all of you who have supported our site over all these years. Thank you, everybody!

-Petteri Pyyny, CEO
AfterDawn Oy

Last week, the European Commission launched an investigation into the largest adult entertainment websites. The inquiry aims to determine whether these platforms have taken adequate measures to restrict minors' access to age-inappropriate content.

Hidden within the Commission's press release was an almost offhand mention of a new app planned for age verification across the European Union.

Details were scarce - so we dug in. We reached out to multiple public agencies to uncover more about this app and how it's expected to work.

Our investigation ultimately led us to Finnish authorities, who were able to shed some light on the matter.

In Finland, the initiative is being driven by the Office of the Data Protection Ombudsman, which is responsible for overseeing the processing of personal data in the country. The office confirmed to AfterDawn that an age verification solution is indeed headed to Finland.

The solution will come in the form of a smartphone app, slated for official release in June 2025 and set to be rolled out across the country in October.

European Union's new directive promoting sustainable consumer electronics, known as Ecodesign, comes into effect in June 2025. Among other things, it mandates that smartphones must receive software updates for a minimum of five years.

European Union's new Ecodesign legislation, aimed at improving repairability and extending the lifespan of electronics, partially takes effect on June 20, 2025.

Perhaps the most significant shake-up in the new rules targets budget smartphones, but the law will also ripple through the higher-end device market.

Only in recent years have Android manufacturers started gradually extending their software update commitments--that is, how many major Android version upgrades a phone receives during its lifecycle and how many years of security updates are guaranteed.

For cheaper phones, say, phones under €300, most brands have so far promised just two Android updates - with security patches for only two or three years. Some manufacturers have even launched phones in recent years with zero guaranteed Android upgrades and just two years of security updates.

That's about to change.

In a quite interesting move, Signal - the privacy-focused messaging app favored by journalists and privacy advocates - has quietly rolled out a new safeguard for its Windows desktop application. Going forward, users on Windows will no longer be able to take screenshots that include the Signal app window. Whether you're capturing the whole screen or just a portion, if Signal is visible, it'll appear as nothing more than a black box.

The feature doesn't impact macOS, iOS, or Android versions of the app - it's strictly a Windows-only measure. And there's a very specific reason behind this: Microsoft's controversial Recall feature.

Recall, which Microsoft plans to reintroduce despite backlash, automatically captures screenshots of a user's screen every few seconds in the background. The idea is that these snapshots can help users, with the assistance of Windows' Copilot AI, retrace their steps or recover forgotten actions - say, the name of that app you briefly opened or the form you accidentally closed.

But for privacy-first platforms like Signal, that kind of constant surveillance raises major red flags. And since Microsoft hasn't offered any tools for developers to opt their apps out of Recall's screenshot collection, Signal has taken matters into its own hands - creatively.

One of the biggest players in the robot vacuum market, Roborock, has been pushing the boundaries with innovation and smart ideas for several years now.

In early 2025, Roborock unveiled a fresh wave of new products, which hit store shelves that same spring. We got our hands on the company's flagship release, the Roborock Saros 10, even before it officially launched in Europe.

The big headline feature of the Roborock Saros 10? It's the lowest-profile robot vacuum currently on the market. In other words, it should fit under sofas and beds that other robot vacuums simply can't squeeze beneath.

Of course, it's also a feature-packed flagship device - a fact reflected in its hefty $1600/€1500 price tag. The Saros 10 is a mopping, self-emptying, self-washing, obstacle-dodging robot vacuum - the whole package.

We put the Saros 10 through our traditional real-world testing: the robot was tasked with cleaning the floors of a typical Nordic home over a period of two months. During that time, it was the only tool used for floor cleaning - no brooms or vacuums allowed.

The test period coincided with the tail end of the Finnish spring, meaning mud, grit, and sand were constantly being tracked indoors - the perfect storm for a proper stress test.

Few names in digital music history are as recognizable as Napster. Launched in 1999, this pioneering service completely upended the music industry by enabling users to share songs freely--an innovation that was deemed illegal but gained massive popularity.

It's worth considering that without Napster, legal streaming services such as Spotify--and even video platforms like Netflix--might not exist today.

At the peak of Napster's success around the turn of the millennium, the recording industry was thriving on CD sales. With no need to change a profitable model, record labels saw no urgency for digital transformation--until Napster came along. By popularizing MP3 files and proving that users wanted to download individual tracks, the platform forced the industry to rethink its approach.

Napster's impact was both technological and cultural. It contributed to the decline of the album as the dominant format and created an entirely new market for tech companies. MP3 players flooded stores, including those from major brands--despite widespread awareness that they were mostly used for pirated music.

Even Apple owes part of its success to Napster's disruption. Apple became the first company to successfully pair legal music downloads with its own hardware, and for a time, its iTunes store--where users could purchase individual songs--was as vital to the industry as Spotify is today.

A decade ago, in 2015, smartphones surpassed computers as the most-used YouTube platform. That year, people spent more time watching YouTube on their phones than on desktops or laptops, as confirmed by Comscore data.

Following that shift, mobile devices left computers far behind, solidifying the smartphone as the dominant way to consume YouTube content for years.

However, an unexpected competitor has steadily risen alongside smartphones and computers, now rivaling them head-to-head.

And now, at least in the United States, smartphones have officially been overtaken: YouTube is now watched more on televisions than on phones.

According to YouTube's official blog, even vertically shot YouTube Shorts are seeing strong engagement on TV screens. Despite their portrait orientation being less than ideal for a widescreen format, viewers are still consuming these minute-long clips on their big living room displays.

Naturally, YouTube's push for television dominance is also influenced by its growing YouTube TV service in the U.S. The subscription package includes ad-free YouTube Premium and a lineup of traditional, linear TV channels available via streaming.

An unexpected announcement came from the Japanese electronics giant, Sony. While the news that the company will cease production of writable, blank Blu-ray discs in February 2025 due to declining demand is less surprising, it marks a significant step in the ongoing retreat from Blu-ray technology. Sony had already signaled this move in the summer of 2024, when it revealed plans to scale down the production of recordable Blu-ray discs. A little later, South Korean tech giant LG also announced the discontinuation of Blu-ray player production at the end of the year.

What is more surprising, however, is Sony's decision to also stop the production of writable MiniDiscs and MiniDV tapes.

MiniDisc, a Sony-developed storage format introduced in 1992, was initially aimed at replacing CDs for music listening. It gained a brief period of popularity in the 1990s but was quickly overtaken by recordable CDs and, later, MP3 files at the turn of the millennium. Sony ceased production of MiniDisc players in 2013. While the MiniDisc format is largely considered a footnote in the history of digital media, the MD Data format, used for computer data storage, was even more obscure.

For the past eight years, gamers have eagerly awaited a successor to the Nintendo Switch, which was first launched in 2017. During this time, Nintendo has remained relatively silent on new console developments, focusing instead on retro releases and even launching a Nintendo alarm clock while fans waited for the next big hardware announcement.

Now, the long-anticipated successor has finally arrived, with the Nintendo Switch 2 making its debut in an official video broadcast by Nintendo. The new console is larger than the original Switch, sporting a dark gray color scheme, but it retains the same portable, handheld gaming experience that made the original so popular. Interestingly, Nintendo has chosen to stick with the "Switch 2" name, which is somewhat out of character for the company, as they typically introduce completely new names for each new console generation.

Perhaps the most exciting news for fans is that the Switch 2 will be backward compatible with the original Switch. This means that games purchased digitally or physically for the first Switch will also work on the new console, a rare move in Nintendo's history when transitioning to a new system.

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.