News archive (1 / 2022)

Probably the biggest online phenomenon of the winter 2021-2022 has been the small, but addictive online word game Wordle. Game has now been sold to The New York Times.

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

German regional court just dropped a total bombshell of a ruling today. Court decided that the way how virtually all modern websites function, is actually illegal under the European Union GDPR legislation.

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.

According to several user reports on Android Update Tracker, the Sony's year 2020 flagship model, Sony Xperia 1 II is slowly getting its Android 12 update.

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.

Much-anticipated TV series based on Lord of the Rings franchise has finally gotten a name - and first trailer.

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:

Pretty much every website in the world uses some form of analytics service to track its pageviews and usage. By far, the most popular solution for this is Google Analytics.

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.

For most parts, year 2021 will be probably remembered as the second year of the global pandemic. But in technology world, quite interesting developments happened during the year 2021, too.

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.