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The social media service TikTok, known for short videos, has today announced it will build a second data center in Finland.

The newly announced data center will be located in Lahti, while the first data center, announced less than a year ago, is located approximately 60 kilometers away in Kouvola.

The data centers are thus located quite close to each other, which may facilitate maintenance and the connection between the two data centers for data transfer. According to the press release, another reason is the availability of clean and reliable energy in the region and in Finland generally.

The investment for the Lahti data center is one billion euros. A similar sum will also be invested in the Kouvola data center, meaning TikTok is investing a total of 2 billion euros in Finland. Few individual companies have invested such large sums in Finland in such a short time. Lahti and Kouvola together form the backbone of TikTok's European infrastructure.

"Both investments are part of Project Clover, our 12 billion euro European data protection initiative, which provides industry-leading protection for the data of over 200 million European users. As part of the project, we have established a dedicated European data protection entity with enhanced technical, operational, and administrative safeguards," TikTok's press release states.

In a way, a historical moment is approaching, as Linux will most likely discontinue support for the 80486 processors by the end of this year.

The Register reported around Easter how changes have already been accepted into the Linux 7.1 codebase, which will remove support for the 486 processor family from the Linux kernel (kernel).

The change does not affect a very large audience, and Linux's lead maintainer Linus Torvalds has himself stated that 486 support is no longer "very relevant" in the 2020s.

Intel unveiled the 80486 processor family in 1989, and it dominated the PC market for several years until its successor, the Pentium, was unveiled. Intel itself manufactured 486-based processors until 2007.

The 486 was also a significant processor for PC technology, in that during its era, Intel saw the emergence of the first serious competitors manufacturing so-called clone x86 processors - including companies like AMD and Cyrix.

Three well-known American YouTubers have sued Apple, accusing the company of unauthorized use of their own videos for training Apple's AI models. The lawsuit was filed by h3h3 Productions, MrShortGameGolf, and Golfholics.

The creators who filed the lawsuit want the court to handle the case as a class action lawsuit, meaning other content creators on YouTube whose videos Apple has (allegedly) used as training material for its AI models could join.

According to MacRumors, the content creators accuse Apple of violating the U.S. DMCA law. According to the creators, Apple illegally collected (scraped) millions upon millions of YouTube videos, which it then used to train its AI. Based on court documents, Apple collected data from the so-called Panda-70M dataset, which contains links to videos, their subtitles, and verbal descriptions of each video's content.

Apple published an AI research paper (Scalable Text and Image Conditioned Video Generation) in late 2024, where the Panda-70M dataset was used to train a video generation model. According to the content creators (PDF), their created content appears in the said material over 500 times. Although the research description states that only video links were used, the content creators believe that instead of just links, Apple would have downloaded the videos and utilized the content of the videos themselves - which in turn violates both YouTube's terms of service and U.S. copyright laws.

Microsoft has started automatically updating computers using the soon-outdated Windows 11 version.

The mandatory update applies to all computers using Windows 11 24H2, i.e., the major version of Windows released in the autumn of 2024. According to Bleeping Computer, only computers used by businesses and managed by IT support are currently exempt from the mandatory update.

The official support period for Windows 11 version 24H2 ends in October 2026, after which no security updates will be released for it.

Computers being force-updated are updated to the latest major Windows update, 25H2, which was released in autumn 2025. For the user, the update appears so that Windows simply states there are updates ready to be installed - and the user can choose whether to install the update immediately or only during the next restart. No other options are offered.

Microsoft, obviously, wants to avoid a situation where (once again) outdated Windows computers are left hanging in the real world, possibly connected to the internet, for which security updates are no longer released. Such PCs would eventually become ticking time bombs, risking the security of the entire internet.

Strict age limit enforcement is expanding globally and it is gradually becoming part of operating systems. Apple began requiring age verification from all iPhone users in Britain earlier this year, and the practice has now expanded to two new countries: Singapore and South Korea.

The age must be genuinely verified, meaning simply faking the birth date is not enough - nor is the good old adult entertainment sites' "are you an adult?" query.

In Britain, a nationwide digital method to verify age is not widely used yet, the age can be verified in several different ways. If an Apple user account has existed for at least 18 years, no special tricks are needed when setting up a new iPhone.

But if the user account is not old enough, user's age must be proven by other means. These methods include entering a credit card issued in Britain during phone setup (a minor cannot obtain a credit card acting as a 'main card' in Britain) or some method of age verification according to the recently introduced PASS scheme. The last option offered is scanning and sending a passport or driving license to Apple for verification.

A much-desired update is coming to Steam, the world's largest PC game marketplace, owned by Valve.

Steam will start showing an estimate of how well each game would perform on the specific computer you are logged into the Steam marketplace with.

The estimate is based on real performance statistics from other users who have already played the game, and the computer configurations used by those players. In other words: you will directly see how fast the game runs on your own computer, because it is very likely that someone has already played the game with exactly the same hardware you are using.

According to Steam's latest change history, the collected game performance data is anonymized, meaning no individual player can be identified from it. Smoothness is simply described by the fps number, which indicates how many times per second the computer in use can update the image displayed on the screen with that particular game.

The feature is currently in beta testing and focuses on players using the SteamOS operating system.

Microsoft has recently given strong hints that Windows 11's problems and pain points are finally being seriously addressed.

As one clear step, Microsoft has established a completely new team, which focuses on renewing a large number of key Windows core applications - and they are intended to be implemented entirely as native applications. This refers to the fact that nowadays - in both Windows and most other operating systems - a large portion of applications are implemented as so-called PWA applications, meaning, to put it very simply, they are solutions built with web technologies, wrapped as apps.

The advantage of native applications over PWA applications is that they demand much less PC resources like RAM, and partly also better consistency in the user interface's appearance and usability. Apple has also been criticized for the fact that an increasing number of Mac's core applications are implemented using (usually Electron) PWA technology.

The team will be led by a name perhaps vaguely familiar to many tech enthusiasts, Rudy Huyn. Huyn rose to fame during the Windows Phone era, when the biggest problem with Windows phones was the lack of many important applications. App giants were not interested in developing new versions of their apps for Windows Phone, so Huyn - usually without permission - made them himself. His creations on Windows Phone included an unofficial Tinder app for Windows Phone and an unofficial Windows Phone version of Secret.

Google's popular photo service, Google Photos, is finally coming directly to Samsung TVs.

Photos integrates directly into Samsung TV's entire user interface, meaning it's not just another app. At the same time, Google Photos replaces Microsoft's OneDrive integration, which was previously on Samsung TVs and will now be removed from Samsung TVs.

Just like on a mobile phone, Google Photos also offers Memories highlights of old photos and moments through the TV. Users can browse their automatically updated memories, view them full-screen, or see selections in a widget view. Freely browsing the entire photo library is not yet possible; the emphasis is on Google's automatically selected highlights.

The installation process has been made easy: in the Google Photos section of the TV, the user is shown a QR code, which is then scanned with a phone camera - and immediately linked to the user's Google account. After this, the user enters a verification code and allows access to their photos. Individual people, pets, or dates can be hidden from memories if, for example, one does not want former partners to appear on the TV's home screen at regular intervals.

In Italy, a court has issued a decision that could have huge implications for streaming services across Europe.

According to the court's decision (in Italian), Netflix's price increases in Italy between 2017 and 2024 were illegal, as they were not justified in any way.

According to the court, price increases made without any specified and explained reason are illegal, as they violate Italian consumer protection law. Netflix does not define any specific reason in its terms of service on the basis of which it can raise prices, but rather generally reserves the right to increase its prices in its terms of service. According to the court, this is not permissible; instead, the reasons for price increases must be clearly stated in the contract - for example, by describing that they are based on inflation or a similar, understandable reason.

Behind the decision is a lawsuit filed by the Italian consumer organization Movimento Consumatori, which demanded the annulment of Netflix's price increases and compensation for customers. The court ordered that the company must refund customers for unduly collected fees, the amount of which can in individual cases reach up to 500 euros for Premium subscribers and approximately 250 euros for Standard subscribers. The refunds apply to both current and former customers who have paid increased prices during the period in question.

Penguin Random House has filed a lawsuit against AI company OpenAI, alleging that the company's ChatGPT has infringed the company's copyrights by reproducing content from a popular German children's book series.

According to The Guardian, the lawsuit was filed in Germany last week and targets OpenAI's Irish European subsidiary.

According to Penguin Random House, ChatGPT, with user prompts, is capable of generating stories, images, and even cover designs that are almost indistinguishable from the original works of the German children's author Ingo Siegner's Coconut, the Little Dragon (in German Der kleine Drache Kokosnuss) book series. The publisher states that ChatGPT was also able to copy the texts from the back covers of the books - and when asked, provided instructions on how to make money from copies of Siegner's books produced by ChatGPT, by publishing them on various self-publishing platforms. According to Penguin Random House, OpenAI has used the works of the author it represents (Siegner) as training material without permission.

Swiss-based Proton, known for strong encryption and privacy protection, has expanded its product range.

The company is now challenging the dominance of Microsoft Teams with its new Proton Meet video conferencing service. As with Proton Mail, Proton Meet is also promised to be end-to-end encrypted (end-to-end encryption) and that no meeting data will be collected by Proton.

Proton Meet meetings can be joined without a Proton user account, and conferences work not only with a separate application but also in a browser and on mobile.

Using Proton Meet is free, as long as meetings last a maximum of one hour and there are a maximum of 50 participants. Larger numbers require a paid Proton subscription from the organizer.

The product launch is clearly timed at the right moment, when Europe is actively considering breaking its dependency on American technology. Often, the transition is easiest to make one piece, product, and service at a time.

The Proton Meet service can be found at meet.proton.me.

American IT giant Oracle has laid off up to 30,000 of its employees around the world in a rather brutal manner.

In countries where advance notice of dismissals is not required, the company simply sent an email at six in the morning to all employees being laid off, informing them of their termination.

The sender of the messages was only "Oracle Leadership", meaning Oracle's management, without the name of any single leader. According to news sources, the company did not inform even the supervisors or HR of those being laid off about the upcoming terminations, meaning they came as a complete surprise before morning coffee on Tuesday, March 31, 2026.

According to the Times of India, the majority of the layoffs affected the United States and India.

Those being laid off were apparently offered a severance package, but on the condition that the employee immediately signs an agreement accepting their termination.

Samsung has announced it will raise the prices of some of its high-end smartphone models in its home market, South Korea.

The price increase particularly affects the foldable display models released last year, the Galaxy Z Fold7, Galaxy Z Flip7, and the thin S25 Edge.

According to Korean sources, the new prices will take effect from April 1, 2026, and primarily target versions with larger storage capacities: for 512-gigabyte models, the price increase is approximately 100,000 Korean won (about €60 / $65), and for 1-terabyte models, it is up to 200,000 won (about €120/$130).

Typically, smartphone prices gradually decrease after their market launch to maintain demand. However, the staggering rise in prices for memory chips and storage, which began last autumn, has quite irreversibly changed the market.

Anthropic's hugely popular AI-powered coding tool, Claude Code, has had its entire source code leaked online via a source map file (source map) published in the npm registry.

The leak was discovered on March 31, 2026, when security researcher Chaofan Shou noticed (link leads to X/Twitter) that a large .map file had been accidentally included in Claude Code's npm package, which allowed anyone to restore the original, TypeScript-based source code of Claude Code. Source map files are intended for developers' debugging, but in this case, their careless publication led to over 1,900 files and over 512,000 lines of code becoming publicly available.

The leaked source code was quickly archived in a public GitHub repository, where it garnered thousands of stars and forks in just a few hours. The developer community reacted immediately to the incident: the event is considered one of the most significant AI software source code leaks in recent years. Many industry experts have called the leak a "treasure trove," as it opens an unprecedented view into the architecture and development of a production-grade AI tool.

Microsoft's GitHub, the world's largest code repository for software development projects, will start using its users' program codes as training material for its own AI.

The change begins on April 24, 2026, and it does not apply to regular GitHub usage, but only to those users who also use GitHub's own GitHub Copilot.

After the change, all conversations had with Copilot, prompts, and code generated by Copilot will be taken as part of Copilot's AI training material. According to Microsoft's statement, the change will significantly improve the quality of code generated by GitHub Copilot, as it will henceforth be based on real life and conversations developers have already had with the AI.

What makes the change unfortunate is that it is a so-called opt-out solution: all GitHub Copilot users are automatically subject to the new policy, unless they themselves refuse to share their activities as AI training material.