News archive (11 / 2014)

According to new reports, LG is preparing a second-generation G Flex smartphone for launch at CES next year, in early January.

The first Flex device was notable because it featured a curved OLED screen and a back panel that has "self-healing coating" meaning scratches disappear over time as long as they aren't majorly deep.

Obviously, the details of the new sequel are unconfirmed, but the device is expected to be a "major upgrade" over the first-generation model. The phone is expected to move to a 1080p display, get thinner and lighter, the self-healing coat is significantly improved, and the main components are also expected to see upgrades.

In addition, the actually flexibility is also supposed to be getting an upgrade, thanks to a new hard rubber chassis.

There will be much more to know at CES next year.

Source:
AndroidAuthority

Chinese smartphone OEM OnePlus has made their popular One device available without the need for an invite as part of a 'Black Friday' sale.

The devices are available while supplies last and are guaranteed to ship before Christmas, making them a nice gift for the potential smartphone owner in your family.

OnePlus has priced the phone at $299 unlocked for the 16GB model and $349 for the 64GB model, a much better value if you have lots of apps, pictures, and music to store.

The OnePlus One has a 5.5 inch, 1080p LTPS IPS with Gorilla Glass 3, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor clocked at 2.5GHz an Adreno 330 GPU, 3GB RAM, LTE, and dual 5MP/13MP cameras, and CyanogenMod 11, making it a high-end specced device at a very low price.

Interested parties can check the phone here: OnePlusOne

Earlier this week we reported that Sony Pictures' computer network had been taken down by a team calling themselves GOP (Guardians of Peace), with the attackers claiming that many terabytes of sensitive data had been taken and would be leaked if their demands were not met.

Now, it appears that the first leaks have hit the Internet, with a few Sony Pictures' films, many of which aren't set for release for a couple of months are now widely available on the Internet. Other documents released sadly include passport and visa information for Sony employees, hundreds of thousands of emails and even accounting and research details for Sony Pictures' IT systems.

Among the movies released are four that have not been released in theaters, and one popular film that only had one month in theaters. Among the films leaked are "Fury" with Brad Pitt, "Annie" with Jamie Foxx (release date December 19th), "Mr Turner," (release date December 19th), "Still Alice" with Alec Baldwin (release date January 16th, 2015) and "To Write Love on Her Arms," scheduled for release in March of next year.

It is unclear whether more full leaks of pre-release films will hit the Web in the coming days, but it is clear that someone may have been out to hurt Sony financially.

Spotify saw its revenue grow significantly in 2013, but the large losses remain as the company continues to iron out a business model that will make it profitable.

Overall, revenue grew 74 percent to €746.86 million last year from €430.28 million in 2012. Losses fell but were still large, with a net loss of €57.8 million compared to €86.7 million in 2012.

91 percent of the company's revenue comes from paying subscribers, most of which pay $10 per month for unlimited, ad-free streaming and mobile access. The rest comes from advertising. Spotify cited "substantial investments" into its international expansion, product development and new employees as the main reasons for the large loss.

Indeed, Spotify expanded to 32 more markets in 2013, helping to increase its active users by almost double over 2012.

Also of note, Spotify says it pays a full 70 percent of revenue to music-license holders, paying between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream.

Source:
WSJ

Nintendo has proudly boasted that Super Smash Bros. for Wii U is the fastest-selling game for the console since its inception.

The game reached 500,000 units sold in three days, including retail and digital copies.

"The Nintendo holiday is off to a great start, but there's a lot of work left to do and a few more surprises in store for our fans," said Nintendo of America's Scott Moffitt. "With great deals coming on Black Friday and Cyber Monday and great content like Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker launching next week, Nintendo will offer shoppers the best combination of fun and value this holiday season."

In addition, the game pumped up Wii U sales 129 percent to 86,014 units for the month, and three million units total in the U.S. to date.

Disney has confirmed that the new teaser trailer for the upcoming "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" will be available to all tomorrow.

The company had initially announced that only 30 specific movie theaters would have the trailer playing tomorrow before other movies, but now everyone can watch it on iTunes.

It is unclear what time the trailer will go up.

Fans are beyond eager to get a look at the new film, even it is just a narration and some scene pieces.

HTC has already slashed the price of its action camera, the Re Camera, pricing the device at $99 for Black Friday.

The price is 50 percent off its retail price, and the camera will be available from Best Buy, Verizon, AT&T and through HTC starting Friday morning at midnight all the way until Monday.

With its tubular ergonamic design and a single wide-angle lens with 16MP sensor, HTC says the device is for consumers that may not be going on as crazy adventures as GoPro users. The device also has built-in Wi-Fi for quick uploading and live streaming to YouTube through a partnership with Google.

Check out the camera here.

Steam has started their Exploration sale, giving gamers six days to get games on the cheap.

The deals will change daily, but today's deal are solid including Watchdogs at 50 percent off.

Here are the rest:

Watchdogs - 50% off
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - 50% off
The Evil Within - 66% off
Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth - 30% off
Lords of the Fallen - 40% off
Goat Simulator - 50% off
The Long Dark - 50% off
Don't Starve - 75% off
Company of Heroes 2 - 75% off

James Cameron, the director behind the highest grossing films of all-time, says that the new Avatar films are 'gonna be b*tchin'.'

In addition, Cameron candidly said "You will sh*t yourself with your mouth wide open."

Cameron has three sequels to Avatar planned, with the first expected to hit theaters in December 2016. Cameron is still working on the scripts, but the films are supposed to be filmed together.

One thing we do know, is that Cameron has decided on 48fps for the film, rather than the rumored and more controversial 60fps. "My thinking at the time was that 60 [FPS] might be a better segue to the video market," he says. "I'll be plugging into a system that's a little more mature, so it makes sense for me to do 48 frames at this point."

Although the details are unconfirmed, we have some reported tidbits about the upcoming OnePlus 2 smartphone.

The original OnePlus One became famous for packing great specs into a slim body with a cheap price tag, and the sequel is set for launch next year from the Chinese OEM.

Sources speaking to BI, say the following are true of the new device:

It will probably be more customizable, since the company is aiming to produce more of its StyleSwap back covers around the time the phone launches, our source said. OnePlus released a Bamboo-style back cover for its One phone, but discontinued it in September due to manufacturing issues. OnePlus sold a few of those covers earlier this month, but since they were so limited you need an invitation to buy them. The company previously said it would release its StyleSwap backs in different materials such as wood, denim, and Kevlar, but we have yet to see any of these launch. There's no guarantee manufacturing issues won't arise this time around, but based on what our source says it sounds like the company is trying to produce more to coincide with the phone's launch.

Sony Computer Entertainment President and CEO Andrew House has confirmed the company's revenue expectations for their PlayStation division have been increased for the future.

The "Game and Network Services" segment is now expected to see revenue of between 1.4 trillion yen and 1.6 trillion yen ($11.8 billion and $13.5 billion) for the 2017 fiscal year. For the 2015 fiscal year, the company expects 1.29 trillion yen in sales ($11 billion).

Perhaps most notably for Sony, the company expects operating income margin of over 5 percent in 2017, compared to just 2.7 percent for this fiscal year.

Sony's PlayStation 4 continues to outsell its rival, the Xbox One, on a monthly basis, thanks in part to strong sales of hit games.

Earlier this year, in one of the highest profile movie leaks in history, a DVD-quality copy of 'The Expendables 3' was leaked to the Internet a full three weeks before its release in the U.S.

This week, two men accused of leaking the film have been arrested in the U.K. The authorities claim that the two men stole a digital advance copy and then illegally distributed it. In August, Lionsgate Studio had filed a lawsuit against 10 anonymous individuals who they claimed were behind the leak.

"The public need to be aware that piracy is not a victimless crime," said Danny Medlycott, head of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (UK anti-piracy unit). "By downloading illegal music, film, TV and books, not only are you exposing your own computer to the risk of viruses and malware, but you are also putting hard-working people's livelihoods at risk as piracy threatens the security of thousands of jobs in the UK's creative industries."

Lionsgate blamed the leak on the film's poor box office showing, with the movie making just $39 million in domestic receipts, compared to $100 million for the first in the series and $85 million for the sequel.

According to new reports, Sony is preparing an E-Paper smartwarch that could launch next year and would be an interesting new device in the fledgling industry.

Reportedly, Sony's watch "face and wrist band will be made from a patented material that allows the entire surface area to function as a display and change its appearance."

In addition, the watch will emphasize style over tech features, which it hopes will take the device out of the geek category and more mainstream.

CEO Kazuo Hirai created a new division this year to accelerate promising products and the watch will be the first of a few new, innovative devices. Another such device is called "MESH," a collection of LED, sensors and buttons in small blocks that can be operated via an easy to use tablet UI.

Sony Pictures' computer systems are still down following yesterday's massive attack by a group that called itself #GOP.

Yesterday, the company's computers all saw a screen with a skull on it, with a warning message from a group calling itself #GOP. The group threatened that the warning was just the beginning and they would begin dropping stolen data until they get what they want. The demands were unclear, however.

Sources within Sony claimed yesterday that "We are down, completely paralyzed."

Sony did not have much to say except that "Sony Pictures Entertainment experienced a system disruption, which we are working diligently to resolve."

As if there needed to be more proof that Amazon's foray into the smartphone hardware has been a complete disaster, the company has now slashed the price of the device to almost as low as it can go.

Amazon is offering the 32GB model, GSM unlocked for $199 (originally priced at $599 unlocked), including a free year of Amazon Prime, which is $99 per year.

If you were already a Prime member, the device is effectively down to $100, well within the price range of anyone looking for a smartphone with mid to high-end specs.

If the "fire" sale on the Fire Phone, interests you, check the page here while supplies last.

For a more in-depth look at the Fire Phone, see our past articles here.

According to a new report, Apple may be ditching Google as its default search engine for the Safari browser starting next year.

Google's deal with Apple expires in 2015, and Microsoft and Yahoo have already each pitched their respective search engines to Apple SVP Eddy Cue.

Microsoft already has their Bing engine as default for Apple's personal assistant Siri, and on the new Mac OS X Yosemite, the "Spotlight" feature uses Bing results, as well.

While Yahoo doesn't have any inroads with Apple, they recently announced that Mozilla's Firefox browser would use Yahoo as default for the next five years, a major win for the world's third-largest search engine.

Of course, no matter what the default engine is, you are free to switch it right back to Google although some less tech-savvy consumers may not know or care to change it back.

Universal has dropped the new "Jurassic World" trailer two days ahead of time, finally giving fans a look at the movie outside of tiny teaser trailers and set pics.

In the video, the park is open to the public and is wildly popular, but of course that is never enough and the scientists and engineers behind the rebirth of the dinosaurs have created a genetically modified hybrid that, of course, starts running wild and killing things.

Reads the video's small blurb: "Steven Spielberg returns to executive produce the long-awaited next installment of his groundbreaking Jurassic Park series, Jurassic World. Colin Trevorrow directs the epic action-adventure from a screenplay he wrote with Derek Connolly. Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley join the team as producers."

The movie hits theaters next June.

As the popularity of their franchise games wanes, Rovio has made all of their Angry Birds game free for Windows Phone users.

Among the included freebies are hits like the original Angry Birds, Angry Birds Epic, Angry Birds Space, Angry Birds Star Wars, Bad Piggies and Angry Birds Roost.

Notably absent is the latest in the series, Angry Birds Transformers, which is still not available for the platform but will be early next year. It is also expected to be free.

Check the full listing here and download away: Windows Phone Store

Although the limited beta invites quickly got eaten up, Windows Phone users can look forward to being able to use the VLC media player in the near future.

The media player is one of the most popular for Windows, given its feature set, software acceleration and ability to play nearly everything thrown at it.

Videolan, the team behind VLC, created a desktop Windows VLC with the modern/metro style for Windows 8 but there have been issues building the software for ARM devices.

British Telecom (BT) appears to be in talks to buy back major UK carrier O2, the company it sold back in 2005 for £18 billion.

Telefonica, of Spain, was the acquirer and could sell the carrier back in exchange for a 20 percent stake in BT as a whole. The "strategic alliance" could benefit the pair, say early reports.

The report did note that talks are still early, and could fall apart.

In a statement, BT added that they are "assessing the merits of an acquisition of a mobile network operator in the UK," without mentioning any names.

Yahoo has acquired yet another startup, the photo app maker Cooliris.

Colliris was founded in 2006 and created the "3D wall" for easier navigation of photos and media content from different sources. The company now has a popular mobile app of the same name that allows you to do the same: browse photos from across services. Included are your social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Instagram and Dropbox

Yahoo will keep all 17 employees of the company but it is unclear what Yahoo will use the company or its products for.

Says Cooliris of the acquisition: "Cooliris is passionate about creating fast, fluid mobile experiences for content and communication – as exemplified by our newest product, BeamIt. Yahoo has a clear vision and unwavering commitment to making mobile an intuitive and effortless experience.

This makes Yahoo the perfect partner for Cooliris, and we are excited to come together to bring indispensable products to a worldwide audience.
Cooliris for Mobile and BeamIt Messenger will continue to work as usual for the time being.

We are grateful to our users, mentors, investors, and partners. We have been committed to building innovative products for you, and are pleased that CoolPreviews, PicLens, the 3D Wall, Android Gallery, LiveShare, Cooliris for Mobile, and BeamIt have touched hundreds of millions of users around the world. Know that we will remain focused as we pursue our passion from our new home at Yahoo."

According to a new report by the Wall Street Journal, the flagship Samsung Galaxy S5 is a flop, selling nearly 40 percent lower than the company expected.

Samsung is said to have increased production of the device by 20 percent compared to last year's popular Galaxy S4, but sold just 12 million units in its first 90 days. By comparison, the S4 sold 16 million in the same time frame.

With profits down and innovation waning, the report claims that Samsung could be looking to shake up its high-level executive team, giving current TV/home electronics CEO B.K. Yoon the Samsung Mobile business, as well. Samsung Mobile currently has its own CEO: J.K. Shin.

Earlier this month, the company also confirmed that it would be reducing the amount of phones it introduces by up to 30 percent, looking to focus more on a smaller pool. Samsung has already introduced 56 smartphones this year, well above its competition.

Source:
WSJ

Google has confirmed the shut down of their "Basecamp" physical stores from which the company offered support for Google Glass headsets.

Spencer Kleyweg seemingly confirmed the move via his Google+ page. Kleyweg explained: "Google Glass Basecamps are the home to demos and one-to-one appointments for Glass. With only four locations (Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and London) they specialized in showcasing Google's wearable device across the US and a section of Europe. People interested in Glass or Explorers needing support could schedule an appointment at one of the Basecamps. Within the past week I have noticed that the page used to schedule said appointments shows no availability for all the Basecamps.

I contacted Glass Support to see if it was a glitch or if they were no longer taking appointments to which they confirmed that the Basecamps are no longer taking appointments."

In reality, it appears that Google, which is now selling the device online to anyone who wishes to shell out $1500, does not need the stores any more nor the cost. Consumers can purchase and have it shipped next day air, avoiding the need to pick it up at a Basecamp. Additionally, Google offers phone tech support. It is unclear how many early adopters have picked up Glass, but judging by recent developer sentiment, that number is likely low.

Earlier this year, T-Mobile made waves by announcing that its customer's data caps would no longer be affected by music streaming.

Unfortunately, the "Music Freedom" program only launched with a few services including Spotify, iTunes Radio, Pandora, Songza and Rdio and iHeartRadio (most of the biggies), and the carrier has now doubled the services that will be exempt from eating up your precious data.

T-Mobile has added Google Play Music (thankfully), Xbox Music, SoundCloud, RadioTunes, Live365, Mad Genius Radio, radioPup, radio.com, Fit Radio, Fresca Radio, JAZZRADIO, ROCKRADIO, and Saavn to the program, effective immediately.

To take advantage, you must be on the Simple Choice or Pay in Advance plans, and the carrier notes that it does not work when roaming or when using a Mobile Hotspot to tether.

Notably, Beats Music remains unavailable, although that seems to be mainly due to lack of a big enough subscriber base asking for it.

T-Mobile did add an interesting tidbit of info with the press release, stating: "The number of T-Mobile customers streaming music each day has jumped nearly 300%, and they're streaming a whopping 66 million songs per day − or roughly 200 terabytes of data per day."

Google says they are getting in the holiday spirit and passing on a great deal for consumers.

All new Chromebook buyers will get 1TB of free Google Drive storage, good for two years - double the normal promotional period for such offers.

Says Google: "Chromebooks make day-to-day computing fast, simple and secure, whether you're searching for a great pumpkin pie recipe or sharing a family photo from Google Drive. And now, as a bonus for the holiday season, new Chromebook buyers can get 1TB of Google Drive storage for two years -- almost $240 in value -- absolutely free.

That's enough space to keep more than 100,000 awkward holiday sweater pics safe and shareable in Drive. With that much free storage, you can use your Chromebook for work, play and pretty much everything else you'll do this holiday season.

The 1TB comes with the purchase of a new, eligible Chromebook for as little as $199. You'll find them at these retail stores and online outlets or on Google Play. Just be sure to redeem the offer before January 1, 2015."

A year after its release, the Xbox One gaming console finally has access to HBO Go as a native app.

The streaming service gives HBO subscribers access to the company's entire catalog of movies and TV shows and the addition of the app is a big positive for the console in general as it will be the first next-gen console to feature it. HBO Go has been available for the Xbox 360 and PS3 for years.

"Xbox One users can get in on the action and 'Kinect' with HBO" said Jeff Dallesandro, HBO's vice president of digital domestic network distribution.

HBO announced earlier this year that it was building a standalone service for HBO Go, for consumers who have "cut the cord" on cable or other pay TV services.

Aereo has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week, confirming that the streaming TV service is completely out of options after losing multiple court rulings.

In June, the service lost a major Supreme Court case to the big broadcasters, and from there the service has been essentially shut down while it tried different routes to make a comeback, including trying to become a cable company.

Here is Aereo's post to its subscribers and investors:

According to a new report by Skift, Amazon is preparing to open their own travel site, including bookings at independent hotels and resorts.

Initially, Amazon Travel will launch with a few hotels that are all within a couple of hours drive of LA, NY and Seattle. The service is expected to launch in the new year, perhaps as early as January 1st.

Skift says "properties would load their room types, availability, pricing information, and photos into an Amazon extranet and would pay a standard 15% commission to Amazon for the prepaid bookings."

Each property would get notified by Amazon of any bookings, and their calendar would be updated on the extranet. Hoteliers do have the right to discount their rooms and can also negotiate with Amazon over the commission price.

Amazon told the independent hoteliers that they were selected by TripAdvisor ratings, and they had to have four stars or higher.

The massive etailer will include editorials, attractions and more at the site, to make it more consumer friendly as only Amazon can, adds the report.

Earlier this week Jolla announced a new tablet on crowdfunding site Indiegogo, and the device quickly hit its target on route to hitting $1 million raised in under two days.

Thanks to the success of the tablet, Jolla is celebrating by dropping the price of their signature Jolla phone, the first device to run the Sailfish operating system.

Originally priced at 350 euros, Jolla has dropped the price of their phone to 250 euros, a significant discount for anyone who may have been on the fence of buying the smartphone.

The Jolla phone has mid-range specs including a 4.5" IPS qHD display with Gorilla Glass 2, a Qualcomm dual-core processor at 1.4GHz, dual 8MP/2MP cameras, 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage and a microSD slot.

Earlier this year, HP and popular menswear designer Michael Bastian announced they would be releasing a smartwatch that could actually be as stylish as a normal watch while still including the ability to get your notifications and other smartwatch features.

The MB Chronowing, which is available now from luxury flash sale site Gilt, is the culmination of the efforts of the designer and the tech giant, and we have been testing the watch for about a week now.

Read on to see whether the MB Chronowing is the first smartwatch worthy of investing in.

Style

Twitch, as part of their Twitch Twednesday videos, have a new hilarious video of late night talk show host Conan playing the latest 'World of Warcraft', 'Warlords of Draenor.'

Conan does a popular segment called "Clueless Gamer" where the comedian plays new video games along with a more seasoned veteran. The results are often hilarious as Conan is way out of his element.

Check the latest here:

Telltale Games, the publisher behind the award-winning Walking Dead series of games, is developing a Game of Thrones game for release next year (or very late this year) and we have the first leaked pictures.

The images show off some familiar characters from the hit HBO show, although there has been no verification that they are real images from the game. You can be the judge.

Telltale's new games series will be six episodes long, and take place in the time frame of the 3rd-5th seasons of the show. The 5th season will launch on HBO in April.

Available for iOS, Mac, PS3, PS4, Windows, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, the cross-platform game is highly anticipated among GoT fans.

See some pics here:

Billboard has announced that it will begin counting plays from streaming services when calculating its namesake music rankings.

1500 streams via sites like Spotify, Rdio or Beats Music will now equate to one album sale. Additionally, 10 individual song downloads will also count for one album sale.

The Billboard 200 chart is highly regarded as the most important album sales chart in the industry.

Interestingly, the move follows Taylor Swift removing her catalog of music from Spotify in a high-profile attack against streaming in general. Swift, who has the top selling album of the past few years, believes that steaming devalues artists.

"Adding streaming information makes the chart a better representation of music consumption activity," says Silvio Pietroluongo, VP of charts and data development at Billboard. "While an extremely valuable measurement, album sales would mostly capture the initial impulse only, without indicating the depth of consumption thereafter. Someone could listen to the album just once, or listen to one track or a number of tracks 100 times. We are now able to incorporate those plays as part of an album consumption ranking throughout one's possession of an album, extending beyond the initial purchase or listen."

According to multiple reports, Apple is looking to make their newly acquired Beats Music a pre-installed iOS app.

The update could come as soon as March, with the launch of a future version of iOS such as iOS 8.3.

Earlier this year, Apple acquired Beats for $3 billion in an effort to boost its streaming abilities. Beats is famous for its headphones, which are a hit among celebrities and consumers, but the streaming Beats Music service was only slowly gaining subscribers, with 250,000 registered as of May. Major rivals like Spotify have 50 million users (13 million paying), so Beats was playing catch up.

It is unclear whether Beats Music will replace another homescreen app for iOS (like iTunes Radio), or just be added on.

Walmart has shut down part of their price matching policy which was being abused by scammers.

Earlier this month, the giant retailer announced it would price match select retailers including Amazon, meaning if you found a price for your item cheaper online, you could bring in a screenshot and Wal-Mart would match the price.

Unfortunately, there were those that took advantage of the vague wording by Wal-Mart and made fake Amazon sales pages offering the PS4, Xbox One and other big ticket items for cheap, even under $100.

The scam forced Walmart to update the policy, eliminating third-party vendors, marketplace vendors or auction sites from price match.

Finnish startup Jolla reached their crowdfunding goals for the new Jolla Tablet within 2 hours, and is now close to pushing $1 million in funding.

The device, which runs on the upcoming Sailfish OS 2.0 operating system, will have high-end specs with an interesting design to go along with a price tag cheaper than all current comparable tablets (iPad Mini 3, Nexus 9, Nokia N1).

Most interestingly about the device, besides the open-source Sailfish OS, is the fact that you can run Android applications, significantly expanding the library of available apps for the device. Sailfish, since being launched last year, has had nine major updates adding 350 new features, and 2.0 should be a lot more stable and offer better performance.

The Jolla Tablet has a 7.85-inch display with 2048x1536 resolution, a 64-bit quad-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, dual 5MP/2MP cameras, 32GB internal storage (expandable via microSD) and a small-ish 4300mAh battery.

Jolla was quick to boast about the multitasking ability of the new operating system. "Multitasking on Sailfish OS shows all your running apps conveniently in one single view. At a glance, you'll see everything that's going on, as well as easily switch between apps. You can also control Sailfish OS apps directly from the multitasking view – for example, change your music or play and pause your video stream without opening the app in full," reads the page. In addition the tablet will work almost entirely with gestures, making simple tasks easier.

Despite the s..tstorm caused by forced extraction of messaging into Facebook Messenger, Facebook wont give up. This time around the social media giant is spinning off its groups feature into a stand-alone mobile app, called Facebook Groups.

Unlike with Messenger, company isn't removing the group features from its main mobile app, at least not yet, but instead, tries to give users an alternative way to use Facebook groups.

Facebook currently owns three of the world's top five mobile apps, according to App Annie's charts: Facebook app, Messenger app and Instagram.

As expected, Facebook Groups is available for iOS and Android, download links are here:

Facebook Groups for iOS
Facebook Groups for Android

Netflix has confirmed two more nations will be receiving the streaming service in the coming months.

Both Australia and New Zealand will get access to the Netflix streaming library in March.

There was no word yet on pricing or supported devices, nor was there a full list of programming available. Netflix did say all of its original content will be available, however.

Netflix currently has 53 million subscribers, with about 26 percent from outside of the U.S.

The U.S. Marshals Service has announced that it will be auctioning off 50,000 Bitcoins seized from the alleged operator of the Silk Road drug marketplace.

At current Bitcoin pricing, the coins should bring in about $19 million USD. The coins were found in the digital wallet of Ross Ulbricht, who is accused of running the online bazaar for drugs found in the Tor deepnet.

Five months ago, the Marshals sold 30,000 seized Bitcoins following the raid in October 2013 in which the marketplace was shut down.

Bidders will have a six-hour window on December 4th to bid on the lots which will breakdown as 10 blocks of 2000 Bitcoins each followed by 10 blocks of 3000 Bitcoins each. Bidders will have to go through a background check to ensure they are not connected to the Silk Road or Ulbricht.

Even after the two auctions, the Marshals will have plenty of remaining coins to sell. In total, nearly 174,000 Bitcoins were seized in connection with the Silk Road. There are plans to auction the remaining currency in the coming months.

The Popcorn Time team has announced a new killer feature for the software: Offline viewing.

With the new 2.4 beta for Android, smartphone and tablet users can watch TV and movies even when they are not connected to the Internet.

In addition, the new update comes with some major upgrades for other recently announced features. The full change log here:

What else does this version have in store for you?

- You can watch stuff offline.
- We fixed bugs from crash reports you sent us (thanks!)
- We added support for physical keyboard
- We made some major improvements (torrents, vlc, Chromecast, updater and other)
- We added subtitle font color chooser in settings
- We added dimensions for normal, large and x-large screen sizes.

Samsung has admitted it needs some refocusing and will cut costs by dropping the number of models it sells by up to 30 percent next year.

The company recently saw its profits fall 49 percent year-over-year for the last quarter, and high-level executives have promised investors a more cost efficient company moving forward.

Samsung offers a plethora of different models aimed at pretty much the whole range of consumers, from the entry-level to the premium but only a few models have ever been truly successful.

Over the past few quarters, the company has seen its margins slide and sales drop due to the fierce competition of lower-cost Chinese smartphone makers, most notably Xiaomi and Huawei.

So, Nokia finally made its return to consumer business with the introduction of Nokia N1 Android tablet. Device is priced aggressively and doesn't seem to fail in terms of specs on any particular area.

However, it has few potential obstacles to overcome:

Lack of Google Play

Only one model available: No 3G nor 4G

x86 Android

Availability

Nokia, who sold its phone manufacturing business to Microsoft, has made a return to consumer markets by releasing its first-ever Android device: The Nokia N1.

The Nokia N1 is a 7.9-inch Android tablet, featuring the proprietary Nokia Z launcher as its default UI. The display has a 2048x1536 resolution, an 8MP rear camera, a 5MP front camera, 2GB RAM and 32GB storage memory. The exterior is made out of aluminium and the entire device is only 6.9mm thin. In addition, Nokia's latest utilizes the new USB Type C reversable connector.

Sony has announced this week that their PlayStation 4 was once again the top selling console in the U.S., marking the 10th month in a row it has done so.

"October 2014 marks the first 12 months of sales for the Xbox One and PS4; and after the first year, these consoles have had a great start as cumulative sales are currently over 70 percent higher than the combined first year totals of Xbox 360 and PS3," said The NPD Group's analyst Liam Callahan. "Hardware sales of eighth generation consoles represent close to 80 percent of dollar sales this month driving overall consoles sales to increase by 186 percent over October 2013."

That streak is likely to end this month, however, as Microsoft dropped the price of the Xbox One in November and the console (especially bundles) have been selling very quickly.

In addition, Call of Duty Advanced Warfare and its bundles are expected to have pushed console sales for both major platforms.

Nvidia has proudly announced two major updates for their SHIELD tablet and SHIELD handheld console.

First, the devices have been updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop, with the rollout of the new operating system beginning on Tuesday, November 18th. The devices run a basically stock version of Android, with the exception of a suite of Nvidia apps. Adds the press release: "Also included in the update: SHIELD tablet's preloaded Dabbler app. Besides a new interface inspired by Lollipop's material design language, our painting software will offer full support for layers, and users can now share live Dabbler sessions over Twitch."

The second major update is the launch of GRID for SHIELD. The company calls GRID a "Netflix for games," in which you can stream video games right to the tablet/handheld. Gamers do so "by connecting to state-of-the-art NVIDIA GPU servers, the GRID service delivers a GeForce GTX gaming experience on SHIELD devices."

GRID will launch for North American gamers this month and already includes 20 titles such as Batman: Arkham City, Borderlands 2 and Psychonauts, with a new game launching weekly.

The service is completely free for owners until June of next year.

Thanks to some major first-party games, it looks like the Nintendo Wii U is back in business.

Nintendo says that for the first 10 months of the year, Wii U hardware sales have increased 47 percent year-over-year. In addition, software sales have jumped 84 percent, thanks mainly to Mario Kart and a few other hit titles.

Adds Nintendo: "Those numbers are both poised to grow with the one-two punch of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and amiibo on Nov. 21, which are then quickly joined by Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker on Dec. 5."

One would also expect a price cut in the coming month to get more hardware out there (especially in conjunction with Super Smash), but Nintendo has not confirmed such a move, as of yet.

Activision has another hit on their hands.

The latest blockbuster in the 'Call of Duty' franchise, 'Advanced Warfare' sold 7.51 million units worldwide in just its first week of availability, beating out other 2014 stalwarts including Destiny and Titanfall.

Although the numbers are big, they really don't show serious growth compared to last year's launch of "Call of Duty: Ghosts," which sold 7.25 million units in its first week, and 8.23 million if you include the late launches for the (at the time) new PS4 and Xbox One.

The game sold best for PS4, at 3.05 million units, followed by the Xbox One at 2.06 million units. The 360 outsold its late gen counterpart the PS3 1.22 million to 1.09 million, but it still shows demand. The PC version barely moved 100,000 units.

Google has confirmed that the standard silent mode has disappeared from the volume rocker options in Lollipop for phones, but has been replaced.

In previous iterations of the operating system, you could use the volume rocker to take the ring settings down from loud to vibrate and then finally "silent" which meant no vibrations or rings for notifications.

With the new launch of Android 5.0, users have been complaining that the silent mode is no longer offered, with vibrate and ringer being the only options.

However, with "Priority" mode, the company has taken the traditional silent mode and given more customization options. Your notifications will be silent, and you have the option to let specific things ring or vibrate, including phone calls or alarms.

That being said, please do not fret everyone. Your standard silent mode is dead, but it's still around (and improved).

Despite being the most popular Windows operating system, by far, it appears gamers who want the benefits of the upcoming DirectX 12 will have to upgrade their operating system.

DirectX 12 promises gamers reduced CPU overhead and much improved multithreading support leading to increased performance while gaming. In addition, the software promises reduced power consumption, which is great for gaming notebook owners.

The news comes via AMD's Chief Gaming Scientist Richard Huddy who said Windows 7 is now installed on 52 percent of all machines, and that number grows daily. "It's a very, very popular operating system. One thing that's not going to happen to it is DX12. Yup, DX12 is not coming to Windows 7."

Although unsurprising, since Microsoft has used tactics like this in the past, Microsoft's bigger issue will be convincing potential Windows 10 buyers that the OS is actually worth upgrading to.

New Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri says the company is looking to revive its brand name in the consumer electronics market, but they will not be building phones again.

"I think you can expect our brand will return to the consumer world," said Suri. The telecom equipment maker sold its struggling handset business to Microsoft earlier this year, and Microsoft just unveiled their first smartphone with Microsoft branding rather than Nokia's.

Suri says the easiest way to get back in is to license the name to other OEMs who will bank on the name recognition. "We see brand licensing as an opportunity ... But I would say it is more of a long-term opportunity," Suri added. "This is not a sentimentality thing."

Nokia was once the biggest phone maker in the world, and Interbrand says its brand ranking was as high as #5 in the world, as recently as 2007. It has since fallen to the #90s.

According to new reports, the Justice Department via the U.S. Marshals Service program is collecting data from thousands of Americans cellphones in an effort to find criminal suspects.

The program flies small Cessna airplanes across the U.S. equipped with "dirtboxes" (hardware that mimic cell towers and basically trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information back) allowing the criminals to be tracked to within 3 meters of their location.

Unfortunately, a criminal is not usually sitting alone in a rural area, so the devices collect data from thousands of innocent American's phones. The flights are said to be done regularly.

All modern phone are internally programmed to connect to the strongest cell tower signal available, and the reports claim that the dirtboxes will always identify as the strongest signal, even though it does not. Any phone that connects, even for a second, will then relay back its unique registration information. Full phone encryption, found on Android 5.0 and iOS 8.x devices, does not matter.

While the overall goal of trying to find fugitives, drug dealers and other criminals has been approved by court order, it is unclear if the orders give free range for any kind of method, like the "dirtboxes" say the sources. It is also unclear how long the government will hold onto the data collected from unsuspecting innocent Americans.

Earlier this week, BlackBerry and Samsung announced a new joint partnership in which BlackBerry will provide "end-to-end encryption" and expertise on Samsung Knox devices.

BlackBerry's upcoming BlackBerry Enterprise Services 12 platform will be the home of the added Android security, and from most vantage points appears to be a great deal for both companies. While BlackBerry is dead as a hardware maker, it has held onto its reputation for enterprise security.

Knox, Samsung's security platform for businesses, allows employees to have just one device (rather than a work and personal phone) with the ability to transition between both, securely. Knox even received Pentagon approval last year, alongside BlackBerry's own BB 10 operating system.

BlackBerry has not provided information on subscription prices as of yet, but there will be more info to come as the platform gets closer to launch in 2015.

Google Glass, the wearable headset that allows users to basically attach Google services and a camera to eyeglass frames, will not see its consumer debut in 2014 as originally planned.

A developer edition, for $1500, became available for all to buy earlier this year, but stock remains plentiful as even Google faithful have begun to lose interest. Reuters contacted 16 Glass app developers, nine of which said they have already abandoned their projects for the wearable, citing a lack of customers and the limitations of the device and software itself.

Within Google, key employees who helped create the Glass have left in recent times. Lead developer Babak Parviz, electrical engineering chief Adrian Wong, and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations have all left for different projects or startups in the past six months. Google still says development is active, and there are hundreds of employees still working on the wearable. "We are completely energized and as energized as ever about the opportunity that wearables and Glass in particular represent," added Glass Head of Business Operations Chris O'Neill. However, the consumer launch is slow coming. "We are as committed as ever to a consumer launch. That is going to take time and we are not going to launch this product until it's absolutely ready," O'Neill said.

As we normally do here at AfterDawn, we want to make sure our gamer readers know when the scheduled PSN maintenance times are.

Sony confirmed that the PlayStation Network will be down on Monday, the 17th, for routine maintenance from the following times: 12:00PM-6:00PM EST.

The company will be 'deploying a series of back-end improvements to the network', and Sony noted that you will still be able to play online if you are logged in before the network goes down.

Reads the post: "If you've signed in to the network any time since November 13th, you will be able to play games online and access partner apps such as Netflix during this maintenance period. The PlayStation Store, PlayStation Home and Account Management will not be available during this time, and users may receive a maintenance notification when attempting to access these services."

Streaming music service Rdio has dropped the price of their family plans to better compete with Spotify's new offering.

Rdio launched family plans back in 2011, letting family members (or friends) share an account for a discounted price, along with individual controls for playlists, favorites and stations so that track selections don't have to commingle.

Here is the new pricing

• Family of 2 = $14.99
• Family of 3 = $19.99
• Family of 4 = $24.99
• Family of 5 = $29.99

Microsoft says Xbox One sales are on the rise, thanks to new bundles and a price cut.

The company posted this week that they have shipped 10 million units to retailers, with all those units expected to sell through to consumers.

Microsoft dropped the price of the console last week by $50, including bundles with popular new games like Assassin's Creed Unity, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and Sunset Overdrive, giving a jolt to sales. In addition, the highly-anticipated Halo: The Master Chief Collection launched to rave reviews.

Says the company (press release): "The response to this wave of blockbuster game releases and new bundles has been amazing, and sales have skyrocketed since the new price took effect on Nov. 2. Compared to the previous week, Xbox One sales in the US have more than tripled, which is exciting as more and more friends will be playing together this holiday. As we head into the busy holiday season Xbox One led generation 8 console sales in the US for the past two weeks."

While the sales and the milestone are significant, the company is still playing catchup with Sony, whose PlayStation 4 reached 10 million units sold over the summer, and has led new console sales for 10 straight months.

Samsung will once again be first to market with a new consumer wearable, with their "Innovator's Edition" Gear VR headset set to go on sale in December.

The device will launch with Oculus' software ready for installation on your phone, including a "VR-specific home screen for navigating between apps, a VR movie theater experience, and the Oculus app store." The company did note that you will need a Samsung Galaxy Note 4, as the device is the only one compatible with the Gear VR and Oculus' mobile SDK.

"Innovator Edition" VR headsets will cost $200 for the headset or $250 for the headset and a Bluetooth 4.0 controller. Given that the Galaxy Note 4 is the only compatible (and apparently powerful enough) device, the whole set will cost you around $1000 if you bought the phone unlocked, a hefty price for a likely early version of the tech.

Sony has announced the launch of PlayStation Vue, a cloud-based TV service that will "reinvent" the traditional cable TV experience.

The service will start in beta for PlayStation consoles, and will launch with content from 75 networks including the majors like CBS, Fox, NBCU, Viacom and Discovery. More partnerships are expected in the future especially since Disney and Time Warner are noticeably absent. Disney is the owner of ABC and ESPN, two of the more popular stations for content on all of TV.

PlayStation Vue will offer both live TV and on-demand content but the company did not announce pricing except to say they would be "fair and competitive." Major media outlets have pegged that "fair" figure at about $70 and Sony did note that there are no contracts necessary, nor any additional fees or service charges. You will need a PS3 or PS4, however, which ranges from $150-$400.

"Everyday TV is about to become extraordinary with our new cloud‐based TV service, PlayStation Vue," said Andrew House, president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment and group executive in charge of the network entertainment business. "PlayStation Vue reinvents the traditional viewing experience so your programming effortlessly finds you, enabling you to watch much more of what you want and search a lot less."

"PlayStation Vue brings the best of live TV and a robust catalog of the latest content, always keeping you connected to what's popular, new and trending."

If the latest rumors are accurate, Apple is ready for mass production of its Apple Watch smartwatch, with an order of at least 30 million units already placed.

The device is expected to launch in February, and the rumors come via Apple's east Asian chip manufacturers.

30 million for an unproven product is certainly a big figure, and rival Android Wear devices have struggled to reach the millions even after months of release meaning Apple appears to be very, very confident.

For the Apple Watch, the company is using a new system-in-package (SiP) chip called the "S1." The S1 is a custom silicon chip "that stacks and integrates multiple subsystems into an area small enough to fit within a wristwatch's small footprint." Jony Ive has said the S1 is "is entirely encapsulated in resin for superior protection against the elements" but little else is known about the SiP.

See our featurette on the wearable device here: What is the Apple Watch all about?

According to new reports, DreamWorks Animation studio is in talks to merge with major toymaker Hasbro.

Hasbro, the second-largest toymaker in the world behind Mattel, could certainly have some nice synergies after a merger given the ability to create consumer products off the popular films from DWA including How to Train Your Dragon, Madagascar, Shrek and Kung Fu Panda. Hasbro recently announced that most of its revenue growth has come via toys related to movie franchises.

DreamWorks Animation could also expand into TV and live-action films, categories in which they have actively been trying to enter in the past couple of years.

Habro has made good partnerships in recent years for their properties to be turned into films, including the Transformers, GI Joe, Candyland and Magic: The Gathering.

Large record label Warner Music Group and major Chinese web portal and social network Tencent have agreed to a deal for the industry's "first ever master distribution partnership between a major music company and a leading Internet provider in mainland China."

Tencent will distribute WMG's large catalog and manage new track releases for "all legitimate audio services" in mainland China.

China has long been infamous for rampant software, music and movie piracy and the record labels recently stated that China accounted for just 1 percent of all global revenues for music in 2013, a shockingly low number given that there are over 1.3 billion people living in China.

There are a few questions about how the new deal will work, however. Most streaming audio services in China are free and are ad-supported, begging the question of how the revenue share will work between the partners. Another question is how WMG will monetize its catalog through Tencent's QQ microblogging platform, which has over 800 million active users but does not have an active music-sharing strategy.

According to new reports, the servers for the deepnet drug marketplace Silk Road 2.0 were housed in Lithuania.

Earlier this month, the FBI and Europol took down over 400 illicit .onion domains, arrested 17 people and most of the major marketplaces were taken offline. Drug markets Cloud 9 and Hydra were taken offline as were contraband marketplaces Pandora, Blue Sky, Topix, Flugsvamp, Cannabis Road, and Black Market. In addition, money laundering sites Cash Machine, Cash Flow, Golden Nugget and Fast Cash were also taken down.

Despite the success of Operation Onymous for law enforcement, those on the other side have been scrambling to answer how such a raid could have occurred. There have been worries that the entire Tor network could be compromised, meaning the end of the deepnet as it stands currently.

According to reports, the FBI found the servers in May, worked with Lithuanian authorities to temporarily take them down so they could clone the data and from there began down the path of taking down the Silk Road and other marketplaces. Apparently, the servers were registered to Blake Benthall using his own personal email of blake@benthall.net. Benthall was arrested this month along with the others and now faces at least 35 years in prison.

Announced months ago, Google's YouTube music subscription service "YouTube Music Key" is now available in beta.

The service offers full albums to stream, including offline listening, for $10 per month. In addition, the subscription also gives access to Google Play Music, which has a 30 million track catalog and also allows you to upload your own tracks to build your library.

YouTube Music Key will also allow you to watch music videos via the app, as well.

The app is launching in the US, UK, Portugal, Italy, Finland, Ireland and Spain and beta testers get the first 6 months free and then a promotional monthly price of $7.99.

Google has finally begun rolling out the new Android 5.0 Lollipop update to its Nexus reference devices.

As of this morning, Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 7 (both generations) and the Nexus 10 will start seeing the OTA operating system update. So far, the Nexus 9 and the Nexus 6 are the only devices to receive the updates officially via Google.

In addition, the update has been added to AOSP, so you can download it manually.

To be expected, the rollout will be done in waves, meaning it should take a few days before everyone gets it.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who specializes in Apple, says the rumored 12.9-inch "iPad Pro" will not ship until the Q3 2015, after going into mass production in the Q2.

The analyst says the Pro will require an oxide panel to achieve its "high resolution, quick response, and high color saturation," and Apple needs plenty of time to ensure sufficient yield and assembly, pushing delivery time back.

In addition, Kuo believes Q1 2015 sales of iPads will be mediocre at best, with Apple expected to sell under 10 million, a 54.5 percent drop year-over-year.

"We believe that, in a major shift, while Apple (US) used to be able to use new form factor designs to boost demand, it has failed to do so this time around," Kuo said. "The lighter and thinner iPad Air 2 will face strong headwinds in increasing sales in 1Q15, we believe; we also hold that this means that iPad, along with the entire tablet market, is faced with structural challenges characterized by a lack of new applications and market saturation. We don't think these challenges will be easily overcome by upgraded specs, new form factor designs or lower prices."

Microsoft, via their Lumia Twitter account, has confirmed that Windows Phone 8 devices will be getting Windows 10 in the future.

When Windows Phone launched, early adopters were screwed when they could not upgrade from the first-gen Windows Phone 7.x to Windows 8.x due to hardware restrictions. Basically, Microsoft told early adopters "thanks for beta testing but now that the OS is good, you have to buy again." Thankfully, that will not be an issue for current buyers.

Interestingly, the company made sure to note that the update will be Windows 10, not Windows Phone 10, seemingly confirming that the next Windows iteration will be a completely cross-platform option.

Here's the tweets:

A Chinese programmer has installed Windows 95 onto his iPhone 6 Plus, a move that falls squarely in the very fun but completely useless category.

Using a software tool called 'iDos,' forum user xyq058775 installed the nearly two decade old operating system on his brand new hardware.

The FAQ, translated via Google via Crunch:

1.Q: Can I install WINDOWS XP? A: The answer is yes you can, but certainly not by idos, because idos simply simulate the DOS environment is not the true sense of the virtual machine, so the system is more difficult to run the DOS and idos simulation environment and do not have XP running basic environmental needs, so later if transplanted XP system, then I will make use of their leisure time with friends ios platform to write a plug-in to run XP virtual machine system.
2.Q: Why are you doing this? Why not use Remote Desktop. A: First, to show that this kind of thing tall Remote Desktop is currently no support on win98 systems, not to use during system installation and tool methods have sent me here.

3.Q: Why is the process I installed the explorer process wrong? A: Because idos simulator only simulates the 16's dos environment, although win98 16/32 hybrid system but Explorer and exe process large part needed is a 32-bit environment, so when they need 32 program calls some system environment variables and support libraries when an error occurs, LZ modify some of the resource is designed to allow him to run in idos environmental good, However, this modification will change the part of the machine, which has led some device errors when using LZ modify the good image. After LZ according to everyone's feedback slowly improve!

Another major institution has been hit my a major cyber security attack.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) was the victim and 800,000 employees appear to have had all their personal information taken including social security numbers.

"The intrusion is limited in scope and all operations of the Postal Service are functioning normally," USPS spokesman David Partenheimer said in a statement.

While "limited in scope," nearly a million employees' names, addresses, SSN, and phone numbers were taken, which could sadly lead to batch attempts at identity theft. In addition, customers who called the USPS customer support line from January through August have also had their info taken, depending on what they provided to the service reps. What that means is there are likely hundreds of thousands of email addresses out there now.

The USPS says the attack was first found in September, but they waited two months before coming forward because "communicating the breach immediately would have put the remediation actions in jeopardy." A blanket statement like that will likely do nothing to appease the fears of employees whose socials are now in the wild.

Employees will all receive one year of free credit monitoring.

Microsoft finally unveiled their first non-Nokia branded Lumia device today, the 535, including a familiar look but with Microsoft logos everywhere.

At $140 USD (€110) it is clear the device is aimed at everyone, and it will be an upgrade from previous 5-series Lumia devices.

Microsoft's latest has a 5-inch IPS display, a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 200, 8GB internal storage (expandable to 128GB with microSD), 1GB RAM and dual 5MP cameras. It also includes dual-SIM capabilities for European and Asian consumers who can take advantage.

The device runs on Windows 8.1, and as expected, Microsoft has bundled its suites including Office, Skype and OneNote.

Microsoft is releasing the phone in China, Hong Kong and Bangladesh this month, with a more global rollout expected before the end of the year.

LG has unveiled its new mid-range Aka smartphone, a strange device that actually has eyes that have their own "emotions."

There are four different Aka phones, with different colors and different personalities. The yellow phone is called Eggy, the white phone is Wooky, the pink phone is YoYo and the black phone is Soul.

The eyes act as a notification bar of sorts. They look down when you haven't read your messages/emails/etc, and the colors change indicating different emotions.

Featuring a 5-inch 720p display, the devices runs on Android 4.4, a quad-core 1.2GHz processor, 1.5GB RAM, dual 2MP/8MP cameras, 16GB internal storage, LTE, a 2610 mAh battery and a microSD slot.

Launching in South Korea, the device goes on sale this month for KRW 500,000 (about $450).

Last week, pop artist Taylor Swift made headlines when she removed all her music from popular streaming service Spotify, stating that the best way for fans to listen is to buy the CD or download the album.

Spotify has responded to Swift, revealing that the company has paid over $2 billion to artists, labels, songwriters and publishers; a hefty sum.

In the response, Spotify brings up many good points, most notably that the average paying subscriber for Spotify is under 27 years old and never paid for music in the past, growing up in a piracy prevalent environment.

Here is the response in its entirety, which is worth reading:

Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it. We started Spotify because we love music and piracy was killing it. So all the talk swirling around lately about how Spotify is making money on the backs of artists upsets me big time. Our whole reason for existence is to help fans find music and help artists connect with fans through a platform that protects them from piracy and pays them for their amazing work. Quincy Jones posted on Facebook that "Spotify is not the enemy; piracy is the enemy". You know why? Two numbers: Zero and Two Billion. Piracy doesn't pay artists a penny – nothing, zilch, zero. Spotify has paid more than two billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists. A billion dollars from the time we started Spotify in 2008 to last year and another billion dollars since then. And that's two billion dollars' worth of listening that would have happened with zero or little compensation to artists and songwriters through piracy or practically equivalent services if there was no Spotify – we're working day and night to recover money for artists and the music business that piracy was stealing away.

LG has announced that its flagship G3 smartphone will be getting the Android 5.0 Lollipop update starting next week.

Poland will be the first nation to receive the update, followed by more major markets in the coming weeks.

"LG is absolutely committed to giving our customers the best mobile experiences available and bringing Android Lollipop to G3 owners as soon as possible is a top priority," said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of the LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. "The new features and improvements in Android 5.0 will bring a whole new user experience to the G3 and make it even better than it already is."

There was no word on the update for other LG devices.

Blizzard has announced their first new IP in 17 years, "Overwatch," a team-based FPS with a plethora of characters.

The design of the game looks similar to Team Fortress 2, with a colorful art style. The game is a six vs. six shooter, and each playable character has their own special abilities. Each character also has a map of their own based on their back story.

Blizzard says the game will not be a standard shooter, however. "We wanted to make the game less lethal," said Blizzard vice president Jeff Kaplan at a BlizzCon panel. "You will die. That's part of the game. We're just hoping that you die less frequently than in current modern military shooters. We wanted to give players other things to do than put crosshairs on targets. We know not everyone is great at that and that's what drives a lot of people out of other shooters."


For example, Overwatch will include a "Payload" objective (deliver the bomb successfully) and "Point Capture" (capture different control points).

Here is the first official trailer:



There's great information about the characters here. Beta gamers can sign up starting next year.

According to sources, Tesla and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk is looking to bring Internet to even the most remote areas of the world via 700 small satellites.

Supposedly, Musk is in talks with Florida and Colorado officials in efforts to construct a satellite factory. Musk is working with ex-Googler Greg Wyler, who led Google's satellite division and now runs WorldVu Satellites, a company that owns part of the radio spectrum used for satellite Internet.

There has never been a fleet so large, but the satellites are small and will weigh under 250 pounds each. Each satellite will cost under $1 million to produce, and SpaceX would use their rockets to release the satellites into orbit.

Musk and Wyler are not the first to make such plans, but they may be the closest. Google and Facebook have also announced plans to use balloons, drones or satellites to get Internet to remote areas.

Trendon Shavers of Texas has been arrested on securities and wire fraud after he allegedly ran a large Bitcoin-related Ponzi scheme.

Shavers allegedly started an online digital hedge fund and raised millions. Each count carries a max sentence of 20 years and millions in fines. The SEC already filed civil fraud charges against Shavers last year, and he owes $40 million in fines for that conviction.

Under the handle Pirateat40 on the ForumBitcointalk.org forum, Shavers solicited about 100 investors to place their Bitcoins in Bitcoin Savings and Trust (BST), an online fund in which he promised weekly returns of 7 percent. In his solicitation, he explained the returns were achieved through "Bitcoin arbitrage activities that included acting as a middleman for individuals who wished to purchase large quantities of BTC 'off the radar.'"

As the Ponzi scheme grew, the minimum investment was set at 100 Bitcoin (BTC), which at that point was worth about $1000. By August, 2012, well before Bitcoin began its massive run to $1200 per BTC, Shavers closed down the fund, declaring that there was no money left. In total, he had brought in 700,000 BTC, about 7 percent of the entire float of BTC and had returned 500,000 BTC to investors as supposed interest. Shavers is accused of stealing another 150,000 BTC and transferring to his own BTC wallet.

Microsoft's Phil Spencer has confirmed the company's acquisition of Minecraft maker Mojang has completed, ahead of schedule.

Reads Spencer's tweet: "It's official, today we welcome Mojang to the Microsoft Studios family. We're excited for the possibilities ahead w/the Minecraft community."

The companies announced the move in mid-September, with Microsoft paying a handsome $2.5 billion price to buy the developer.

While Mojang had rejected previous offers outright, it became clear over the summer that the founders were finally ready to sell. All three founders including Notch decided not to stay on after selling, leaving just 37 employees, a tiny number for a studio with a massive hit game.

Minecraft has sold over 50 million copies since launch in 2009, across platforms that include the PC, PlayStation, Xbox and phones. The game is also wildly profitable, with Mojang bringing in over $100 million in profit last year from game and merchandise sales. The company also had nearly $300 million in revenue last year. The company recently signed licensing deals with Scholastic for tutorial books, LEGO for toys and even Warner Bros. for a feature film. Besides the licensing revenue, the developers make money by charging a one-time fee for their games, unlike most others that offer freemium models. The games range from $7-$30 depending on system.

Asus' first foray into the smartwatch world is the ZenWatch, and it's ready for launch.

The company has confirmed that its Android Wear-based device will launch tomorrow at Best Buy, and later in the Google Play Store for $199, making it the cheapest of the new smartwatches to hit the market.

While most of the specs and software are the same as other current devices, Asus is offering a classier (less sporty, less nerdy) design that actually looks somewhat similar to the announced Apple Watch with nice leather bands and a metal finish rather than plastic.

The full feature set:

Exquisitely-crafted using premium materials
-Sophisticated design enhanced by rose gold color layering
-Genuine stitched-leather watchband and quick-release clasp design
-100+ combination watch face choices to fit your mood and personality
-Vivid AMOLED display and Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3
Smart Companion
-Seamless ASUS ZenUI integration and enhanced functionality
-Automatically unlock your phone with ASUS ZenWatch
-Tap Tap and Find My Phone helps you locate your phone instantly if misplaced
-Simply cover ASUS ZenWatch with your hand to mute an incoming call
-ASUS Remote Camera frees users to take photos from creative angles where the viewfinder would be difficult to see.
-Presentation Control enables ZenWatch to be used as a remote control and time manager when giving a business presentation or lecture
Wellness manager
-Monitor and track a range of health-related statistics with the ASUS Wellness app
-Measures steps taken, calories burned, activity duration, heart rate, exercise intensity and relaxation level
-View an easy-to-understand relaxation score based on relaxation-level measurements

Primecast, the Android app developed to bring unofficial support of Amazon Instant Video to Chromecast, has already been shut down just two days after launching.

Amazon Instant Video and Prime Instant Video are services that allow users to buy and rent movies and TV shows, or stream from the Prime catalog (if oyu are a subscriber) and the Google Chromecast is a popular HDMI dongle that allows users to stream content by "casting" it from their phone or PC to the TV. Amazon does not offer official support for the Chromecast unlike other popular services like Hulu, Netflix and HBO.

The team behind the app did not give a reason why the app was pulled from the store, but likely Amazon was not a fan.

Reads the post:

Dear Primecast users,
a few months ago, we set out to bring together two great products that seemed like a natural fit: Amazon Instant Video and Google Chromecast.

We spent most of our free time trying to come up with the best solution we could, while also safeguarding your privacy, honoring digital rights management and copyright mechanisms, and making the app as useful as possible.

Two days ago, we felt we were ready for an announcement, so we posted a single link on Reddit...and waited.

Walmart is preparing its own streaming stick to rival the popular Google Chromecast, named the Vudu Spark.

The specs for the Vudu Spark have just made it to the FCC database, and Walmart (the parent of streaming company Vudu) has confirmed the stick's existence.

Says a Vudu rep: "At VUDU, we're always looking at new ways for our customers to experience the movies and TV shows in their VUDU library. We're developing a streaming stick and will share more information in the coming months, so stay tuned."

There does not appear to be much to the Spark, except for its ability to stream Vudu. The device will ship with a remote control for easier navigation, and it also appears that the device will use Zigbee RF rather than Wi-Fi Direct, so mirroring abilities may be out of the picture, leaving the device as a single use streaming stick.

Likely, given its limited functionality, Walmart will sell the device for cheaper than the Chromecast, the Roku Streaming Stick and Amazon's new Fire TV Stick although none of them are necessarily "expensive" at $50 and under.

Source:
Om

Microsoft has confirmed that its upcoming Patch Tuesday will be a large one, with fixes coming for 16 security bulletins of which five are "critical."

Most of the remaining are flagged as "important" but will still require immediate patching. At 16 bulletins, the fixes are the highest count of the year. The critical bulletins will take care of vulnerabilities found in IE6 all the way through IE11. There are no critical fixes required for Windows but Office and IE require fixes for all operating systems even including Windows 10 Technical Preview.

The critical bugs would have allowed attackers remote code execution and some of the "important" bulletins allowed for privilege elevation. Some are probably not required by all, such as Bulletin 6 which is exclusively for Microsoft Office 2007.

Windows Update should take care of the patching for most users.

According to a quick teaser tweet we know that Microsoft's first Lumia smartphone without the Nokia branding is on its way.

The device will be unveiled on November 11th. Reads the teaser: "Microsoft is delivering the power of everyday mobile technology to everyone. Come back on November 11, to find out more! #MoreLumia"

Microsoft recently confirmed that Nokia Lumia is now Microsoft Lumia, a long expected move given the fact that Nokia is um, still a company and Microsoft does not own all of it.

Recent rumors seem to support the launch of a mid-range device with a 5-inch 720p screen, a Snapdragon 200 quad-core processor at 1.2GHz, 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage, dual cameras 1.3MP/5MP and many colorful options.

We will know more on the 11th.

In a rather shocking turn of events, the desktop PSU and CPU cooling system manufacturer Zalman has declared bankruptcy following massive bank fraud committed by the company's parent, Moneual.

The company filed for bankruptcy on November 3rd and reports are claiming that a multi-billion dollar fraud occurred leading to the shutdown. A former employee of Moneual allegedly told the Korea JoongAng Daily that executives took out nearly $3 billion in bank loans and lines of credit using fabricated export data and balance sheets.

Allegedly, the perpetrators of the crimes are Moneual CEO Harold Park, VP Scott Park, and VP Won Duck-yeok. The employee said that the executives would take long trips every summer to Hawaii to drive luxury cars and live in luxury.

If the allegations are true, it is highly unlikely that the creditor banks will be able to collect what is owed to them, especially if the export data was initially inflated.

The under-the-radar Android Wear-based LG G Watch R is now available via the Google Play Store after having been available only through AT&T.

Reads the page: "The timeless design of the LG G Watch R will complete your every look. The 100% stainless steel body, round shape and multiple face options make this watch feel like a classic timepiece."

Besides the retro look and round face, the G Watch R will also be water and dust resistant, include a gyroscope and accelerometer for motion, a barometer for temperature, and a heart rate monitor. LG is also including a few fitness related apps in addition to Google's own.

The device has a 1.3" Full Circle P-OLED, is powered by a Snapdragon 400 processor clocked at 1.2GHz, and has 4GB internal storage. The device should last around 36 hours with regular use before needing a charge.

Aereo has announced that 43 more employees have been laid off, this time from their Boston and New York offices.

"In an effort to reduce costs, we made the difficult decision to lay off some of our staff in Boston and New York. We are continuing to conserve resources while we chart our path forward. We are grateful to our employees for their loyalty, hard work and dedication. This was a difficult, but necessary step in order to preserve the company. We decline to comment further," said Aereo VP Virginia Lam.

The recent decision for more layoffs comes following a federal judge ruling that placed a full injunction on the company to operate as a TV service.

Aereo was effectively shut down a few months ago following a Supreme Court decision that ruled it violated copyright by offering OTA streams of broadcast channels without paying retransmission fees through thousands of tiny antennas. The company has been trying to resurrect operating as a cable company or as a standalone DVR company.

The clock is ticking, however, as the company cannot raise any more money and all revenue has dried up after the shut down.

Struggling casual gaming company Zynga announced a huge loss of $57.1 million for the quarter, up from a loss of just $68,000 in the same quarter a year ago.

The company has not been able to match the success of games like Farmville, which were huge for Facebook casual gamers but have since been supplanted by other much more popular mobile titles like Clash of Clans.

One major miss was Zynga's new version of its popular mobile "Poker" game. The design change was radical and many fans missed the style and design and openly complained. In addition, the game was also broken for a few much older devices. Zynga had to bite the bullet and reinstate the "classic" version. We need to "improve our execution in terms of product quality and audience growth," added CEO Don Mattrick.

Overall, daily active users fell to 26 million, under half of what the company's games were seeing in 2012. Revenue was down 13 percent year-over-year to $176.6 million but that was higher than expected.

Home Depot has confirmed that their high-profile data breach was worse than expected, with 53 million email addresses being stolen in addition to the 56 million credit and debit card numbers taken.

In April, the company confirmed that hackers were able to breach their systems by accessing the password of a vendor. That small access allowed the attackers to get deep into the home improvement store's networks through a Windows exploit and take personal info. Even though Microsoft quickly patched the exploits, the hackers were already in and were running through the company's point-of-sale systems using high-level employee permissions.

While the email leak is actually on the smaller side compared to others of the past five years, Home Depot warned users to expect more phishing attacks, in which attackers will try to secure more sensitive information (such as bank accounts or other logins) via purporting to be real companies in fake emails.

Home Depot did not seem too apologetic, claiming that their network design was not at fault but did concede that the company should have placed data security higher in its "mission statement."

The data collection was ongoing for months, and they hackers were only detected after they decided to sell a giant block of credit card numbers on the underground forum Rescator. The U.S. Secret Service then informed Home Depot. On the same day, Capital One called the company to inform them that the only common thread between a giant batch of fraudulent charges from a group of cards was Home Depot. Home Depot, banks and government agencies all tried to buy the cards at that point to take them off the market, and the traffic actually took the site down. In the next few days, the company was able to acquire some cards and began backtracking, eventually finding the "patient zero" server at a store in Miami.

Rockstar Games has confirmed that the upcoming PS4 and Xbox One versions of GTA V will include first-person mode, giving the game a whole new perspective that should be as interesting as it is fun.

In addition, the game will have better visuals, new playable content and a larger multiplayer, as well.

Explains Rob Nelson, animation director on GTA V, of the time and effort it took to create the new gameplay mode. "You have to change pretty much everything. I mean, if you want to do it right. We have a very solid third-person animation system, but you don't just put the camera down there and expect to see the guns, aim, and shoot. All those animations are new when you switch to first-person, because it all has to be animated to the camera, to make it feel like a proper first-person experience that I think people would expect. All the timings have to be re-evaluated."

Since there are three protagonists, making sure that each felt unique was another problem for Rockstar. Nelson says each now has their own idle animations and "if a character is speaking to you when you look over at them, you'll see they're looking back at you, making eye-contact." Adds the director, "This is new territory for us. We wanted as much as possible to retain a sense of character, whatever character you're playing. Whether that's little fidget or hearing them speak."

'Destiny,' Bungie's new cross-platform smash hit, already has a sequel in development.

The game, despite heavy criticism for a short (and easy) campaign mode and a plethora of bugs and loopholes, still had over $500 million in sales in its first day of availability and Sony set records for console sales thanks to an exclusive white console with PS4-exclusive goodies.

Activision understands how money works, however, and despite the shortcomings of the game (it is a still a great game), there is a sequel already in development. Eric Hirshberg, publishing CEO at Activision says: "Work has also begun on future expansion packs as well as on our next full game release. We're very pleased with the launch and continuing engagement."

The revelation is a bit of a surprise given that Bungie and Activision have already said they plan to support Destiny for the next decade including continuous DLC and updates and multiplayer events.

Yesterday, we reported that the Deepnet's 'premier' drug marketplace, Silk Road 2.0, was taken down by a joint FBI, Europol, DHS task force under the umbrella of "Operation Onymous."

Today it has been revealed that the Silk Road was just part of a massive operation in which a total of 17 people were arrested, over 400 hundred .onion domains were seized, and most of the major marketplaces were taken offline. Drug markets Cloud 9 and Hydra were taken offline as were contraband marketplaces Pandora, Blue Sky, Topix, Flugsvamp, Cannabis Road, and Black Market. In addition, money laundering sites Cash Machine, Cash Flow, Golden Nugget and Fast Cash were also taken down.

From the 17 arrested, $1 million in Bitcoins were seized, as well as $250,000 in cash, computers, servers, drugs, precious metals and weapons.

Troels Oerting, head of the European Cybercrime Centerm said that the authorities had not yet even cataloged all the contraband nor listed all 414 .onion domains that were seized. "One of the primary targets was the Silk Road guy [Blake Benthall]," added Oerting, "But we also decided to see if we could identify more of the administrators of these sites and remove their infrastructure as well...Some moved before we could act, but we've taken most of our targets down."

The OnePlus One smartphone, notable for its high specs and extremely cheap price, has reached 500,000 units sold.

Besides its cheap, unlocked price, the device is also notable as it has only been available via an invite system until very recently when the company began doing "flash sales" for orders.

Carl Pei co-founder of the company, confirmed the sales data and says now that the stretch goal is 1 million units before the end of 2014. "It's going to be hard but I think it's possible," noted Pei. Most impressive about the sales figures is the fact that Pei says the company has used just $300 on its entire advertising budget. "All that money was spent experimenting on different types of Facebook ads. We found that we've now reached a critical mass of users, and they are helping us spread the word organically. Normally when you launch a [smartphone] product it gets really hot in the first month, and in the second or third month, sales start to drop really fast. For OnePlus, when you look at our internal metrics, our sales just keep growing."

Pei did also admit that margins are razor thin, and that there are future monetization plans for OnePlus. "We're making a single-figure dollar amount on each phone. That's not the way we're going to make money in the future, it's just to keep the operation going. Accessories will be a big part of it. We've made a really social brand, that people are fans of. If we make lifestyle products or specialized accessories, I think those will do really well."

The Xbox One-exclusive 'Halo: The Master Chief Collection' finally has its first official launch trailer.

343 Industries' hotly anticipated collection includes a remastered Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 4, Halo: Nightfall (a new digital series), and exclusive access to the Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta.

The remastered Halo 2 is the big draw here, as it is updated with new cinematics at 60fps for the Xbox One, and with 100 multiplayer maps.

343 is making the collection available on November 11th in North America with a global launch to follow.

Here is the trailer (which is epic):

Nintendo has announced that its hit N64 game 'The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask' is excitedly being remade for the 3DS handheld.

The original game was released in 2000 and the main storyline is Link trying to stop Skull Kid (who has stolen the Ocarina of Time) from destroying the planet by bringing the moon crashing down in. The game was unique in that it introduced a three day time system that even gamers were affected by and also added transformation masks.

Over time, the game sold 3.36 million copies, a huge hit, and it was praised for its story and being inventive.

"As we worked on the remake version, we set out to maintain the original level of challenge, while keeping the game accessible for anyone," Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president, said in the announcement. "So we also focused on making sure the gameplay experience was as smooth as possible."

The game will be available in the Spring 2015.

The FBI has announced the arrest of Blake Benthall, a man who is accused of running the deepnet marketplace Silk Road 2.0.

Benthall, who was a former employee at Elon Musk's rocket ship company SpaceX, was arrested in San Francisco and the marketplace was raided and shut down. Benthall could face life in prison for the crimes.

As part of Operation Onymous, the new Silk Road was taken down exactly one year to the day from when it went live in 2013. Benthall has been charged with one count of conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking, one count of conspiring to commit computer hacking, one count of conspiring to traffic in fraudulent identification documents, and one count of money-laundering conspiracy.

After raiding his home, the FBI says Benthall's PC (which was not encrypted in any way) had full "address lists for customers all over the world that will be of significant interest to many global law enforcement agencies." Prior to the raid, the U.S. DEA made purchases from the Silk Road 2.0, including heroin, cocaine, LSD and Oxycodone. Each was then tested and all tested positive for illegal drugs.

Undercover FBI officers had conversations with Benthall, who claimed that as of last month the Silk Road 2.0 had 150,000 monthly active users and over $8 million in monthly sales. Although Benthall claims hackers stole all of them in September, there was allegedly $1.4 million in Bitcoins in the marketplace.

Facebook has announced a few new initiatives this week that will allow its 1 billion+ users to help donate towards fighting the deadly virus.

Reads the post of the three ways Facebook is making it easier:

An easy way to donate – a Donate feature to raise awareness and funds for International Medical Corps, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and Save the Children

Health education – collaborating with UNICEF to show information on Ebola symptoms and treatment to people in targeted regions on Facebook

Emergency voice and data services – working with NetHope to provide vital communications capacity to medical and aid workers in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone

There will be a donate feature added to your news feed, allowing you to quickly donate to the three aforementioned company and of course to share that you are donating and how easily others can to.

Ebola has been dominating the headlines for months now, as it became an epidemic in Western Africa with over 4000 people dying. One person has died in the U.S. from exposure after coming back from Africa, and two others have been sick and treated.

Founded in 2010, Chinese smartphone OEM Xiaomi has seen a meteoric rise to become the world's 4th largest smartphone maker by volume and with it, has come exponential growth in revenue and profits.

Thanks to new documents, it appears that Xiaomi's net profit almost doubled from 2012 to 2013 and is likely to see similar gains in 2014. The documents show an 84 percent rise in profit to 3.46 billion yuan ($566 million) in 2013, with a 75 percent rise expected for 2014.

Xiaomi sells cheap smartphones with high-end specs, including the incredibly popular Mi4 flagship which starts at 1,999 yuan ($330 USD). Currently, the company only sells devices in China, but has promised expansion in the future.

The company has built up a loyal following thanks to its social media and forum strategy in which the company almost always responds to all requests. Even the company's operating system has been tweaked based on fan feedback. By having loyal fans, marketing has been cheap and has kept costs down. According to the documents, sales and marketing expensives were a measly 876 million yuan, or just 3.2 percent of its overall revenue.

Google's smarthome hardware maker Nest has announced the first step in its new sales strategy to get free smart thermostats to everyone.

Irish citizens can now get a free Nest when they sign up for a two-year utility contract with Electric Ireland. The Nest normally costs $250, so the deal is pretty decent especially if you were going to sign a utilities contract, anyways.

Most utilities customers pay month to month so the deal also works out for the utilities companies.

While Ireland and its 1.6 million households is a small start, but Nest is looking to "bring it out to hopefully many more countries. This is a seminal event in Ireland [that] we think is going to change the world."

The smart thermostat learns user's heating and cooling preferences over time and also allows you to control the heat via Web-connected devices.

Dell has introduced their new Venue 11 Pro 7000 tablet, the first major consumer tablet to feature Intel's new powerful but low-power Core M CPU.

The processor is part of the Broadwell line from Intel, which is said to offer great power efficiency with mainstream performance without the need for internal fans.

Besides the updated internals, the Venue 11 Pro has a similar design to its predecessor and it remains aimed at enterprises.

For those interested, the Venue 11 Pro offers multiple models. 64GB, 128GB or 256GB of SSD internal storage, Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 Pro, and 4GB or 8GB of DDR3 RAM. The tablet also has a model with a TPM chip, necessary for many companies so they can authenticate the hardware. Standard connectivity includes a USB 3.0 port, a micro HDMI port, and Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC.

The updated Venue 11 Pro goes on sale next week, November 11th, for $699.

Source:
Dell

As usual, South Park was hilarious this week and relevant, as the show's creators took on the growing trend of addictive freemium mobile titles.

In the show, Jimmy pushes the new Canadian freemium title with titular characters Terrence and Phillip in which you basically collect coins to help T&P rebuild Canada. Coins (the virtual currency of choice) can of course be purchased for real cash, just like in many popular titles like Clash of Clans, Candy Crush, and many, many more.

The game is built by the Canadian Department of Mobile Gaming and the Prince of Canada goes into "the science behind freemium gaming" which are accurately as follows:

1. Simplicity: A player must be enticed with a simple game loop.
2. Compliments: Make sure you're making the gamer feel special and good about themselves.
3. Fake Currency: Train the players to spend your fake currency.
4. Switcheroo: Offer the customers a way to spend their real money for fake, virtual dollars, so they'll forget they're spending money.
5. Waiting Game: "Make the game about waiting, but make the player pay not to wait."

To not spoil the rest of the show, it is worth watching (if you like South Park already, what are you doing still reading?), and even if you don't it is a fun way to think about the freemium game addiction you might be worried about.

Former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker had some interesting thoughts on current U.S. technology companies, specifically their choices to encrypt.

"The state department has funded some of these tools, such as Tor, which has been used in Arab Spring revolutions or to get past the Chinese firewall, but these crypto wars are mainly being fought between the American government and American companies," said Baker.

Both Apple (with iOS 8) and Android (with Android Lollipop) have begun encrypting their operating systems, making it supposedly nearly impossible for users to be spied on or for police authorities to take data from the devices.

Baker says that encryption was the downfall for BlackBerry (although, I would disagree), as encrypting user data limited its business in countries that require government oversight such as India, Arab Emirates, China and Russia. "Blackberry pioneered the same business model that Google and Apple are doing now - that has not ended well for Blackberry," added Baker. "They restricted their own ability to sell. We have a tendency to think that once the cyberwar is won in the US that that is the end of it - but that is the easiest war to swim."

The team behind Popcorn Time have unveiled beta 5.0 for desktop users, the next step in their "Popcorn Time Revolution."

Recently, EURid took down the team's original domain, effectively wiping official traces of the software off the Web. The software and a new domain was quickly reinstated, and the team says downloads and installs are back up to 25,000 per day.

Says the email we received: "It is impressive, but it's not even close to the numbers we had before EURid removed our domain and basically crashed us... for a moment. EURid tried to take us down but instead of doing so, they just opened our eyes and made us better and wiser.
We built beta 5.0 so that no one will be able to take it down. Popcorn Time from now on will keep on working as usual even if our domain gets removed, and in the future even the necessary data for Popcorn Time will be transferred purely via Peer2Peer (the infrastructure for this is already in the beta 5.0)."

More importantly for users, 5.0 comes with some new features, most notably touch screen support for Windows devices. In addition, there is a "brand new UX/UI with a smooth, slick feeling that just makes you want to watch a movie," and new anime and cartoon sections.

Speaking today at a Web summit in Ireland, music publisher Kobalt shocked by stating that its European artists actually collected more from Spotify than they did from iTunes for the first time ever.

Royalties from the streaming service for the Q1 2014 were actually 13 percent higher than those received from iTunes purchases. In the Q3 2013, that figure was 32 percent higher from iTunes showing how quickly the tides have turned.

"Spotify overtaking iTunes in Europe is an important new milestone in streaming," added Willard Ahdritz, founder and chief executive of Kobalt.

While Kobalt's data may be unique (other larger publishers have not confirmed), the publisher does have 6000 songwriters and artists, including half of the UK's top 10 Billboard songs for this week, giving it some say in the industry as a whole.

Thanks to a new report, we have some details about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S6 flagship, codenamed Project Zero.

It is unclear what size display the new phone will feature, but it is expected to have a QHD (2560x1440) resolution that is quickly becoming standard in the high-end industry.

The camera's sensor has been updated to the IMX240, which is equal to the one seen in the Galaxy Note 4. Samsung has not yet decided on a 16MP or 20MP camera, although the 16MP OIS camera is expected given the only slight upgrades from this year's S5 model.

On the front side, the "selfie" camera is upgraded to a 5MP unit, and under the hood are 32GB, 64GB and 128GB variants, which is also quickly becoming standard. Samsung will use their own Exynos 7420 processor, which is a 64-bit chip with four Cortex-A53 and four Cortex-A57 cores. In addition, the company will use its own LTE modem (Exynos Modem 333), as the company moves to build the entire device in-house.

Another interesting feature is the detail that the Galaxy S6 will use the Broadcom BCM4773 chip, a new SoC that combines GPS and most other sensors (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc) onto a single chip leading to a significant reduction in battery drainage.

Google has announced that its Google Maps service and apps have been updated with new "material design" to fit the style of Android 5.0 Lollipop, bringing some exciting new features with it, as well. The update extends to iOS, as well.

Says Google: "Over the next few days, when you open up Google Maps on your Android or iPhone, you'll be greeted by bright colors and a fresh new design. This new look is all about creating surfaces and shadows that echo the real world; with Google Maps' new material feel, layers and buttons come to life so you know just where to touch to get directions, recommendations and imagery."

One of the best new features is the addition of restaurant reservations directly from Maps. You can reserve using OpenTable (U.S.-only for now) right from apps after searching for the restaurant (or any nearby restaurant).

In addition, you can now get pricing and wait time estimates for Uber (if you have Uber installed) right from within Maps.

For the full changelog, see here.

Microsoft has halted the retail sale of some versions of its still-popular Windows 7 operating system, and of its successor Windows 8.

Specifically, Microsoft is no longer peddling copies of the Home Basic, Home Premium or Ultimate versions of Windows 7 to customers. Windows 8 is also no longer available at retail from Microsoft, as the Redmond-based giant just wants it to go away at this point. Of course, you can still buy Windows 8.1 from Microsoft, which already has a larger market share than Windows 8.

Many retail stores will still have stocks of the older versions of Windows so it is not impossible to buy a genuine copy just yet, and probably won't be for a while. Microsoft is hoping that the 2015 launch of Windows 10 will let it put the Windows 8 fiasco to bed and move on, but it also has to convince Windows 7 users that there is a need to upgrade.

More than half of all Windows users are running a version of Windows 7 presently, while estimates of Windows XP usage still range around 17%, with some commercial customers finding it tricky to move away from the 13 year old OS.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Microsoft ends retail sales of Windows 7 and 8: www.bbc.com

Police have targeted members of a file sharing forum called Boerse, searching 121 apartments in 14 states in Germany.

The raids were announced by the office of the Cologne public prosecutor on Tuesday. They targeted people allegedly sharing music, movies and other products illegally through a portal "boerse.bz."

More than 400 officers were involved in raids of 121 apartments across 14 states. The press release indicates that uploaders profited up to several thousand users per month from their activities.

The raids also turned up plenty of evidence, with computers, hard drives and plenty of optical media seized for further analysis. Some suspects reportedly have already displayed a willingness to cooperate with the investigation.

Press Release (.DE): www.presseportal.de

Microsoft and Dropbox are teaming up to make life a lot easier for users of both of their products on mobile.

Dropbox users will soon be able to edit Office files from the Dropbox mobile apps, while Office app users will be able to access Dropbox directly. Changes to documents will be synced across devices as normal.

The Office app can use Dropbox to sync documents across devices without having to leave the app, or load the Dropbox app.

Office app users will also be able to share Dropbox links from the app, meaning you can finish up editing a document and share a link to it immediately.

The relevant mobile apps will be updated for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets in the coming weeks, while the features will be extended to the Dropbox website and Office Online for Desktop use in 2015.

According to Dropbox, its users already store over 35 billion Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

"That was FANTASTIC! That was the greatest feeling I've ever experienced... and I've watched two of my children be born."

Conan has delivered another one of his "reviews" of a blockbuster video game this week. This time, Conan takes on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and has just a little bit of trouble with it, especially when he has to just cross the street.

The talk show host also has a fascination with Kevin Spacey's look-a-like Jonathan Irons, and how his eyes appear to be "dead".

watching Conan get lead character Jack Mitchell killed over and over again crossing the street makes the entire video though.

Check out another one of Conan's golden Clueless Gamer segments.

Microsoft's next Windows revamp supports the popular Matroska (MKV) container in Media Player, along with immediate support for H.265/HEVC.

The flexibility offered by the MKV multimedia container format has made it popular over the years, particularly with HD content. Typically, on Windows you would need to install a splitter for the container, like Haali Media Splitter, or use a player with built-in support, such as VLC.

With Windows 10, Media Player supports the MKV container out of the box, as confirmed by Gabriel Aul, providing updates on the Windows Insider program on Twitter.

When asked later by another user whether Microsoft will include a codec for H.265/HEVC video streams, Aul confirmed that HEVC is "also supported in-box."

The promise of HEVC is to make it possible to stream and download ultra high resolution video content without having to push up the bitrate to the same degree necessary with other standards.

Windows 10 is set to ship in late in 2015.

The Director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the UK claims that Twitter, Facebook and other tech firms are in denial about the use of their services by extremists, terrorists and criminals.

Just fresh in the new job as head of Britain's signals intelligence body GCHQ, Robert Hannigan wrote an interesting article for the Financial Times in which he describes the difference between how newer extremists like ISIS use social media and modern Internet services to spread messages and recruit.

When al Queda was public enemy number one in the majority of the first decade of the century, intelligence services were aware of its use of the Internet to recruit and to communicate. Back then, extremists hid their web presence in the dark corners of the web out of the limelight.

Contrast that with how ISIS uses social media. Hannigan points out how ISIS extremists openly use services like Twitter to recruit, and use hashtags to spread a message. They even hijack popular hashtags to expose their material to a wider audience, as was seen during the World Cup and as the Ebola crisis has grown.

Hannigan also pointed out that even in some beheading videos, the perpetrators stop the video before the actual beheading in order to conform to rules and guidelines of services.

As you may have noticed, Taylor Swift has had a public break-up with Spotify, prompting sadness from the service and anger from some fans.

Swift, who's "1989" album just sold shy of 1.3 million copies in its first week - a feat not seen since The Eminem Show sold 1.33 million copies in its second week more than 12 years ago - suddenly removed her entire catalog from the the streaming music service this week.

While Swift has not publicly stated a reason for this decision, her past comments on the value of music and art serve as an explanation. In July, Swift wrote an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal, in which she showed considerable distaste for low-royalty streaming services and absolute opposition to the idea of free music.

"In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace," Swift wrote.

"Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It's my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album's price point is."

The last of the original founders of the notorious Pirate Bay BitTorrent site is in custody in Thailand ahead of an expected extradition to Sweden.

36-year old Fredrik Neij was arrested on Monday at the border with Laos reportedly wearing the exact same shirt he is wearing in a wanted poster. He has been a wanted man for several years after fleeing Sweden while out on bail, following a 2009 conviction for copyright infringement offences.

While no extradition deal exists between Sweden and Thailand, officials said they were working with Thai authorities to bring him back to his home country, according to The Local.

Another original founder of the popular share site, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, had also fled to Asia. He failed to attend an appeal hearing in Sweden in 2010, prompting an international arrest warrant being issued. In 2012, he was extradited from Cambodia to Denmark to face unrelated charges of hacking offences, resulting in a conviction and a three and a half year sentence in Denmark.

Peter Sunde was arrested in may in Sweden after he had also been on the run for two years. Carl Lundstroem was also sentenced to a year in prison as a "site financier".

A music video recorded on the International Space Station (ISS) by retired Cdr Chris Hadfield has returned to YouTube, following the resolution of some copyright/legal issues.

It drew a very positive reaction from a global audience when it was uploaded to YouTube last year as Canadian Cdr Chris Hadfield was preparing to return to Earth from orbit after a six month stay on the International Space Station.

In his spare time, Hatfield recorded footage to be used in a music video of David Bowie's iconic Space Oddity. Under an agreement with Bowie and others, the video stayed on YouTube for a year before it had to be removed.

In that time, it received 23,489,187 views on YouTube, and had been reported across the web and replayed on TV all over the globe, pushing its exposure to hundreds of millions of people.

The Internet Archive has opened access to a library containing over 900 arcade games that are playable in-browser, although some may not work quite well just yet.

The games range from the very early days of arcade gaming with simple black and white interfaces, up to later developments in color and featuring digitized voices, images and music.

Dubbed the "Internet Arcade", the library provides research, comparison and entertainment to users.

Be warned though that some games won't work as nicely as others. They are emulated in JSMAME, part of the JSMESS software package, and aren't completely bug-free by any means. Additionally, some aren't really suited to a keyboard / mouse input.

Still, you can have fun shutgunning through them at: archive.org.

BlackBerry has announced a new update for its popular BBM messaging service that includes a few new features that should sit well with users.

The company says the heart of the release is better privacy features.

Here is the full list:

Timed Messages: Set how long contacts have access to messages and pictures shared in a chat*
Message Retraction: 'Retract' a message to remove it from your BBM chat*
A quicker sticker picker: Adding stickers to your BBM chats is now even quicker with a new picker
HD Picture Transfer: It's easier than ever to get a high quality version of the pictures you receive in BBM
Discover Music: See what music your contacts are listening to in BBM Feeds.

With these new features, now is the time to get your friends on BBM to start enjoying the unmatched level of privacy and control.

According to new company data, the average Tinder user is checking their app 11 times per day, an addicting behavior rivaled by Facebook and Instagram.

Additionally, the average users spends 77 minutes per day on the app, which is a ridiculous amount of time given that all you have to do is swipe left or right whenever a matched profile shows up. If you are interested, you swipe right and can then chat with the other user, which is likely where most of the 77 minutes is going, one can assume.

The company also added that it it nearing 50 million users, much higher than other rival dating apps and services.

Source:
NYT

A pair of Internet criminals are currently evading police in Germany as the authorities warn that the two are potentially "armed and dangerous."

The police have begun a manhunt for brothers Kastriot Selimi, 25, and Kreshnik, 22, the alleged founders of popular piracy sites kinox.to and FreakShare. Both are accused of copyright infringement crimes and also of armed robbery, arson, predatory blackmail, extortion and tax evasion of over 1 million euros.

Kreshnik and Kastriot are said to have violently attacked rival file sharing site operators, with "sometimes even a car bursts into flames," said a police statement. Both are considered violent and likely armed.

Besides their scary violent crimes, authorities believe the brothers are the key to shutting down a network of nearly 30 file-sharing sites including streaming sites, torrent sites and cyber lockers.

R.I.P Xbox Entertainment Studios.

On Friday, Microsoft announced 3000 layoffs as part of a large staggered layoff plan first announced over the summer. As part of the layoffs were the remaining staff for Xbox Entertainment Studios, which will now be dissolved.

The studio was supposed to bring original content to the Xbox, but so far in two years there has only been one major completed project. Boss Nancy Tellem and second-in-command Jordan Levin had been desperately trying to save some of the partially completed projects by moving them to a new studio but it appears that most of the licensing rights have reverted back to their writers and creators. Both Tellem and Levin were part of the layoffs.

Tellem spent 15 years working directly below CBS CEO Les Moonves and the hiring was highly regarded when she brought to Microsoft in 2012.

Gottfrid Warg, co-founder of infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, has been sentenced to 42 months in prison for his part in "Denmark's largest ever hacking case."

Warg was convicted of hacking into the mainframe of Denmark's large IT provider CSC and then accessing the police's criminal register in 2012. Prosecutors had claimed that highly sensitive personal data was stolen for months during the campaign.

An accomplice in the crime, an unnamed 21-year old, was also sentenced to six months but was released because he has already spent 17 months in pre-trial detention.

Warg already spent time in prison for copyright theft as owner of The Pirate Bay and was hiding in Cambodia until 2012 when he was arrested and extradited to Sweden to face charges of hacking IT consulting firm Logica and the Swedish government.

Source:
Reuters

Google wants to enhance the ebook reading experience for books that are not traditionally read front to back, like textbooks and cookbooks.

The company has updated their Google Play Books app, adding a new "Skim Mode" that will allow you to easily "skim" and slide between the pages of the book, in a zoomed out setting so you can easily see what the page shows and slide ahead hundreds of pages without effort.

In addition, the tablet of contents has been improved (if your book supports it), so you can see a detailed blurb of each chapter right from the TOC.

Perhaps equally as handy is the addition of a "timeline" and bookmarks to the bottom of the page. The timeline shows you what page you were on so you can easily jump back if necessary, and the bookmarks will allow you switch easily back and forth between pages or chapters you previously bookmarked.

Android users should be getting the update as we speak while iOS owners will have to wait a couple of more week.

Earlier this year, PC gamers were elated to hear that developer Rockstar's blockbuster Grand Theft Auto 5 would finally be headed to PC, after months of being available for Xbox 360 and PS3.

Sadly, publisher Take Two recently confirmed that the game would be delayed until at least January, 2015 for PC, disappointed eager fans in the process.

During a recent shareholder's conference call, Take Two's CEO Strauss Zelnick explained the reason behind the delay, basically saying it needs more time to be perfected. "When we move a title, it's almost always the same answer, which is giving a title a bit more development time to make sure that it can be everything that it ought to be. And while we would prefer never to change a release date, it's proven to be a good move for us in general. We have the highest Metacritic ratings in the business, and that correlates with revenue and ultimately, of course, profitability," said Zelnick.

Rockstar Games does indeed have a long history of putting out games that are free of significant bugs, even if it means they have had to delay the launch.

In 2011, Samsung and Microsoft signed a licensing deal in which the South Korean giant agreed to collaborate on new Windows Phone products for a discount on the amount it would have to pay Microsoft for Android phone sales.

Last year, with Samsung selling over 300 million devices, those royalties topped $1 billion but allegedly Samsung was late with the payment and Microsoft sued them asking for about $7 million in interest.

Samsung has now filed with the court claiming that the licensing deal should be null and void due to Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia, which in their words makes the company a "direct hardware competitor." In the deal, Samsung had agreed to share confidential business info with Microsoft that it clearly cannot do anymore given that Microsoft is in the smartphone business for themselves. If they continue to share secrets, there could be a violation of U.S. antitrust laws, Samsung added. "[T]he agreements, now between competitors, invite charges of collusion," Samsung concluded.

Microsoft has said their case is strong, and they expect to win in court. The company collects patent royalties from over 75 percent of Android manufacturers, and those figures are usually higher than what they make in Windows Phone sales.

Earlier this week, Sony named a new boss for its struggling mobile division, hoping fresh leadership can help turnaround their fortunes.

SVP Hiroki Totoki has been named the new head of the division, replacing Kunimasa Suzuki. Totoki formely led the company's financial division (Sony Bank) and also its Japanese ISP So-net. Suzuki will move over to become EVP of Sony Entertainment.

"In light of the global mobile market that is rapidly becoming competitive and difficult, we need to make our business profitable," said Sony of the move. "Chief Executive Officer Kazuo Hirai judged Mr. Totoki, who has a proven track of record in turning the business profitable, is the most suited for the job."

Sony Mobile has been a "core" focus of the company's rebuilding efforts, as have their financial and video game divisions.

The company is expected to lose at least $1.65 billion for this year, marking nearly half a decade of full year fiscal losses.

Every month, NetMarketshare releases their Web browser market share data and there is always something interesting to gain from the figures.

For October, a few notable milestones occurred. Internet Explorer, as it has been since the 1990s, stayed on top holding on to a large 58.49 percent share. Google's Chrome continued its slow and steady ascent, now up to 21.25 percent share and good for second place. Firefox, which has been losing followers daily for over two years, fell once again, with share now down below 14 percent for the first time since 2010.

Firefox's fall is notable as the market is quickly becoming a two-horse race. Chrome has always been the fastest and safest of the brand name browsers and it appears as more and more people buy Android devices, Chrome and its syncing ability is becoming more popular. Firefox on the other hand, has been losing fans ever since they decided to move away from large annual updates to nightly and more regular background updates, just like Chrome. The change was confusing, and Mozilla has not been great with advertising new or exciting features. Most of the time, it seems like the devs are playing catchup with Chrome or Safari.

Speaking of Safari, Apple's browser continued to be stagnant (at 5% share) as Mac sales are relatively stagnant, as well.

HP has introduced a new all-in-one touchscreen PC this week dubbed the Sprout that features a strange new projector/3D scanner and a 20-inch mat that allows you to turn your desk into a tablet.

The company says the Sprout is their first "Blended Reality" device in an "effort to streamline the interface between real and virtual objects."

As a PC by itself, the device is powerful. Base models, which sell for $1900, run on a 3.2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU with 8GB RAM, a NVIDIA GeForce GT 745A graphics card with 2GB RAM, a 1TB HDD/SSD hybrid drive, and connectivity includes an SD/SDHC/SDXC card reader, an HDMI port, and a pair of USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports. The display is a 1080p 23-inch LCD screen.

While those are standard mid to high-end specs, the reason you are getting the PC is for the projector. The projector faces downward and projects a touch-sensitive keyboard onto the mat which allows for typing and gestures. In addition, the "HP Illuminator" also acts as a scanner and allows you to move "documents or objects in front of the computer, scan them with the Sprout's 14.6-megapixel and depth-sensing Intel RealSense cameras, and then use the multitouch mat to move those scanned objects around and resize them," reads Wired's review.

The upcoming MB Chronowing, the smartwatch designed by designer Michael Bastian and tech giant HP, is easily the nicest looking watch to date but it will lack in many of the features seen in the Apple Watch or Android Wear.

MB Chronowings will not have a touchscreen, no mic, and no way to track your heart rate or steps but it will give you notifications of your texts, emails and notifications from a multitude of apps.

Says Bastian of the new watch: "How many times have you been in a lunch and someone keeps checking their phone?" The new watch is "intended to make you more polite." It does work with both iOS and Android and Bastian jokes that it has a "clock dial on the face, because that's the thing you're going to use 99% of the time."

The actual display is a monochrome LCD and it can show full messages, your stock portfolio, alarms, calendar events, the weather and more. On the side of the device are physical buttons (what are those?) that can be used to navigate the device, turn on the backlight (like Casio G Shock and other watches) and you can also control your music.

Because of the lack of a full touch color LCD screen, the device has a stated battery life of 7 days, easily beating out the current lineup of watches that last a day.

Amazon has leaked the existence of a few updates to the popular Moto 360 smartwatch today, although the pages were quickly pulled.

It appears that Motorola will begin offering a champagne (gold) color version of the watch, priced at $299 just like its other steel band brothers. The company will interestingly offer the standard 23mm band and a smaller 18mm band, as well.

In addition, the company will offer a "Cognac" new leather band color, which is brown and looks very classy with the silver rimmed Moto 360. Just like the other leather models, Cognac will also cost $249.

For now, the updated bands can only be seen in cached pages but Motorola is likely to officially announce them soon.





Source:
The Verge

Samsung has introduced their new Galaxy A3 and A5 smartphones this week, taking a step away from the large plastic Galaxy S devices and showing off slim, metal devices it hopes can appeal to more people.

The two devices are slim, at just 6.7mm and 6.9mm thin, and include nice perks for avid camera users, including a 5MP "selfie" camera on the front.

Armed with a small 4.5-inch screen (960 x 540 resolution), the A3 has a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, an 8MP rear camera, a microSD slot, LTE support and runs on Android 4.4.4.

The A5 is the higher end device, with a five-inch screen (unclear if 720p or 1080p), 2GB RAM, a 1.2 GHz quad-core processor, a 13-megapixel camera on the back, 16GB internal storage and a microSD slot.

Samsung recently announced its worst quarter in years, as revenue stagnated and the company promised a turn around and more desirable phones.