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Less than a month after the company laid off half its staff, it appears that mobile payments company CurrentC could be DOA.

Current beta testers received an email this week titled "An Important Message from CurrentC," noting that the mobile payment system will shut down in its current form on June 28th.

"We will be concluding our beta test and postponing further releases of CurrentC on June 28, 2016," the email said. "Therefore, June 28th will be the last day that transactions will be accepted using CurrentC."

Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), the group behind the system, added that they have "not announced future timelines or plans around the app but we're looking forward to analyzing and learning from the data we gleaned throughout the beta."

There had been high hopes for CurrentC due to its backing by MCX, which included huge retailers like 7-Eleven, Best Buy, CVS Health, Lowe's, Publix, Sears, Target and Walmart but it appears Apple Pay and Android Pay just got too far ahead.

HTC's Vive VR headset is now shipping to 24 countries, and demo headsets will be available in retail locations like GameStop and Microsoft Stores in the coming days.

In total, the demos will be available in 100 retail locations across North America, giving potential buyers a chance to "experience room-scale virtual reality first-hand."

Thanks to Valve's partnership with HTC, there will be a large amount of content available on Stream right from the onset.

"Since beginning preorders at the end of February and shipping in early April, we've seen incredible interest in Vive," said Dan O'Brien, vice president of VR at HTC, in a statement. "Working with our retail partners has only enhanced that momentum because more people are able to try the only truly immersive virtual reality offering on the market today."

The Vive is not cheap. The headset will cost you $800 and will require a higher-end PC, just like the market leading Oculus Rift.

Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi will buy 1500 patents from Microsoft in the coming months, likely a sign that the company wants to finally expand sales outside of Asia.

Xiaomi exploded onto the scene four years ago and quickly become the largest smartphone maker in China, and one of the top smartphone makers on the planet. Since 2014, however, sales have saturated and the company has seen its expenses gradually increase as they acquire patents, invest in R&D, and advertise more.

Along with the patents, Xiaomi also signed a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft, where Xiaomi will preload Microsoft Office and Skype on a number of devices.

"Both Xiaomi and Microsoft respect intellectual-property rights,"said Xiaomi. "We believe that with this kind of collaboration and also our commitment for the long-term investment in IP, we are going to build a very strong patent portfolio."

Japanese carrier SoftBank has announced it will sell about $8 billion worth of its shares in the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

SoftBank says it will use the money to reduce its leverage and pay down debt that it took on when it acquired the failing U.S. carrier Sprint three years ago.

The company owns about 32 percent of Alibaba shares. Alibaba has a current market value of almost $200 billion. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son invested $20 million in 2000 for the stake, making it one of the best bets in history.

SoftBank will sell $2.4 billion of its shares to Alibaba itself, $500 million to a sovereign-wealth fund and the last $5 billion to institutional buyers.

Apple's external display's are somewhat popular among certain professionals but the company hasn't released any new models in ages. Soon, however, we will likely see an upgrade.

What makes this display special, though, is not its amazingly color accurate panel or the super fast Thunderbolt connectivity. No, according to 9to5Mac the new Thunderbolt Display from Apple has an integrated GPU.

That means that the display will feature a full-fledged graphics card to run your Photoshop or Premiere on 5K resolution that your MacBook's GPU might not support.

Of course the upgrade will bring the resolution from QHD resolution in the 2011 model to a 5K resolution (5120x2880). This will bring it on par with the best current iMacs.

The sources have it that the display(s) won't be revealed at this years WWDC in June but it could be that they have been postponed to the fall iPhone event. They are reported to become available this year.

Sony has a huge lead in this generation's console wars but it's far from over yet. There might be another hurdle that could change things up – virtual reality. However, looking at the current situation it seems like Microsoft is behind the curve on this too. Or is it?

Even though PlayStation intends to bring the VR experience to PlayStation as early as this year, Microsoft might not be out of the race as we've thought. According to Ars Technica's source a large European game studio is developing a VR game for both Windows and Xbox.

According to the leaked information this game will, however, not be available before 2017. This reaffirms that Microsoft is, like Sony, developing an improved console, mostly VR experience in mind.

It could be that Microsoft will rival the first official introduction of VR experience to their console at the E3 this year but would have to wait until 2017 to release it to the public. It also remains to be seen if the new Xbox is compatible with Oculus and/or Microsoft's own glasses. However, it does seem that Sony doesn't have this aspect totally in the bag yet.

Samsung has introduced a new super small SSD that might only cover your regular postage stamp but can fit 512 gigabytes of data. This PM971-NVMe chip is sized at one hundredth of a normal 2.5 inch SSD you usually see on laptops.

Laptops are becoming smaller by the year and storage this is one of the key things holding them back. Replacing a standard 2.5 inch drive with a miniscule chip like this not only slims the laptop down but also removes some excess weight. This first of it's kind SSD NVMe chip weighs only one gram – around 60 rice grains.

Obviously Apple is one of the key partners of Samsung – as well as a competitor – and it would be (read: have been) hugely important for Samsung's SSDs to grab a deal with the Cupertino giant for their next super slim MacBook. As Apple Insider notes the companies are closely cooperating in SSD space already.

The next question is obviously going to be if it's fast enough for laptops. And yes, in fact, it is. Read and write speeds are 500 MB/s and 900 MB/s respectively which puts it above most SSD drives that you'd find in computers. The chip is manufactured with Samsung's V-NAND technology that packs sixteen 48-layered 256-gigabit chips, an in-house controller and DRAM into one tiny drive.

Microsoft has announced a price cut on the Xbox One console ahead of next month's E3 event, suggesting the long-rumored "Xbox 1.5" could be on the way.

Every Xbox One bundle now has a $50 discount until June 13th, the start of E3, although there is speculation the price drop will be permanent.

The rumored Xbox 1.5 will be 40 percent lighter than the current model, following the previous generation's model of offering "slim" consoles halfway through the life cycle of the console.

A Finnish woman turned up at Microsoft offices demanding help after a Windows 10 update rendered her computer useless.

Microsoft has come under fire for how aggressively it pushes users of older versions of Windows to upgrade to its shiny new Windows 10 consumer operating system. Some even go as far as to accuse the Redmond-based giant of deception. When users do decide to give in to the constant nagging and upgrade, they would hope for a painless transition but that hasn't always been the case.

In Finland, one lady turned up at Microsoft offices demanding to be helped after a botched attempted update from Windows 7 to Windows 10. According to reports out of Finland, she even threatened to sue the company if she wasn't helped.

Leena Aro's attempted upgrade to Windows 10 resulted in nothing more than a black screen with a spinning circle that never moved on to anything else. After failing to restore her PC to Windows 7, Aro had enough and decided to confront someone at Microsoft. Aro is a photographer and had thousands of images stored on her PC that she was naturally concerned about.

"On Monday, I went to their offices. Surprisingly, they allowed me in, when I threatened to sue them," she said, according to digitoday.fi.

According to Sony, as May 22nd there have been over 40 million PlayStation 4 units sold, making it easily the best-selling console of the current generation.

Sony also says the console is the fastest-selling in PlayStation history, which is certainly an interesting note given how many Sony PS2 and PS3 consoles sold over time.

In addition, 271 million games have been sold for the PS4, including physical copies and digital downloads.

"We are truly grateful for the enormous support from our fans and partners across the globe, which helped us achieve this significant milestone in such a short span of time," said Andrew House, President and Global CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment. "We will strive to deliver even more exciting gaming experiences to our users, further driving the momentum and accelerating the expansion of the PS4 platform and its business this fiscal year by offering an unparalleled line-up of games, bringing our virtual reality system, PlayStation VR, to market and providing ground-breaking features and network services."

Microsoft has announced plans to streamline its smartphone business, trimming more than 1,850 jobs mostly in Finland.

Having completed the purchase of Nokia's handset only a couple of years ago, Microsoft now plans to drastically trim its smartphone business with the loss of around 1,850 jobs worldwide. Approximately 1,350 of these jobs are located in Finland, where Microsoft plans to shut its research and development site in Tampere.

The Redmond-based firm bought Nokia's once-dominant handset unit for $7.2 billion in 2014.

"We are focusing our phone efforts where we have differentiation -- with enterprises that value security, manageability and our Continuum capability, and consumers who value the same," said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft.

"We will continue to innovate across devices and on our cloud services across all mobile platforms."

Microsoft will continue to support its Lumia smartphones and the development of Windows 10 Mobile, but its unclear whether it will develop new phones.

The firm will write down $950 million due to these changes, of which approximately $200 million will relate to severance payments.

Netflix has unveiled a new exclusive pay TV deal that will bring extra Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm content to the streaming giant starting in September.

The company also showed off their summer catalog additions, including some films that they claim are exclusive for streaming services:

Last week we reported that an unknown Chinese company was looking to buy SoftBank's majority share in Finnish gaming giant Supercell, and it appears that that unknown company was actually Tencent.

The talks remain in early stages, but it is clear that Tencent is very interested in the company behind Clash of Clans, Boom Beach and Clash Royale.

Supercell has an estimated value as high as $5.25 billion. According to the reports, Alibaba tried to buy the stake last year, but the two companies could not agree on the price.

Tencent recently flew their president out to meet Supercell's founders, who have ultimate veto authority on any acquisition, but it is reported that the founders (still based in Finland) prefer SoftBank since the carrier has given Supercell complete autonomy.

Despite that hurdle, there are clear synergies for a merger. Tencent owns Riot Games, the maker of "League of Legends," an extremely popular desktop game, and has stakes in Glu Mobile and Pocket Gems, as well.

According to the most recent StatCounter figures, Firefox has surpassed Internet Explorer/Edge in market share for the first time ever, although all three browsers still have nothing on Google's Chrome.

For desktop web traffic, Firefox now has 15.6 percent share compared to Internet Explorer and Edge at a combined 15.5 percent. Chrome remains the big dog at 60.5 percent, with the rest of the traffic (8.4 percent) coming through other browsers but mainly Safari and Opera.

Not all is lost for Microsoft, however, as StatCounter notes that IE/Edge remain well ahead of Firefox in both the U.S. and the UK, two of the world's largest PC markets.

BitTorrent has launched a new live video streaming platform, available via TV, mobile and desktop apps.

The service, dubbed "Live," runs on P2P tech (duh) and will livestream sporting matches, news, music concerts and other interesting content.

BT says the app is free to download and will come with free programming channels but there will be ad-supported and paid channels in the future.

Here is a list of the content available at launch later this month: