Latest news

For a limited time, you can pick up a Wii U (32GB) console with Super Mario 3D World and Nintendoland for a total cost of $250.

The promotion is being run by Target and it is not timed. However, it is only available while stocks last so if you want to take advantage of it then get up off your ass.

In fact, when we say get up off your ass we mean it literally because you cannot get the deal online, you need to visit a brick and mortar Target store and pick up the goods there.

You can use Target's website to find the nearest store and pre-pay for it however, and then go to pick it up.

via: GameSpot

Uber is offering free rides in Sydney as it seeks to make good after the cost of some car rides in Sydney spiked during the hostage siege at a cafe.

As you are likely aware, there is a terrible hostage situation currently underway in Sydney and it is dominating more or less all major media outlets at the moment.

It turns out that after this crisis started, the cost of using Uber drivers to get away from the central business district (CBD) in the city spiked, prompting criticism of the firm which promises typically to cost less than traditional taxi services.

The company found itself accused of exploiting the situation in Sydney for profit. For example, some drivers were quoted prices often more than twice the usual rate to get from the CBD to the airport.

It would appear that the increase in cost was simply down to the increase in demand in the area of the city. The algorithm used to set pricing for the service responded to the gulf between demand and available cars by pushing up the cost. The intention of this cost increase is to draw more Uber drivers into the area.

Uber has responded by refunding customers who were overcharged and by offering free rides out of the CBD to help people to get home safely.

Several major news media organizations have been threatened by a Sony Pictures lawyer and ordered to stop reporting details from e-mails stolen in November.

According to reports, a letter was received by the New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety from Sony attorney David Boies on the matter. The asserts that the stricken studio "does not consent to your possession, review, copying, dissemination, publication, uploading, downloading or making any use" of data leaked from November's massive breach of the entertainment firm.

The group responsible for the attack - Guardians of Peace (GoP) - has released more than a terabyte of stolen data since late-November, including personal information of employees and Hollywood stars. The data also includes hoards of e-mails that clearly were never supposed to be seen by the public.

"Any decisions about whether or how to use any of the information will take into account both the significance of the news and the questions of how the information emerged and who has access to it," said Eileen Murphy, spokeswoman for the New York Times, reports the Reuters news agency.

Following Verizon's sale of its share in Vodafone earlier this year, there had been speculation that the European carrier would be returning to the U.S. The company has now confirmed those plans.

The company has introduced wireless services for its "400 multinational (MNC) customers based in the United States and a further 500 Vodafone MNC customers that are based outside the United States but have a strong US presence."

Here is the full proposition:

-An unrivaled international wireless footprint, with networks in 27 countries (including 16 Vodafone markets with 4G LTE networks) extending to more than 75 countries through partner market relationships

-Proven total communications products and services for enterprise, from telecommunications expense management and security products to cloud services and Vodafone OneNet fixed-mobile converged products and services enabling employees to collaborate and communicate on any device on any network, anywhere

-Ongoing expansion of the world's most advanced IP-VPN global network, with 91 points of presence (PoPs) rising to 212 PoPs by the end of 2015 to span 67 countries

According to a new report, LG is preparing to unveil a new TV with 8K resolution at the upcoming CES event in Las Vegas.

The 55-inch TV has a ridiculous 7,680 x 4,320 pixel resolution and 'over 20 display driver integrated circuits installed. The TV also has 500 nits brightness because "unlike conventional displays that use RGB sub-pixels, LG added a W sub-pixel to increase the brightness."

LG built a prototype last month and was so happy that it decided to airlift it to Vegas for CES, which begins on January 5th.

For any demos, LG will use "3D images generated by an unnamed high-quality Nvidia GPU" as there are currently no video sources with support for 8K. While the TV seems out of this world for the current environment, the sources believe LG will move to add an 8K model to their lineup in 2015. "With the know-how acquired from making the prototype, if LG finds good grounds to commercialize the display for mass production, it will do so. LG has already finished up approving the technological viability of the 55-inch, 8K display, and is now starting preparation to commercialize it to make it a product," reads the report.

Google has made their new Nexus 9 tablet available with LTE, just over a month after the tablet was released (sans cellular data).

Available at the Google Play Store for $599 with 32GB internal storage, the tablet is also available directly through T-Mobile for the same price or for $24.99 per month for two years with $0 down.

The HTC-built Nexus 9 has a 8.9-in. IPS LCD display with a 2048-x-1536 resolution (4:3 aspect ratio) which Google says is part of the company's "new focus on productivity." Under the hood is the crazy powerful Tegra K1 64-bit processor, and 2GB RAM. HTC has added dual front-facing stereo speakers for improved audio playback, and added their own BoomSound audio software enhancements. The 6700 mAh battery should give you 9.5 hours of active use.

Running on the new Android 5.0 Lollipop and all its features, Google has included a "tap to wake" option that was seen in the past on LG's tablets as 'Knock On." You have to tap the screen twice to turn on the display without needing to hit the power button.

Google has confirmed that while the Nexus 5 is on its last legs, it isn't totally dead yet.

The search giant says the year-old device will be available through Google Play and a few remaining retailers throughout the Q1 2015.

While Google is not saying goodnight to the device just yet, it is becoming increasingly hard to find one. The Google Play Store has removed all the additional colors that were available, with the exception of the standard black, which is still available in 16GB and 32GB models but supply goes in and out.

The Nexus 5 recently just received the Android 5.0 Lollipop update, which has been either a blessing or a curse depending on who you ask. Many have seen performance improved after the update, but many others have seen their devices freeze and reboot often and sluggish performance.

Sony Pictures has been forced to stop filming following the massive hack that has paralyzed the company in the past weeks.

Sources claim that glitches from the computer network that was taken down has led the studio to be unable to process payments. Most of the company's computers remain offline or unusable and the rest are experiencing significant technical glitches. Many at Sony Pictures have taken to using pen and paper while their systems are down.

Security experts have estimated the cyber attack will cost Sony nearly $100 million, but it is unclear if those experts took into account an extended freeze on shooting when creating their models.

Hackers got away with potentially 100 teraybytes of data in the breach, including pre-release movies, hundreds of thousands of emails, contracts for its stars and executives, and social security numbers and addresses for nearly 50,000 employees.

Besides the obvious monetary damages, the PR has been a nightmare for Sony. Many emails from executives have gone viral, showing that those with power at Sony Pictures often insulted, belittled or just generally disliked the actors, directors and producers their company was promoting.

Canadians who download and share musically illegally may end up getting notices from their Internet Service Providers due to a new law.

Up until now, Canadian ISPs had a choice of whether to notify a customer that had been identified by IP address for copyright infringement, but in January the system will change and become mandatory as the Copyright Modernization Act will take effect.

The ISP will not hand over personal details of the customer however, just act as an intermediary.

"So essentially a copyright holder will provide Sasktel with notification that an IP address has illegally downloaded some material...and then Sasktel is required to notify the customer with that IP address," said Michelle Englot, director of external communications at SaskTel.

Such communications are intended to deter users from continuing to infringe copyright and lead them to legal, licensed outlets instead.

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare may be the best selling game of 2014, but its sales are down compared to last year's retail sales of Call of Duty: Ghosts.

This represents a third straight year that Call of Duty sales have declined year-over-year in the United States. The data comes from Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson, citing research from the NPD Group.

"This is disappointing data following first week Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare sales showing a year-over-year increase," Olson said, reports GI.biz.

"NPD data does not include digital copies or international sales, which, if included, would lessen the year-over-year decline, but we believe this data suggests potential for Q4 revenue upside is now very low."

Activision's total sales have decreased by 22 percent year-over-year.

Comparing Advanced Warfare's first month to Modern Warfare 3, released in 2011, U.S. sales have declined by 49 percent during the first month of availability on the market.

The IsoHunt team has put the old Pirate Bay search and data back online in a working site for users while the original site remains down.

The Pirate Bay went down on Tuesday as a result of police action in Stockholm, and since then many proxies and mirrors have been mistaken for the official site. OldPirateBay.org is not a resurrection of the official site, but it will be something Pirate Bay users will be happy with.

It is the old Pirate Bay search and the archived data from the notorious BitTorrent site, and on top of that new torrents are appearing in "Recent Torrents" too. It is not intended as a replacement for the Pirate Bay however.

"As you probably know, the beloved Pirate Bay website is gone for now. It'll be missed. It'll be remembered as the pilgrim of freedom and possibilities on the web. It's a symbol of liberty for a generation of Internet users." a note reads on the site.

"It its honor we're making the oldpiratebay.org search. We, the IsoHunt team, copied the database of Pirate Bay in order to save it for generations of users. Nothing will be forgotten. Keep on believing, keep on sharing."

Nintendo has confirmed that its Amiibo line is a huge hit in the U.S.

Amiibo is a set of toys that use NFC to communicate with Nintendo 3DS and Wii U games, allowing characters and other data to be transferred across platforms.

Nintendo says that sales of the toys nearly matched Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, which puts the figure in the 700,000 range.

Additionally, Nintendo reported that their new Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire games also saw 1.5 million combined units sold, leading to one of the best months in quite some time for the Japanese game maker.

Source:
GI.biz

Ford has announced that its new in-car entertainment system, newly updated to version 3, has replaced Microsoft with BlackBerry for the underlying operating system.

Sync 3 uses a variant of BlackBerry's QNX operating system, after the first two versions ran on a variant of Windows.

While Microsoft has often boasted of its in-car system and its partnership with Ford, but QNX offers more modern features. A few examples are capacitive touchscreen support, pinch and zoom gestures, Wi-Fi OTA updates, and support for Siri.

A few of the launch apps that are supported are Spotify, iHeartRadio and NPR One.

Ford said that "hardware and software decisions were based on identifying the technology that would best meet the expectations for performance by our customers."

Twitter co-founder and board member Ev Williams had some choice words for rival social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.

Speaking during a recent interview, Williams said: "It's a question of breadth versus depth. Why is users the only thing we talk about? The crazy thing: Facebook has done an amazing job of establishing that as the metric for Wall Street. No one ever talks about, 'What is a [monthly active user]?' I believe it's the case that if you use Facebook Connect -- if you use an app that you logged into with Facebook Connect -- you're considered a Facebook user whether or not you ever launched the Facebook app or went to Facebook.com. So what does that mean? It's become so abstract to be meaningless. Something you did caused some data in their servers to be recorded for the month. So I think we're on the wrong path.

If you think about the impact Twitter has on the world versus Instagram, it's pretty significant. It's at least apples to oranges. Twitter is what we wanted it to be. It's this realtime information network where everything in the world that happens on Twitter -- important stuff breaks on Twitter and world leaders have conversations on Twitter. If that's happening, I frankly don't give a shit if Instagram has more people looking at pretty pictures."

Google has begun shutting down its operations in Russia, closing out its engineering office and relocating employees.

The search giant says the Russian government has become very restrictive, asking Google to remove over 250 links from its search results in the last six months. As with all tech companies in Russia, data about Russians must stay within the country's borders and it is unclear if Google has been complying.

Despite the shut down, some Google team members will stay around. "We are deeply committed to our Russian users and customers and we have a dedicated team in Russia working to support them," the company added.

With the move, Google has now pulled out of Russia and China and had their services restricted in Spain and other nations.