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Project Maelstrom envisions a web that works the way BitTorrent works, rather than the standard model of centralized services you connect directly to.

BitTorrent Inc. has launched an invite-only alpha as it seeks to bring its vision of a distributed / decentralized web to life. There's no question that P2P technologies like BitTorrent can be very efficient at spreading large files around the web or on a local network (Sync), but can it be relied upon to drive a decentralized web where content can be published and accessed as easily as the world wide web?

That's what BitTorrent is hoping to find out, and you can apply for an invite to the Alpha as a tester, academic/researcher, agency, artists, developer or publisher here.

So why is it necessary to build a web browser to power a decentralized web? BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker provides a variety of good reasons for trying. To start, he argues that such a decentralized web can keep the Internet open, and keep access to the Internet neutral.

The crowdfunding campaign for the open-source Jolla Tablet has come to an end this morning.

Jolla fans were able to take the funding high enough to reach the company's second stretch goal, meaning the Sailfish OS will add split screen support in addition to the microSDHC slot (expandable to 128GB) that was reached with the first stretch goal.

Sadly, the device will not be getting a 3G radio for cellular data, as the campaign needed to hit $2.5 million to "unlock" that reward. The campaign closed at just over $1.8 million.

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 is expected to start shipping the tablet in May. See more of the device via the official page.

SimCity 2000 - the classic city-building PC game, is available for free for a limited time letting you re-live the 90s all over again.

Normally priced at $5.99, the game is free on EA's Origin platform for the time being, as part of EA's "On the House" promo.

Reads the page: "One of the most beloved retro EA games is now available On the House on Origin. Now you can step back in time absolutely free.

This classic title goes way beyond building a city. You'll be laying down districts, assuring everyone has power and water, acting as the mayor, and making sure to keep your citizens happy, healthy, and wealthy. The game's iconic art style will transport you back in time.

Want to play now for free? Just log in to Origin, head to the On the House page, and download SimCity 2000 to your "My Games" library. You'll be able to play it whenever you want."

The game available is the "Special Edition" version, released in 1995 for Windows and DOS gamers.

Source:
EA Origin

One of the original founders of the Pirate Bay hopes that yesterday's raid on the service will bring about its permanent end, saying the site lost its soul.

Peter Sunde was one of the original founders of the BitTorrent site and spent some time in prison recently for his part in bringing about the Internet phenomenon. You would think that given his personal sacrifice (his freedom) he would be devastated to see the site down, but on the contrary he is relieved to think it might be gone forever.

Sunde (aka brokep) explains that he did not like what the Pirate Bay had become in recent years. It "become an institution that people just expected to be there. Noone willing to take the technology further," he wrote.

"The site was ugly, full of bugs, old code and old design. It never changed except for one thing – the ads. More and more ads was filling the site, and somehow when it felt unimaginable to make these ads more distasteful they somehow ended up even worse."

According to Sunde, the original plan for the Pirate Bay was to shut it down on its tenth birthday, but instead the birthday had what he clearly found to be a tacky party in its honour in Stockholm. He references the 2006 raid that brought down the popular BitTorrent site and how people took to the streets to protest, but that now there is no public outcry because the site has no soul anymore, and no cause. According to Sunde, the site has long served its original purpose to push BitTorrent.

You can get a $50 discount off the red, black and blue Nintendo 3DS XL handhelds, but the offer expires this weekend.

Best Buy is selling the red, black and blue 3DS XL models for $150, but the offer will expire on Saturday, December 13 so you may want to snap one up now if you're interested.

The offer is available in Best Buy stores, or alternatively you can take advantage of free shipping if you order one online.

GameSpot also notes that Best Buy is currently running a Buy 2 Get 1 deal on games that will also expire on December 13. The offer applies to any Xbox, PlayStation or PC titles, but it does not apply to Wii U, 3DS or PSVita, nor does it involve pre-orders.

Like the 3DS offer, you can take advantage of it in store or online.


via: GameSpot

You can get a OnePlus One smartphone without an invite for a limited time, and the OnePlus website says they will be delivered before December 25.

It's not clear how long it will be before the offer ends, there is no time limit visible. However, to be on the safe side if you really want one of these you should order it as soon as possible. Previous promotions that allowed consumers to buy one without an invite only lasted for an hour.

The 16GB Silk White model sells for $299 and the 64GB Sandstone Black model sells for $349.

To remind you of some specs, the OnePlus One packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Quad-Core 2.5GHz CPU with integrated Adreno 330 GPU, 3GB LP-DDR3 RAM at 1866MHz, a 13 Megapizel Sony Exmor IMX214 and a 5 Megapixel front facing camera. The 3100 mAh battery will power the device all day long even with plenty of apps in constant use.

The OnePlus One features a 5.5-inch 1080p full HD JDI screen with LTPS technology for a higher pixel density and sharper picture, with Gorilla Glass 3 to protect the screen against scratches.

Order one at: https://oneplus.net/

Lenovo has announced a recall of more than 500,000 power cords sold with IdeaPad products that have been deemed a safety risk.

The defective power cords were sold with IdeaPad computers between February 2011 and June 2012. The recall comes after consume complaints about the power cords overheating, and in cases melting, burning and throwing sparks.

The IdeaPads these defective cords were sold with include products in the B, G, S, U, V an d Z series, and some other Lenovo notebooks potentially were sold with the defective cord.

One quick way to tell if you might have a defective cord is to disconnect the cord from the AC adapter (power brick) and check to see if it has LS-15 stamped into the molding, as shown in the picture.

If so, then go to the Lenovo recall page and verify that you have a defective cord, then apply for a free replacement from Lenovo.

More here: 2014 POWER CORD RECALL (support.lenovo.com)

Sony is running a limited offer for PlayStation Store customers with PayPal that can get you $10 store credit to use later this month.

To qualify, you will need to use PayPal to add $60 to your SEN wallet before Tuesday, December 16. The offer applies to the United States and Canada. You will be sent a code by December 23 to redeem $10 credit to spend in the PlayStation Store. The code will be delivered to users who qualify via XMB message on PS3, system messaging on PS4 or the e-mail account associated with your Sony Entertainment Network account.

There's some things to remember about the promotion. Firstly, it is limited to $10 credit per account, so using PayPal to add $120 to your PS Store wallet will not result $20 credit. Secondly, you will need to add the $60 or more to your SEN wallet or using PayPal through their PS4 or through the web store at store.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com.

SEN wallets can only hold a maximum of $150 USD at a time so a balance at or below $90 USD is required to participate.

And last thing to remember, you must redeem the code by January 22, 2015.

Netflix has been increasing their portfolio of tv shows steadily during the past couple of years. The pace is only going to get higher says the Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos in an interview at a media conference.

Sarandos said that customers will be able to expect as much as 20 premieres a year from Netflix in five years. These premieres would be either brand new Netflix original tv shows or new season premieres. That would mean that in average there would be a new premiere almost every two weeks.

Sarandos also made it clear that it is always in Netflix's interest to increase the availability of its service and new regions will be added in the future.

In addition to increasing its tv show production the streaming giant is launching more original movies to further reduce the dependence on Hollywood studios and their content.

Contrary to reports, the Pirate Bay is not back online and operating out of Costa Rica just one day after a Stockholm raid took the torrent giant down.

The notorious BitTorrent site has been offline since Tuesday afternoon after police action took it offline. Also reportedly down are a number of other sites including EZTV. However, despite the Pirate Bay's history of prompt returns after legal action, it has not come back online just yet.

Reports suggested that the Pirate Bay is not operating out of Costa Rica, specifically using the domain ThePirateBay.cr. These reports are inaccurate however. Sure, when you load the page it looks like the Pirate Bay (although at time of writing it was providing an internal server error), but it is actually a Pirate Bay proxy and relies on the original Pirate Bay site for access to content. In other words, it does nothing.

There are several other proxy and mirror sites of the Pirate Bay that will load a homepage, but these aren't operational, you can't really use them for anything.

Whether or not the Pirate Bay will return remains to be seen. It did recover from a very similar police action in 2006 relatively quickly, so we'll just have to sit back and see if history does repeat itself from time to time.

The decision by two Australian retailers to pull copies of GTA V from shelves has been blasted by Take-Two president Karl Slatoff as an affront to the values of a free society.

GTA V publisher Take-Two had previously expressed disappointed with the decision by Target Australia and KMart Australia to drop the controversial game from their stores across the country in response to a petition that decried the depictions of violence against female characters in the game.

However, at the BMO Capital Markets 2014 Technology & Digital Media Conference, Slatoff was a bit more blunt with his reaction to it, finding it to be incompatible with a free society.

"It's one thing for someone to not want to buy a piece of content, which is completely understandable, and that's really the solution. If you don't like it and it's offensive to you, then you don't buy it," Slatoff reportedly said, reports GI.biz.

"But for a person or a group of people to try to make that decision for millions of people... We have 34 million people who bought Grand Theft Auto, and if these folks had their way, none of those people would be able to buy Grand Theft Auto."

The Chinese love their slim smartphones. The world's thinnest smartphone has been a three horse race between Oppo, Gionee, and Vivo – all of which are from China. Now the latter has introduced the newest king of the hill.

Called Vivo X5Max the slimmest smartphone on the planet is just 4,75 millimeters thin. Regardless of its thinness the phone is packed with almost everything you'd expect from a modern smartphone. It has a 5.5 inch Full HD display, 13 and 5 megapixel cameras, 16 gigs of microSD expandable memory and 2 gigs of RAM.

The phone is powered by the mid range Snapdragon 615 chip that is a quad-core SoC with 64-bit capabilities that can be taken advantage of as soon as the phone gets updated to Android Lollipop.

The battery is "only" 2200 mAh due to the thinness but Vivo has managed to retain the 3.5 mm audio plug unlike its competitor Oppo.

Vivo says that X5Max packs the audio experience you'd expect from its siblings, and even surpasses them. Also the karaoke function gets a mention.

Vivo begins selling the phone in China this Friday for what is just under $500. There is no word on European or US variants.

Comcast has been sued by a mother and daughter for the practice of using home WiFi routers as part of its plan for a nationwide hotspot network.

Under Comcast's plan to create an Xfinity WiFi Hotspot network, newer home WiFi routers of customers will activate a second WiFi signal intended to be used by house guests or by Comcast subscribers who have a mobile device in proximity to the router.

In a lawsuit filed by Toyer Grear and daughter Joycelyn Harris in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Comcast is accused of exploiting their customers for profit, reducing the performance of connection / WiFi network and costing customers more money on their electricity bills.

To be fair, the service can be disabled by customers, but the lawsuit alleges that the provider turns it on without their permission and so forces customers to pay the cost of powering its national hotspot network. It cites research from Speedify that finds that Comcast's secondary Internet channel will cost its national users tens of millions of dollars on their electricity bills.

Tests showed that under heavy use, the secondary channel adds between 30 percent and 40 percent more to a customer's electricity bill than the typical cost of powering the router for home use.

Google has begun sending out e-mails to customers informing them that they may be entitled to a refund for in-app purchases made previously, as part of a settlement with the FTC.

Google reached the settlement with the FTC over the issue of in-app purchases, and how many parents may have been charged for in-app purchases made by their children when they didn't have permission to make them. Any user who made an in-app purchase between March 1, 2011 and November 18. 2014 could be eligible for a refund.

"We understand some parents might have been charged for in-app purchases made by young children who did not have permission to make those purchases," Google writes.

"As a result, we've added tools to help parents avoid unauthorized in-app purchases by their young children. We are also offering refunds in certain cases in line with our agreement with the FTC."

Customers can request a refund request until December 2, 2015.

via: Phandroid

Microsoft unusually instructed users running the Windows 10 Technical Preview to uninstall Microsoft Office products before attempting to install a required patch.

According to Gabriel Aul, users had to uninstall Office before applying a needed patch or else the installer would fail. He made the revelation by Twitter, but then later on encouraged users to try to install the patch without removing the firm's Office software.

"We have a security update going out today, and the installer fails on 9879 if Office is installed. Rather than rolling a new fix (losing several days in the process) we're going to publish it as is." Aul wrote.

"The workaround is painful: uninstall Office, install the hotfix, reinstall Office. Sorry. We're working hard to fix."

Later on he changed his advice and instructed users to try to install the update - identified as KB3022827 - before removing office. "It will work for many, no harm if not."

Many users responding to his tweets said they didn't have a problem installing the patch with Office on the system.

It is usual for Microsoft to recommend that software be uninstalled before a patch is applied, but that's the risk you take if running on a pre-release version of an options system. It may be nice to on the edge of emerging software, but it comes with its own drawbacks and risks.