Latest news

A Member of the UK Parliament and former IP advisor to Prime Minister David Cameron believes that Internet Service Providers and web hosting companies have to shoulder some of the responsibility for leaked Sony movies, following a massive hack.

Speaking to TorrentFreak, Mike Weatherley gave his opinion on spreading blame and responsibility for the leaking of movies including Fury, and Annie, following a devastating attack on Sony Pictures last week. Over 11TB of data was allegedly stolen. Since then, a massive ~26GB dump of data including the personal details of Sony staff, including their names, addresses, social security numbers and more, has appeared online.

The hack coincided with the leak of several Sony Pictures movies, which have been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times through torrent websites and other sources of pirated content.

An FBI investigation is currently under way into the extraordinary breach, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea - aka North Korea - is near the top of the list of suspects, and you can read the reasons why that is the case right here.

The German High Court has decided not to permit the extradition of a man once described as the world's "number two" hacker to the United States to face prosecution.

Turkish national Ercan Findikoğlu, 32 years old, has alleged links to global cybercrime activity that generated millions of dollars in illicit revenue. He has been linked to the 2012/2013 attacks on EnStage and ElectraCard in India, two payment processing companies, and on partner banks including the the Bank of Muscat, Oman, and the National Bank of Ras Al-Khaima (RAKBANK), UAE.

All told, over $45 million was stolen by using cloned payment cards with stolen PIN codes to withdraw cash from ATM machines all over the world, including from some 140 machines in New York. In February 2013, over 36,000 illicit ATM withdrawals were made within a ten hour time frame.

Findikoğlu is also allegedly linked to a failed heist targeting over a million credit card numbers back in 2008, around the time he was described as the world's "number two hacker."

In August, a regional court approved his extradition to the United States, but now the Bundesverfassungsgerich (Federal Constitutional Court of Germany) has overturned the lower court's decision, citing the "extreme length" of the sentence being threatened by U.S. authorities, and the inclusion of a "conspiracy" charge which is incompatible with German laws.

HTC One owners will have a nice start to their Friday, as HTC will be rolling out Android Lollipop OTA update to One (M8) and One (M7).

This brings the latest and best of Android to HTC's flagship owners, whether the flagship was bought in 2013 or 2014. There's one catch: the OTA update will be available only to Google Play Edition phone owners. Others, especially those with operator-locked phones, will receive the update later (or in worst case scenario, never).

M8 GPE Owners! We just received TA from Google!! I am very grateful for all your patience. OTA to start at noon on 12/5 (working to pull in)

— Mo (@moversi) December 5, 2014

A week after hackers took down the networks of Sony Pictures and stole 11 terabytes of data, more personal data has been released today, including the social security numbers of nearly 50,000 past and present employees.

Among those with leaked information were celebrities like Sylvester Stallone, Rebel Wilson and Judd Apatow.

Besides the socials, hackers released much more info, as well. Credit card info, social media accounts, computer passwords, home addresses, salary information and contracts are also available now for all to see. Some of the leaked personal data comes from as far back as 2000. On the corporate side, there were passwords and logins for expensive research and data services such as Bloomberg, ComScore and Lexis Nexis leaked, and even the logins for Sony's Amazon and FedEx accounts.

Sony Pictures truly failed its employees with lax security as the documents were kept without encryption, and in plain text labeled files as obvious as "YouTube login passwords.xlsx," for example.

It is unclear where the destructive malware originated, but a handful of security experts have cited how similar the attack was to 2013 attacks by North Korea against South Korea. In fact, North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un promised "merciless retaliation" if Sony did not ban showings of its new film "The Interview," a comedy in which Seth Rogen and James Franco are sent to interview Un and then kill him. North Korea, for its part, has denied any involvement.

Spotify has gotten into the holiday spirit, discounting their premium package for new customers.

Anyone new to the service can get the Premium subscription for just $0.99 for 3 months, when it then reverts back to the normal $9.99 per month.

A premium account gives you unlimited, ad-free access to the entire Spotify catalog and it also gives you the ability to stream from mobiles and other devices. You can also save songs and playlists for offline listening.

Spotify also offers a free ad-supported service and a cheaper "unlimited" service that gets rid of the ads, but doesn't give you mobile access.

Check out the deal here.

Google's excellent new operating system, Android 5.0, is currently on just 0.1 percent of handsets, meaning nearly nobody has gotten to test it outside of the tech media world.

By comparison, Android 2.2, released in early 2010, is still on 0.5 percent of handsets.

Of course, the numbers make sense given that Android 5.0 Lollipop was released to November 12th, and is still only available for a handful of devices. The Nexus 6, which we reviewed here, is still extremely hard to come by but the figure should pick up when all the carriers announce firm release dates.

Other notable devices that aren't in the Nexus line, like the LG G3 and the Moto X, also have seen limited rollouts of the operating system.

Android 4.4 KitKat remains king, with 33.9 percent share, followed by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean at 21.3 percent and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean at 20.4 percent.

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft have unceremoniously ended their partnership in the Nook digital venture of the bookstore.

Earlier this year, Microsoft invested $300 million for a stake in Nook, and today the deal is over, with Microsoft taking a significant loss and no real gains from the partnership.

Microsoft has sold "all of its $300 million convertible Series A preferred limited liability company interest in exchange for an aggregate purchase price equal to (i) $62,425,006.63 in cash and (ii) 2,737,290 shares of common stock."

With B&N shares currently at around $21, Microsoft will get to leave with $119 million in equity, down quite significantly from their original investment.

Of course, the company's stock could go much higher to offset the loss, but things are not looking good for Nook. YoY quarterly revenues decreased 41.3% from 2013 to just $64 million. Device sales fell 63.7% YoY.

A Los Angeles man has become the first person convicted under California's 'revenge porn' law for posting topless images of an ex-girlfriend to Facebook.

Noe Iniguez tried to hide behind a fake identity when he posted topless pictures of an ex-girlfriend to her employer's Facebook page, and also described her as a "drunk" and a "slut" while he urged the employer to let her go.

He had been the subject of a restraining order issued in November 2011 following their break up. They had been together for four years, and Iniguez had been sending her harassing text messages in the wake of their relationship.

Under the 'revenge porn' law in California, it is illegal to upload unauthorized nude or sexual images of a person with the sole purpose of causing them distress. It was enacted in October 2013.

Noe Iniguez will now go down in history as the first person convicted under the law. The 36 year old was sentenced to a year in prison and three months of probation. Additionally, he must keep away from his ex-girlfriend and attend counselling.

Hawking warns again that Artificial Intelligence could one day destroy humanity, while acknowledging that the early primitive forms of A.I. we currently utilize have been very helpful.

He reiterated his fear of the potential of A.I. to bring about the end of human civilization as we know it in an interview with the BBC. "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," he warned, as a machine spoke for him.

That kind of A.I. - the primitive technology we use today to overcome obstacles - has been very useful to humanity, Hawking will submit, but he fears for the long term as A.I. becomes increasingly more powerful. Could humans lose their grip on intelligent machines one day?

The pessimistic commentators in this debate cite the potential for artificial intelligence to quickly surpass that of a human being, and could eventually lead to intelligence re-making itself in order to become more and more powerful, or that it may experience a form of "technological evolution" at a pace vastly more rapid than the biological evolution that developed human intelligence.

Such super-smart intelligences may find human affairs totally unimportant, and may even see humanity as a hindrance.

Arnold Schwarzenegger returns for the fifth Terminator movie, coming to movie theaters in July, 2015.

The movie also stars Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Jason Clarke as John Connor and Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese. The film is initially set in 2029 with John Connor retaining his position as leader of the resistance, forced to send Kyle Reese back to foil a SkyNet plot against him, and to save his mother's life.

As you'd expect, when Reese travels through time, things aren't quite what he expected to find.

Check out the trailer.

According to attorneys representing consumers in a class action antitrust suit against Apple, the Cupertino giant was deleting songs from iPods that were bought from iTunes' rivals.

Consumers would purchase music from sources other than iTunes - Amazon for example - and then store it on an iPod. Later, when attempting to sync the iPod with iTunes, an error would reportedly occur instructing the user that factory settings must be restored.

If the user went ahead and restored the settings, songs purchased from rival sources would be lost, according to attorney Patrick Coughlin, who made the claim to jurors in the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California.

Furthermore, Coughlin asserted that Apple directed the system not to inform users of the problem, which occurred frequently between 2007 and 2009.

Attempting to explain the actions to the court, Apple security director Augustin Farrugia cited fears of hacking, and said it was a legitimate security measure. He said Apple didn't provide a more detailed explanation because they didn't want to confuse users.

Apple paranoid about iTunes / iPod hacking?

Farrugia even name-dropped "DVD Jon", referring to Jon Lech Johansen who was responsible for the DeCSS decryption tool that made it possible to rip the contents of retail DVDs back in the late '90s. Later, in 2004, Johansen got under Apple's skin with a tool called PlayFair, intended to be a solution for the "FairPlay" digital rights management Apple initially used to protect iTunes songs from piracy.

Complaints about depictions of violence against women has prompted Target Australia to remove copies of Grand Theft Auto V from shelves.

In a press release, Target General Manager of Corporate Affairs Jim Cooper said the decision to pull the critically-acclaimed title from its ~300 stores across Australia stemmed from extensive community and customer concerns over its content.

Ironically, just one day before releasing this statement, Cooper had told Australian press that Target was a "retailer for everyone," and cited feedback from customers wishing for the game to remain in Target stores.

The entire affair is linked to a Change.org petition which claimed that GTA V is a "game that encourages players to murder women for entertainment," and that "games like this are grooming yet another generation of boys to tolerate violence against women."

The petition received over 46,000 signatures. Take-Two has since responded to the decision from Target in a statement from chief executive Strauss Zelnick:

"We are disappointed that an Australian retailer has chosen no longer to sell Grand Theft Auto V--a title that has won extraordinary critical acclaim and has been enjoyed by tens of millions of consumers around the world. Grand Theft Auto V explores mature themes and content similar to those found in many other popular and groundbreaking entertainment properties. Interactive entertainment is today's most compelling art form and shares the same creative freedom as books, television, and movies. I stand behind our products, the people who create them, and the consumers who play them."

According to Google, PSY's 'Gangnam Style' reached a view count so high that it actually broke YouTube's view counter, forcing the company to upgrade its code.

Says the company:

"We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (=2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met PSY. "Gangnam Style" has been viewed so many times we had to upgrade to a 64-bit integer (9,223,372,036,854,775,808)!

Hover over the counter in PSY's video to see a little math magic and stay tuned for bigger and bigger numbers on YouTube."

The new updated storage can support 9 quintillion views, even though that never will never be hit.

Sony is taking advantage of the 20 year anniversary of the launch of the original PlayStation console by launching a special edition PlayStation 4 in the gray colorway of its two-decade old predecessor.

Reads the press release:

20 years is a long time! In 1994, many outsiders thought that Sony was slightly crazy to launch the original PlayStation into an incredibly competitive gaming market. Who could blame them? Sony was (and is!) famous for engineering great electronics, audio equipment and many other consumer devices. But game consoles?!

Sony Computer Entertainment, founded by my mentor Ken Kutaragi, was a project borne out of sincere passion and deep admiration for the craft of game development. The mid '90s were an exciting time for game developers, driven by the explosion of powerful but affordable 3D graphics rendering hardware and the birth of many young and adventurous development studios. The original PlayStation was meant to embody that sense of adventure and discovery, that sense that anything was possible.

We sincerely thank you for joining us on our exciting 20-year journey. You have made every bump and scrape we took along the way worthwhile. And there's so much more to come! :D

2014 is undoubtedly the year of the phablet.

Samsung started the trend years ago with its Galaxy Note, which was an experiment but quickly became one of their top sellers. Apple entered the ring this year with their iPhone 6 Plus, confirming that the "mass market" is finally ready for Apple to offer something without a tiny screen.

Most recently, Google released the Nexus 6, its first technical phablet, and the company's showcase for their latest Android operating system.

Each device offers strong performance, a massive screen, and a large price tag.

Check out the specs and key features of the year's most important phablets: