News written by James Delahunty (March, 2017)

SpaceX has successfully launched a satellite for SES using a Falcon 9 rocket with a previously landed and refurbished booster.

This is the first time that an orbital class rocket booster has been successfully reflown and marks a milestone for SpaceX in its goal to make rockets fully and rapidly reusable. The rocket booster landed on a drone ship last year as part of a previous mission.

One again, same booster landed again on Thursday on a drone ship, but it is unlikely to be flown again. Instead, Musk indicated at the post-launch presser that the booster may be offered as a gift to the cape.

Here is the full Hosted Webcast of the SES-10 mission:

Apple released a small update for iPhone after a fake ransomware attack was reported by users.

The hoax ransomware appeared to lock the iPhone browser until the user paid to have it unlocked. It accused the victim of illegal activity and demanded £100 in the form of an iTunes gift card, providing a designated mobile phone number to send the gift card code to.

However, the Browser was not locked and just wiping its cache would get rid of the annoyance completely. It was a more or less harmless piece of Javascript, but enough of an annoyance that Apple pushed a small update that would prevent its effects.

Ransomware and malware in general is a growing problem with mobile devices, though Apple's iOS devices tend to be viewed as more secure than their Android counterparts. The worst kind of attacks include encrypting sensitive information and demanding a ransom be paid for it to be decrypted.

Such attacks have not just hit home users, but government agencies, school and corporations too.

Responding to new taxi regulations in the country, Uber is halting its services for Danish customers while it negotiates with the government.

Uber claims that more than 300,000 people use its app in Denmark, and that there are more than 2,000 Uber drivers operating in the country. It will have to suspend its services however, due to the introduction of new regulations for taxis.

"For us to operate in Denmark again the proposed regulations need to change. We will continue to work with the government in the hope that they will update their proposed regulations and enable Danes to enjoy the benefits of modern technologies like Uber," the firm said in a statement.

The new regulations will mean all taxis operating in Denmark must have fare meters in the vehicle, and seat sensors.

Uber has come up against multiple regulatory walls around the world as it expands its service. It is typically opposed by traditional taxi drivers and even its own drivers have won judgements against it on their rights as workers.

Samsung unveiled its DeX Station dock for its new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ handsets allowing you to connect your device to a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Mobile devices have long passed a point where the hardware under the hood is more than capable of driving a desktop PC environment and there have been numerous attempts at bringing seamless solutions to the market. Samsung is in the ring with the Samsung DeX service, which turns a Samsung Galaxy S8 or S8+ into a mobile PC.

Using the DeX Station dock, users can connect a 16:9 ratio monitor to their handset via a HDMI cable. A keyboard and mouse can be connected via Bluetooth, RF or USB. Once connected, their mobile phone will switch to Samsung DeX mode, providing an Android-based Desktop interface.

The interface supports the typical keyboard and mouse gestures, such as drag and drop, scrolling and shortcuts, and allows you to efficiently multitask and move applications around in resizeable windows.

Samsung came roaring back in the smartphone market yesterday when it pulled the curtain back on the hotly-anticipated Galaxy S8 handsets.

Having been bruised last year by an unfortunate defect with the Galaxy Note 7 resulting in several fires and a global recall, Samsung needed to hit the right notes with the Galaxy S8. It seems fair to say that the South Korean firm has delivered.

Much of the rumored features of the GS8 and GS8+ models materialized, including a larger curved screen, the lack of a previously ever-present physical Home button and Samsung logo, rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, and the inclusion of the Bixby virtual assistant. The water-resistant and dust-resistant handsets are more aesthetically pretty than the leaked images suggested though.

Visually dominating each device are the curved Super AMOLED displays - 5.8-inch on GS8 and 6.2-inch on the GS8+ - which are brighter than their predecessors and support displaying high dynamic range (HDR) video. The Quad HD+ resolution (2960x1440) displays stretch the aspect ratio compared to the GS7 handsets and accommodate two apps side-by-side.

Replacing the physical Home button is an on-screen icon, which sits atop a pressure sensor and vibration module for control and feedback. Both GS8 handsets pack a 12Megapixel camera on the back with a f/1.7 aperture, very similar to the GS7 handsets, however the cameras produce better photos by snapping additional frames and using the extra data to improve sharpness and contrast of the resulting image.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to examine a copyright infringement case against Vimeo brought by music firms, dating back to 2009.

Vimeo was sued in 2009 by Vivendi SA's Capitol Records and units of Sony Corp, for copyright infringement related to 199 videos hosted by the service. The music firms alleged that Vimeo was hosting content that included songs from famous artists like the Beach Boys, without appropriate permission.

In 2013, a federal court dismissed the claims against most of the music videos, citing a protective clause of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which exempts providers from liability as long as it can be demonstrated that they handle copyright infringement notices.

The court did not dismiss claims relating to pre-1972 recordings, finding that since the U.S. Congress included recordings in the scope of federal copyright law that year, pre-1972 recordings are instead protected by state law.

The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals examined the initial ruling, and last year found that the DMCA applies in claims made both under federal and state law, in a win for Vimeo, prompting the record labels to reach out to the highest court in the land.

Owners of Sony PlayStation 4 Pro consoles will now be able to play videos in 4K resolution thanks to an update to the Media Player app.

Previously, you could play 4K video from YouTube, Netflix or Hulu on a PS4 Pro device, but not your own personal videos shot in 4K on your phone, or 4K files you retrieve online.

An update to the Media Player app will enable the PS4 Pro to play videos in 4K resolution saved on a USB stick or streaming from a Home Server. The video must be packaged in the MP4 media container format, and not in the popular matroska (MKV) format, unfortunately.

For those who own PlayStation VR as well as a PS4 Pro, Media Player will also update to support playback of 4K VR video content. PS VR's display resolution is 1920 X RGB X 1080, so 4K VR videos will be displayed in a higher image quality compared to HD VR videos.

Following the nightmare release and recall of millions of Galaxy Note 7 handsets, Samsung is planning to sell refurbished models in some locations.

The South Korean firm already carried out an internal investigation into overheating and fires with multiple Galaxy Note 7 handsets after the device launched. Now that it is confident it has identified the problem, Samsung is detailing its plans for the millions of devices that have been sent back by customers.

It has revealed that devices shall be considered to be used as refurbished phones or rental phones where applicable. Previous reports suggested that Samsung is thinking of the Vietnamese and Indian markets in a possible resale plan, but it really depends on the firm's consultation with national regulatory bodies.

As for devices that will not be resold, Samsung intends to salvage whatever it can as part of the recycling process and in as environmentally friendly a manner as possible.

Galaxy Note 7 components such as semiconductors and camera modules shall be detached by companies specializing in such services and used for test sample production purposes. Samsung will also attempt to retrieve precious metals from the devices such as copper, nickel, gold and silver by utilizing eco-friendly companies specializing in such processes.

Nintendo has decided to launch Super Mario Run a little earlier than expected for Android devices.

Super Mario Run has been available for iOS since December. It is Nintendo's first game made available for mobile platforms and enjoyed a huge launch on iOS, with over $50 million in revenue in a month.

You can download Super Mario Run from Google Play for free and play the first three stages. At that point, you will need to pay up $10 to unlock the rest.

The first version available on Android is v2.0, so will likely include the updates since the initial release on iOS. It requires Android 4.2 and above.

You can get it now from Google Play.

A number of PlayStation 4 owners are reporting that the PS4 version 4.50 update has disabled WiFi on their consoles.

The first complaints about the issue were posted to the PlayStation forums after the update was pushed out to users. In the couple of weeks since the update, the same thread has amassed more than 250 comments.

Engadget also reported that one affected console owned by a staff member had the same issue, with the console reporting the NW-31297-2 error code, but that reconfiguring the console's WiFi settings will not fix the issue.

Sony is aware of the problem and is reportedly looking for a solution, but some users on the PlayStation forums have already resorted to purchasing WiFi extenders with Ethernet ports to get around the issue.

PS4 version 4.50 brought several useful new features, including support for external USB 3.0 hard drives and Boost Mode for legacy games on the PS4 Pro model.

The details of Internet users alleged to have shared films including London Has Fallen, and Mechanic: Resurrection, have to be handed over by an ISP.

The decision came from Sweden's relatively new Patent and Market Court, and it obliges Telia to identify 5,300 subscribers that are alleged to have downloaded and shared blockbuster films. Those allegations come from Guardaley, which has a business model of tracking alleged pirates and being part of legal efforts to gain settlements from them.

"There is probable cause of infringement of copyright in the films in that they were made unlawfully made available to the public via file sharing networks," the Court wrote in its judgement.

"The applicants' interest in having access to the information outweighs any opposing interests, including the interest of the individual [subscribers] to remain anonymous."

Telia says that it values the privacy of its customers but it is legally obliged to comply with the court's order.

Read more at TorrentFreak

A federal judge has rejected a proposed settlement in a class-action lawsuit against Google over the scanning of e-mails.

Google serves ads to users of its Gmail service based on the contents of their e-mails, which has prompted questions from privacy and rights activists for years. However, while Gmail users may agree to agree to such usage of their data by Google, those who don't use Gmail clearly have not.

That is the at the core of the class action lawsuit against Google that it is seeking to settle. Plaintiffs argue that Google's scanning of e-mails sent by non-Gmail users to Gmail users violates the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act and California Invasion of Privacy Act.

Google presented a proposed settlement but it has been rejected by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California. It provided for up to $2.2 million in fees and expenses for the plaintiffs lawyers, but none for the plaintiffs. Judge Koh questioned whether the settlement would ensure Google's compliance with the law in the future.

Koh also found proposed disclosure notices to be inadequate, comparing to a similar accord with Yahoo that requires more disclosures.

"In sum, based on the parties' current filings, the court cannot conclude that the settlement is fundamentally fair, adequate, and reasonable," Koh wrote, reports Reuters.

Google Play Music now lets users select what quality level they would like to hear from the service while using WiFi.

Previously, quality adjustments were only offered when using mobile data. From now however, users can now select between low, normal, high and always high while on Wi-Fi connections and for downloaded tracks, though Google does not specify what bitrate each setting corresponds with.

With Spotify, quality can range from 96kbps at the low end, to 320kbps at the high end, though Spotify seems to be preparing the launch of Spotify Hi-Fi which will offer users lossless quality audio for an extra monthly fee.

Tidal already provides subscribers with lossless CD-quality audio.

Quality settings allow users to control their data usage and avoid going over ISP restrictions and incurring extra fees as a result.

Get Google Play Music for Andorid from Google Play.

Get Google Play Music for iOS from iTunes.

Music streaming service Spotify may delay the availability of certain new albums to its millions of users who listen for free.

Spotify is currently in contract renewal negotiations with three major record firms - Universal, Sony and Warner - and the Financial Times reports that Spotify has had to put forth delayed album availability for free users as a compromise position.

While most of its users listen for free, Spotify has still enjoyed tremendous growth in recent years, just recently passing 50 million paying premium subscribers globally. Naturally, the revenue that trickles through to record labels and rights holders from paying users is much higher than those who use Spotify's free, limited and ad-supported service.

Securing licensing contracts with major labels is obviously crucial for Spotify to remain on top of the music streaming business, but it is still fighting a battle to reach profitability, and has already pushed back plans for an IPO to 2018.

Still, Spotify has continued to grow its paying user base rapidly even after Apple threw its hat in the streaming business, and has fended off other services including Google Play Music and Tidal.

Chrome 57 will place further limits on CPU usage of background tabs in the browser to save energy and prolong battery life.

Chrome 57 will delay timers to limit average CPU load to 1% of a core if an application uses too much CPU in background. Tabs playing audio or maintaining real-time connections like WebSockets or WebRTC won't be affected.

Google claims that his throttling mechanism leads to 25% fewer busy background tabs. Hopefully this will have a noticeable effect on background battery life for laptop / chromebook users in particular.

The long term goal is to suspend background tabs entirely rely on new APIs for service workers to do work in the background.

Any step toward making the web browser more efficient will be welcomed by users, as browsers can be a drain on hardware resources and of course, the battery life.

PlayStation 4 titles will soon be available to play on PC through Sony's PlayStation Now service.

PlayStation Now currently lets users stream over 400 PS3 titles to the PlayStation 4 console, or to a Windows PC, and soon Sony will finally add PS4 titles to the service.

All of the games in the service, including PS4 games, will be included with a single PS Now subscription.

Sony didn't provide details on which titles will be initially available and when the PS4 expansion is available to all subscribers, but it will be sending out invites to some current PS Now subscribers to join a private test with PS4 games.

As with the PS3 games currently available, PS4 titles will also use cloud save so you can switch between the PS4 and PC platforms and keep your progress.

Game streaming options are likely to become more popular in the coming years. Microsoft recently announced Xbox Game Pass, which would let users stream 100 Xbox One games with a flat fee every month.

After a decade of support Microsoft is preparing to abandon Windows Vista, meaning no new updates will be available after April 10, 2017.

Lucky for Microsoft, the installed based of Windows Vista is far smaller than that of Windows XP when it reached the end of its cycle. Approximately 1% of Desktop users are still using Windows Vista, considered to be one of Microsoft's least desirable consumer Desktop operating systems.

"Microsoft has provided support for Windows Vista for the past 10 years, but the time has come for us, along with our hardware and software partners, to invest our resources towards more recent technologies so that we can continue to deliver great new experiences," reads a Microsoft page about the end of Vista support.

Ideally, Microsoft would hope that users will update their computer to Windows 10, though it has reminded users that some hardware changes may be necessary for the upgrade.

Moving to Windows Vista's successor, Windows 7, will buy another few years of the support, with the comparably more successful OS due to reach the end of support in January 2020.

via: Softpedia

Microsoft's Playable Ads will let Windows 10 users try out an app before downloading it and installing it onto their devices.

The user can click / tap a promo ad and a full version of the app will stream to their device for three minutes, letting them test it out fully without downloading and installing it. It is convenient for the end user as you don't have to install something before testing it, and useful for the developer because it will reduce the number of disinterested users who will leave an app unused or just uninstall it shortly after downloading it.

Since the new Playable Ads are inline expandable ads, the user will not leave the current app context after ad click. Users can abandon the app stream at any point of time.

Developers don't really have to do anything to participate, as Microsoft does all the background work. No need for new packages or anything.

The feature is currently being tested as part of a limited preview.

Sony is releasing the PS4 4.50 update which will bring some nice new features to PS4 consoles.

It was no secret that Sony was bringing support for USB 3.0 external hard disk drives to the console (min capacity of 256GB, max capacity of 8TB). With the update, users can set their external drive as storage for games and apps and can easily transfer data from the internal hard drive to the external drive.

The update also brings Boost Mode to the PS4 Pro which can improve the performance of legacy titles that have not been have not been patched to take advantage of the PS4 Pro's faster CPU and its faster and double-sized GPU. This can provide a noticeable frame rate boost to some games with variable frame rates, and can provide frame rate stability for games that are programmed to run at 30 Hz or 60 Hz.

Boost Mode can also result in shorter load times, but it is not guaranteed to work on all games. You can enable it in Settings, under System.

Other improvements include GIF support, custom wallpaper, voice chat for Remote Play, improvements to resolution under PS VR and more.

Below is a video detailing the update.

The Premier League has secured a court order which will allow it to have access to servers streaming football matches blocked in the UK.

The main target is IPTV sources for football match streams that can be viewed through software like Kodi. Streaming live football is nothing new, but has increased in popularity in recent years with the rise of the so called "Kodi box".

A Kodi box is typically an Android-based set top box that has the Kodi media center software installed.

Kodi itself has nothing to do with piracy and its development team strongly objects to the use of its brand when such devices are marketed as providing access to pirate streams. Many of these so called "fully loaded" boxes don't just include Kodi and add-ons, but come with other Android apps like Mobdro which provide access to a lot of live TV channels, including premium sports channels.

Since the software supports third-party add-ons it has become popular for piracy add ons that provide access to streams of all kinds of material, including live television content.

Some add-ons focus on Sports, maybe even exclusively on football, and the Premier League intends to try to block servers that stream football matches. On the individual side, it is not clear if streaming infringing content in the UK is illegal at all, whereas downloading pirated content certainly is an offence. That uncertainly is not likely to last long with the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) describing streaming as a "piracy epidemic".

In time, WebAssembly will deliver significant improvements for in-browser high performance apps, such as video games, CAD or complex interactive visualizations.

WebAssembly allows web apps to achieve near-native performance in the browser without the need to install any additional third party extensions or plugins. Modern web apps are a long way away from the simple Javascript code of a more primitive web; they are large, complex applications.

If programmed to run natively under the host operating system, they would certainly run much better than running in the browser. WebAssembly is the answer put forward for this problem.

Unlike Javascript, all the code a programmer writes is parsed and compiled ahead of time before reaching the browser. The browser then just sees low-level, machine-ready instructions it can quickly validate, optimize, and run.

Programs written in languages like C/C++ can be ported to the web so they run with near-native performance with WebAssembly, using accompanying tools.

A case against a man who was accused of multiple offences for aiding users to bypass government / ISP blockades and censorship has been thrown out.

It stems back to the arrest of a 20 year old man in the UK in 2014 by the City of London Police. The man had been linked to Immunicity, a censorship circumvention tool that routed traffic to blocked websites and services through uncensored proxies, and thus side-stepping ISP-level blocks.

Almost two years later, the young man was charged with one count of converting and/or transferring criminal property and six counts of possession of an article for use in fraud.

The man was also reportedly linked to Piratereverse.info, which at one point operated as a torrent proxy service.

After three dismissal hearings, the case has finally been dismissed by the Nottingham Crown Court and will not be appealed by PIPCU.

The dismissal is related to conflicting evidence that the prosecution presented in court, documented very well by TorrentFreak, an invaluable source for news of this type. They also got comments from the young man at the center of the case.

Read it at: TorrentFreak.com

Nintendo of America has won a key case against the distributor of modchips and circumvention tools for the Nintendo 3DS handheld console.

A federal court in Canada ruled in favor of Nintendo of America in a case against Go Cyber Shopping Ltd. involving the sale of flash carts that can enable the circumvention of anti-piracy measure and boot counterfeit games. Nintendo even went as far as to accuse the GCS founder of boasting about his activities on social media.

CGS maintained that such flash carts and other devices can be used to boot homebrew code, which could be games or apps that are written by enthusiasts. Those apps couldn't otherwise run on the device unmodified, but there is also a legal route to develop games for the 3DS.

The court awarded Nintendo $12.76 million (CAD) against Go Cyber Shopping Ltd., including $1 million in punitive damages. This is the first case of its kind to test anti-circumvention provisions in Canadian law.

"Nintendo continues to be a leader in bringing innovative gaming platforms and software to our fans and millions of gamers across the globe," said Devon Pritchard, Nintendo of America's General Counsel and Senior Vice President of Business Affairs.

A man who admitted selling set-top boxes to pubs and clubs in the UK complete with IPTV software to watch subscription TV has been ordered to pay £250,000.

The 65 year old man from Hartlepool admitted selling the devices to the businesses to enable them to display subscription TV content for free through IPTV. Often described as "Kodi boxes", such devices have nothing at all to do with the development of Kodi, a legitimate media center solution that runs on multiple platforms.

It is the ability of Kodi to install and use third party add-ons that enable piracy, but these add-ons also have nothing to do with the Kodi development project.

Typically, devices that are sold as "fully loaded" are Android-based devices that come with Kodi and a bunch of third party add-ons, or piracy-enabling Android apps, pre-installed. They promise access to thousands of movies, tv shows and live television content.

In this case, the boxes were advertised as "100% legal". Technically, an Android box is as legal as a new Windows laptop, but if they are sold with piracy-enabling add-ons then the seller may be in breach of the law, depending on location.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket launch provider has released an animation showing how its two-stage New Glenn rocket will launch, land and deploy a payload.

The animation comes after Bezos showed off the first BE-4 rocket engine to be fabricated and also announced that the launch provider had secured its first New Glenn customer, French media and communications firm Eutelsat.

The animation shows the two stage version of the New Glenn vehicle (there is also a three stage vehicle on the board) that will fly sometime around 2020, and will be capable of delivering roughly ~45 tons to low-earth orbit, or ~13 tons to geostationary orbit.

BE-4 Engine

The Danish Data Protection Agency has received a complaint about the retention of user's personal data.

A consumer watchdog in the country sent the complaint to the data regulator for possible violation of privacy rules in the country. At issue is the amount of time that Google retains personal data on users, such as searches or location data.

"The consumer council Taenk would like the Data Protection Agency to assess whether Google's indefinite data collection complies with consumer's basic right to privacy," the watchdog stated, reports the Reuters News Agency.

"We have become aware of the fact that Google today has 9-10 years of data on users with a Google account."

Google has run into similar problems in other European countries, including agreeing to specify a time frame for data to be deleted and to explain how data on users is utilized by the firm, after an Italian regulator scrutinized its practices.

Some gamers with a new Nintendo Switch are complaining about annoying dead or stuck pixels on the device's LCD screen.

Nintendo has responded that the dead or stuck pixels are a characteristic of LCD screens and shouldn't be considered a product defect. Yet, users are complaining that on a portable gaming device, stuck/dead pixels are a considerable distraction.

Similar problems have arose with the launch of other portable consoles, including the Nintendo DS, which eventually prompted Nintendo to replace defective units.

CE products with LCD screens are often returned when found to have dead or stuck pixels, including phones and tablet PCs.

Nintendo customers who have dead or stuck pixels should try to return the device to the retailer and seek a replacement.

Tesla is looking for submissions of fan-made ads for its cars as part of a contest suggested in a letter from a 10 year old fan.

10 year old Bria Loveday had written a letter for Elon Musk suggesting that the company should run a contest for users to create their own commercials for Tesla vehicles. Musk responded on Twitter that it was a great idea and promised they would do it, and now they have.

Project Loveday is seeking videos that relate to Tesla, SolarCity, their products, or their mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Videos must be 90 seconds or less in length. Contestants should upload their videos to YouTube and then submit them to the contest at the Tesla website.

Submissions will be accepted by Tesla until May 8 this year.

Don't expect a free car though if you win, rather it appears this is more an opportunity to show off your work. The top ten submissions will be featured on Tesla's social media channels, and three of those will receive additional promotion. The outright winner of the contest will be introduced at a future Tesla product launch, with Tesla paying for the travel and accommodation costs for two people.

Read more at: www.tesla.com

It has been reported that Uber used a secret program called Greyball to thwart efforts by regulators or authorities to catch its drivers.

Uber is no stranger to conflict with regulators and local authorities. When it expanded its service to new cities, it was inevitably going to face issues with traditional taxi drivers, unions and local laws and regulations that government transport and employment.

In order to protect its drivers and service from local regulators and authorities, Uber reportedly used a secretive program called Greyball, which would identify regulators or local authorities posing as ordinary passengers.

In order to identify a "threat" correctly, Greyball would mull location data and even credit card data in an attempt to link an individual to a law enforcement agency or a government or regulatory building. According to the NYT report which broke the story, Uber even visited cell phone stores to trace devices purchased by regulators and others who were suspected of setting up multiple accounts, and even served fake Uber apps that showed fake nearby cabs and would automatically cancel real bookings that got through.

If you haven't been to see Logan yet then chances are you haven't seen the lengthy Deadpool 2 teaser that runs before it. Well, now you can!

Ryan Reynolds shared the teaser this morning and it's more or less what you'd expect from Deadpool; ridiculous, funny, partial nudity (male.. sorry!) and profanity. Stan Lee also makes a very brief cameo.

Upon witnessing an ongoing mugging, Wade Wilson runs to a nearby phone booth to change into his superhero costume, while the theme from Superman movies plays. Unfortunately for the victim, Wade takes quite a long time to change and doesn't manage to save the day!

Have a look around the set for the visual gags too! Unfortunately, the teaser only informs us that the sequel is coming, "Not Soon Enough!"

Enjoy!

iFixit has once again documented a teardown of a popular new consumer electronics product; this time the Nintendo Switch, a Joy-Con controller and the Dock.

The Switch looks more or less what you'd expect to see, much like the inside of a laptop with a familiar looking heat pipe, thermal paste and so on. What is interesting is the metal plate which lays on top of the components appears to double as a heat sink, which channels heat from the heat pipe (though a purple blob of thermal paste) to the rear case (pictured).

We also see the non-replaceable 16 Wh battery (Nintendo plans to establish a paid replacement program in time), the customized NVIDIA Tegra SOC, 4GB of RAM (2 X Samsung K4F6E304HB-MGCH 2 GB LPDDR4 DRAM) and more.

Visit the detailed iFixit Nintendo Switch teardown to see more (including xray shots), and to learn to what extent the Switch was built with repairing in mind.

Also, watch the accompanied video below.

A leading skin manufacturer for popular consumer electronics has warned customers not to apply any kind of vinyl skin / wrap to the Nintendo Switch console, or Joy-Cons (Switch controllers).

dbrand noticed a problem when it was testing prototypes with the console and its controllers. The coating of the devices doesn't play well with adhesive and drand observed that the coating would begin to peel off after testing a couple of prototypes.

This issue affects retail units being sold to customers.

"Both the JoyCons and the Console are not compatible with vinyl wraps or any adhesive-backed skin of any kind," dbrand warns in a post on the Nintendo Switch subreddit.

Those who already ordered skins for the Nintendo Switch from dbrand will receive a full refund over the coming days.

A High Court ruling against Uber in the UK could cost the firm some of its drivers in London.

Uber has roughly 30,000 drivers operating in London, which has caused no shortage of tension between the firm and the traditional black cab drivers in London.

In October, Uber lost another case when a tribunal ruled that it had to provide two of its drivers with at least minimum wage and also holiday pay.

This time Uber was fighting against proposals from public body Transport for London (TfL) which wants to enforce a standard for English reading and writing skills for drivers that the company believes is too high.

High Court Judge John Mitting ruled that TfL is entitled to require private hire drivers demonstrate English language compliance.

"Writing an essay has nothing to do with communicating with passengers or getting them safely from A to B," Uber's General Manager in London Tom Elvidge said, reports the Reuters News Agency.

"We intend to appeal this unfair and disproportionate new rule."

The value of a Bitcoin unit has surpassed the value of an ounce of gold for the first time since the cryptocurrency appeared in 2009.

At time of writing, Bitcoin is valued at roughly $1,270 (coindesk) whereas a gram of gold is valued at roughly $1,230. It marks an interesting milestone for Bitcoin, which has had a volatile existence in its young life.

After collapsing in value in 2014, Bitcoin has been surging again lately due to its popularity in China, where the authorities are trying to crack down on its use, claiming that the crytocurrency is used to move money out of the country illegally.

It has also been scrutinized in the Western world because it is the currency of choice for black market trade online.

Windows 10 users who are annoyed by the operating system's updates and reboots will soon have more control over when updates are installed.

Disruptive reboots due to Windows 10 update installations have prompted complaints from users since the OS was released less than two years ago. As it stands, some updates cannot be deferred and will install automatically, and often require that the system reboots.

As part of the Creators Update project, Windows 10 users will soon be able to schedule the installation of updates at a specified time, or to hit the "snooze" button to pause updates for up to three days. This should make reboots less disruptive but could come at a security cost.

John Cable, director of program management at Microsoft, also said that the firm is exploring changes to privacy settings in Windows 10, which has been another issue for users since its release.

Read more at blogs.windows.com

More than 50 million Spotify users now pay for its Premium music, podcast and video streaming services.

The Stockholm-based firm announced that it has reached 50 million paid subscribers through social media, after crossing 40 million just in September 2016.

When Apple launched its own subscription service, there were fears about the future of Spotify, but almost two years on it seems that Apple has done little to slow the service's growth.

Apple Music reached 20 million paid subscribers in December last year.

It appears that ExtraTorrent has lost its primary domain name, Extratorrent.cc, but is still accessible through backups.

The domain name seems to have been disconnected by the registrar, Internet BS, according to a report coming from TorrentFreak, an excellent source for news about developments in the online copyright and piracy wars.

ExtraTorrent is a huge source for torrents online, second probably only to the notorious Pirate Bay in terms of visitors.

A WHOIS probe of ExtraTorrent.cc returns a status of "clienthold," typically associated with legal disputes, non-payment or domain deletion.

TorrentFreak notes that the site is still accessible through various backups, such as Extra.to.

Chevrolet has become the first automaker to offer an unlimited data plan to owners of its vehicles.

In partnership with AT&T, owners of Chevrolet vehicles with an in-vehicle OnStar 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot can avail of an unlimited prepaid data plan for only $20 per month, starting Friday, March 3.

According to Chevrolet, drivers of its vehicles used more than 4 million gigabytes of data in 2016, which was twice as much as the previous year. To put this data usage in perspective, Chevrolet owners and their passengers streamed the equivalent of more than 17.5 million hours of video in 2016.

Since June 2014, Chevrolet has sold more than 3.1 million OnStar 4G LTE-connected vehicles, meaning it has more LTE-connected cars on the road than any other carmaker.

"We're pleased to deliver this special unlimited data plan to Chevy owners," said Chris Penrose, president, IoT Solutions, AT&T.

"Accessing the internet through AT&T's 4G LTE Wi-Fi, passengers now can access all of their content and enjoy endless entertainment on the go."

For more information, see OnStar.com

Google has bumped the size limit for attachments Gmail users can receive to 50MB from 25MB.

From today, users will be able to receive e-mails with attachments up to 50MB in size, but will still only be able to send e-mails with a 25MB limit on attachments.

The change is useful for attachments coming in from non-Google sources, but currently users experience no attachment limits (outside of storage limits) if they use Google Drive.

Full roll-out of the Gmail change will be completed within the next three days.

Oculus has announced that the all-in price of Rift and Touch has been cut to $598 as it aims to lure more gamers to its VR system.

The new $598 price point is down from $798 previously. If you already have Rift, Touch is now only $99, and the price of an additional Oculus Sensor is now $59.

Additionally, Oculus announced that Robo Recall, the brand-new VR shooter from Epic Games is now available for free with Touch.

Oculus aims to bring the cost of entry to Rift as much as it can, and has been working with hardware partners to offer Oculus-ready machines.

HTC's VR unit Vive said in a statement later in the day that it would not match the price cut being offered by rival Oculus, according to Reuters.

Spotify is preparing to offer high quality lossless audio to subscribers for $20 per month, according to reports.

Along with competitors like Apple Music, Spotify delivers lossy audio to subscribers, whereas a selling point of Tidal was that it streamed lossless audio with noticeable results for listeners.

Some Spotify users that participated in a recent closed survey were asked if they'd consider spending an extra $5 for lossless audio quality, and some users also reported being offered "Spotify Hi-Fi" for $20 per month in-app.

The privilege of lossless audio would add $7.50 on top of the Premium fee.

Would you consider paying an extra fee for lossless audio?

Samsung's hotly anticipated Galaxy S8 smartphone will be unveiled at the end of the month, but we can already see what it looks like.

Leaked by Evan Blass (@evleaks), a press shot of the Samsung Galaxy S8 shows its curved, edge-to-edge display that has been detailed in previous leaks, and you also immediately notice the absence of the Home button.

The image just shows the lock screen of the Galaxy S8, but do take notice of the mention of the date Wed, March 29, which is when Samsung says it will officially unveil the SG8.

Other noticeable details are an additional key on the left, which is expected to be a shortcut key to launch Bixby, Samsung's assistant. There is also an Iris Scanner sensor on the front, and an indentation at the bottom seems to be from a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Surely more details will flood out in leaks before March 29.

The new Xbox Game Pass grants access to over 100 Xbox One and backwards-compatible Xbox 360 titles for a cost of $9.99 per month.

It includes titles from publishers such as 2K, 505 Games, BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment, Capcom, Codemasters, Deep Silver, Focus Home Interactive, SEGA, SNK CORPORATION, THQ Nordic GmbH, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Microsoft Studios.

Fan favorite games like Halo 5: Guardians, Payday 2, NBA 2K16 and SoulCalibur II will be included when the service launches this spring.

The 100 titles available will change monthly, with some new titles cycling in and out. Subscribers will be able to purchase game titles permanently at a discount if they choose to. All titles can be downloaded directly to the Xbox One HDD and so you won't need to rely on streaming.

Microsoft will be testing Xbox Game Pass with select members of the Xbox Insider Program in the Alpha Preview ring starting today with a very limited number of titles.

For more information, see www.xbox.com/game-pass

YouTube has unveiled its own live TV service carrying major U.S. broadcast networks, regional sports networks and some cable networks.

Major networks including ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and ESPN are part of the new YouTube TV service, which promises to break customers away from commitments and viewing limitations associated with subscription TV services.

The servicer also offers dozens of additional cable channels like MSNBC, Fox News, FX, USA, E!, Bravo, the Disney Channel, Sprout and more.

YouTube TV costs $35 per month, but you can choose to cancel it at any time rather than committing to a long contract.

A cloud DVR service can also be used to record programming and store it for nine months. You can watch YouTube TV on any screen, whether mobile, tablet or computer, and you can easily stream to your TV with a Google Chromecast or Chromecast built-in TV.

YouTube TV membership also provides access to YouTube Red original content.

Every YouTube TV membership comes with six accounts, each with its own unique recommendations and personal DVR with no storage limits. You can watch up to three concurrent streams at a time.

For more information see tv.youtube.com