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Even when Microsoft was focusing on smartphones more than ever Windows Phones were barely staying afloat. After Microsoft discontinued manufacturing both dumb and smart phones this summer it was clear that there is really no future for Windows phones in current form.

Some companies still believe that there is room for a third operating system, and many people agree. Can there still be a successful smartphone with Windows in it? Microsoft seems to believe so, after all, CEO Satya Nadella has recently promised that the company will deliver something unique in the future.

If you want to see what kind of traction a traditional Windows 10 powered smartphone with nothing unique creates then look no further than Moly X1. Moly X1 was featured on the crowd-funding site Indiegogo and the startup behind the concept was looking for $100,000 for its work oriented smartphone.

The campaign was a fiasco, and that's a kind way of putting it. A total of 30 funders managed to gather a total of $2,569, that's under 3 percent of the goal. Only 14 backers wanted to invest the products value, around $180. The rest were struggling to give five dollars for a case or a mere digital booklet.

If you don't count The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents might be the most notorious torrent site around. Or used to be until it was closed by the U.S. officials in July. Well, now the site has come online again.

To be clear, the site was already online before but only hosted forums. Now it is providing links to torrent files again but tells TorrentFreak that it is operating according to the U.S. law and features a valid DMCA takedown procedure.

KickassTorrents' admin Ukranian Artem Vaulin was arrested in Poland and the domain seized in July after Homeland Security and Department of Justice had started an investigation on the world's most popular torrent site at the time.

In August the DOJ indicted three Ukranian individuals, one of which was Mr. Vaulin. The three suspects had been linked to other illegal websites, including Leechmonster.com, Solarmovie, iWatchfilm.com, and Hippomovies.com.

Yahoo released a statement yesterday saying again that its servers have been hacked. This time unauthorized third party was able to collect data from up to one billion user accounts.

In September Yahoo revealed that in 2012 its service was hacked and data from as many as 500 million users had leaked. At that point it was considered the largest hack in history.

Now it was surpassed by another attack that gave hackers access to user data including usernames, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.

According to Yahoo this attack was done in August 2013 and no credit card information was leaked. The company said that credit card information are stored on a different server.

Yahoo is currently in talks with Verizon about its acquisition. One can see Verizon second-guessing that deal especially after this second revealment.

If you have an Xbox One and a Dropbox account, you can now access the content in your cloud storage using the new app for the console.

It's the first universal Windows app for cloud storage on the gaming console, letting you view and share your photos, videos, and other files from the cloud.

With the app you can easily manage your files on an interface designed for TVs, using either a gamepad or media remote. You can upload content from your Xbox One, comment on files and share them.

Media stored in your Dropbox account can also be viewed on your Xbox One, and your video content will stream from Dropbox to the Xbox One to save you storage space on your HDD.

The app can be gotten from the Xbox Store for free.

Have time for one more mysterious show in 2016? Eight episodes of The OA will debut on Netflix this Friday, December 16, and this trailer should whet your appetite.

The show casts Brit Marling (The East) in its leading role, and it being produced by Plan B and Anonymous Content (Mr Robot, The Revenant). Promotional material has kept details intentionally limited, but from the trailer, the story revolves around a young woman (Prairie Johnson) who has been missing for seven years.

She meets her parents in the trailer, and we are informed that this is the first time she has ever seen them, given that she was blind all of her life - a disability that has mysteriously vanished.

The rest of the trailer seems to be dedicated to giving us glimpses of her memories, some of which may be dream sequences going by the Instagram account for The OA.

Eight hour long episodes of The OA will be available on Netflix from Friday. Will you binge watch it?

Sony has reduced the Uncharted 4 PS4 Slim bundle price to $249, and now you can also get an additional $25 gift card on top.

The offer is from GameStop and is valid in the United States. Once you purchase the Uncharted 4 PS4 Slim bundle for $249, GameStop will e-mail you a $25 digital gift card in addition. You can see the details of the offer from the GameStop web store.

The bundle includes a new slim 500GB PlayStation 4 console with a matching DualShock 4 controller, and a physical copy of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

It is being sold by retailers in the United States at the cut price of $249 and will be until December 24. Of course, the free gift card only comes with an order from GameStop.

Microsoft has also cut $50 off the price of Xbox One S bundles in the United States.

(via: Gamespot)

Internet Service Providers are arguing in court against the mandated blocking of the Pirate Bay and similar websites, warning about the dangers of censorship and its implications.

The ISPs in question are Sweden's Bredbandsbolaget and Telenor. Both have made their case to an appeals court in the country as rights holders argue that ISPs should be mandated to block websites like the Pirate Bay, otherwise they are complicit in copyright infringement activities of their subscribers.

A district court already disagreed with the rights holders, which reportedly include Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry. That decision is now being appealed and has forced the ISPs to warn the court of the chilling implications of such mandatory blocking.

"It is a dangerous path to go down, which forces Internet providers to monitor and evaluate content on the Internet and block websites with illegal content in order to avoid becoming accomplices," the companies write in a joint statement.

"The copyright holders argue that the blockades they request are similar to those in neighboring Nordic countries. But with the legislation we have in Sweden, it means rightsholders' demands require a form of censorship that has no equivalent in any other EU country."

You can get an Xbox One S bundle at the moment for $50 less thanks to a holiday season offer from Microsoft.

The offer is valid from now until Saturday, December 24, at all participating retailers in the United States. With the offer, you could pick up the Xbox One S Battlefield 1 Bundle for $249, which includes a 500GB HDD, a full download of Battlefield 1 and a month of EA Access.

Alternatively you could get the Xbox One S Minecraft Favorites Bundle for the same price, which also features a 500GB HDD, full game download of Minecraft for Xbox One and Windows 10, and 13 community-favorite content packs.

If you anticipate the need for more storage space, you can get the Xbox One S Gears of War 4 Bundle which packs a 1TB HDD and a full game download of Gears of War 4 for Xbox One and Windows 10, for $299.

Participating outlets include Amazon, Target, GameStop, Best Buy, Walmart.com and Microsoft Store.

Tesla Motors has reached a settlement deal with 126 customers who claimed the E.V. manufacturer's marketing for the Model S P85D was misleading.

All 126 customers are from Norway, a top market for fully electric vehicles due to government subsidies aimed at boosting fully electric transportation in the country. The American car maker was sued by the customers who claim that the marketing for the Model S P85D was misleading because it overestimated the horsepower.

Tesla has denied that its marketing material was misleading, but it has come to a settlement with the customers.

According to Norwegian paper, Dagens Naeringsliv (DN), Tesla has agreed to pay 65,000 Norwegian crowns ($7,700) to each of the dissatisfied customers, or alternatively they can choose from some car upgrade options.

The settlement amounts to roughly half of what they sought in their lawsuit. Proceedings were due to begin on Monday, but lawyers for the firm and its customers informed the Oslo District Court that they wished to withdraw the case.

The Model S P85D was first introduced in late 2014, but is no longer among the Model S lineup available from the company in Norway.


Source: Reuters News Agency

The first episodes of Amazon's super expensive 'The Grand Tour' are the most pirated TV show episodes ever, according to an industry analyst.

The Amazon Video exclusive, starring Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, has an astonishing £160 million budget as Amazon looks to lure subscribers to its Prime service. So far the show has been well received and generated many millions of viewers.

However, it has broken another record for viewers that might not prompt much celebration from Amazon, as is reportedly the most pirated show ever. It dethroned HBO's 'Game of Thrones' rather quickly, according to industry analyst Muso, which tracks piracy affecting digitally distributed content.

Muso's numbers show that the pilot episode of The Grand Tour was downloaded illegally more than 7.9 million times. The second episode followed with 6.4 million illegal downloads, and the third at 4.6 million. Pirates in the United Kingdom are responsible for the largest chunk of downloads, at about 13.7 percent.

Given that Amazon was hoping to use the show to bump subscribers in the UK, where the three former Top Gear presenters are very popular. The reboot of BBC's Top Gear after the departure of Clarkson, Hammond and May has been a failure, with Chris Evans already quitting as a host and ratings tanking.

Samsung will make Note7 devices that have not been returned effectively useless with a software update later this month, though Verizon has announced it will opt out of the update.

Having already pushed out an update that limits the charge level to just 60 percent and nags the user about the recall, Samsung is going to go further later this month and disable the charging of a Note7 device entirely. The South Korean firm says that 93% of Note 7s sold in the United States have already been returned as part of its global recall.

"Consumer safety remains our highest priority and we've had overwhelming participation in the U.S. Note7 Refund and Exchange Program so far, with more than 93 percent of all recalled Galaxy Note7 devices returned," reads Samsung's recall page.

"To further increase participation, a software update will be released starting on December 19th that will prevent U.S. Galaxy Note7 devices from charging and will eliminate their ability to work as mobile devices."

"If you have not yet returned your device, you should immediately power it down and contact your carrier to obtain a refund or exchange."

After Samsung revealed the update, Verizon released a statement announcing that it will opt out of the update, pointing out that there are other safety considerations to take into account.

Sony's PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles outsold Microsoft's Xbox One during November, ending a trend that had the Xbox One on top since July.

The report comes from Gamespot, which cites a Sony spokesperson, but does not give a number of units sold. The NPD Group figures for video game sales are not due to be released until next week.

Sony released its slim PS4 revision in September this year, then followed it up with PlayStation VR in October. In November, it released the PlayStation 4 Pro which comes with 4K output. To what degree the newer consoles made up PS4 sales in November is not clear at this point, but November is a good month to get back on top.

Globally the PS4 is far ahead of the Xbox One, having sold more than 50 million units as of this week after around three years on the market. Microsoft's Xbox One sales are estimated between 25-30 million globally.

Source: Gamespot

YouTube is to pay out millions of dollars in unclaimed songwriter royalties for tracks on the service between August 2012, and December 2015.

In an agreement with the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) it will attempt to pay royalties for tracks with unknown owners. While the official figure was not made public, the New York Times puts it at more than $40 million. Publishers need to opt in to claim royalties.

Those who do opt in will be provided with a list and have a window in which to claim ownership of certain tracks. This opt-in period opens next Monday, December 12, and ends on February 28, 2017.

As part of the arrangement with the NMPA, the same process will be repeated over the next three years.

"It is essential that we work with digital services like YouTube... to fix the challenge of incomplete ownership information to ensure royalties are no longer unmatched and music owners are paid accurately by the platforms that rely on their work," said NMPA founder and chief executive David Israelite in a statement.

YouTube recently celebrated paying out over $1 billion in revenue to the music industry in a twelve month period, but the IFPI responded with skepticism and calls for legislation to address the "value gap" in online music consumption.

U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to conduct a full review of cyber attacks and foreign interference in the run up to the Presidential election.

In October, the U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) accused the Russian government of directing the compromise of e-mails belonging to U.S. persons and institutions, with the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) being the most significant breach.

The hacked information made its way to several organizations, including Wikileaks, and then was published for public consumption.

Lisa Monaco, Obama's homeland security adviser, said the President has made it clear he wants the report to be completed and presented before he leaves office on January 20, 2017.

"The president has directed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process ... and to capture lessons learned from that and to report to a range of stakeholders, to include the Congress," Monaco said, reports the Reuters News Agency.

This is not the first time that a Presidential election has been subject to such attacks. In 2008, the campaigns of both then-Senator Barack Obama, and Senator John McCain, were subject to cyber attacks believed to have originated in China.

Sony is once again taking $50 off the price of a PS4 bundle for two weeks this month.

If you missed out on Black Friday deals for a PlayStation 4, then this offer might interest you. Just as it did last December, Sony is offering a $50 discount on a bundle - the Uncharted 4 PS4 Bundle - between December 11 and December 24.

During that period, U.S. customers can get the Bundle for $249.99. In Canada, you can pick up the Uncharted 4 PlayStation 4 Bundle for $329.99 CAD until December 29th.

The Uncharted 4 PS4 bundle includes the slimmer PS4 model with a 500 GB hard drive, a DualShock 4, and the critically acclaimed Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. The new cooperative and solo mode, Uncharted 4: Survival, launches this month.

Sony announced this week that it has sold more than 50 million PS4 consoles since its initial release in 2013. This Black Friday weekend was the best weekend for the "PlayStation brand" in its history, and is the reason why this special offer has been extended to a further two week period this month.