Latest news

Sony has announced three new PS4 bundles for the EU market, each including Uncharted 4 and a 1TB HDD.

The first bundle includes the critically acclaimed titles Driveclub and The Last of Us: Remastered. The second is aimed more at kids and family and includes a 1TB PS4, Uncharted 4, Driveclub and Ratchet & Clank.

Finally, and what I assume will be the most popular of the bundles, "combines adventure, gothic horror and sci-fi exploration with our bundle that offers a 1TB PlayStation, Uncharted 4, Bloodborne Game of the Year Edition and No Man's Sky." That bundle also comes with an in-ear headset.

Apple has announced it will begin selling LG displays for their power users, including 4K and 5K models.

The company discontinued its Thunderbolt Display earlier this year, effectively leaving the external monitor business. Apple will now partner with LG and co-market the displays, giving it a stamp of approval for use with Mac products.

Apple will have retail exclusivity for the two UltraFine displays, at least to start. The 21.5-inch 4K model is available for $700, and the 27-inch 5K model will go on sale in December for $1,300. Both will work with the newly announced MacBook Pros, using a single USB-C cable for power, data and video.

Just a few months after bookseller Barnes & Noble shut down their own Nook App Store, the company appears to be readying a new device that has access to the Google Play Store.

The new Nook has just passed through the FCC and is codename "Nook Tablet 7," and the FCC posting makes it clear that the new tab will run Android including access to the Google Play Store, allowing for the download of a billion apps.

Apple has raised the price of their entire Mac line in the UK, citing the falling value of the pound following the surprise Brexit vote this summer.

For example, the 2015 edition 13-inch Macbook Air is now £949, up from £849 last week, despite not being updated. More significantly, the older model MacBook Pros w/ Retina all saw increases of £300, despite Apple launching new models to replace them and the Mac Pro, which was last updated in 2013, saw a price increase of £500, from £2,499 to £2,999, an outrageous figure for the old computer.

Says Apple: "Apple suggests product prices internationally on the basis of several factors, including currency exchange rates, local import laws, business practices, taxes, and the cost of doing business. These factors vary from region to region and over time, such that international prices are not always comparable to US suggested retail prices."

A London employment tribunal has ruled that Uber drivers will be classified as employees rather than self-employed in England and Wales, thus entitling them to holiday pay, a national minimum wage, and paid breaks.

Uber says it will appeal the decision that could affect 40,000 drivers. In all nations where it operates, Uber considers its drivers as self-employed contractors rather than employees.

The GMB Union brought the case claiming that "the notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common 'platform' is to our mind faintly ridiculous."

For now, the decision only affects two drivers, James Farrar and Yaseen Aslam, who successfully argued that Uber controlled their actions, and they should have basic workers' rights.

Mozilla, the non-profit organization behind the popular Firefox browser, has announced the start of "Project Quantum," an effort to accelerate browsing speeds using Firefox.

"We are striving for performance gains from Quantum that will be so noticeable that your entire web experience will feel different," said David Bryant, Mozilla's head of platform engineering. "Pages will load faster, and scrolling will be silky smooth. Animations and interactive apps will respond instantly, and be able to handle more intensive content while holding consistent frame rates. And the content most important to you will automatically get the highest priority, focusing processing power where you need it the most."

Quantum will use Firefox's current Gecko engine as its base, but will also take features of the company's experimental Servo browser engine. The first updates will launch in the first half of 2017, adds Bryant, who also says Android devices will see better performance and lower power consumption, a win-win for battery-life-conscious consumers. "We do think Project Quantum will be especially significant on mobile, as for example best use of available hardware can have considerable potential benefits for battery life," Bryant added.

Thanks to sluggish sales of the flagship G5 smartphone, LG Mobile had its worse loss ever, a loss so bad it destroyed the company's overall profits.

The division took a loss of $389.4 million for the Q3 2016, its worst quarter since the Great Recession. The division has not been profitable since the Q4 2014.

Overall profits for LG fell 61 percent due to the mobile division, to $252.7 million.

Is it time for LG to step out of the mobile business? Motorola, HTC, Sony and BlackBerry all learned that hard way that there are really just a few players that can compete.

Apple unveiled this week the next generation MacBook Pro. As you might imagine it is more smaller, thinner, lighter and more powerful than ever before. It also has one completely new feature, the Touch Bar.

Apple celebrated the 25th anniversary of their first notebook by releasing a new MacBook. The new MacBook Pro comes in 13-inch and 15-inch variants with lots of customizability as expected. One thing that separates the cheapest 13-inch version from the other is that there is no Touch Bar in it.

But what is Touch Bar? The Apple's new groundbreaking feature is a touch screen above the updated keyboard with new flatter butterfly mechanism keys. The Touch Bar replaces the old function keys – which are still available on the Touch Bar by pressing the function button – and shows different functionality depending on the application and even inside the applications.

For example, in Safari the Touch Bar can show bookmarks, open tabs or quick links to most used features. In Mail app the Touch Bar shows for example CC suggestions or autocomplete depending what you are doing. The software developers can obviously use Touch Bar in their own way to make the application more intuitive.

Sony streaming IPTV service, PlayStation Vue, is now available on Android TV.

The service will be available on all devices that use the Android TV platform, including smart TVs and set-top boxes.

PlayStation Vue offers 55 to 100 channels for $30 to $75 per month.

With the new announcement, PlayStation Vue is now available on the PlayStation 3 and 4, iOS, Android, Android TV, Roku, Fire TV and Chromecast.

Nintendo CEO Tatsumi Kimishima has teased that there is a lot more to come with the Switch console, suggesting that the tablet and Joy-Con controllers are part of something much larger.

"By no means was that everything," Kimishima said about their unveiling event from last week. "It may be appropriate to call them accessories. Or it might be better to call them add-on hardware. It's probably more correct to call them accessories. You can assume that there will be a wider array."

It will be interesting to see what the company has in store, and we should know everything on January 13th during their special event. "What we haven't shown you yet is the software lineup," added Kimishima. "When we make new hardware, how it works with our software is critical. This is what we weren't able to show. We want people to touch the device in January and experience the software for themselves."

Sony has announced two officially licensed pro controllers coming for the PS4 this year; the Razer Raiju and Nacon Revolution.

Says Sony: "To give our competitive and pro players more choice, we invited Razer and Nacon to use their knowledge and expertise in developing eSports peripherals to design two unique pro controllers for PS4.

Through close collaboration we've been able to help optimize each controller for PS4 – incorporating innovative Dualshock 4 controls and ensuring gamers can enjoy a plug & play experience with any model of PS4."

The Raiju:

Twitter has pulled the chord on Vine today, shutting down the popular video clip sharing service.

Reads the company's press release:

"Since 2013, millions of people have turned to Vine to laugh at loops and see creativity unfold. Today, we are sharing the news that in the coming months we'll be discontinuing the mobile app.

Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today. We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way. You'll be able to access and download your Vines. We'll be keeping the website online because we think it's important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website.

Thank you. Thank you. To all the creators out there -- thank you for taking a chance on this app back in the day. To the many team members over the years who made this what it was -- thank you for your contributions. And of course, thank you to all of those who came to watch and laugh every day.

What's next? We'll be working closely with creators to make sure your questions are answered and will work hard to do this the right way. We'll be sharing more details on this blog and our Twitter account, and will notify you through the app when we start to change things."

Samsung has announced that operating profit fell 30 percent in the most recent quarter to 5.2 trillion won ($4.6 billion), its lowest profit since 2014.

The dip is thanks to the recall and subsequent discontinuation of the Galaxy Note7 after hundreds of the devices literally exploded thanks to faulty batteries.

Samsung said the company would now focus on "expanding sales of new flagship products... as well as regaining consumers' confidence," before the launch of the Galaxy S8 early next year.

Over 7 million of the Note7 have been recalled, with millions more still out there.

Thanks to new component analysis from IHS, we can now estimate what it costs Google to build their new Pixel XL smartphone.

The firm says the XL with 32GB of internal storage has a total materials and manufacturing build of $285.75. The phone has a retail price of $769, suggesting a gross margin of $483.25 per unit.

Of course, IHS does not take into account R&D and other costs but no matter what, Google is making significant numbers for every Pixel sold. Indeed, according to teardowns of the latest Apple products, the gross margins by Google are even higher.

"Google is getting the same pricing for the same components as other tier one manufacturers of phones," said Andrew Rassweiler, senior director of cost benchmarking for IHS Markit. "They have as much pull as any of the big guys." That may be true in certain respects, but it is highly unlikely that Google can get the same pricing as Apple, a company that sells over 120 million units per year. Google has never released Nexus data, but it has been suggested that they have sold less than 50 million total Nexus devices since launch in 2009.

Most of Google's XL costs come from the 5.5-inch AMOLED QHD display at $58 per unit and the Snapdragon SoC at $50.

Daily deals site Groupon has acquired its one-time rival LivingSocial for an amount it called "not material," suggesting the company paid very little for the company that was once worth a billion.

Investors were not happy with the move, however, as the company's stock fell 19 percent following the news.

"We are happy to have them join us on our mission to build a daily habit in local commerce," Groupon CEO Rich Williams said. The company will take on LivingSocial's 200 employees.

In 2010, at its peak, LivingSocial had a valuation of somewhere between $500 million and $1 billion and Amazon even invested $175 million in the company. However, by 2012, Amazon had written down its entire investment and stopped marketing for the company.

Groupon says the deal will bring 1 million customers over and could bring $15 million in additional revenue per quarter.