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Screening Room, a new startup backed by Sean Parker, wants to offer rentals of movies day and date when they hit theaters.

The company also promises completely secure anti-piracy technology for the releases, although there has yet to be a truly "uncrackable" protection for movies and streaming media.

Sources say Screening Room will charge $150 for the proprietary set-top box to play the movies, and then $50 for the 48-hour rental. Anyone who rents will also get two free tickets to the film at any theater of their choosing, helping to make the price more reasonable.

Parker and other reps for the company have been meeting with all the major studios and exhibitors for months, and there is a feeling that AMC could be ready to make a deal. The exhibitor could make as much as 20% of the revenue while the studios make an additional 20%. Of the majors, Universal, Fox and Sony are said to have shown sincere interest in the program.

For now, talks are in the early stages, but we may be on the verge of a true home theater experience.

Apple has today sent invites for its unusually important March event. Apple is expected to unveil a new iPhone as well as a smaller version of iPad Pro.

Like last year Apple is looking to announce new products in three different events, first of which is in less than two weeks on March 21. New products are expected as well from the WWDC and September iPhone event.

The March Special Event will be more influential than previously as Apple's new products are expected to include both a new iPhone and an iPad.

The four inch iPhone has been rumored for quite a while and it seems that it will be released under the moniker iPhone SE. It's a revamp of the older iPhone 5 and 5s models but includes Apple Pay with Touch ID and NFC, and a newer and faster A9 chip.

Apple's new iPad will likely be a 9.7 inch version of the Pro model which comes with a smaller Smart Keyboard. In addition to the iPad and the iPhone, Apple is teasing new Apple Watch straps with the slogan "let us loop you in."

Blockbuster mobile gaming developer Supercell has announced their financial results for 2015, and the company made an astounding amount of profit.

On just three games - Clash of Clans, Boom Beach and Hay Day, the company had profits of $964 million, on revenue of $2.326 billion.

The company only has 180 employees but is now one of the most profitable companies in the video game industry.

Supercell just released a new game, Clash Royale, which is already the top game for Android and iOS suggesting there are some more profits to go around for 2016.

In total, Supercell has 100 million daily active users.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is working on a plan to subsidize broadband prices for low-income families, giving households $9.25 per month towards the cost of high-speed Internet.

The government agency says that 95 percent of households with income over $150,000 have high-speed broadband at home while only 48 percent of those making less than $25,000 can afford such services.

FCC head Tom Wheeler says the plan will go to a vote on March 31st, and it is expected to be approved.

"When we talk about digital equity, we need to remember that we're talking a key part of the answer to many of our nation's greatest challenges -- issues like income inequality, job creation, economic growth, U.S. competitiveness," said Wheeler.

The broadband subsidy will be part of the greater 'Lifeline' plan that has been around for decades and now gives $2 billion in subsidies annually to low-income families to afford landlines and mobile phones. As with most government programs, however, Lifeline has been plagued by fraud and abuse and had to be completely remodeled last year.

Months after its launch, Android Marshmallow is finally getting wider availability.

The Sony Xperia Z5 group is getting the update to Android 6.0 starting this week, and some consumers in Japan, Thailand and Russia have already received it.

Both carrier and unlocked editions are seeing the OTA update.

In addition to all the standard Android 6.0 features, the Z5 update will have a Sony-fied version of the battery-saving Doze feature.

In celebrating their early release of Android N, Google has also dropped the price of the Pixel C Android tablet.

The tablet will be 25 percent cheaper with a special discount code, and that code is good for the 32GB and 64GB variants.

Google is the only seller of the Pixel C, meaning you aren't going to get it any cheaper elsewhere (except maybe on eBay or other second-hand stores) and the specs of the Pixel C (which will run Android N out of the gate if you want to test it) are pretty spectacular.

The tablet has a 10.2-inch LTPS LCD at 2560 x 1800, 500 nit brightness, is powered by an NVIDIA Tegra X1 and a 256 core Maxwell GPU and 3GB RAM. If you use tablet cameras, there are dual 8MP/2MP, and the above-mentioned internal storage options. Battery life shouldn't be an issue thanks to the 9243 mAh battery to power it all.

Buy it here: Google Tablets
Get your code here: Google Developer Discount

Google has pleasantly surprised the Android community by releasing a Developer Preview for Android N (Nutella).

The early preview is Google's effort to get the final N release out to manufacturers this summer rather than over the winter, as usual.

"As we look to the next release of Android, N, you'll notice a few big changes aimed at you as developers: it's earlier than ever, it's easier to try and we're expanding the ways for you to give us feedback. We hope these changes will ensure that you are heard and reflected -- that's what makes Android stronger," says Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's SVP for Android, Chrome OS and Chromecast.

The Preview is available over-the-air, making it easier than ever to download.

For now, we can see the main changes are better notifications including "direct reply notifications," and the addition of split-screen view, allowing for multiple apps to run side-by-side.

The European Union is preparing to send Google a formal complaint over the Android operating system.

Google is having a rough go on the continent, as it just concluded a complaint from EU, over their comparison shopping search, and the company's advertising business and current taxes are also under review.

Previous anti-trust investigations by the EU, against Intel and Microsoft, have led to billion dollar fines for each. The initial search into Android began 3 years ago, after a consortium backed by Nokia and Microsoft submitted a complaint. The EU is worried mainly by Google's bundling of their own apps with Android, including YouTube, Chrome and Maps, and whether that practice harms rival developers.

The Olympics Broadcasting Services has announced that 130 hours of 2016 Olympic coverage will be shot in 8K (7,680 × 4,320-pixel resolution).

Besides the opening and closing ceremonies, there will be recordings of swimming, basketball and judo. 130 hours is just a fraction of the total of 7000 expected hours of coverage, but at the same time, there are probably very few people who will enjoy the 8K broadcasts.

Less than 10 percent of global TV owners have a 4K TV, so the 8K broadcasts are clear overkill. Sharp does sell 8K TVs, but they retail for over $100,000.

Additionally, the OBS says the 8K broadcast will only be streamed to Japanese households.

Chris Poole, the founder of popular anonymous online forum 4chan, has joined Google and will work in the Google Photos and Streams division.

Poole founded the forum in 2003 when he was 15 and ran it until last year when it was sold to 2Chan, a popular message board based in Japan.

"When meeting with current and former Googlers, I continually find myself drawn to their intelligence, passion, and enthusiasm -- as well as a universal desire to share it with others," Poole said. "I can't wait to contribute my own experience from a dozen years of building online communities, and to begin the next chapter of my career at such an incredible company."

Overall, Poole says Google's commitment to finding solutions to "some of the world's most interesting and important problems" made it a nice fit for him.

Poole also noted last year that 4chan was never profitable, and he had to use profits from his other company DrawQuest, and donations, to keep the lights on.

Google had to process over 77 million search takedown requests last month, an incredible amount that keeps increasing daily.

In February of last year, the search giant processed just under 40 million DMCA requests, and for the same period in 2012, the number was under 1 million.

Content holders and their watchdogs like the MPAA and RIAA sends thousands of requests per day automatically thanks to algorithms that are supposed to find pirated content, and although plenty are for actual infringing files there are also thousands of false positives that unfortunately take down legitimate content.

The leader, as usual, for takedown notices was 'Rivendell,' who sent 18 million requests last month. Rivendell does not own any content, and has a strange website, but appears to be a popular destination for anti-piracy.

Source:
Google

Dropbox COO Dennis Woodside has confirmed that the company now has over 500 million users.

Last June, the company claimed 400 million users, so growth still seems strong.

The company also now has 3.3 billion sharing connections (the amount of shared links and folders), up 50 percent year-over-year. 44 percent of new users come via another existing user, adding Woodside, great viral growth.

There have been recent concerns of the valuations of 'unicorn' startups like Dropbox (private companies valued over $1 billion) and the recent figures should help to alleviate some concerns although the company is certainly not worth its recent valuation of over $10 billion.

Microsoft has announced the cancellation of their latest 'Fable' game, and may shut down a few of their gaming studios.

'Fable Legends' had been rumored for release next year, and it is unclear if we will ever see it Microsoft or any other studio.

In addition, the company has proposed to close down the UK-based Lionhead Studios, and will be closing down the Denmark-based Press Play Studios.

Google's first foray into becoming a carrier, Project Fi, is now available to anyone in the U.S.

The service runs on T-Mobile and Sprint (depending on which network is more powerful wherever you are) and offers unlimited domestic calls and texts, free Wi-Fi tethering, free (3G) data coverage in over 120 countries, and free international texts.

Project Fi starts at $20 per month and costs $10 per GB of data. If you pay for 3GB and only use 2, Google will actually refund you the difference meaning you only pay for what you use.

As an incentive to try it, Google is offering an unlocked Nexus 5X for $200 if you activate the device with Fi. That leads to one of the main caveats of the service, and that is that the Fi only works with the Nexus 6, Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P currently, so most likely you will not be bringing your own phone to the service.

Romania's top court will extradite the hacker known as Guccifer, approving a request from U.S. authorities.

Marcel Lazar Lehel, aka Guccifer, will now have to face a U.S. court on charges of fraud, unauthorized access to a protected computer, aggravated identity theft, cyberstalking and obstruction of justice.

The hacker is accused of stealing data from email and social media accounts of U.S. celebrities and politicians, most notably the family of former President George W. Bush. Lehel already received four years in prison in Romania for similar crimes.

Guccifer became infamous in 2013 for hacking into the Bush family emails and then posting the unreleased artwork drawn by the President.