Latest news

Amazon has announced today that it is raising the free shipping minimum on its orders from non-Prime members to $49.

When Amazon first launched, the minimum total to get free shipping was $25 and the company raised that to $35 in 2013. The only exception to the rule are books, which keeps the original $25 minimum.

Amazon Prime costs $99 per year and gives you free two-day shipping on millions of items, free streaming music, the Amazon Prime Video catalog with original TV and movie content and more perks.

Dish Network's Sling TV streaming service now has over 600,000 subscribers, a year after launch.

Of note, Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch said that a vast majority of its new customers are "not currently pay-TV subscribers," an incredibly interesting fact. "Either they have never had pay-TV because they are 25 years old and it never crossed their mind to have pay-TV," Mr. Lynch added. "Or, they cut the cord some time in the last one, two, three, four, five years."

The service costs $20 per month and includes the following channels: TNT, TBS, CNN, Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, the Disney Channel, Galavision, El Rey Network, IFC, AMC, a Maker Studios channel and ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN 3.

Additionally, you can buy specialised packages that include movies or sports, for example.

According to multiple reports, Yahoo will begin approaching potential buyers as early this week in an effort to sell off its core businesses.

There are a few companies supposedly interested, including Verizon, Comcast and AT&T, but there is a better chance of Yahoo selling to a private equity firm like Bain, KKR or TPG, say the sources.

CEO Marissa Mayer was hired to turnaround the company but so far all her acquisitions and efforts have fallen flat to the point where the company's stock shares are almost worthless after you take away their $25 billion stake in Alibaba.

Samsung has announced that their fledgling mobile payments service Samsung Pay now has over 5 million registered users.

In the service's first six months, Samsung has processed over $500 million in transactions, all from consumers in South Korea and the United States.

"Since its introduction last year, Samsung Pay has changed the way people pay and use their smartphones," said InJon Rhee, Samsung's head of research and development and EVP of mobile communications, in a statement. "We've already seen significant consumer adoption and we continue to see great momentum. Our aim is to expand Samsung Pay to even more locations around the world, and our customers should expect to see more features in the year to come."

Samsung Pay is expanding to China, Australia, the UK, Brazil, Singapore and Spain this year.

Lenovo has introduced a new, highly affordable tablet running Windows 10.

The MIIX 310 has a 10.1-inch 1080p display and runs on an Intel Atom X5 processor with integrated graphics. Additionally, it is a 2-in-1, meaning there's a detachable keyboard that gives the device a more "notebook" feel for productivity.

Priced at $229 with the keyboard, the rest of the specs are predictably mid-range. There are 2GB RAM, 802.11b/g/n wireless, and 128GB internal storage.

Lenovo will begin shipping the devices in June.

Hundreds of Spotify Premium accounts have been compromised - with the details showing up on Pastebin in at least three data dumps.

Spotify claims they were not hacked, but users have confirmed that the passwords and usernames posted were theirs and unique to the streaming site. "Spotify has not been hacked. We monitor Pastebin and other sites regularly," a spokesperson said from Spotify. "When we find Spotify credentials, we first verify that they are authentic, and if they are, we immediately notify affected users to change their passwords."

Even worse, those users all claimed that "Spotify failed to notify them their account information had been compromised." If you want to see if your details have been compromised, you can visit haveibeenpwned.com.

According to research firm Gartner, smartphones sales rose to 403 million units in the Q4 2015, 9.7 percent higher year-over-year.

Despite the seemingly high growth, the number is actually the lowest the smartphone industry has ever seen, suggesting that smartphone sales have completely peaked.

Overall, smartphone sales reached 1.4 billion units for the year, an increase of 14.4 percent YoY.

"Low-cost smartphones in emerging markets, and strong demand for premium smartphones, continued to be the driving factors," said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. "An aggressive pricing from local and Chinese brands in the midrange and entry-level segments of emerging markets led to consumers upgrading more quickly to affordable smartphones."

Samsung remained king, shipping 320 million units for the year, followed by Apple at 225 million. Chinese giant Huawei jumped to 104 million and Lenovo/Motorola fell to 72 million but still took fourth.

According to Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, the company is losing a billion dollars a year trying to compete against rival Didi Kuaidi in China.

Uber's China business is valued at $8.2 billion, but the ride-hailing service has yet to make a cent of profit thanks to intense price wars in mainland China.

"We're profitable in the USA, but we're losing over $1 billion a year in China," added Kalanick. "We have a fierce competitor that's unprofitable in every city they exist in, but they're buying up market share. I wish the world wasn't that way."

Didi is backed by Chinese tech giants Tencent and Alibaba, both of which are subsidizing fares in order to gain as much market share as they can.

Vevo, the lead streaming music video service, is planning a subscription-based model.

The paid version of the service could be available as soon as this year, noted CEO Erik Huggers.

"Today our business is all about ad-supported," said Huggers. "So we think that one of the important things -- we hear this throughout the industry -- is the move toward subscription. That's something we're interested in."

Vevo, a joint venture between giants UMG and Sony Music, sees about 17 billion video views a month and the companies receive all their revenue from the site from advertising.

It is unclear what the paid service will cost consumers, or what exactly will make it worth the monthly fee. We will likely know more this year.

The Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center has paid $17,000 in bitcoin to attackers who shut down access to their computer system via ransomware.

The malware first infected the computers on February 5th and hospital staff was forced to use paper for nearly 10 days before deciding to pay to have their files decrypted.

Hospital CEO Allen Stefanek says the initial ransom figure was large but ended up at 40 bitcoin. Each bitcoin is worth $430 as of writing. "The malware locks systems by encrypting files and demanding ransom to obtain the decryption key. The quickest and most efficient way to restore our systems and administrative functions was to pay the ransom and obtain the decryption key," Stefanek said. "In the best interest of restoring normal operations, we did this."

The hospital alerted authorities and technology experts who helped them regain access to their systems. No hospital records or patient records were stolen, nor was patient care compromised.

The U.S. Department of Defense has laid out plans to upgrade "4 million devices and systems" to Windows 10 by February 2017.

It appears that Windows 10 is ready for secure deployment, a huge deal for Microsoft since corporations and especially governments are infamously slow to upgrade their systems. The government PCs are running Windows 7, skipping the oft-maligned Windows 8 and 8.1 completely.

Terry Halvorsen, CIO for the DoD, directed all Combatant Commands, Services Agencies and Field Activities "to rapidly deploy Windows 10 to improve the DoD's cybersecurity, lower the cost of IT and streamline the IT operating environment."

Each branch will be allowed an additional 12 months via a "limited waiver authority" to get their systems upgraded, added Halvorsen, which unfortunately means for Microsoft that 4 million updates are probably not getting done by next February.

Additionally, the Surface family has been certified via the DISA Unified Capabilities (UC) Approved Product List (APL), allowing the government to purchase the devices in bulk.

According to ARM, your phone will see such a leap in computational power by the end of next year that they will be more powerful than the PlayStation 4 or Xbox One.

The chips will, at least, be able to generate graphics that are on par with the current-gen dedicated consoles, noted ARM ecosystem director Nizar Romdan.

"Mobile hardware is already powerful," said Romdan at Casual Connect Europe. "If you take today's high-end smartphone or tablet, the performance is already better than Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It's catching up quickly with Xbox One and PlayStation 4."

As a simple way to compute their power, the current consoles can compute around 1.84 TFLOPS (floating point operations per second (in this case TerraFlops). By the end of 2017, the most powerful chips will hypothetically be able to output 2 TFLOPS.

While gamers are not likely to ever move exclusively to mobile gaming (touch is not always as fun as a controller), the chips will have the ability to power the next generation of virtual reality.

"Our view is that mobile VR is the use case that could unlock the potential of mobile for hardcore gamers," Romdan added. "For once, mobile devices are on par with PC and consoles in terms of experience [when it comes to the form factor of VR]. We won't have the same processing. And battery life is a problem. But it is the same user experience. That could be a game changer for mobile gaming."

Yahoo has announced that nearly all of their digital magazines will be shut down soon, including Yahoo Food, Health, Parenting, Makers, Travel, Tech, Autos and Real Estate.

The company had put millions into building their media division in the past few years, but they failed just like all of Yahoo's attempts at a turnaround.

Moving forward, only News, Sports, Finance and Lifestyle, the company's four most popular verticals, will remain active. Popular writers, including former New York Times' writer David Pogue, will move from their magazines to 'News.'

Yahoo's general popularity has fallen, as daily active user visits to the homepage have fallen 16.5 percent year-over-year and time spent on the site has fallen significantly, as well.

Google has introduced 'Gmailify' this week, giving users the "best of Gmail, without a @gmail address."

The company had previously allowed Yahoo, Outlook and Hotmail users to link their accounts to Gmail and the service will now give those users Gmail's spam protection, Google Now card integration and mail organization (tabs).

Says Google: "For the last year, you've been able to access your email from other providers, like Yahoo! Mail or Outlook.com, in the Gmail app on Android. And we've been getting lots of great feedback from those of you that do. Many of you would like more of Gmail's powerful features, like spam protection and inbox organization, on these accounts--but don't want to go through the hassle of changing your email address.

We agree. So starting today, if you use Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail/Outlook.com, you now have the option to Gmailify your inbox.

Gmailify links your existing account to Gmail so that you get all the bells and whistles--spam protection, inbox organization and even Google Now cards based on your mail--without having to leave your current address behind.

All you need to do is open the Gmail app, sign in to your email account(s), and enable Gmailify. And of course, you're always in control--so if you ever change your mind, you can unlink your account(s) at any time, and continue to access them through the Gmail app without using Gmailify."

According to multiple reports, Spotify is nearing 30 million paying subscribers, a large increase from previously announced milestones.

Spotify announced in June 2015 that its paying subscriber base had jumped to 20 million. By the end of last year, that number had reportedly reached 25 million.

If the numbers are accurate, streaming growth is accelerating very quickly. It took Spotify 5 years to get its first 20 million premium consumers but just 9 months to get the next 10 million. Apple Music has added 11 million paying subscribers since September of last year.

Other major competitors are in the industry, such as Google, although their numbers appear to be growing less quickly. That could change with the new launch of YouTube Red and its original content as well as the upcoming on-demand service from Internet Radio giant Pandora.