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Facebook has offered its employees up to $15,000 to move closer to their Silicon Valley headquarters.

To be eligible, "employees must buy or rent a home within 10 miles (16 km) of the Facebook campus at One Hacker Way," the headquarters located about 30 miles south of San Francisco.

There are hopes that programs like Facebook's will spur genrtification of nearby communites such as East Palo Alto, which are currently low-income and cheap compared to the ridiculously priced San Francisco.

"Our benefits at Facebook are designed to support our employees and the people who matter most to them at all stages of life," a Facebook spokesman added.

Videolan has proudly announced the launch of VLC for ChromeOS, allowing users to play their media via the cloud-based operating system.

"A few months ago, the Chrome team announced the possibility to run some Android applications on Chrome OS using the new Android Runtime for Chrome. Starting from that moment, we wanted to support this runtime," said the development team.

Going more in-depth, developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf added: "Usually, the mobile ports of VLC, like VLC for Android, VLC for iOS or Windows phone, use the native language of the platforms to create the interfaces and the media database.

For ChromeOS, the only solution we saw, before ARC was announced, was using PPAPI, NaCL and Javascript, but that would require to rewrite a complete interface in Javascript and would be a bit problematic for the database. That work would have taken months of work.

Therefore the ARC solution was a blessing, and helped us to recycle 95% of the Android code and optimizations we did in the last months (some are not released yet)."

With the new release, ChromeOS users can now play all video files, audio files and subtitle files supported by VLC and can also playback "streams, local and on the internet, include adaptive streaming like HLS or DASH."

Finnish startup Jolla has secured a third round of financing as it tries to fight mobile's duopoly with its own Sailfish OS.

Last month, the company was on the brink and had to lay off half of its staff and file for restructuring of existing debt but the new lifeline should buy them some time.

Noted chairman Antii Saarnio: "It's not often that you can actually recover from the very, very difficult situation but we have done it."

It's unclear who the investors are but we may know soon enough. "The total amount we can't unfortunately disclose yet because it is part of the bigger financing package," added Saarnio. "The next packages will be securing our growth and further investment to the operating system agenda. So that's why we don't want to start disclosing the size of the investment because it will basically start speculations on how long this money will last and so on.

"It's a sizable investment what we are receiving but it also includes some other instruments which we are continuing to negotiate at the moment. But at the moment we have received enough financing to continue the operations and stabilize the company's financial position."

Despite the new investment, it is hard to see the company surviving too much longer as there does not appear to be much demand for Sailfish at this time.

Plex, the home media streaming app, is now available for free on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles.

To date, the apps were available in beta to Plex Pass customers, but now everyone can get their hands on the core app for free (without some of the features paying subscribers get).

The setup is very quick, and includes creating a Plex account, downloading the media server to your PC/NAS and then downloading the app on your console.

Plex can play nearly any format you have saved and it also catalogs your movies and shows with artwork, descriptions and more.

Microsoft has delayed the rollout of Windows 10 Mobile to existing Windows Phone users, with the company now planning to begin the launch in 2016.

Previously, Microsoft had said the rollout would begin this month, but there are some delays it appears.

Says the company: "This November we introduced Windows 10 to phones including brand new features such as Continuum and Universal Windows Apps with the introduction of the Lumia 950 and 950 XL. The Windows 10 Mobile upgrade will begin rolling out early next year to select existing Windows 8 and 8.1 phones."

It remains unclear which existing Windows Phones will get the upgrade and which will not although if you purchased in the last year you are likely to have an upgradeable phone.

GTA: Liberty City Stories is now available on iOS for $6.99 as developer Rockstar continues to bring popular titles to mobile.

The title will be very similar to the PSP version that launched a decade ago except that it will bring touch and gamepad support, improved visuals and cloud saving ability. Additionally, the game will feature "shorter, streamlined missions designed with mobile gameplay in mind."

"Get ready to head back to the East Coast as Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories returns to mobile devices. With shorter, streamlined missions designed with mobile gameplay in mind, this definitive open-world adventure has been remastered for iOS with extensive graphic enhancements, rebalanced touch controls, cross platform saves and native Retina screen support," adds Rockstar.

If you like to put on headphones while you're gaming, you can also play a custom playlist during the game rather than needing to listen to the radio stations.

Apple has somewhat surprisingly named its first Chief Operating Officer (COO) since 2011 when Tim Cook took over as CEO of the world's most valuable company.

Jeff Williams, who has been with the company since 1998, will take over the role and report directly to Cook. Apple also announced that marketing boss Phil Schiller is now head of the App Store, as well, previously the duty of Eddy Cue.

Williams was Apple's VP of operations and also oversees the Apple Watch and ResearchKit making his new title perfectly logical. Schiller will now be in charge of "nearly all developer-related functions at Apple" and it sounds like Cue will continue his business of diving into whatever needs help.

Netflix has announced that their HTML5 player is now available in Firefox, as long as you are running a Windows PC. If you are a Mac fan, your time is coming early next year.

Says the streaming giant: "Firefox ships with the very latest versions of the HTML5 Premium Video Extensions. That includes the Media Source Extensions (MSE), which enable our video streaming algorithms to adapt to your available bandwidth; the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), which allows for the viewing of protected content; and the Web Cryptography API (WebCrypto), which implements the cryptographic functions used by our open source Message Security Layer client-server protocol.

We worked closely with Mozilla and Adobe throughout development. Adobe supplies a content decryption module (CDM) that powers the EME API and allows protected content to play. We were pleased to find through our joint field testing that Adobe Primetime's CDM, Mozilla's < video > tag, and our player all work together seamlessly to provide a high quality viewing experience in Firefox. With the new Premium Video Extensions, Firefox users will no longer need to take an extra step of installing a plug-in to watch Netflix."

Last month, Microsoft made over 100 Xbox 360 games available to Xbox One gamers via their backwards compatibility program.

Today, there are 16 new titles playable, and Microsoft has promised to continue adding new titles throughout the year.

Full list:

Braid
DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION
Doritos Crash Course
Fable III
Halo: Reach
Hydro Thunder
Iron Brigade
Kane & Lynch 2
Motocross Madness
MS.PAC-MAN
Peggle
Portal: Still Alive
Spelunky
Splosion Man
Ticket to Ride™
Zuma's Revenge!

Apple has confirmed that their Apple Pay service is officially headed to China next year thanks to a partnership with China UnionPay.

UnionPay is in charge of running China's banking card industry and the companies have promised the service will expand to China "as soon as early 2016." Apple Pay has support from 15 of China's most popular banks but still requires certification from Chinese regulators. Apple appears to feel confident, given their press release.

"China UnionPay is dedicated to promoting payment innovations and providing secure, convenient mobile payment experiences for its hundreds of millions of cardholders, aligning multiple parties in the industry," said Chai Hongfeng, executive vice president of China UnionPay. "We're very excited to offer Apple Pay among a diverse set of innovative payment options that work with China UnionPay QuickPass."

"Apple Pay has revolutionized the way millions of people pay every day with their iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. "China is an extremely important market for Apple and with China UnionPay and support from 15 of China's leading banks, users will soon have a convenient, private and secure payment experience."

Netflix has created a new DIY guide to building a pair of "smart socks" that will know if you've fallen asleep while binging and will be smart enough to pause your show or movie if you do fall asleep.

The socks use 'actigraphy,' a method of activity monitoring that includes an accelerometer which can detect if you have stopped moving for an extended period of time. At that point, it can send a signal to your TV/set-top to pause your place. The socks also flash an LED light before pausing your viewing incase you are awake and just not moving at all for some reason.

Netflix's socks are part of their "Make It" series of DIY projects but the socks are not easy to build, even if you have some technical know-how. You need a pair of socks, an Arduino microcontroller, infrared LEDs, a battery, soldering iron and some more little components.

Netflix has completely rebuilt their Windows application as a cross-platform or universal app. The new app will become available this week.

Thanks to Windows 10 and its universal app ecosystem largely the same code base is used for all the different variations of the application. Windows 10 on smartphones, tablets, PCs will be using the same app – even the Xbox One will share features. However, at first the app will only be available for tablets and PCs.

Lumia smartphones will be getting the new Netflix app "in the near future", possible in early 2016.

In addition to the architectural update the new version brings about an improved layout. Like on other platforms the categories are now browsed vertically and the titles within the categories horizontally. The description view has also been revamped.

More information about the update can be found from the Windows Experience Blog.

Earlier today Brazil court ordered mobile carriers to block WhatsApp traffic because the company had failed to cooperate in an investigation. The app that is used by over 90 million people in Brazil – and same percentage of internet users – was quickly unblocked.

The initial ban was meant to go on for 48 hours but was overturned by a São Paulo judge before the first 24 hours had expired. According to BBC, Judge Xavier de Souza said that it was "not reasonable that millions of users be affected by the inertia of the company".

Most of Brazil's internet users also use WhatsApp because of the high prices of traditional texting and mobile phone plans in general. As much as 93 percent of the country's internet population uses Facebook owned app, TechCrunch reports.

Some have questioned if the reasons for blocking are tied with the investigations of criminal activity within the messaging service or if it's a plot by the telecoms. The latter can be refuted by the fact that blocking a single service would not stop people from using online messaging. The messaging app Telegram proved the point by gaining millions of users immediately after the ban.

Thanks to a new domain registration, it appears that Ubisoft is preparing an Assassin' Creed collection anthology.

Ubi has registered "assassinscreedcollection.com", suggesting they are working on a collection for the action-adventure series although for the time being we will take that as speculation.

Like other publishers have in the past, there is a good chance the company will compile a group of remastered AC titles from previous consoles and sell it for PS4 and Xbox One.

Ubisoft has already gone down the collections road, releasing Assassin's Creed: The Americas collection, and Assassin's Creed: Heritage collection (for PS3 and Xbox 360) so the latest game could be similar.

Mac anti-virus provider MacKeeper has exposed 13 million customer records and left customer passwords vulnerable to cracking.

White hat researcher Chris Vickery said he found four IP addresses that directed him straight into the company's MongoDB database, where names, emails, usernames, password hashes, phone numbers, system info and IP addresses were all stored without protection (for the most part). The passwords were using the easily crackable MD5 hash, although they weren't even salted.

Even more shocking was that the database did not require any kind of administrator password or username to get in. Vickery used the Shodan 'hacker search engine' to find the open database.

Vickery tried to contact the company first but could not get through so he posted the issues on Reddit. The company then responded and fixed the issues within hours. "Analysis of our data storage system shows only one individual gained access performed by the security researcher himself. We have been in communication with Chris and he has not shared or used the data inappropriately," the MacKeeper team wrote in a blog post.