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Facebook's new notification system for state-sponsored attacks has already helped the U.S. State Department discover that their accounts had been compromised by Iranian hackers.

It appears that the attackers were looking to gain access to credentials for "officials who focus on Iran and the Middle East," including email and social media logins.

"It was very carefully designed and showed the degree to which they understood which of our staff was working on Iran issues now that the nuclear deal is done," a senior official noted. "It was subtle."

Adele's latest album, '25,' is available via Pandora, despite the artist and label specifically keeping it away from streaming services.

By early reports, '25' is the fastest selling album of all-time, beating out NSYNC's 15-year-old 'No Strings Attached' and that figure is certainly notable given that Adele and her label have kept the album away from Spotify and other popular streaming services.

Because Pandora is a radio service, the labels had not say in what songs can or cannot be streamed via the service. Of course, you cannot choose what you hear via Pandora, only the genre or playlists or the artists you'd like to hear, but you cannot choose the specific tracks.

"This is a unique situation to the US market," added Benny Tarantini, PR head for Adele. "As it turns out, Pandora is licensed through government statute in the US, and as a result record companies cannot withhold from webmaster radio services."

Giant Chinese smartphone OEM Xiaomi has launched their first all-metal devices this week, the Redmi Note 3 and the Mi Pad 2.

The Note has a 5.5-inch 1080p display, runs on the MIUI 7 operating system and is powered by a MediaTek Helio X10 processor and 2GB RAM. The phone has dual cameras (13MP/5MP), has dual-SIM support, 16GB or 32GB of internal storage and a huge 4000 mAh battery. Additionally, the phone has a fingerprint scanner.

For the 16GB model, Xiaomi has priced the device at RMB 899 ($140) and the 32GB model with 3GB RAM will set you back RMB 1,099 ($172).

Second, the company revealed their 7.9-inch Mi Pad 2 tablet, a device which promises to be much thinner and lighter than its predecessor at 6.95mm and 322g.

The Mi Pad 2 has an Intel Atom quad-core 2.24GHz processor and 2GB RAM to power the 2048×1536 pixel display. The device has a gigantic 6,190mAh battery, dual cameras, and a USB-C port. Interestingly, the device has a reading mode that specifically cuts down on blue light to avoid eye strain.

Priced to perfection, the 16GB model will sell for RMB 999 ($156) and the 64GB version will cost RMB 1,299 ($203).

Both devices go on sale in China on November 27th, but don't expect them in the U.S.

Earlier this month, T-Mobile announced "Binge On," a feature that will allow you to stream movies and TV from services like Netflix and Hulu without touching your monthly data. The only catch is you need to reduce your video quality to 480p, for all video, even when you aren't streaming.

Now, as an incentive to get you to opt-in, T-Mobile is offering 3 months of free unlimited LTE if you sign up for Binge On. If you opt-in, your unlimited data will be turned on December 1st, at no extra charge.

If you opt-out of Binge On, the LTE promo disappears, as well, T-Mobile notes. If you don't want to have your video at lower quality, T-Mobile offers unlimited LTE with 14GB of tethering for $90 a month.

According to new reports, Apple is looking to launch Apple Pay in China by February.

The company has inked deals with China's four largest state-run banks, suggesting that Apple Pay users can hook up the mobile payments service to their local bank accounts.

It is unclear what cut Apple will get for the service in China. In the U.S., it gets 0.15% of all credit card transactions and 0.5 cents per debit card transaction. When those numbers are extrapolated to millions or billions of transactions in China, the revenue could become significant.

Apple pay works for the iPhone 6 and 6S using NFC tech and has been very popular in the U.S. since launch.

Adele's new album '25' is poised to become the top selling record of all-time thanks to strong digital downloads.

The album looks ready to sell at least 2.5 million copies in its first week, meaning it will beat NSYNC's current record of 2.42 million. Their album "No Strings Attached" was released in 2000.

On iTunes, '25' had 900,000 copies sold on its first day, a record for the service.

One big reason for the high sales is the fact that Adele has denied legal streaming music services of the album, and the artist's record label appears to be on top of taking down pirated copies on warez sites and YouTube relatively quickly.

Square has begun rolling out its new, updated mobile payment readers to local businesses around the U.S., giving them support for chip cards and Apple Pay.

Apple and Square initially announced the new reader in June at Apple's WWDC event, and Square just went public last week so the rollout is certainly a big deal for them.

"Until now, technology like our new reader has been out of reach for local businesses," said Jesse Dorogusker, head of hardware at Square. "Now Square sellers across the country can quickly and easily accept the new forms of payment that are crossing their counter tops."

Merchants will have to pay $49 for the new reader.

Google received 15,659,212 URL takedown requests for the week of November 19th, a ridiculously high number that is almost double the requests it received for the same week last year.

For the past month, Google has received over 65 million URL takedown notices for copyright infringement and all the notices came from just 5492 copyright owners.

The most takedown notices came from 'rivendell,' 'Degban,' and the BPI, who combined for about 30 million.

As always, the Google transparency report is a great read and worth checking out: Google

Amazon has announced a new free cloud software program called Amazon Storywriter aimed at screenwriters.

The hope for Amazon is that writers will help the company expand its own original video content, including movies and TV series. Amazon will also allow WGA members to upload directly to the site moving forward, and Amazon will also allow drama series submissions.

Until now, Amazon Studio had taken scripts for feature films, primetime comedy series, and series for kids under 14.

Any screenwriter will now be paid better, as well. Previously, Amazon could buy the exclusive rights to a film for $200,000 or a TV script for $55,000 and then pay $10,000 to extend that exclusivity another 18 months. Now, if Amazon wants to buy the script, "they will reach out and offer a paid option that matches or exceeds any applicable guild minimum, and the writer can choose to accept or reject the offer."

The free software will help new writers with styling issues by auto-formatting as you type and also supports FDX, Fountain and PDF import.

Airbnb has raised another $100 million, valuing the company at $25.5 billion and proving that not all unicorns are dead.

The company had revenue of $340 million in the third quarter, with total bookings topping $2.2 billion. Both of the numbers were year-over-year growth of 90 percent and total nights booked were 23.8 million for the quarter, up from 11.3 million year-over-year.

Airbnb makes money by taking 3% of every booking and also charges guests anywhere from 6-12%.

Despite the huge growth, the company is not likely to be profitable for some time. The home rental company said earlier this year it expects to lose $150 million, thanks in part to a strong US dollar and significant investments in marketing, R&D and growth.

Massive hotel chain Starwood has announced that the point-of-sale systems for 54 different hotels in the U.S. and Canada were hit by malware and credit card details were taken.

Starwood owns hotels such as Westin, Sheraton and W and says the affected dates are from November 2014 to October 2015. Your credit card details were likely taken if you used the hotel's restaurants or gift shops.

The company's president Sergio Rivera says there is no evidence that the company's reservation systems were affected so if you stayed at the hotel but didn't buy anything you should be fine.

Just like other companies, Starwood is offering a free year of identity protection and credit monitoring.

If you were considering switching from Android to Windows Phone, Microsoft has got you covered.

Their latest app, AppComparison, will search through your currently installed Android apps and let you know which ones will be available when you transition to Windows 10 Mobile.

If your app is compatible (and it's probably not) then Microsoft will show you comparable apps for Windows.

In addition, "the application also introduces you to some of the most popular Windows Phone applications" which includes flagships like Spotify, Netflix, and Facebook.

If you are actually looking to switch from Android to Windows 10 Mobile, you can check the free app here.

Pepsi (yes, the soda giant) has officially unveiled their Pepsi Phone P1s for China.

The device has relatively high-ends specs and will sell for just $110.

Full spec sheet:

5.5-inch (1080 x 1920 pixels) Full HD 2.5D Curved Screen display
1.7 GHz Octa-core MediaTek MT6592 processor with Mali 450-MP4 GPU
2GB RAM, 16GB internal memory, microSD expansion slot
Hybrid Dual SIM (second nano SIM slot can also be used as microSD slot)
dido OS 6.1 based on Android 5.1 (Lollipop)
13MP rear camera with LED Flash
5MP front-facing camera
Fingerprint sensor
Dimensions: 152.2 ×76.2×7.7 mm; Weight: 158g
4G LTE / 3G, WiFi 802.1 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS
3000mAh battery

According to sources, Google is aiming to have a Chinese version of the Google Play store available in the nation next year.

The store will comply with Chinese laws for sensitive content, meaning it will be censored and not connected to the other international stores.

Google has been out of China since 2010 after they refused to censor their search results and just pulled their services.

The search giant is expected to use the Play Store as a gateway to begin offering more services in China, like Gmail or possibly YouTube.

Yahoo has infuriated a few of its email users today as it tests out a feature that will block access to your email if you are running an ad blocker.

Users trying to log in to their Yahoo email saw an error message that told them to "please disable ad blocker to continue using Yahoo Mail."

After receiving complaints, Yahoo confirmed the move. "At Yahoo, we are continually developing and testing new product experiences," Yahoo said. "This is a test we're running for a small number of Yahoo Mail users in the U.S."

It seems that ad blocking is really hurting companies that rely on ads.