Latest news

Microsoft has announced that over 100 Xbox 360 games will soon be available to play via your Xbox One - the start of their "Xbox One Backward Compatibility" platform.

The software giant also says more games will be announced on a "regular basis" starting next month. If you already own the digital copy of the games, you will see them start to download to your HDD on the 12th if you want them.

This week, Swiss luxury watchmaker TAG Heuer unveiled their first smartwatch, the Connected Watch.

The watch was built in partnership with Google and Intel and will run on Android Wear with custom TAG watch faces and features like restaurant recommendations and golf trackers.

For fans of design, the Connected Watch is easily one of the nicest looking smartwatches ever, based on the classic Carrera model. The case and buckle are made of titanium in Switzerland, and TAG is offering 7 different vulcanized rubber straps to match the buckle. The face is relatively large, at 46mm, and the watch is not thin either at nearly 13mm thick.

Everything under the hood is standard and well known to smartwatch fans or owners, but the Connected Watch is missing a speaker and GPS. The company promises 30 hour battery life, but it will interesting to see real world tests.

TAG's watch is available now and sells for $1500 retail.

Comcast has reset over 200,000 customer passwords after a Dark Web marketplace seller began offering a purported 590,000 Comcast email addresses and their passwords, in plain text.

The seller was offering 100,000 accounts for $300 or the whole list for $1000.

It appears that Comcast was the only buyer of the list, and their security team found 200,000 of the accounts were active, leading to the mass reset.

Comcast says their systems and apps have not been compromised so it remains unclear on how the list came to be. Most likely, the list was recycled from other data breaches and combined.

Even though it hasn't really been producing Betamax or MicroMV items since at least 2002, Sony has finally and officially killed off the two brands.

Sony was still selling minimal amounts of Beta and MicroMV cassettes, but sales will cease in March of next year.

For those of you who remember, VHS beat out Betamax back in the late 70s and early 80s to become the dominant media until the advent of the DVD in the 90s.

Apple has confirmed that its massive 12.9-inch Apple iPad Pro tablet will go on sale online this Wednesday, November 11th.

The company also noted that it will be available in stores later in the week alongside the new Apple Smart Keyboard and the Apple Pencil.

"The early response to iPad Pro from app developers and our customers has been incredible, and we're excited to get iPad Pro into the hands of customers around the world this week," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "iPad Pro is the most powerful iPad we've ever made, giving users the ability to be even more creative and more productive with the epic 12.9-inch Retina display, powerful 64-bit A9X chip and groundbreaking Apple Pencil and new Smart Keyboard. We can't wait to see what they do with iPad Pro."

iPad Pro measures 12" x 8.68" x 0.27" (305.7mm x 220.6mm x 6.9mm) dominated by a 12.9‑inch Retina display with a resolution of 2732 x 2048 (264ppi). It weighs 1.57lb (713 grams) for the Wi-Fi only model, and slightly heavier at 1.59lb (723 grams) for the Wi-Fi + Cellular model.

Snapchat has announced that its videos and snaps are being viewed 6 billion times per day, up from 2 billion just six months ago.

While the numbers are certainly large, there is some question as to how the numbers are skewed. Rivals such as Facebook, won't count a video view until it's been played for three seconds and Google's YouTube counts usage in hours, not views. Snapchat counts a view whenever a video is played, even for a few milliseconds. And all videos are just seconds long.

Regardless, Snapchat is definitely being validated for its flurry of new features, including Stories and the ability to replay, rewind and more.

Sony has announced that their Internet TV-powered PlayStation Vue subscription service will be adding Disney products like ESPN, The Disney Channel and local ABC affiliate channels.

In total, the service will get 18 channels which will join local NBC, Fox and CBS affiliates and a number of cable channels from popular media providers totaling 110 total channels.

Vue is available in just a handful of metros, and costs $50 per month to start, but it remains unclear whether Disney's additions will raise the price of the service.

The service is compatible with the PS3 and PS4 as well as on iOS devices that have downloaded the PlayStation Vue mobile app.

Full list of new channels: ABC local affiliate, ABC Family (becoming Freeform in January), Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN College Extra, ESPNU, ESPNEWS, ESPN Deportes, ESPN Classic, ESPN Goal Line, ESPN Buzzer Beater, ESPN Bases Loaded, Fusion, Longhorn Network, SEC-ESPN Network.

Verizon has confirmed this weekend that they too will carry the BlackBerry Priv slider, joining AT&T among the major U.S. carriers.

Unfortunately for fans, Verizon did not give a time frame for release except to say it's "coming soon." The news is somewhat surprising as BlackBerry had originally said it would be a GSM-only device.

BlackBerry's first Android phone has a curved 5.4-inch QHD display, is powered by a Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB RAM, 32GB internal storage (expandable to 2TB), dual 2MP/18MP cameras, a large 3410 mAh battery and a full physical keyboard.

According to new data from research firm Slice Intelligence, only men appear to be buying the new Apple TV set-top.

Slice uses email receipts from millions of consumers to gather data, and during the device's first week of availability over 90 percent of Apple TV buyers were males, mostly between the ages of 35 and 44.

Interestingly, sales were high enough to push Apple to the top of the streaming set-top hardware market, beating out Amazon.

Between all four generations, the Apple TV now has 31 percent share, ahead of Amazon at 27.5 percent and Roku at 25.3 percent.

See some more interesting figures here: Slice Intelligence

AMD has been sued for allegedly misleading customers about how many cores were contained in their Bulldozer processors.

The class action suit claims that while the Bulldozer line was advertised widely as having 8 cores, it really only had four functional cores.

At the core of the issue (no pun intended) is how AMD designs their multi-core Bulldozer chips. The company uses "modules" that combine the functions of two discrete cores into a single package. Windows counts each module as separate cores, but they share a single FPU.

The suit claims that since the cores cannot work independently, this results in performance degradation and the average consumer will not understand the difference between modules and independent cores. By advertising 8 cores and not "conveying accurate specifications," thousands of consumers were duped into believing their Bulldozer CPU could perform like a true octa-core processor, added the suit.

AMD is facing damages (statutory and punitive), litigation expenses and possible injunctions on the CPUs.

Tencent, China's largest social network and online gaming company, has announced new deals with Hollywood that will give the company distribution rights for James Bond and Star Trek in the nation.

In the first deal, with Paramount Pictures, Tencent will become the exclusive online distributor in China for the studio's future feature films including 'Star Trek Beyond.'

The second deal, with MGM, will give the company rights in China for the James Bond franchise including the newly released 'Spectre."

Paramount's distribution deal will begin in April, and will be good for 12 months. Another expected blockbuster is the sequel to Tom Cruise's 'Jack Reacher.' It's unclear how long the MGM deal is for, but both agreements include on-demand PPV and subscription video on demand.

E-commerce giant Alibaba will buy Chinese online video provider Youku Tudou, following months of speculation and an initial offer from Baba in October.

Alibaba already owned a fifth of the company, and will pay $27.60 per share in cash for the company.

Youku CEO Victor Koo says he will continue to lead the company and its operations after the deal closes.

"We are confident that we will strengthen our market position and further accelerate our growth through the integration of our advertising and consumer businesses with Alibaba's platform and Alipay services," added Koo.

Google has purchased Fly Labs, the company behind the popular Clips, Fly, Tempo and Crop on the Fly video editing apps for iOS.

The app maker says current employees will be integrated into the Google Photos team, suggesting at the very least that the search giant is considering adding some video editing features to its cloud-based photo service.

Fly Labs say their apps were downloaded over 3 million times and over 20 million videos were created using the tools. At the end of 90 days from the acquisition, Google will be pulling the apps from the Apple App Store.

Fans of Warcraft now have the first trailer for the upcoming live-action Duncan Jones-directed film based on the franchise.

In the trailer we see orcs fleeing their dying world, en route to the human world.

The movie is scheduled for release in June 2016.

Google has released its updated platform numbers for the end of October, with Android Marshmallow making its first appearance following the launch of the Nexus 6P and Nexus 5X.

In addition to the new Nexus phones, the Nexus 6 also got the update to Marshmallow, which is officially 6.0.

KitKat (4.4) and Lollipop (5.0/5.1) remained the big winners, at 37.8 percent and 25.6 percent respectively, but quite a few older versions still have respectable numbers. Google's ultimate goal is to have everyone using the same operating system, but there are too many older phones out there that aren't upgradeable.

Check the full numbers here.