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Two groups claiming to represent the interests of children have reported the YouTube Kids App to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claiming it provides access to inappropriate content.

The two groups - Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and the Center for Digital Democracy - said they could use the app to find videos that were extremely disturbing and "potentially harmful for young kids to view."

Among the objectionable content, the groups cited explicit sexual language in cartoons; jokes about pedophilia and drug use; activities such as juggling knives, tasting battery acid, and making a noose; and adult discussions about family violence, pornography, and child suicide, according to a Wall Street Journal blog post.

"Google promised parents that YouTube Kids would deliver appropriate content for children, but it has failed to fulfill its promise," said attorney Aaron Mackey.

Google said it works hard to make sure that the videos that can be accessed through the app are as kids-friendly as possible. It uses automatic filters, user feedback and reviews to determine if access to content should be removed.

A YouTube video blamed for kicking off violence all over the world for perceived offense to Muslims, Islam and the prophet Muhammad should not be banned, a U.S. court has decided.

The "Innocence of Muslims" video was technically a trailer for a longer film that started production as "Desert Warrior". The video caused a surge of violence in some parts of the middle east and the western world for its portrayal of the figure Mohammed from Islam as a fool, a sexual deviant, a delinquent and so on.

Fatwas were issued against the producer of the film, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, and against the cast. What the cast didn't know is dialogue had been dubbed over the film in post-production to add anti-Islamic sentiment.

YouTube voluntarily blocked access to the video in some countries, citing a difficult situation, but it did not remove it in the United States or most of the western world. Google did not find the content of the video in violation to its rules, finding it was about Islam and did not qualify as hate speech against a particular ethnic group.

However, actress Cindy Lee Garcia claimed to have been tricked by the producers of the film and filed a lawsuit against Google seeking to have the footage removed. Garcia had received death threats for her part in the production of the film beforehand, but was relying on a weak copyright claim in order to have the film removed from YouTube, and a district court refused her request.

A man turned himself in to police in the UK to confess to possessing sexual images involving animals after being threatened by ransomware on his PC.

The 61-year old living in Scotland had encountered a run-of-the-mill ransomware infection on his Windows PC in 2013. Unlike more advanced ransomware that uses cryptography to wall off access to files on infected PCs until a ransom is paid, this infection just locked the screen and threw up a phony warning from police.

Such ransomware infections often claim to have detected illegal browsing activity, illegal files such as pornography or copyright infringing content, and threatens to forward the information to authorities unless a ransom is paid. Some even use location information on the PC to pick the relevant police force based on the territory the victim resides in.

In this case, the man in question reportedly paid £100 in ransom to regain access to his files, which actually were never encrypted at all. To his dismay, the access was not restored and fearing he was about to be arrested, he turned himself in to police.

He admitted to possessing hundreds of images of animals of a sexual nature, including horses, dogs and pigs, although he maintained that he never actually looked at them after downloading them.

Notorious Pirate ship sets sail for new shores after a Swedish court ordered the seizure of both thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se domain names.

Once again the Pirate Bay has been forced into evasive maneuvers to thwart legal efforts to sink it to the bottom of the ocean. This time, the Stockholm District Court ordered the official thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se domain names seized, continuing a cat and mouse game that has been going on for over a decade between the Pirate Bay and... everyone.

(Also Read: Canadian copyright notice program reduces piracy by up to 70%, and is heading for the United States?)

In response, the Pirate Bay now has SIX new domain names ending in .GS, .LA, .VG,. AM, .MN and .GD. The new logo on the evasive torrent site features a Lernaean Hydra - a mythical monster from Greek mythology that sports multiple heads - and the new domain names.

Humble as always, the Pirate Bay team congratulated the prosecutor for wasting time and money on this latest effort to slay the beast.

"Congratulations to Prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad. Two years hard work to get us to change two little letters at a cost of $20,000 per letter," TorrentFreak quotes TPB team.

Today we have the first official trailer for the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic featuring Michael Fassbender in the lead role.

The teaser doesn't reveal too much about the film, but we do get to see Fassbender as the genius founder of Apple.

Steve Jobs is directed by Danny Boyle and also has Seth Rogen as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman.

Check out the trailer here:

HTC has confirmed today that they will stop producing their 'mini' line of products as the company focuses on devices with screens larger than 5 inches.

North Asia president Jack Tong said the smaller devices are no longer in fashion in the industry.

In fact, the company's most recent budget offering has lower-end specs but still has a 5.5-inch display.

Truthfully, Apple killed off the 'compact" smartphone market when it moved away from tiny screened devices and launched the iPhone 6 last year.

Spotify and Starbucks have announced a new deal in which employees and customers will be able to influence the in-store music played at local Starbucks locations.

The program will start with 150,000 U.S. Starbucks employees getting a Spotify Premium membership and followed by My Starbucks Reward members getting "unique access to Spotify." That program will then let employees and loyalty customers influence which songs make it to the store's in-store playlists.

"For over forty years, music has played a vital role in Starbucks Third Place experience – inspiring our partners and customers in unexpected ways that have helped to shape the global pop culture. And we are delighted and honored to bring Spotify directly to our customers," said Howard Schultz, chairman and CEO of Starbucks. "Throughout its history, Starbucks has worked closely with the music industry, offering a variety of artists a platform for their work. By connecting Spotify's world-class streaming platform into our world-class store and digital ecosystem, we are reinventing the way our millions of global customers discover music."

Spotify recently struck a similar deal with Uber, allowing riders to DJ from their seats.

In 2013, a jury ruled in favor of Apple in a blockbuster patent and intellectual property fight with Samsung, awarding the Cupertino giant $930 million in damages.

A new ruling by the U.S. appeals court has threatened parts of that verdict, meaning nearly 40 percent of the damages award will now be reconsidered.

The patent infringement verdict was upheld but a separate trademark verdict was thrown out. The trademark verdict had found that the iPhone's external appearance could be protected and was the most controversial ruling of the trial.

$382 million that was awarded for trade dress dilution will now be reconsidered. Apple was never able to gain an injunction on the offending smartphones, all of which are now years old and no longer available.

LG's latest flagship, the G4, has begun rolling out across the globe following its early launch in Korea.

The company says the device will launch in Hong Kong first, followed by Turkey, Russia and Singapore. Afterwards, the smartphone is headed to "most of Europe, North America, CIS, Southeast Asia, Middle East/Africa and South/Central America" over the course of the next month.

LG's latest has a large 5.5-inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel (QHD) display with better color reproduction, adds a bit of a curve (to help avoid shattering the screen if you drop it), is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage (microSD expandable), a 3,000mAh removable battery (no QuickCharging or wireless charging available however) and Android 5.1 with LG's own custom UI on top.

Notably, LG says its GPS nav and location services are "twice as accurate" as any other phone and the company has removed lots of bloat, so the devices will seem almost like stock. The company is also adding 100GB of free Google Drive storage for 24 months, at least for the U.S. model.

Earlier this month, streaming music service Grooveshark shut down and settled for millions of dollars with the major record labels.

The record labels took over control of the Grooveshark name, its patents and copyrights, and the existing database was completely wiped.

Just days after the site was shutdown, however, someone revived the brand with multiple domains, offering up a basic music search engine to find copyright music. Going by the name 'Shark' the new admin claimed that Grooveshark would rise again.

The record labels did not agree and quickly sued the new site over trademark infringement, copyright infringement, cybersquatting and counterfeiting. A District Judge was quick to rule in favor of the labels, issuing a restraining order. Additionally, domain registrar NameCheap was ordered to seize grooveshark.io and any other domains.

Within a day, the operator brought the site back at grooveshark.vc but that domain has since been seized, as well.

According to new reports, Netflix is in talks with Wasu Media Holding, the Chinese company backed by Alibaba's Jack Ma, looking to partner up in the nation of 1.4 billion people.

China's online video market is growing exponentially and is now valued at $5.9 billion.

Netflix plans "to be nearly global by the end of 2016," although they did not specifically confirm China as part of the plans.

A local partnership is necessary in the nation, where the government censors and controls online and TV content. Wasu has licenses to play content on mobile devices, PCs and set-top boxes, one of just 7 companies in the nation to have those.

"China is too big to have an asterisk next to it," Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said Friday in response to the reports. "There are a lot of operating constraints in China that are different to anywhere else. We don't have any operating partners anywhere else in the world, so that would be a new skill for us too."

The Chinese online video market is expected to grow to $12.9 billion by 2018.

Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi will launch their Mi Store outside of Asia starting on May 19th, in beta.

The store will launch in the U.S., UK, France and Germany offering accessories but not phones or tablets.

"For the 1st time ever, fans in US, UK, France and Germany can shop on mi.com (beta test) and purchase star accessories like the 5000mAh and 10400mAh Mi power banks, Mi Band and Mi Headphones! Very limited quantities will be available on 19 May, 1pm CEST (7am EST)," says the company.

Items like the power banks have been incredibly popular, especially at their cheap price points ($9.99 and $13.99) so it will be interesting to see how successful the company is in their endeavors outside of Asia.

CBS's on-demand streaming service, All Access, now offers local and live TV feeds to over 60 percent of U.S. consumers.

The service launched last October and the live feeds were limited to just 14 CBS owned and operated stations in major metros like NY, LA and Chicago.

Since then, CBS has expanded to 12 additional affiliate stations in 56 markets. Today's announcement adds an extra 13 affiliates, and the total markets are now up to 94.

The service costs $5.99 per month and offers 7000 episodes of classic and new CBS programs that can be streamed through your browser, on Roku, via Chromecast and on dedicated Android and iOS apps.

Sadly, the service does not offer live streaming for football games, which would be a huge draw in America.

Oculus VR has posted the minimum specs required to use the upcoming Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, specs that will guarantee a "better player experience of comfortable sustained presence."

The company does say the recommended specs configuration will hold for the lifetime of the headset meaning you won't have to keep updating your PC as each new generation of the Rift is launched.

Reads the statement: "Today, that system's specification is largely driven by the requirements of VR graphics. To start with, VR lets you see graphics like never before. Good stereo VR with positional tracking directly drives your perceptual system in a way that a flat monitor can't. As a consequence, rendering techniques and quality matter more than ever before, as things that are imperceivable on a traditional monitor suddenly make all the difference when experienced in VR. Therefore, VR increases the value of GPU performance.

At the same time, there are three key VR graphics challenges to note: raw rendering costs, real-time performance, and latency.

On the raw rendering costs: a traditional 1080p game at 60Hz requires 124 million shaded pixels per second. In contrast, the Rift runs at 2160×1200 at 90Hz split over dual displays, consuming 233 million pixels per second. At the default eye-target scale, the Rift's rendering requirements go much higher: around 400 million shaded pixels per second. This means that by raw rendering costs alone, a VR game will require approximately 3x the GPU power of 1080p rendering."

In a document leaked by 9to5Mac Apple lists the products that will become obsolete (or vintage) in June this year. This means that they will lose their repair support.

Included in the devices are the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS as well as a couple of iMacs and MacBook Pro models. In most markets the status is "obsolete" but in Turkey and in California they are considered "vintage" because of the required support.

The products listed below will enter the new status in June 9, 2015. This means that repair support is no longer offered via Apple retail stores or authorized partners.