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It appears that we finally have some scene pics of the upcoming Apple biopic, which features Michael Fassbender and Seth Rogen as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

The movie has been filming around the Bay Area for the last few weeks, within walking distance of Apple's current Cupertino headquarters.

Universal is behind the film, which began filming at Jobs' childhood garage, and emails leaked in December implied that the entire film could be shot in just a few weeks although it is unclear if that timeline has changed. Sony Pictures originally owned the script before dropping it in November.

The new film centers around the notable launches of the original Mac, the NeXT cube and the iPod.

Some pics:

As we have reported for the past few months, Google's latest version of Android is struggling to see adoption.

Into its third month of availability, the operating system is only installed on 1.6 percent of devices, a way lower figure than the install base for Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which was released in 2011.

Android 4.4 KitKat continued to take share, and now stands at 39.7 percent, still slightly below Jelly Bean, which encompasses Android 4.1-4.3.x and has 44.5 percent.

Lollipop remains available for very few devices, most notably Google's own Nexus line. Android 5.0 is easily the search giant's best mobile OS to date, and it is a shame that so few have been able to test it.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced the sequel to their popular micro PC, the Raspberry Pi.

The new, updated Raspberry Pi 2 has an improved processor and double the RAM but keeps the amazing price of $35.

"It's a major leap forward in terms of computing power for users," says Mike Powell, a technology development manager for Pi distributor Element14. "A whole wave of new applications are now possible."

The Pi 2 has a quad-core, ARMv7 processor with a clock speed of 900MHz and 1GB of RAM. The original "Model A" Raspberry Pi had a single core ARMv6 processor at 700MHz with 512MB RAM.

Since its inception, the Pi has been aimed at students that are looking to learn coding. With the added RAM and processing power, there will certainly be the ability to use more power-intensive programs now.

Samsung has sent out press invites for an "Unpacked" event in which the company will reveal an upcoming Galaxy flagship device.

The event will take place on March 1st in Barcelona. Samsung has used 'Unpacked' to unveil Galaxy Note and Galaxy S flagships in the past.

In the past weeks, there have been 'leaks' and rumors about the S6, which is expected to depart from a plastic case to a more premium metal design. Additionally, there are rumors that the device will have a curved display, similar to last year's Galaxy Note Edge.

Besides the phone, Samsung is also expected to release a round smartwatch.

Reportedly, Alibaba has invested $10 million in Ouya, the Kickstarter darling that never made a splash with consumers.

Ouya, which started by building tiny Android-based set-top consoles for gamers, has mostly migrated to becoming a software provider, and that means that Alibaba is planning to integrate the Ouya operating system and its 1000 game strong lineup into their own set-tops.

When Ouya first hit Kickstarter, it was an instant hit, reaching $8.5 million in funding in 2012. However, the set-top saw a few delays and by the time it came out, the PS4 and Xbox One were just months away from hitting shelves. Within months, Amazon and Nvidia also killed Ouya by offering casual gaming on the big screen, at the same price and with more features.

Since overhauling and getting out of the hardware business, Ouya has partnered with Madcatz and Xiaomi who have integrated the software into their more popular hardware. Certainly, Alibaba could help increase that existing network, as well.

Rap mogul Jay Z is preparing to buy his own music streaming service.

The rapper and entrepreneur is currently in the process of buying the Scandinavian music streaming company Aspiro for $56 million.

Through his company, Project Panther Bidco Ltd, Jay began looking into Aspiro for some time ago and found the service to be "an innovative high-quality company with strong future growth potential."

Aspiro, which is not a household name in the U.S., has two ad-free services; WiMP and Tidal. WiMP is available in Europe while Tidal offers high-def audio and music videos in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Late night talk show host Conan O'Brien released a hilarious video yesterday of NFL stars Marshawn Lynch and Rob Gronkowski playing the upcoming 'Mortal Kombat X' for PS4, ahead of tonight's Superbowl.

In the segment, which is part of the comedian's "Clueless Gamer" series, the players fight to the death, and their reactions to fatality moves are notably funny.

Check out the full video here:

Finnish startup Jolla has started a second funding campaign for its Jolla Tablet on Indiegogo, adding more storage.

The original campaign closed in December, with $1.8 million in funding. Buyers of the original tablet can upgrade for $25, or new buyers can purchase for $249.

In addition to the upgrade to 64GB internal storage, the device also has a larger battery (4300mAh to 4450mAh) and has added a gyroscope and compass sensors. Finally, the device has a microSD slot with 128GB support but with a major caveat: "Due to Microsoft's licensing limitations cards over 32GB that are formatted in Jolla Tablet will not be readable with Windows computers or devices that advertise microSDXC support (cameras/phones/tablets)." Jolla has not paid to license exFAT for the OS.

The Jolla Tablet has a 7.85-inch display with 2048x1536 resolution, a 64-bit quad-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM and dual 5MP/2MP cameras.

Get the tablet here: Indiegogo

Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger has confirmed the release dates for the upcoming Star Wars Episodes VII-IX, delighting fans of the blockbuster franchise.

Following this years release of Episode VII, better known as Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Episodes VIII will hit theaters in December 2017 and Episode IX will be released in December, 2019.

Iger wrote in Disney's annual shareholder letter: "As one of the few people allowed to visit the set during filming... and one of the fewer who's seen most of the footage... I can assure the millions of 'Star Wars' fans who have spent the last decade hoping for a new movie this one will be worth the wait. And it's only the beginning of a new era of exceptional 'Star Wars' storytelling; next year we'll release our first standalone movie based on these characters, followed by 'Star Wars: Episode VIII' in 2017, and we'll finish this trilogy with 'Episode IX' in 2019."

The Force Awakens is scheduled for release on December 18th, and there is little question that it will be a billion dollar hit. There are a few in the industry that believe it could even beat the original Star Wars' box office gross, which adjusted for inflation was $1.48 billion.

The Pirate Bay has figuratively risen from the ashes today, after nearly two months of downtime following a police raid by Swedish authorities back in December.

The infamous torrent tracker has replaced its iconic pirate ship logo with a phoenix, at least for the time being.

Back in its original form, including the .se domain, the Pirate Bay had promised a return by February 1st. Some features remain down, and there are no ads yet on the site but the actual torrent magnets appear to be back up, as are user accounts. Over the last hour, I have seen 502 errors intermittently, meaning not all is well yet with the site.

Uploaders are likely to be in overdrive mode for the coming days, as the latest uploads are from early December, the day the servers were raided.

In its downtime, clones and rivals have emerged, most notably isoHunt's "The Old Pirate Bay," which now has millions of unique daily visitors. It will be interesting to see if the original site can take back its visitors.

According to IDC, Apple narrowly missed out on becoming the world's top smartphone maker in the Q4 following its record quarter of 74.5 million iPhones sold.

Samsung shipped 75.1 million smartphones for the quarter, good for 20.01 percent market share, beating out Apple at 19.85 percent. Compared to the same quarter last year, Samsung's shipments declined 11 percent compared to Apple whose growth was up 46 percent. The rest of the top five also saw major growth.

Lenovo/Motorola shipped 24.7 million, good for 6.59 percent share and 77.9 percent growth, followed by Huawei in fourth place with 23.5 million units shipped for the quarter. Xiaomi has insane 178.6 percent year-over-year growth, as it took fifth place.

In total, 375.2 million smartphones shipped for the month, 28.2 percent growth for the industry.

"Most of the industry expected an extremely strong holiday quarter from Apple, especially with regards to the iPhone. However, worldwide shipments of 74.5 million units beat everyone's expectations," said Ryan Reith, Program Director with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. "Beyond the record-setting quarter, a few impressive things stand out with regard to Apple. First, at a time when average selling prices (ASPs) for smartphone are rapidly declining, Apple managed to increase its reported ASPs in the fourth quarter due to higher-cost new models. Second, the growth of iPhone sales in both the U.S., which is considered a saturated market, and China, which presents the dual challenges of strong local competitors and serious price sensitivity, were remarkable. Sustaining this growth and higher ASPs a year from now could prove challenging, but right now there is no question that Apple is leading the way."

Earlier this month, OnePlus announced that it would be unveiling its own Android ROM after a falling out with lead Android fork maker Cyanogen.

On February 12th, the company will reveal more about the custom operating system, which will be released only for OnePlus One and OnePlus Two devices.

Codenamed 'OxygenOS,' the operating system is "open, customizable, and free of bloat and unnecessary features." "We've spent a lot of time thinking about what this ROM means to us and our fans. We realized that, like everything we do, our true goal is to make the product that we ourselves would want to use--to make great technology more accessible for everyone," OnePlus added in a statement.

Since its falling out with Cyanogen, which provided the CyanogenMod operating system, OnePlus has been using stock Android for its devices.

Earlier this week, Sony announced the end of their own Sony Music Unlimited service and the introduction of PlayStation Music, powered by Spotify.

PlayStation Music + Spotify will be available in 41 markets "by Spring," says Sony.

Reads the post:

We know how important music is to our community of gamers, and this partnership combines the best in music with the best in gaming. PlayStation Network users will enjoy the convenience of linking your accounts to Spotify, making it easy to sign-up with your existing ID and subscribe to Spotify's Premium service. You can also use Spotify while playing games on PS4, enabling you to soundtrack your gaming sessions with your favorite songs in the background. Want something heavy and rocking for an intense Destiny Raid? How about some old school hip hop while taking the field in Madden NFL? With more than 30 million songs and 1.5 billion playlists, Spotify on PlayStation Music has it covered. As we get closer to launch we look forward to telling you about some of the other great features that will be available exclusively through Spotify on PlayStation Music.

Unlimited streaming music giant Spotify is working on raising $500 million in new funding valuing the company at about $7 billion.

The raise would be Spotify's largest to date and its first since November 2013, when it raised $250 million from venture capital investors.

If true, such a huge investment round would likely delay an IPO, which has been planned over the past year. Besides venture capitalist, the major record labels combined own about 15 percent of the company, as well.

Spotify has over 60 million users, and 15 million paying subscribers. In 2013, the company had revenue of €747 million ($842 million) but lost €57.8 million ($65 million) and the company has never been profitable. With massive competition and most of the revenue going to royalties, it is unclear how soon the company could even become profitable.

Source:
WSJ

Popular fast fashion retailer Forever 21 has been sued by Adobe, Autodesk and Corel over their alleged use of pirated software including Photoshop.

Adobe filed suit claiming that they found 63 instances of copyright infringement for software such as Photoshop, Acrobat and Illustrator and Autodesk and Corel found instances of pirated copies of Autodesk, WinZip and PaintShopPro.

The company claims to have registration numbers and dates for each instance of piracy, which it claims is "willful, intentional, and malicious copyright infringement." The companies have asked the court for an injunction and damages to cover lost revenue, court costs, and additional damages for willful infringment.

Forever 21 had revenue of $4 billion last year so it is unclear why employees were using pirated software on their systems.