Latest news

As Je suis Charlie has become the trending topic around the internet politicians are pressured to make decisions on new anti-terrorists acts.

In the United Kingdom the Prime Minister David Cameron is calling out for a backdoor to all secure messaging or else ban it.

According to Engadged the UK Prime Minister doesn't want terrorists to have means for private messaging without the possibility of government intervention.

The conservative party leader wants a new legislation in effect in 2016 as the Draft Communications Data Bill will be terminated. Known as the Snooper's Charter the bill requires companies to retain certain information of their users' communication.

This would first mean that the party would have to win this year's election and gain huge amount of traction for such a radical act.

The ban of such services would mean Whatsapp, Snapchat and the likes would be considered illegal – not to mention other encrypted data services – unless the special access is created.

It is highly unlikely the companies behind that messaging platforms would remove the encryption to the extent that it would become insecure.

In addition to Netflix the e-commerce giant Amazon is trying to fight against the Hollywood's overbearing control over TV shows.

Now Amazon has signed the legendary Woody Allen for an upcoming TV series.

The details are still extremely scarce. Amazon told that the series will feature all new 30 minute episodes but of what nature is yet unknown. The show will be written and directed by Allen.

Woody Allen himself doesn't have more details, saying: "I don't know how I got into this. I have no ideas and I'm not sure where to begin. My guess is that [Amazon Studios'] Roy Price will regret this."

The series will premiere next year on Amazon Prime Instant Video. What kind of plot or who will star the series are obviously completely undisclosed.

According to sources, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun recently discussed a possible Facebook investment in the world's third-largest smartphone maker.

Xiaomi raised $1.1 billion last month, valuing the company at $45 billion, but Facebook was not part of the investors.

Zuckerberg visited China in October, but no deal was ever cemented. A big hurdle was the political implications of such a move, since Facebook has been banned in China for half of a decade.

Xiaomi, after starting just 4 years ago, is now China's biggest smartphone maker. The company sold 61.12 million smartphones last year, bringing in $12 billion in revenue.

Samsung has unveiled a sleek new all-metal octa-core processor powered smartphone: the Galaxy A7.

The device features a 5.5-inch display, a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon chip (dual 1.8GHz and 1.3GHz quad-core processors or 1.5GHz and 1.0GHz in the dual-SIM model), 2GB RAM, at least 16GB internal storage and Android 4.4 KitKat.

For heavy camera users, the smartphone has a 13MP standard camera and a 5MP front-facing camera. Samsung has added some software tweaks, as well, allowing you to take "wide selfies" and "auto selfies" using "a voice command or even a simple wave of the hand."

In addition, Samsung has added a new private mode that "adds an extra layer of security for important files and documents" and multi-screen support for apps.

The device is also notable for its design, which is metal. Samsung's devices to date have mainly been plastic with faux leather, which can feel cheap when compared to the iPhone and other high-end devices.

Just two months after unveiling 50 million active users, Spotify now has 60 million active users and a full 15 million paying subscribers.

The streaming music service had 12.5 million paying users in October, paying either $4.99 for unlimited ad-free streaming on their PCs or $9.99 per month for unlimited ad-free streaming everywhere including mobile devices. The company offers all users free music for PCs with ads, and a free but slightly limited version for mobile devices.

Spotify is one of the more valuable private companies in the tech sector, and it is expected to IPO later this year and be worth in the low billions.

The service recently had a setback when popular artist Taylor Swift pulled her entire catalog from Spotify, claiming that streaming services do not value the musician's music. The company has clearly recovered since.

Samsung is preparing another flagship press event at this years Mobile World Congress in March. A lot depends on this one phone and its possible accessories as Samsung's stocks in the smartphone industry have been withering.

According to the information Business Insider has gathered from "sources familiar with the company's plans" Samsung will introduce not only one but two flagship variants at the event.

In addition to the two phones BI notes another revision of Gear smartwatch is coming. It will be the first one with a round display for the Korean company.

The sources say that the construction of one of the phones will include metal as is expected after the launch of Galaxy Alpha – the predecessor of metal design flaunting Alpha series – and Galaxy Note 4. It is however not yet known in what fashion the metal is used.

The non-metal variant features an Edge-like curved display. Galaxy Note Edge features a curved display that wraps around the right side of the phone (pictured above).

Business Insider notes that Samsung's plans can still change before the press event in early March.

The Netflix original that has since the first season defined the service – House of Cards – is continuing on February 27th. The Emmy and Golden Globe winning drama series has now released a new trailer for the upcoming season.

Starred by the Academy Award winning actor Kevin Spacey the third season returns maybe in a even darker tone than before. According to the trailer there will be more stress in the White House and in the hands of Francis Underwood.

The season will appear on Netflix in one package as usual and will feature thirteen all new episodes.

The first and the second season are of course available still in the streaming service if one desires a recap before the new season begins. Meanwhile watch the intense trailer below.

The web is quickly shifting towards the mobile and not unlike web, the music streaming is one of the more popular activities on a mobile device. And so in their latest press event Spotify has told that it is now more popular on phones and tablets than on desktop.

According to the new stats the desktop app is used by 45 percent of the users while the phones and tablets combine to 52 percent – phones are at 42% and tablets 10%.

The figures could be even more into favor of mobile if the company had stepped into it more aggressively. Last year Spotify reached into mobile with more apps and new shuffle-only and ad-supported models.

Currently the music streaming service says it has 60 million active subscribers of which 15 million are paying customers. This years possible introduction of Apple's new streaming service will keep Spotify on its toes and try to expand especially on mobile.

As they do every year, pirates have released a plethora of Oscar hopefuls to the Web, all in "DVD Screener" quality.

Among the releases are Birdman, The Imitation Game, Selma, American Sniper, Unbroken, Big Hero 6, Into the Woods, Big Eyes, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, The Gambler, Inherent Vice, A Most Violent Year and Kill The Messenger.

The screeners seem to have come from different sources, and while most are decent quality, reports say quite a few have audio that goes out of sync and have choppy frames, suggesting the leaks came from rookies.

According to sources, Samsung would consider building Windows Phones again if Microsoft were to settle their outstanding royalties legal battle against Android products.

"Samsung has run pilot programs on the stability of Windows 8.1 software on devices. It is interested in promoting Windows mobiles. If the companies settle their litigation, then Samsung will manufacture handsets powered by the Microsoft-developed mobile platform. The timing could be the third quarter of this year at the earliest," reads the report.

The company halted all development on Windows Phones as they discovered quickly there were not enough being sold to make it profitable for them.

In recent times, however, Samsung has tried to break their dependency on Google's Android platform. The company has built their smartwatches on their own Tizen operating system, and have been planning a smartphone with the operating system, as well.

Thanks to changes in exchange rates and local rates, Apple has raised the minimum app prices for the App Store in Canada and most of Europe.

The new minimum prices are $1.19 CAD (Canadian dollars), .79 euro or .99 British pounds.

Apple said the price change is in effect for "all territories in the European Union as well as in Canada and Norway, decrease in Iceland, and change in Russia."

The EU recently passed a new law that adds a 6.5 percent "digital tax" on apps, ebooks, movie downloads and MP3s, so the increase was widely expected. In Canada and Russia, the local currencies have depreciated significantly against the US Dollar, so changes in those nations were expected, as well.

Apple made similar changes last year in Australia, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Turkey as currencies fluctuated.

The future of The Pirate Bay is anything but certain. After last month's raid the website – or atleast it's functionality – has been down. Now Google has decided to move on and select the new number one.

The site is rumored to make a comeback soon. If that happens after the countdown on the official website runs down to zero remains to be seen.

Whatever the fate of the website will be Google's web search has decided that with "pirate bay" search it is no longer the most relevant website, TorrentFreak notes.

Google search reveals a new number one holder which is "Old Pirate Bay", a cloned website by the popular torrent site isoHunt. Other searches including Bing and Bing-powered Yahoo still rely on the official thepiratebay.se as the most relevant result.

Which one of the sites seems more relevant to you, the functional or the official website?

Google's share of the U.S. search market fell to 75.2 percent for the month of December, down to its lowest share since 2009.

Yahoo appears to have gained most of what Google lost, moving to 10.4 percent share, its highest share in the last six years, as well.

In stark change happened almost immediately after Mozilla replaced Google with Yahoo as the default search engine for their Firefox browser. "The move by Mozilla has had a definite impact on U.S. search," StatCounter Chief Executive Officer Aodhan Cullen said. "The question now is whether Firefox users switch back to Google."

The research firm also noted that Firefox is used by about 12 percent of Internet users in the U.S.

Source:
BBG

Nintendo has announced today that it is ending operations in Brazil, with the gaming company discontinuing software and hardware sales in the South American nation.

The company said extremely high tariffs on importation and exportation of goods made it fiscally irresponsible to continue to invest or sell products in the country.

Brazil uses high tariffs, usually higher than 20 percent (and over 50 percent for consoles), to encourage foreign companies to build in Brazil and to protect its own manufacturing jobs.

"Brazil is an important market for Nintendo and home to many passionate fans," Nintendo of America Latin America general manager Bill van Zyll said. "But unfortunately, challenges in the local business environment have made our current distribution model unsustainable in the country."

Is there a chance Nintendo returns in the future?

"Working together with the Juegos de Video Latinoamérica, we will monitor the evolution of the business environment and evaluate the best way to serve our Brazilian fans in the future," said van Zyll. "We will continue to monitor the environment in the country so that we can evaluate future opportunities."

Google's latest Android update, 5.0 Lollipop, was installed on just 0.1 percent of active Android devices as of January 5th, a shockingly low number even for a new update.

The search giant unveiled the OS in mid-October, and it shipped with the Nexus 9 and the Nexus 6 in November. Other Nexus devices received the update by the end of November.

Android KitKat 4.4, is now up to 39.1 percent share of the fragmented market while Jelly Bean 4.1.x-4.3.x still has the lion's share at 46 percent.

Older devices continue to shock, with Android 2.2-4.0.x still controlling 15.9 percent share despite those operating systems being released in 2010 and 2011.

Source:
Google