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The team behind Popcorn Time has made a few changes to their Mac and Windows versions of the software and made a strong promise for the upcoming iOS update.

First, the Windows version has been updated to beta 5.1:

After learning about how awesome beta 5.0 is, but also what's not working so well in it, we worked hard on solving the issues and we believe we managed to fix many bugs that were bugging you guys!! First of all, Chromecast should work well again for those who experienced issues with it recently... So go a head and enjoy a good movie on your TV screen again, no problemo!

Other than that we fixed many player issues, the cache folder bug and we increased download speed, enabled support of a bigger variety of torrents and in general we improved the watching experience, so go and watch something and tell us how it feels!!

First of all to the burning question you all are probably asking: Why isn't Mac on beta 5.X yet?
Well, with all that's been going on recently, we had to invest a lot of time making sure that Popcorn Time will not be shut down, and that time took a bite from the time we had for development.

Sony attorney David Boies has seemingly confirmed that the studio will eventually release 'The Interview,' although the when and the how are still very much unclear.

Boies stated that the now infamous comedy "will be distributed." He added, "Sony only delayed this. Sony has been fighting to get this picture distributed. It will be distributed. How it's going to be distributed, I don't think anybody knows quite yet. But it's going to be distributed."

This is a stark change from last Wednesday, when the studio said there were "no further release plans" for the film following its theatrical cancellation. There have been reports that Sony will release the film via their free streaming service - Crackle, but that is nowhere near confirmed.

The attorney also added to President Obama's recent comments about the attack. "I think that what we have to do is use the president's recognition of the importance of this issue as a rallying cry, so that all Americans can unite against what is really a threat to our national security," added Boies. "If state-sponsored criminal acts like this can be directed against Sony, it can be directed against anybody."

Amazon has dumped the price of their new Fire HDX 8.9 tablet, giving consumers a chance to get the device at 30 percent off.

The 32GB/Wi-Fi model is selling for $300 today, down from $430. If you need cellular data and more storage, the 64GB/LTE model is down to $414 from $594, a pretty decent deal given the specs.

Amazon's tablet has an 8.9" "HDX" display with 2560x1600 resolution, a 2.5GHz quad-core processor, 2GB RAM and an Adreno 420 GPU for smoother gaming and video playback.

In addition, Amazon has added free one-day shipping for all buyers of the tablets for the next day, ensuring you can get it by Christmas.

Interested parties can check the tablets here: Amazon Fire HDX 8.9

In 2012, social networking giant Facebook purchased photo sharing giant Instagram for $1 billion. At the time, many cited the deal as a sign that the tech world was in a bubble.

Just two and a half years later, the acquisition is looking like the steal of the century.

Large international bank Citigroup has raised their valuation of Instagram significantly, valuing the company at over $35 billion. Last year, the bank had placed a valuation of $19 billion on the company, in of itself a huge increase from the original purchase price.

Instagram now has over 300 million monthly active users and Citigroup believes the photo sharing service could eventually bring in over $2 billion in annual revenue.

Anonymous, the group behind some of the largest corporate cyber attacks in recent history, claims the FBI are wrong in claiming North Korea is behind the hack on Sony Pictures.

Last week, the FBI claimed that the North Korean government was responsible for the attack on Sony's servers, which netted the hackers as much as 100 terabytes of sensitive information. The hackers also then threatened movie theaters if they showed the comedy "The Interview," which was eventually forced to be canceled by Sony since no one would distribute it.

At the time, the FBI claimed that "technical analysis of the data deletion malware used in this attack revealed links to other malware that the FBI knows North Korean actors previously developed. For example, there were similarities in specific lines of code, encryption algorithms, data deletion methods, and compromised networks." Additionally, the FBI found IP addresses that were associated with Korean infrastructure that were communicating with the IPs hardcoded into some of the malware used during the hack.

Many saw an obvious connection, but there were quite a few doubters, as well. For their part, North Korea still denies any involvement and has proposed a joint task force to find the real culprits. Guardians of Peace, the group that took credit for the attack, also mocked the FBI's investigation, calling the officials 'idiots.'

Less than a week after Sony announced they were canceling the release of 'The Interview' and that they had 'no future plans for its release," we have some encouraging news this weekend.

Sources claim the studio will release the now infamous comedy for free on Crackle, their free streaming service that has a catalog of older content.

Sony canceled the release after their attackers threatened terrorist attacks against movie theaters and movie goers. The movie theater chains refused the show the film, and Sony says that streaming sites also refused to take the film for distribution.

It will be interesting to see if the studio will keep their original release date of Christmas, December 25th.

It appears that being the most powerful couple in entertainment is not enough to compete with Minecraft money.

Markus 'Notch' Persson, the creator of the blockbuster game, became a billionaire in September when Microsoft acquired Mojang AB for $2.5 billion. Notch is said to have owned 70 percent of the gaming studio, netting the developer $1.75 billion before taxes.

The dev is now the proud owner of a $70 million mansion in Beverly Hills, California, outbidding Beyoncé and Jay Z, who were expected to win.

Curbed has an apt description of the ridiculous house: "It's outfitted with a candy room, a car showroom, vodka and tequila bars, a 54-foot curved glass door that opens onto the pool, eight bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, apartment-sized closets, and a movie theater, and even the listing called it 'an overwhelming sensory experience.'"

You can see more pictures at the source.

President Obama bluntly stated yesterday that Sony "made a mistake" in caving to the threats of hackers that have stolen terabytes of data and threatened movie goers.

The President says the U.S. "will respond proportionally" to the cyber attack, which the FBI has blamed on North Korea.

"We cannot have a society in which some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States" he said. "Because if somebody is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, imagine what they start doing when they see a documentary that they don't like, or a news report that they don't like -- or even worse, imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don't want to offend the sensibilities of somebody whose sensibilities probably need to be offended. That's not who we are. That's not what America is about."

"Sony is a corporation. It suffered significant damage, threats against some employees. I am sympathetic to the concerns they faced. Having said that, yes I think they made a mistake [in canceling the release of the film]," Obama added. "That's not what America is about...I wish they'd spoken to me first. I would have told them, 'Do not get into a pattern in which you're intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks'."

Another major retailer has confirmed a security breach, this time with 1.16 million credit and debit cards compromised from office supply giant Staples.

Says the company: "Staples' data security experts detected that criminals deployed malware to some point-of-sale systems at 115 of its more than 1,400 U.S. retail stores. Upon detection, Staples immediately took action to eradicate the malware in mid-September and to further enhance its security. Staples also retained outside data security experts to investigate the incident and has worked closely with payment card companies and law enforcement on this matter.

Based on its investigation, Staples believes that malware may have allowed access to some transaction data at affected stores, including cardholder names, payment card numbers, expiration dates, and card verification codes. At 113 stores, the malware may have allowed access to this data for purchases made from August 10, 2014 through September 16, 2014. At two stores, the malware may have allowed access to data from purchases made from July 20, 2014 through September 16, 2014."

Staples is offering anyone affected a free year of identity theft protection including credit monitoring and identify theft insurance.

Steam has begun their annual holiday sale, letting gamers get thousands of games and DLC packs for as much as 90 percent off normal prices.

Over 15 days, the deals will be available to anyone with a Steam account and there will be sets of "featured deals" that rotate every 24 hours and will include what Steam considers to be the best deals of the day.

More example, today's Featured Deals include:

Dark Souls II - 63% off
Metal Gear Solid V – Ground Zeroes - 33% off
Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth - 40% off
Total War: ROME II – Emperor Edition - 75% off
Sniper Elite 3 - 50% off
Euro Truck Simulator 2 - 85% off
State of Decay - 75% off
Space Engineers - 50% off
Rocksmith 2014 - 66% off

The Steam Holiday Sale will run until 10AM PST, January 2nd.

Check out the sale here, which includes some very, very recent games like Telltale Games' 'Game Of Thrones': Steam Holiday Sale

National Geographic (NatGeo) has announced the winners of their annual Photo Contest, a stunning 19 images from lucky amateurs and seasoned professionals.

There were over 9200 submissions from 150 different countries, and all the winners were chosen from three categories: people, places and nature.

The grand prize winner won $10,000 and an all-expenses paid trip to Washington D.C.

Here are 12 of my favorite shots, in no order except for the top photo of the year - "A Node Glows in the Dark" at the top:

Social networking giant Facebook has been auto-enhancing your photos, and will continue to do so unless you opt-out.

The auto-enhance began with the most updated iOS app, but will likely expand to other operating systems in the near future.

Facebook seems to think that if your picture needs some help in the brightness or contrast areas, it can do a pretty good job at helping you out. The first time you upload an image, Facebook will give you a pop-up message letting you know it's being enhanced.

When an image might require auto-enhance, a small wand will appear in the lower-left of your app, allowing you to adjust the enhancement or even turn it off.

If you don't like Facebook messing with your photos, you can turn off the "Enhance Automatically" setting forever.

Source:
Digits

Amazon has confirmed the launch of Prime Now, a service in NYC that promises delivery in as quick as an hour between 6am and midnight. Right now, there are 25,000 eligible items and 9 eligible zip codes, which will continue expanding into next year.

You must have a $99 per year Amazon Prime subscription to use Prime Now, and the expedited delivery will cost just $7.99 for one-hour delivery and free for two-hour delivery.

For the past few weeks, Amazon has been testing the service with bike couriers in downtown Manhattan. The e-tailer has leased a building across from the Empire State Building for merchandise and office space.

To use Prime Now you must download the Prime Now mobile app, which allows you to search and order in seconds.

Former Anonymous and LulzSec hacker Hector 'Sabu' Monsegur does not believe North Korea had the capability to commit such a cyber attack as the one that was perpetrated against Sony Pictures.

"For something like this to happen, it had to happen over a long period of time. You cannot just exfiltrate one terabyte or 100 terabytes of data in a matter of weeks," Monsegur added. "It's not possible. It would have taken months, maybe even years, to exfiltrate something like 100 terabytes of data without anyone noticing."

Sabu led some of the most brazen attacks on corporations in the U.S. before he was eventually arrested and flipped as an informant for the FBI.

"It could be [North Korea]. In my personal opinion, it's not," Monsegur said. "Look at the bandwidth going into North Korea. I mean, the pipelines, the pipes going in, handling data, they only have one major ISP across their entire nation. That kind of information flowing at one time would have shut down North Korean Internet completely. They don't have the technical capabilities. They do have state-sponsored hackers very similar to China, very similar to Russia and very similar to our good old USA."

Following yesterday's decision by Sony to cancel the release of 'The Interview,' Paramount Pictures has blocked theaters from playing the decade-old 'Team America: World Police' in its stead.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a popular independent theater chain, had planned to replace The Interview with Team America but now says the cancellation is "due to circumstances beyond our control" and that screenings have "been canceled by Paramount Pictures."

Team America was a supermarionation film that focused on ex-North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il's plans to take over the world and "Team America"'s plan to stop him.

The last 24 hours mark a sad time for Hollywood, which has bowed to the demands of cyberterrorists.