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Google has begun sending out e-mails to customers informing them that they may be entitled to a refund for in-app purchases made previously, as part of a settlement with the FTC.

Google reached the settlement with the FTC over the issue of in-app purchases, and how many parents may have been charged for in-app purchases made by their children when they didn't have permission to make them. Any user who made an in-app purchase between March 1, 2011 and November 18. 2014 could be eligible for a refund.

"We understand some parents might have been charged for in-app purchases made by young children who did not have permission to make those purchases," Google writes.

"As a result, we've added tools to help parents avoid unauthorized in-app purchases by their young children. We are also offering refunds in certain cases in line with our agreement with the FTC."

Customers can request a refund request until December 2, 2015.

via: Phandroid

Microsoft unusually instructed users running the Windows 10 Technical Preview to uninstall Microsoft Office products before attempting to install a required patch.

According to Gabriel Aul, users had to uninstall Office before applying a needed patch or else the installer would fail. He made the revelation by Twitter, but then later on encouraged users to try to install the patch without removing the firm's Office software.

"We have a security update going out today, and the installer fails on 9879 if Office is installed. Rather than rolling a new fix (losing several days in the process) we're going to publish it as is." Aul wrote.

"The workaround is painful: uninstall Office, install the hotfix, reinstall Office. Sorry. We're working hard to fix."

Later on he changed his advice and instructed users to try to install the update - identified as KB3022827 - before removing office. "It will work for many, no harm if not."

Many users responding to his tweets said they didn't have a problem installing the patch with Office on the system.

It is usual for Microsoft to recommend that software be uninstalled before a patch is applied, but that's the risk you take if running on a pre-release version of an options system. It may be nice to on the edge of emerging software, but it comes with its own drawbacks and risks.

The Pirate Bay has been down since Tuesday evening after a reported raid in Stockholm aimed at the notorious BitTorrent website, but it may not be the only casualty.

It is notable that two other popular BitTorrent-related sites including EZTV and Zoink also went down at the same time and remain down. Torrage was also reportedly down following the raid but seems reachable now, but the Istole tracker is apparently still having issues.

UPDATE: The services seem to be coming back online gradually, read more here.

The EZTV twitter feed hasn't updated since yesterday at time of writing either. Superbay.org, Bayimg.com and Pastebay.org are also down since the raid.

Some news sites have linked the action taken by Swedish authorities to a wider investigation resulting from the Sony Pictures hack in the United States. Following an unprecedented breach at the entertainment company, several unreleased films appeared online and were available on the Pirate Bay, including Fury starring Brad Pitt, and Annie.

However, whether that is based on any substance or is just mere speculation due to the proximity of the two events is unclear, and this certainly isn't the first time that the Pirate Bay has been the subject of a police raid in Sweden.

According to a new report, HBO will release its standalone streaming service in April, right alongside the premiere of the new season of "Game of Thrones."

The service will be different than the current HBO Go streaming service, and the technology backing the software will also be different. The new tech will supposedly keep outages and lag to a minimum, even during episodes of extremely popular shows like "Game of Thrones" and "True Detective."

HBO's current CTO, Otto Berkes, resigned today as HBO decided to outsource its work to a tech firm called MLB Advanced. Reportedly, Berkes knew about a memory leak in HBO Go that was leading to downtime of the service when server loads were high, but did not care to fix it.

"Recently HBO's management decided to partner with a third party to assist HBO in bringing our OTT service to market in 2015," Berkes wrote in his resignation. "This is a change in direction from what I planned with HBO and the approach will not utilize my overall capabilities. Therefore, I feel that this is the right time for me to move on from HBO so that I am able to fully pursue my passion building world-class technology teams, products and businesses."

According to cybersecurity experts, Sony Pictures could be looking at a loss nearing $100 million from the massive hack that took down their network and exposed terabytes of sensitive data.

Sony, as a company, knows well the price of such a breach. In 2011, the company had costs above $170 million following the breach of the PlayStation Network that exposed data on over 100 million people.

While the latest attack did not expose customer data, over 50,000 employees and former employees have had their social security numbers and other data leaked. The company also had a few of its films leaked to the Web months before they hit theaters, which could lead to "an impairment charge of $83 million" for lost ticket sales and more.

In addition, there will be a major cost to investigate the hack, repair all damaged servers and PCs, and upgrade systems to avoid future attacks. For a few days, productivity at the studio even stopped completely as employees had to use pen and paper since their computers were unusable.

Sony has not estimated their costs, yet, as it assesses the full impact of the breach. The company did have insurance, by cybersecurity insurance will likely only cover a small portion, especially if it finds that Sony was negligent.

The crowdfunded Jolla Tablet is near the end of its funding campaign, and just within reach of their next $1.75 million stretch goal.

Based on the Sailfish 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, dual 5MP/2MP cameras, 32GB internal storage (expandable via microSD) and a small-ish 4300mAh battery.

Earlier this week, Jolla hit the first $1.5 million stretch goal, which was to add 128GB mciroSDHC support. As the page read at the time: "Once we reach the first goal, every Jolla Tablet will be upgraded to support microSDHC cards up to 128GB! You'll never have to worry about running out of space again. Currently Jolla Tablet supports cards up to 32GB, besides having 32GB internal storage."

At $1.75 million, Jolla will add Split Screen capabilities to Sailfish. Says Jolla: "Split screen allows you to view and use two apps simultaneously, enhancing Sailfish OS' multitasking capabilities even further. Split screen is the most wanted Jolla Tablet software feature by our community at together.jolla.com, and we're thrilled to offer it to you as one of the goals! Split screen will be available to you as a software update during Q3/2015."

Infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay has been taken down today following a raid by Swedish police in which servers, computers and other equipment were seized.

Other torrent sites and even Pirate Bay's forum Suprbay.org is down too.

"There has been a crackdown on a server room in Greater Stockholm. This is in connection with violations of copyright law," read a statement from Paul Pintér, police national coordinator for IP enforcement in Sweden.

It is unclear if the raid was aimed at The Pirate Bay, although it seems very likely given the high profile of the site and its ire in the global anti-piracy community.

We will keep you updated on the situation.

According to a new report, luxury Swiss watchmaker TAG Heuer is preparing to unveil a smartwatch at next month's CES event.

CES 2015 starts on January 5th and there is expected to be a plethora of new wearables revealed for release in the Q1 or later.

The new rumored watch will run on an Intel processor and it expected to be able to measure steps, burned calories, and sleep patterns.

It is unclear if the watch will have a touchscreen, but it is not expected to, with the design rumored to be similar to the Withings Activité or the HP Chronowing.

Source:
BI

The Twitch app for Xbox One has gotten a major update greatly improving search, and also adding video-on-demand and a Home screen revamp.

The search now allowed you to use Xbox Live's new ability to associate real-time gameplay stats with broadcasts, which enables a massive array of search options. The filters could include player stats, game modes, maps, player skill level, in-game activity, progress, and so on.

"Want to search for the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare broadcaster with the highest kill/death ratio? How about instantly queuing up a Halo match from whoever has the highest rank in Slayer mode, or finding Forza Horizon 2 players who are driving a specific class of car?" writes Larry Hryb.

The update means that up and coming broadcasters can find an audience because if they are very good at games they could quickly attract an audience.

Additionally, Xbox One is the first platform which brings a full-featured Twitch app including video on demand. You'll begin to see highlights and past broadcasts available to watch at any time, even when the broadcaster is offline.

The Home screen has also been updated to provide a more personalized experience while broadcasters can take advantage of new profile pages.

Several media organizations are trying to get Steve Jobs' deposition video from the antitrust trial currently under way released for the public to view.

The two hour video was recorded six months prior to Jobs' death in 2011, and thirty minutes of it was shown in court last week during an antitrust case. The video caught the attention of the media very quickly, as it's one of the last videos recorded of the Apple founder before his death.

"Given the substantial public interest in the rare posthumous appearance of Steve Jobs in this trial, there simply is no interest that justifies restricting the public's access to his video deposition," attorney Thomas Burke, representing the Associated Press, Bloomberg and CNN, wrote in a filing.

The video is not technically sealed evidence, but it could be sealed retroactively if the judge chose to do so. Apple does not want the Jobs' video released.

The case is almost a decade old. Apple stands accused of harming competition by using its FairPlay digital rights management system to tie iTunes-purchased music to its iPods, which generally sold for a higher price than rival's hardware.

The video player that Microsoft bundles with Windows 8.1 has finally gotten support for MKV files, meaning users will no longer have to rely on third party applications for every video.

The MKV support was added in the latest version of the app (Xbox Video v2.6.0432.0) and it means that users will not longer have to use third party apps like VLC in some cases to play MKV files. However, when it comes to MKV files, simply supporting the container doesn't provide guarantees of success.

MKV is popular because of the flexibility of the container, it can contain a wide variety of video streams, audio streams, subtitle streams and so on. Therefore, you could run into problems playing MKV files correctly if the content streams in the container format aren't supported by the player - in other words if it doesn't have the appropriate codecs for them.

So perhaps it is better to stick to VLC for now, rather than the bundled Metro Xbox Video app.

Other than the MKV support, the update only provides a few minor bug fixes and nothing really major. It is available at the Windows Store.

The group claiming responsibility for the massive Sony Pictures breach in November have demanded that the release film starring Seth Rogen and James France be cancelled

The Interview stars the pair as journalists who have been recruited by the CIA into a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. North Korea has condemned the movie as an act of war and of sponsoring terrorism, though North Korea has denied any involvement in the Sony hack.

Despite denying involvement, North Korea did describe the hacking and later leaking of massive amounts of data from the entertainment company as a "righteous deed."

A message from the group calling itself the Guardians of Peace has demanded that the film be dropped. "Stop immediately showing the movie of terrorism which can break the regional peace and cause the War," the demand reads. The group also denied that it sent e-mails to Sony Pictures employees last week threatening them and their families.

Amazon has announced that some content is now available to Amazon Prime members in Ultra HD, but the selected is limited for now.

Customers will not have to pay any additional fee for the resolution upgrade, which is always nice. The selection for now is very limited, including Amazon Original Series including the sophomore season of fan-favorite Alpha House, the critically-acclaimed Writers Guild of America nominated series Transparent, and children's series Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street, and more content from Amazon Studios.

BBC America's Orphan Black is also available, and several films from Sony Pictures Entertainment including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Funny Girl, Hitch and Philadelphia are available in 4K.

The video will be streamed at a resolution of 3840 x 2160, or 8.3 million pixels, and are available through the Prime Instant Video app or on supported Smart TVs from LG, Samsung and Sony.

"We want to deliver the best entertainment experience, and offering Ultra HD movies and TV shows raises the bar on quality and innovation that customers have come to expect from Amazon," said Michael Paull, Vice President, Amazon Digital Video.

"We're also excited that Ultra HD is the latest benefit of the Amazon Prime membership, giving members instant access to great movies and TV shows in a premium picture resolution at no additional cost."

Sony has confirmed that its systems are back online and operating as normal after the PlayStation Network and PlayStation Store were inhibited by a DDoS attack.

The Japanese firm has insisted that there are no indications of a wider hack that would involve any sensitive user data. A group called Lizard Squad took credit for downing the services and promised there would be more disruption for gaming services during the holiday period.

The same group took credit for an Xbox Live outage recently.

There is no link between this cyber attack on Sony's gaming services, and the massive breach of Sony Pictures in November.

The pressure is piling on Uber overseas, and now it is facing more domestic opposition as the City of Portland, Oregon has filed a lawsuit against the app-driven car service.

The lawsuit alleges that Uber has started operating private-for hire transportation services in the city, and it wants the court to declare that the San Franciso firm is subject to and in violation of the Private for Hire Transportation Regulations and Administrative Rules of the city.

It seeks an injunction to force Uber to stop operating the service in the city until it complies with the safety, health and consumer protection rules that apply to it.

"I am hereby directing that Uber Technologies Inc.... or any other Uber affiliate entity immediately cease and desist operating within the City of Portland until such time as appropriate permits are obtained and Uber is in full compliance with the requirements of Portland City Code Chapter 16.40," Transportation Director Leah Treat wrote in a cease and desist letter sent to Uber.

"Please alert all Uber-affiliated drivers that they are to cease and desist."

Source: Portland Bureau of Transportation