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You can get a $50 discount off the red, black and blue Nintendo 3DS XL handhelds, but the offer expires this weekend.

Best Buy is selling the red, black and blue 3DS XL models for $150, but the offer will expire on Saturday, December 13 so you may want to snap one up now if you're interested.

The offer is available in Best Buy stores, or alternatively you can take advantage of free shipping if you order one online.

GameSpot also notes that Best Buy is currently running a Buy 2 Get 1 deal on games that will also expire on December 13. The offer applies to any Xbox, PlayStation or PC titles, but it does not apply to Wii U, 3DS or PSVita, nor does it involve pre-orders.

Like the 3DS offer, you can take advantage of it in store or online.


via: GameSpot

You can get a OnePlus One smartphone without an invite for a limited time, and the OnePlus website says they will be delivered before December 25.

It's not clear how long it will be before the offer ends, there is no time limit visible. However, to be on the safe side if you really want one of these you should order it as soon as possible. Previous promotions that allowed consumers to buy one without an invite only lasted for an hour.

The 16GB Silk White model sells for $299 and the 64GB Sandstone Black model sells for $349.

To remind you of some specs, the OnePlus One packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 Quad-Core 2.5GHz CPU with integrated Adreno 330 GPU, 3GB LP-DDR3 RAM at 1866MHz, a 13 Megapizel Sony Exmor IMX214 and a 5 Megapixel front facing camera. The 3100 mAh battery will power the device all day long even with plenty of apps in constant use.

The OnePlus One features a 5.5-inch 1080p full HD JDI screen with LTPS technology for a higher pixel density and sharper picture, with Gorilla Glass 3 to protect the screen against scratches.

Order one at: https://oneplus.net/

Lenovo has announced a recall of more than 500,000 power cords sold with IdeaPad products that have been deemed a safety risk.

The defective power cords were sold with IdeaPad computers between February 2011 and June 2012. The recall comes after consume complaints about the power cords overheating, and in cases melting, burning and throwing sparks.

The IdeaPads these defective cords were sold with include products in the B, G, S, U, V an d Z series, and some other Lenovo notebooks potentially were sold with the defective cord.

One quick way to tell if you might have a defective cord is to disconnect the cord from the AC adapter (power brick) and check to see if it has LS-15 stamped into the molding, as shown in the picture.

If so, then go to the Lenovo recall page and verify that you have a defective cord, then apply for a free replacement from Lenovo.

More here: 2014 POWER CORD RECALL (support.lenovo.com)

Sony is running a limited offer for PlayStation Store customers with PayPal that can get you $10 store credit to use later this month.

To qualify, you will need to use PayPal to add $60 to your SEN wallet before Tuesday, December 16. The offer applies to the United States and Canada. You will be sent a code by December 23 to redeem $10 credit to spend in the PlayStation Store. The code will be delivered to users who qualify via XMB message on PS3, system messaging on PS4 or the e-mail account associated with your Sony Entertainment Network account.

There's some things to remember about the promotion. Firstly, it is limited to $10 credit per account, so using PayPal to add $120 to your PS Store wallet will not result $20 credit. Secondly, you will need to add the $60 or more to your SEN wallet or using PayPal through their PS4 or through the web store at store.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com.

SEN wallets can only hold a maximum of $150 USD at a time so a balance at or below $90 USD is required to participate.

And last thing to remember, you must redeem the code by January 22, 2015.

Netflix has been increasing their portfolio of tv shows steadily during the past couple of years. The pace is only going to get higher says the Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos in an interview at a media conference.

Sarandos said that customers will be able to expect as much as 20 premieres a year from Netflix in five years. These premieres would be either brand new Netflix original tv shows or new season premieres. That would mean that in average there would be a new premiere almost every two weeks.

Sarandos also made it clear that it is always in Netflix's interest to increase the availability of its service and new regions will be added in the future.

In addition to increasing its tv show production the streaming giant is launching more original movies to further reduce the dependence on Hollywood studios and their content.

Contrary to reports, the Pirate Bay is not back online and operating out of Costa Rica just one day after a Stockholm raid took the torrent giant down.

The notorious BitTorrent site has been offline since Tuesday afternoon after police action took it offline. Also reportedly down are a number of other sites including EZTV. However, despite the Pirate Bay's history of prompt returns after legal action, it has not come back online just yet.

Reports suggested that the Pirate Bay is not operating out of Costa Rica, specifically using the domain ThePirateBay.cr. These reports are inaccurate however. Sure, when you load the page it looks like the Pirate Bay (although at time of writing it was providing an internal server error), but it is actually a Pirate Bay proxy and relies on the original Pirate Bay site for access to content. In other words, it does nothing.

There are several other proxy and mirror sites of the Pirate Bay that will load a homepage, but these aren't operational, you can't really use them for anything.

Whether or not the Pirate Bay will return remains to be seen. It did recover from a very similar police action in 2006 relatively quickly, so we'll just have to sit back and see if history does repeat itself from time to time.

The decision by two Australian retailers to pull copies of GTA V from shelves has been blasted by Take-Two president Karl Slatoff as an affront to the values of a free society.

GTA V publisher Take-Two had previously expressed disappointed with the decision by Target Australia and KMart Australia to drop the controversial game from their stores across the country in response to a petition that decried the depictions of violence against female characters in the game.

However, at the BMO Capital Markets 2014 Technology & Digital Media Conference, Slatoff was a bit more blunt with his reaction to it, finding it to be incompatible with a free society.

"It's one thing for someone to not want to buy a piece of content, which is completely understandable, and that's really the solution. If you don't like it and it's offensive to you, then you don't buy it," Slatoff reportedly said, reports GI.biz.

"But for a person or a group of people to try to make that decision for millions of people... We have 34 million people who bought Grand Theft Auto, and if these folks had their way, none of those people would be able to buy Grand Theft Auto."

The Chinese love their slim smartphones. The world's thinnest smartphone has been a three horse race between Oppo, Gionee, and Vivo – all of which are from China. Now the latter has introduced the newest king of the hill.

Called Vivo X5Max the slimmest smartphone on the planet is just 4,75 millimeters thin. Regardless of its thinness the phone is packed with almost everything you'd expect from a modern smartphone. It has a 5.5 inch Full HD display, 13 and 5 megapixel cameras, 16 gigs of microSD expandable memory and 2 gigs of RAM.

The phone is powered by the mid range Snapdragon 615 chip that is a quad-core SoC with 64-bit capabilities that can be taken advantage of as soon as the phone gets updated to Android Lollipop.

The battery is "only" 2200 mAh due to the thinness but Vivo has managed to retain the 3.5 mm audio plug unlike its competitor Oppo.

Vivo says that X5Max packs the audio experience you'd expect from its siblings, and even surpasses them. Also the karaoke function gets a mention.

Vivo begins selling the phone in China this Friday for what is just under $500. There is no word on European or US variants.

Comcast has been sued by a mother and daughter for the practice of using home WiFi routers as part of its plan for a nationwide hotspot network.

Under Comcast's plan to create an Xfinity WiFi Hotspot network, newer home WiFi routers of customers will activate a second WiFi signal intended to be used by house guests or by Comcast subscribers who have a mobile device in proximity to the router.

In a lawsuit filed by Toyer Grear and daughter Joycelyn Harris in a U.S. District Court in San Francisco, Comcast is accused of exploiting their customers for profit, reducing the performance of connection / WiFi network and costing customers more money on their electricity bills.

To be fair, the service can be disabled by customers, but the lawsuit alleges that the provider turns it on without their permission and so forces customers to pay the cost of powering its national hotspot network. It cites research from Speedify that finds that Comcast's secondary Internet channel will cost its national users tens of millions of dollars on their electricity bills.

Tests showed that under heavy use, the secondary channel adds between 30 percent and 40 percent more to a customer's electricity bill than the typical cost of powering the router for home use.

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."