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It appears Nintendo is targeting gameplay footage of Mario Kart 8 on YouTube to have ads placed on them, generating revenue for the Japanese firm.

Nintendo has been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism for using YouTube's built-in content ID systems to identify videos containing footage of its games, and then having advertisements placed on them in order to generate revenue.

At first, YouTube uploaders had any revenue generating potential completely removed for these videos, but Nintendo has responded to criticism by promising an affiliate program that will share revenue.

Still, even with shared revenue, YouTubers can expect a significant difference in any revenue generated for gameplay footage (walkthroughs, tips, tricks, reviews etc.) of Nintendo games compared to what they might expect for titles not developed by the firm.

Of course, Nintendo has a right to monetize the use of its content, as does any developer, but given how valuable a resource videomaking gamers can be these days, it seems foolish to hinder their efforts in any way.

What do you think?


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Nintendo begins Mario Kart 8 YouTube video claims: www.gamernode.com

Nintendo dominated in combined global hardware sales for video games consoles for eight years, but now Nintendo's decline and the early success of the PS4 has pushed Sony ahead.

Nintendo is continuing to feel the pain of consumers' less-then-lukewarm reaction to the Wii U console and the decline of its handhelds. The iconic Japanese gamesmaker witnessed its hardware sales slump 31 percent last year, pushing it into second place. Combining the sales of Wii, Wii U and the 3DS console, Nintendo topped 16.3 million hardware unit sales last year.

By comparison, Sony sold almost 19 million hardware units when you combine the PS4, PS3 and PS Vita tally. In its first day, Sony's PlayStation 4 sold over a million units. That figure swelled to 2.1 million within the first week of December, and before the end of the year sales had reached 4.2 million, far more than enough to dethrone Nintendo.

This is the first time in eight consecutive years - since 2006 - that Nintendo didn't top the charts. The incredible success of Nintendo's DS handhelds combined with its dominance (in terms of units) with the Wii compared to Xbox 360 and PS3 in the year days of the generation, helped the Japanese firm to keep its seat at the top of the table.

Flickr informed users this week that they will no longer be able to use Google and Facebook accounts to login from this month.

Instead Flickr is demanding that its users login using Yahoo, as Facebook and Google sign-ins will be removed soon.

"Over the next few weeks, if you have been logging in with Facebook and Google IDs, you will be prompted to create a Yahoo username and password when you access your Flickr account," wrote Markus Spiering, head of product manager, Flickr.

"If you already have a Yahoo account, you will be reminded and prompted to use those log-in details."

Spiering says that you can expect a streamlined sign-in experience across Flickr and other Yahoo properties, and dedicated service from Yahoo Customer Care.

To change over to a Yahoo account sign in, you can start here.

If a study conducted by Internet porn king Pornhub is any indication, users of Apple's iPhone and iPad view more pornography than users of Android devices.

Pornhub's stats show that on mobile browsers (smartphone browsers), Apple's Safari leads the way with a 38.2 percent share. The Android browser follows with 29.4 percent of the tally.

Google's Chrome mobile browser claims 18 percent, which could mean that Android smartphone users actually watch more porn, but Chrome is available for iOS too so it is unclear. The mobile version of Internet Explorer claimed just a 2.4 percent share, while Opera Mini was just below IE with 2.3 percent.

In the Tablet share however, there's no misrepresenting the results. The Safari browser claims 73 percent of Pornhub use, compared to 7.8 percent for the Android browser. Chrome claimed a 13.6 percent chunk of this pie, while Amazon Silk followed at 4.8 percent and BlackBerry claimed just 0.69 percent.

On the Desktop side of things, Google's Chrome claimed top spot with a 44.4 percent, ahead of Internet Explorer at 23.2 percent. Firefox was in third place with 20.1 percent, ahead of Safari at 7 percent and Opera at 2.6 percent.

Over 38 million people visit Pornhub each day.

Last week, word hit that Sprint was preparing a $32 billion bid for T-Mobile US, and all eyes turned to one man, current TMUS CEO John Legere.

Legere has helped turn the company around over the last five years, and is now the clear favorite to be CEO of the merged company, if the acquisition does occur. Legere has become somewhat infamous, at least among high-level telecom executives, since he wears pink colored carrier-branded T-shirts, even to important meetings, and is known to taunt competitors and individuals on Twitter and in press releases.

TMUS has been the fastest growing carrier thanks to its "Uncarrier" campaign which includes buying out early termination fees if you come from an other carrier, offering free international roaming and texting, no contracts, and all-you-can-eat truly unlimited plans for as low as $70 per person.

Sprint, which is now majority owned by SoftBank of Japan, will offer 50 percent stock and 50 percent cash for the carrier and the combination of the two smallest major U.S. carriers would give Verizon and AT&T a major competitor, at least as far as spectrum, network and subscribers go.

Both Sprint and T-Mobile are large money losers, however, but at least TMUS is gaining an impressive amount of customers each quarter. Sprint has lost 2.5 million contract customers in the past five quarters, alone.

Vodafone, the world's second largest phone company with over 420 million subscribers, has confirmed that the governments of six nations listen and record customer's phone calls.

Via its 2014 "Disclosure Report," the carrier says six countries within Europe, Africa and Asia are tapping phone calls, similar to what the NSA and GCHQ have been accused of in the U.S. and England. Most governments need warrants issued by judges to tap phone calls, but apparently these countries did not.

For legal reasons, the carrier did not reveal the nations but did say that "in Albania, Egypt, Hungary, India, Malta, Qatar, Romania, South Africa and Turkey it could not disclose any information related to wiretapping or interception."

"In a small number of countries the law dictates that specific agencies and authorities must have direct access to an operator's network, bypassing any form of operational control over lawful interception on the part of the operator," Vodafone said in its report. Vodafone adds that the government agencies of these nations by inserting their own equipment into the network, or diverting data and traffic through their own government systems.

Of all of its operating countries, Vodafone says that Italy made the most requests for communication data, and that Britain and Australia also made hundreds of thousands.

A new video has been released showing the Batmobile's transformation ability in the upcoming Batman: Arkham Knight, dubbed "Battle Mode."

Batman: Arkham Knight was recently 'delayed' until 2015. The next title in the Arkham series picks up after Batman: Arkham City, released in 2011, and features nemesis Scarecrow as he attempts to organize Gotham's criminal elements against Batman.

The feature of the new game getting most attention is the Batmobile. Arkham Knight will be the first game in the series that allows you to drive the Batmobile around Gotham City and use its extensive capabilities for Urban pacification.

Some observers have likened it more to a "tank" considering its explosive power. In this short demo video alone, we're shown a 60mm cannon ('Kinetic energy penetrator'), a Vulcan gun that fires armor-piercing incendiary rounds intended for tanks and aircraft, a missile barrage that can simultaneously target up to six hostiles and a riot suppressor that fires non-lethal rounds.

Wow, that's quite a lot of fire-power for a man who doesn't kill.

According to new research from BI Intelligence, video game consoles remain far and away the most popular devices to stream content on TVs.

Consoles with streaming video playback capabilities accounted for 54 percent of the connected TV market, which includes smart TVs, dedicated set-top boxes, and consoles. The report did not include Web-enabled Blu-ray players.

Smart TVs came in second at 38 percent of the connected TV market, followed by dedicated streaming devices (Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, WD Live) at just 10 percent share.

About 50 percent of all U.S. households own at least one console, and one-third of those owners use the consoles to stream TV, movies and more. Surprisingly, not just teens and young adults are console owners and streaming content, with 32 percent of console owners between 31 and 47 also actively streaming movies or TV.

One of the spin-offs of the popular Popcorn Time application is adding a free VPN service to anonymize users to avoid copyright infringement allegations.

The original Popcorn Time was like a free Netflix powered by BitTorrent technology. While it was a hit with users right away, it didn't last all that long.

This is the Internet though, so plenty of spin-offs came along and users embraced them. It wasn't long until users started to be identified as sharing copyright infringing material, with some users in Germany being fined.

One of the spin-offs of Popcorn Time is aware of this risk and is taking steps to remedy it. Time4Popcorn is adding a feature that will anonymize users of the application behind a VPN. The VPN will be available to use for free.

This is made possible by the cooperation of VPN provider Kebrum, which claims to have more than enough resources to handle the demand.

"From our experience and the expected usage stats provided by Popcorn Time, we believe that the resources we allocated for Popcorn Time users should be enough in order to give a good and fast download experience. Our servers are prepared to handle the traffic," Kebrum's 'Martin', told TorrentFreak.

Jimmy Fallon, host of The Tonight Show, got a demonstration of Sony's Project Morpheus Virtual Reality system.

Joshua Topolsky of The Verge brought the VR system along for Fallon to test out a demo, and actor Channing Tatum also had a go.

Fallon had also checked out emerging gaming technology in the past as host of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, such as Microsoft's Kinect way back when it was known as Project Nadal.

In the Morpheus demo, Fallon has a lot of fun punching the head off of a dummy, and then attempting to attack a dragon. The demo was very limited but it seemed to impress the new host.

Sony is expected to give up more information on Project Morpheus at E3 this year, but is almost certain not to ship any hardware this year.

Here's the demo..

A New Hampshire town absolutely will not pay a ransom to recover files that were encrypted by raonsomware that infected systems at the police department.

Ransomware is a type of malware that attempts to force the victim into handing over a sum of money by holdings systems, or files hostage. Earlier this week, a US-led operation targeted the Cypertolocker ransomware that is estimated to have cost individuals and businesses around $30 million. The malware encrypts files in the background and demands a payment of 1 bitcoin to decrypt them, which could cost up to $600. If a fee isn't paid on time, the files can be destroyed forever.

The malware that infected the police department of Durham, New Hampshire, is not Cryptolocker, but a similar threat known as Cryptowall.

Accordin to Todd Selig, town manager, the infection started when a police officer opened an e-mail attachment that appeared legitimate. Luckily, the police department creates period backups of files and will restore as much as possible.

"Make no mistake, the Town of Durham will be paying no ransom," Selig is quoted by CBS Boston, as saying.

A 20+ minute film released by the Open Rights Group exposes the activities of GCHQ in the United Kingdom, and the government's failure to control it and protect its citizens' privacy

A year on from the first reports of massive surveillance operations around the world, the Open Right's Group has chastised the UK government for doing pretty much nothing at all to protect itself citizens' rights to privacy, or to reign in GCHW.

ORG notes that the UK has fallen five places in the Freedom House world ranking of countries' press freedom, largely related to how it reacted to media reports about GCHQ.

"There has been limited public and political debate in the UK," Ed Paton Williams writes for ORG.

"The issue continues to be conveniently ignored by the UK government and sidelined by most of our mainstream media."

The privacy rights' advocacy group has released a new film that details the spying underway in the UK, and you can watch it below. Alternatively, you can get a torrent for it here.

European Union ministers have agreed that firms located outside the European Union must abide by data protection and privacy rules within the 28-member bloc.

As it stands now, it is very unclear what rules and regulations firms need to abide by within the EU. For example, a German court recently ruled that Facebook was subject to data protection laws within Germany, even though Facebook's headquarter are located in Ireland.

The EU seeks to end this disorder by having one blanket set of data protection laws that applies to all 28 states.

"All companies operating on European soil have to apply the rules," EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said, according to Reuters.

Disclosures of surveillance operations targeting Europeans, mainly by the NSA, has pushed the issue toward the top of the agenda at the EU level, but there are plenty of things that still need to be ironed out before such new rules can come into force.

Sony has released an E3 2014 app that can be used to watch the company's E3 press conference, trailers, view screenshots and do more things.

The app can be download by U.S. users on the PlayStation 4 (PS4) console now, but it's unclear whether it will be available for PS3 too before E3 kicks off. PS4 owners can use it to watch Sony's E3 press conference live and then check out screenshots, trailers and other information from the show floor.

The app also has gold and silver challenges you can complete in the app that will grant you up to 250 Sony Rewards points – these points will be available to unlock until June 24th.

Sony has released an E3 2014 app to view its conference live + trailers, screenshots and more.. http://t.co/ernG5e1asv

— AfterDawn.com (@afterdawn) June 7, 2014

You can also get an Amazon Prime 30-day trial and a Music Unlimited 30-day trial through the app. Sony will also have 6,000 invites per day for the PlayStation Now Private Beta on PS4, starting June 10th at 12pm PDT, so you'll have to login in early for a shot at an invite.

A Romanian man who hacked into the Bush family's e-mails, as well as accounts of celebrities and officials, has been jailed.

Marcel Lazar Lehel was known as "Guccifer" and "Small Fume." He was arrested in January of this year, in Bucharest for a wide range of offenses. Lehel allegedly hacked the e-mail accounts of U.S. president George W. Bush's family, even publishing some of the former president's artwork online.

He also distributed e-mails that were sent to former U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell from Corina Cretu, a Romanian member of the European Parliament, which lead to affair speculation.

Along with other targets in the entertainment industry, he also allegedly hacked the private Yahoo e-mail account of Romania's secret service chief George Maior.

It does not appear that the U.S. has filed any request to extradite the alleged hacker as of this time. He could spend up to seven years in prison in Romania.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Romania sentences hacker 'Guccifer' to jail: www.reuters.com