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The creator of the addictive Flappy Bird game for smartphones is pursuing developers who have published 'clones' of the simple game.

Flappy Bird was developed by Dong Nguyen (.Gears Studio) of Vietnam, and it became a sensation due to its simplistic, and addictive gameplay on smartphones. Despite being extremely popular, Nguyen pulled the app from mobile app stores, citing its addictive nature.

By pulling the app, Nguyen created a very predictable void in which many other developers have squeezed clones and very similar games hoping to emulate its success. Nguyen is not happy about that, and had said previously that clone-peddlers would be pursued.

That appears to be happening now, with Apple contacting developers on behalf of .Gears Studio, informing them that they may be infringing on the copyright of the Vietnamese studio.

BusinessWeek details one case where a developer is defending an app from this allegation. Duck Run, developed by Todd Moore, was one of the games identified as an infringing game, but Moore has no intention of giving up his app.

The world's largest private video game collection is to be auctioned off, including more than 11,000 games.

Michael Thommason was certified by Guinness World Records as having the largest private collection of video games, confirming a collection of 10,607 titles. Since then, Thommason has added hundreds more games to swell the number to over 11,000.

Now this entire collection - as well as the privilege of having the confirmed largest collection of games - is up for auction at Game Gavel. Bids started at just $1 but have reached $50,000 so far.

In terms of quality, over 2,600 are still factory shrink-wrapped and 8,300 are complete with a box and manual.

Thommason has been involved in the industry for over 25 years, operating seven independent gaming stores in the '90s, and will continue to write for periodicals and publish books, teach classes and occasionally partake in competitive gaming.

He is not giving up the games collection because he wants to, but because family responsibilities demand it.

"I simply have an immediate family and extended family that have needs that need to be addressed," he writes.

In a semi-annual report to Congress, the National Science Foundation (NSF) detailed how a researcher abused NSF-funded supercomputing resources to mine bitcoin.

The report stated that the NSF recommended a government-wide suspending for the researcher. It had received reports describing his activity, in which he used NSF-funded supercomputing resources to mine bitcoin, a clearly unauthorized use.

"The researcher misused over $150,000 in NSF-supported computer usage at two universities to generate bitcoins valued between $8,000 and $10,000," the report states.

When confronted about the misuse, the researcher reportedly tried to pass it off as system tests, but neither University authorized him to carry out tests anyway.

Additionally, the University's involved noted that he accessed the computer systems remotely and even access through a proxy located in Europe, possibly hoping to conceal his identity.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
NSF Office of Inspector General Semiannual Report to Congress, March 2014 (page 29): www.nsf.gov (PDF)

(via: PC World)

In an interview with CNBC, Silicon Valley icon and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen claimed NSA leaker Edward Snowden is a textbook traitor.

He made the comment during an interview with CNBC, admitting that he is a distinct minority for criticizing Snowden's actions. "I think most in Silicon Valley would pick the other designation," he said.

Andreessen said that Snowden's revelations have seriously damaged the U.S. tech sector, with a major question mark now hanging over the ability of U.S. firms to sell their products in overseas markets. Other countries have been envious of the U.S. position as leader in the space, he argued, and now Snowden has provided them with an excuse to adopt protectionist policies that favor domestic products under the guise of protecting against surveillance.

"For me obviously he's a traitor," Andreessen said. "If you look up in the encyclopedia 'traitor' there's a picture of Ed Snowden."

Snowden wasn't the only one to be on the receiving end of Andreessen's criticism either, President Obama was also brought up.

"The Snowden reveals keep coming out. The [Obama] administration is letting the NSA out to dry. They're letting the American tech industry out to dry," Anderseen told CNBC in a Squawk Box interview. He had publicly endorsed Obama in the 2008 Presidential elections, but switched allegiance to Mitt Romney in 2012.

Gottfrid Svartholm, co-founder of the notorious Pirate Bay, is in custody in Denmark awaiting trial for allegedly hacking a Danish IT firm, but maintains his innocence.

Svartholm and his legal representation have maintained that he is innocent, and that somebody else carried out the attacks on IT firm CSC. New evidence presented in court might actually back up Svartholm's assertion that the breach was carried out by someone else.

An analysis of the computer Svartholm allegedly used to hack CSC found it was infected with several threats, including trojans that could have provided an attacker with administrative control over his computer without his knowledge.

"This is definite evidence that the computer has been compromised – and that the attacker has gained administrator privileges, no less," claims Svartholm's lawyer Luise Høj, told TorrentFreak.

"For me this is a clear evidence that Gottfrid has been telling the truth all along – and in my opinion it shows that the Danish legal system has big difficulty handling cases which require a certain level of technical insight as regards computers."

Aereo has updated their Android app to add support for Google's HDMI dongle Chromecast, as expected.

The startup's service, which costs $8 per month, allows users to watch free, OTA content on any mobile device along with a free remote DVR. Aereo does not pay any re-transmission fees as it uses tiny digital TV antennas for each user in its own facilities and links to the streams.

Android users will be able to now stream broadcast content to their HDTVs without a cable subscription and with cheap hardware. Compared to having a digital antenna, Aereo allows you to pause/rewind live TV, and record to a cloud DVR.

Aereo has also been available for Roku, and remains available via mobile devices and Web browsers.

The company is in a fight for its survival as a case brought by the major broadcasters is under Supreme Court review.

Leaked via Amazon, Sony appears to be preparing a number of bundles that will include the PlayStation 4 console and the PS Vita handheld.

One such bundle, the PlayStation 4/PlayStation Vita "Ultimate Player Edition" was listed at €579 with a release date of July 4. It is unclear what else will be bundled, but the listing seemed to suggest Infamous: Second Son.

Additionally, next week's leaked Best Buy ad shows a $560 PS4/PS Vita bundle for North America that also includes Borderlands 2 for PS Vita.

Sony, of course, offered no comment.

The company's E3 keynote is slated for June 9th at 9PM EST.

According to a new research report from Adobe, Google's Chrome browser has surpassed Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the most popular browser in the nation, at least by one important metric.

For the first time ever, Chrome surpassed IE in the number of visits to U.S.-based websites on both personal computers and mobile devices. Chrome (on desktop and Android, including older Android browsers built by Google) had 31.8 percent share in April, while IE had 30.9 percent. IE had 37 percent in the same quarter last year, while Google had 26 percent, showing a significant swing.

Adobe does agree with other reports, however, that Chrome is not the most popular browser in the U.S., with that crown still owned by Microsoft on desktops, and Safari for mobile. However, Safari has less than 7 percent share in desktop, and Microsoft's mobile browser presence is almost non-existent.

According to Microsoft VP of OEM partners Nick Parker, the company's mobile devices should see prices dip below $200 in 2014.

"We'll reach price points that are very industry competitive for 7, 8, 10-inch devices," Parker said during Computex. "They will really surprise you. Last year, we were in the 3s, 4s, 500 dollars. This year, we'll be 1s, 2s, 3s."

Parker says the price points noted will be mainly for tablets, but some higher-end Windows Phone smartphones will also sell for under $200 in certain key markets, as well. So far, Microsoft's/Nokia's most popular smartphones have been some of their cheapest, including the $75 Lumia 521.

Microsoft has been aggressive in trying to gain mobile share, even making Windows 8 free for OEMs as long as the device is smaller than 9 inches. The company then made the certification process for mobile devices easier, and has provided support and marketing for development of Windows tablets and phones.

Despite the moves, Microsoft has a huge uphill battle to fight, as the company only has 4 percent share of the tablet market, and and even smaller share of the smartphone market dominated by Apple and Samsung.

Barnes & Noble, the struggling book retailer, has announced the addition of Samsung as a hardware partner for upcoming Nook-powered tablets.

Samsung will co-brand its Galaxy Tab 4 with the custom Nook operating system, almost a year after B&N stopped selling their own hardware tablets following horrendous sales.

A 7-inch model will go on sale in August, on sale at B&N brick-and-mortar stores and online, as well.

"We are very excited and proud to partner with Samsung, a world-class technology and tablet leader, to create customized co-branded devices featuring our valuable NOOK reading experience and digital content catalog for Barnes & Noble customers nationwide," said Michael P. Huseby, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble, Inc. "Standing behind these great new devices will be the power of our 40,000 Barnes & Noble booksellers combined with our deep bookselling and retail expertise to provide sales support and personalized in-store customer service for our lineup of new Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 NOOK products. Partnering with Samsung brings our customers great new products and evidences our commitment to our NOOK customers and growing our digital content business."

Verizon has turned to legal threats against Netflix as the relationship between the two continues to sour.

Yesterday it emerged that Netflix had identified Verizon as the culprit for video streaming problems in error messages shown to subscribers. A shot of one of these error messages was tweeted by Yuri Victor, a Vox journalist, and was immediately picked up by the media.

Verizon didn't take long to respond, accusing Netflix of engaging in a PR stunt that was deliberately misleading, and of using its subscribers as pawns in business negotiations and regulatory matters.

Today the slipping relationship between the pair has gotten even worse as Verizon sent a cease and desist letter to Netflix. The letter was sent to David Hyman, Netflix council, and it demands that Netflix immediately halts providing such notices to subscribers.

It goes on to demand that Netflix provide evidence and documentation to demonstrate that Yuri Victor's below par service from Netflix was caused by congestion on the Verizon network, and that Netflix provide a list of all customers it has displayed the message to. Verizon expects all of this information within five days.

You can read the cease and desist letter at: www.docstoc.com

The first ad released by Beats since its $3 billion takeover by Apple is a star-studded 5-minute montage of footballers 'before the game.'

Honestly, FIFA and other football authorities haven't done as much to help you get pumped up for the World Cup as this ad did. It is rare to see commercials that are all that interesting in the first place, but this just hits the spot perfectly.

It features several stars, including Barcelona and Brazilian ace Neymar, shown as they gear up to the kick off of the biggest sporting event on Earth, which starts next week.

There's really not much else to say about it, just watch it!

Xbox Live's Major Nelson (aka Larry Hryb) has posted downloads for Xbox One controller drivers for Windows PCs.

The drivers will roll out to Windows operating systems as part of regular updates, but if you would rather not wait you can grab them and manually install them on your PC now.

You can use the Xbox One controller with the same games and apps that you might have previously used an Xbox 360 controller for. The drivers will enable the Xbox One controller to be used with any game that featured gamepad support for the Xbox 360 controller.

Download and install the drivers from the links below, and then simply connect your Xbox One controller via a micro USB cable and its game on!

PC Drivers for Xbox One Controller (x86)

PC Drivers for Xbox One Controller (x64)

An OpenSSL Security Advisory has been issued detailing a flaw (CVE-2014-0224) that could be exploited by Man-in-the-Middle attacks between OpenSSL SSL/TLS clients and servers to decrypt or modify traffic.

It involves the use of a specially-crafted handshake to force the use of a weak keying material in OpenSSL SSL/TLS clients and servers, but can only be performed between a vulnerable client and server. In the worst case, this flaw can be exploited by a Man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack, where a malicious agent can decrypt and/or modify traffic between the client and server.

All OpenSSL clients are vulnerable to this attack, whereas servers are only vulnerable in OpenSSL 1.0.1 and 1.0.2-beta1, therefore it is absolutely necessary that users of OpenSSL servers earlier than v1.0.1 upgrade.

According to the OpenSSL Security Advisory, which detailed this flaw and six other (albeit less severe) issues, the following upgrades are essential.

OpenSSL 0.9.8 SSL/TLS users (client and/or server) should upgrade to 0.9.8za.
OpenSSL 1.0.0 SSL/TLS users (client and/or server) should upgrade to 1.0.0m.
OpenSSL 1.0.1 SSL/TLS users (client and/or server) should upgrade to 1.0.1h.

OpenSSL is crediting KIKUCHI Masashi (Lepidum Co. Ltd.) for discovering and reporting the issue last month.

Microsoft has confirmed previous speculation that developers will be given access to more GPU bandwidth through an SDK update.

Previously, it was speculated that Microsoft's decisions to scale back Kinect (or at least unbundle it) could result in developers being given access to more resources for games. Specifically, it was rumored that Microsoft has ring-fenced around 10 percent of graphics resources specifically for Kinect operations, and that the 10 percent could theoretically be unlocked for developers.

Well, whether it is 10 percent or not, Xbox head Phil Spencer has confirmed that the latest software dev kit update does indeed provide more GPU resources to developers.

June #XboxOne software dev kit gives devs access to more GPU bandwidth. More performance, new tools and flexibility to make games better

-- Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) June 4, 2014