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Paramount Pictures has become the first major studio to drop film as its distribution method, moving to digital-only for its U.S. releases.

The studio started its plan with the recent release of the blockbuster "The Wolf of Wall Street," with Paramount letting theater owners know that the comedy "Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues," (released last month) would be the last to be released on 35mm film.

"It's of huge significance because Paramount is the first studio to make this policy known," said Jan-Christopher Horak, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive. "For 120 years, film and 35 mm has been the format of choice for theatrical presentations. Now we're seeing the end of that. I'm not shocked that it's happened, but how quickly it has happened."

There are about 8 percent of theaters in the U.S. that have not yet embraced digital and only play traditional film, despite the huge added cost. Digital distribution costs around $100 while film prints cost between $1000 and $2000 per movie. Internationally, Paramount will still ship film, as most theaters (especially in Europe and Latin America) cannot support digital.

Microsoft has boasted of having the top-selling hardware for December in the U.S., citing the most recent NPD figures.

The Xbox One sold 908,000 units in December, beating out the PlayStation 4, and the Xbox 360 saw 643,000 units sold, good for third place.

"We're grateful for the excitement and support of our fans - many purchasing their next Xbox console and many joining the Xbox family for the first time," said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of marketing, strategy and business for Xbox.

Sony did not reveal exact figures, but made sure not note that the console still has the cumulative lead: "PlayStation 4 remains the cumulative leader for next gen console sales in the US since the launch on November 15," said Sony's senior director of corporate communications, Dan Race. "We sold every PS4 available at retail in the US and were out of stock in December due to overwhelming consumer demand. With more than 4.2 million PS4 systems sold worldwide, it's clear that the PS4's gaming and entertainment features are resonating with large audiences and we're doing our best to provide additional inventory in all of the 53 countries where it's available."

According to CEO Brian Krzanich, Intel's quad-core Bay Trail processors will reach Android tablets starting in the Q2.

"Most of the Bay Trail Android tablets really start showing up more in Q2...remember we made a shift, the original program for Bay Trail was all Windows," noted the executive. Mid-way through their original plan, the shift began to Android, thus causing the delays.

When asked about 64-bit processing, which Apple moved to last year with the iPad Air and iPad Mini with Retina display, Krzanich talked about the many advantages of such a platform: "[Device makers] who build with our products now can already go out and start to utilize 64-bit. We are out there working with the OSs, all of the OSs and the OEMs to go enable that. The real usages...are going to be in those high compute areas, things like video, things like media, transfer media manipulation. All the classic things around computing that you saw drive the compute cycles on PC and people are doing more and more with tablets and phones or that will be the same things that drive 64-bit utilization on these mobile devices."

Cisco, in their 2014 Annual Security Report, blames Java for being far and away the leading cause of security exploits.

In fact, "Java represented 91 percent of all Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) in 2013," says the report. This means Java exploits were the "final payload observed" in a huge majority of all attacks throughout the year.

"I was surprised to see that the Java IOC number was 91 percent," Levi Gundert, technical lead, Cisco Threat Research, Analysis, and Communications, added. "There were a number of Java zero days that were used in various attacks, but there were also a ton of well-known Java vulnerabilities that were packaged into various exploit packs."

Oracle, which runs Java after their acquisition of Sun Microsystems, has had to constantly update the software, including an update for 51 vulnerabilities just this week.

In the report, Cisco notes that Java exploits tend to work well for attackers because people do not patch their Java as regularly as they should. This is likely true since Java needs updates sometimes weekly. Exploits are also successful since Java is easily portable and works on nearly all operating systems. Business customers can not always patch as quickly as necessary, either, as patches could break functionality.

According to security firm IntelCrawler, a Russian teenager was the author of the malware that was used in attacks on Target, Neiman Marcus and other retailers that has so far revealed credit, debit card and other personal information on over 70 million customers.

The report states that the teen has sold over 60 versions of the software to cyber criminals, suggesting more attacks are on the horizon.

Allegedly, the 17-year-old is based in St. Petersburg and has a reputation for his malicious code programming skills

Dubbed BlackPOS, the software was sold by the teen and then run by numerous attackers who "entered retailers' systems by trying several easy passwords to access the registers remotely."

Even worse, the point-of-sale servers do not appear to have restrictions for many large retailers, possibly allowing easy access to back-office servers.

This week, Intel has announced it will slash 5350 jobs in 2014, a full five percent of its workforce, following another poor year for traditional PC sales.

"This is part of aligning our human resources to meet business needs," spokesman Chris Kraeuter said. The company has a global workforce of 107,000.

The layoffs may include voluntary programs and retirements with severance, says the spokesperson.

Intel, to offset the reduced PC sales, will focus instead on low-power chips for phones and tablets and other faster growing areas like data center technology. Smartphones and tablets are dominated by Qualcomm and Samsung chips, but Intel has been increasing their share, especially through Windows 8.1 tablets and devices.

Additionally, the company also said this week it would not be building its $5 billion factory in Arizona that was set to produce 14nm chips and said instead that the existing factories will be re-fitted.

According to sources, Twitter is preparing to let its hundreds of millions of users purchase products directly through the network thanks to an upcoming deal with e-commerce payments startup Stripe.

The deal is said to be in the final stages and will allow the social network to accept credit card payments.

If completed, the deal will make it much easier for brands, retailers and manufacturers to sell their products directly. Twitter tested the concept last year with Starbucks and American Express, both of which required syncing your account to a card or account for the third-party.

Commerce is likely the next revenue strategy for Twitter, which has only recently begun to expand their monetization of the company and its services.

Stripe allows for payments to be accepted through websites and mobile apps within one day of signing up with the company, due to their APIs, and the startup is backed by over $40 million in venture capital.

Earlier in the week, Nintendo reported expectations for their upcoming earnings, and even slashed their Wii U sales forecast by over 70 percent.

The company will have its third straight fiscal year with an operating loss as strong 3DS game sales are not enough to turn around the company's fortunes.

In light of the earnings, and a 20 percent drop in the company's stock price as a result, it appears Nintendo may finally be "studying" new business models.

"We are thinking about a new business structure," says Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. "Given the expansion of smart devices, we are naturally studying how smart devices can be used to grow the game-player business. It's not as simple as enabling Mario to move on a smartphone."

The Wii U saw reduced projections multiple times last year and the company slashed its fiscal year Wii U sales forecast to 2.8 million from 9 million, a devastatingly low estimate. 3DS sales were also guided down to 13.5 million units from 18 million units.

Spotify has removed all playback limitations on their free, ad-supported versions for all countries.

Until this week, web users who did not pay for premium versions of the service got six months of unlimited listening but were then limited (dependent on country) to as low as 2.5 hours per week.

The streaming service continues to be more accessible to users on all platforms. Last month, Spotify launched a free, ad-supported service for tablets. Mobile versions had previously been $10 a month but the new service is limited to shuffling (just like Pandora except that you can hear more of the artist you search for) rather than a full on-demand offering.

Spotify may have dropped the limit as the industry gets more and more competitive. Beats recently launched a new rival service, and Google and Apple each have their own, as well.

According to Asa Dotzler, Mozilla has begun testing its Firefox OS on a tablet prototype.

The tablet, as expected, has mid-range specs featuring a 10-inch 1280x800 display, 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage and a 1GHz quad-core processor.

Aimed at emerging markets, the Firefox OS tablet will likely never see the light of day in the U.S, just like Mozilla's current low-end smartphone offerings.

Full specs:

Brand/Model: InFocus New tab F1, Wi-Fi
Processor: A31 (ARM Cortex A7) Quad-Core 1.0GHz w/ PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU
Memory: 2GB DDR3
Hard Disk: 16GB Flash
Screen: 10.1 IPS capacitive multi-touch @ 1280x800
Camera: Dual cameras, 2MP/5MP
Wireless Network: 802.11b/g/n
Ports: Micro SD, Micro USB, headphone
Other: GPS, Bluetooth, Gyroscope
Battery:7000mAh

Sprint has announced that LG's curved G Flex smartphone will reach the carrier on January 31st with a $299.99 price tag on contract.

LG said earlier this month that the device would be headed to AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile over the winter, and Sprint is the first to give a timeframe.

"Continuing to raise the bar in innovation, we are thrilled to once again team up with LG to bring a top-of-the-line device to our customers," said David Owens, vice president of product, Sprint. "LG G Flex combines everything in a single device and provides Sprint customers curved ergonomic comfort and a cinematic viewing experience that will make movie buffs rejoice. With the multitude of Android™ apps available for download, LG G Flex with Sprint Spark, combined with Sprint's new Sprint Framily Plan, make an ideal pair for today's multimedia, multitasking lifestyles."

The device feature a 720p 6-inch curved P-OLED, which LG claims is ultra-light, ultra-thin and flexible. The device runs on Android 4.2.2, is powered by a 2.26GHz Snapdragon 800, an Adreno 330 GPU, 2GB RAM and a 3500mAh battery. In addition, the device has a 13-megapixel rear camera, and a 2.1-megapixel front camera. The OLED panel is also built with plastic substrates, for better durability. The display also includes Real RGB technology for all three sub-pixels in one pixel, increasing brightness.

Earlier in the week, occasionally accurate Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin claimed that Microsoft was setting aside $2.6 billion for Windows Phone OEMs like Sony, Samsung and HTC as a co-marketing budget.

While the company confirmed there was such a budget for co-marketing, Corporate VP of Communications Frank X. Shaw says the numbers are completely untrue and "fiction."

Murtazin quickly responded that his numbers are correct but that Microsoft could spend a good portion of it on funding R&D and other expenses.

reality check. Do we do co-marketing with partners? You bet! But these numbers are complete fiction! http://t.co/Hfq7dtk9u1

-- Frank X. Shaw (@fxshaw) January 16, 2014

Toshiba has introduced their Satellite P50t notebook, featuring a 4K display.

The 15.6-inch screen has 3,840 x 2,160 resolution, the highest yet seen on a consumer notebook.

Toshiba expects the laptop to be released in the late Q2 or early Q3.

It is unclear what is under the hood, except that it will include a Haswell Core i7 processor.

Check a photo of how small some objects will be on the display, via Engadget.

Google has finally made their Google Play Movies and TV store available on iOS.

The move follows earlier launches of Google Play Books and Google Play Music in 2013.

You will not be able to buy content directly through the app, due to Apple's restrictions, so you will have to buy the content via the web client first and then play them through your app.

Another downside is the video will only stream in SD, but can be viewed in HD if streaming through a Chromecast. Continuing the disappointments, the content will be Wi-Fi-only and cannot be saved for offline viewing. Finally, the app is missing "info cards" when the films are paused.

As with nearly all Google products, however, the apps are crippled at launch for iOS and then eventually reach parity with their Android counterparts.

Get the app here: Google Play Movies and TV

Japan's largest carrier NTT DoCoMo, has dropped plans to release a smartphone running on the Tizen operating system.

DoCoMo says the stagnant Japanese market could not support a third smartphone OS. According to IDC, the country's smartphone market only grew 2.2 percent year-over-year for the six month period ended September 30th.

Samsung, the biggest backer of Tizen, will likely be disappointed with the decision. The company uses Android for all of its devices, but has been developing Tizen to hedge its bet on the single operating system and also to increase revenue of app sales by controlling the entire environment.

Additional backers of Tizen are Intel, Orange and Vodafone, each of which has remained relatively quiet about the OS.

The carrier says they will continue to work with the Tizen Association moving forward.