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Li Ka-shing, the richest man in Asia, is now an investor in BitPay, the startup aiming to become the largest payment service provider for Bitcoin and other virtual currencies.

The investment was made through Li's venture capital company, Horizons Ventures, a company which had major successes as early investors in Facebook, Waze and Skype. Li is worth about $30 billion.

So far, the startup has raised an estimated $2.7 million.

Bitcoin, the leading virtual currency (of the moment) has come under fire recently after regulators in China and India issued warnings against using the currency and China's leading Bitcoin exchanges even outright banned deposits in Yuan. Bitcoin's value has skyrocketed from $14 per coin last December to settle at about $750 per coin as of today. The currency did see a crash just last month, diving to $450 from a high of $1242.

BitPay has processed over $100 million in transactions for 2013, with its merchant base now exceeding 15,500.

Invincea, the venture-backed security software company, has announced its acquisition of the premiere sandboxing solution Sandboxie.

Reads the press release:

The two pioneering brands in Windows Containment technology are Invincea and Sandboxie. Not coincidentally, they are also the leading brands by market share [footprint & sales] in Windows Containment globally. Invincea's acquisition of Sandboxie consolidates these two market leading brands and provides a tremendous opportunity for advancement in endpoint security.

Sandboxie has been an early pioneer in Windows Containment with a global deployment of hundreds of thousands of users and over 1,000 firms trusting it to secure its endpoints. Adding Sandboxie to Invincea's portfolio was a strategic move to expand our business globally, to address the small and individual market, and provide a pathway for Sandboxie fans to an enterprise ready solution – Invincea FreeSpace™. Sandboxie fans have no need to be concerned by its new ownership. You've been running under the Invincea umbrella for some time now and we have been working with Sandboxie Founder, Ronen Tzur, to ensure a smooth transition to new ownership. We will grow Sandboxie's user base and continue to support and enhance the Sandboxie solution.

According to online porn aggregator/indexer PornHub, the majority of U.S. visitors to the site are now from mobile devices, surpassing desktop users by the highest margin ever.

The massive site, which has nearly 15 billion visitors so far this year, says 49 percent of global visitors visited using a smartphone or tablet, up from 38 percent in 2012.

U.S. watchers appear to be a major driver of mobile viewing as it was the only country to have a majority of its traffic come from mobile devices. 52 percent accessed the site from smartphones, with another 10 percent visiting from tablets.

Porn watchers in the UK loved their tablets, with 15 percent accessing the site from their iPads, Kindles and Android tabs.

There are some more figures that aren't necessarily safe for work, but can be viewed here.

According to reports, Japanese carrier Softbank, the parent of Sprint, is in the final stages of talks with T-Mobile USA parent Deutsche Telekom over acquiring the U.S.' fourth largest carrier.

The deal would be worth just over $19 billion and would be funded using shares of Sprint, say the sources. Softbank wants to purchase the majority of T-Mobile's shares, which trade publicly.

Deutsche Telekom is said to prefer a cash deal over a share swap, however, which could add time to the negotiations. Softbank has also spoken to numerous banks about funding for such a cash deal.

A merger of the two companies could possibly break the current U.S. duopoly of Verizon and AT&T, as a combined T-Mobile/Sprint/MetroPCS would have about 99 million subscribers. Both AT&T and Verizon have over 110 million subscribers each.

According to Torrentfreak, 'Game of Thrones' was the most pirated TV show of the year, not unexpectedly.

The finale of the HBO fantasy series saw over 5.9 million downloads via BitTorrent, beating out the estimated TV viewership of 5.5 million.

Competition was strong this year, and the series finale of "Breaking Bad" and the latest season of "The Walking Dead" also saw strong piracy, garnering 4.2 million and 3.6 million downloads, respectively.

Earlier this year, Game of Thrones set the record for "most people sharing a copy of an episode simultaneously" at 170,000 and the piracy throne is unsurprising as most of the other shows on the list are available on cable or broadcast TV and also available on services like Hulu and Netflix after they have aired. HBO has not licensed its programming to other streaming providers, no matter the price.

Attached is the full list, which uses "data by TorrentFreak based on several sources, including download statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers." The site does note that since many private trackers, cyberlockers and online streaming services are impossible to include, the piracy figures posted are a lot lower than they otherwise would be.

Earlier this year, when the struggling smartphone maker put itself up for sale, BlackBerry co-founders Michael Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin indicated they may want to put in a bid to purchase the company and take it private.

Already owning an 8 percent share in the company, the move did not seem too far fetched.

As of this week, however, Michael Lazaridis now has a 4.99 percent stake, and says any bid to acquire the company is off the table.

BlackBerry recently cleaned house, starting with a new CEO and other executives and announcing an end to their consumer handset business. Last week, the company announced a $4.4 billion quarterly loss due to excess inventory of failed phones, but the company's stock has surged suggesting the bottom has finally been reached and investors are willing to give the new management team a breather.

The company announced a manufacturing deal with Foxconn that will remove most of the risks of a failed device, due to inventory management and a stake in the revenue of the device by BlackBerry's new Taiwanese partner.

Sony and Panasonic have announced the end of their OLED production partnership.

The companies had been developing new OLED tech, but there are still no true mass-market models of the ultrathin, vibrant TVs. Sony released an 11-inch model back in 2007 to start the OLED train, but costs remain high for creating larger devices. Samsung released a 55-inch OLED TV this year, but prices have kept demand low.

Both tech giants agreed to partner up early last year to help reduce costs and share production facilities. The companies are ending the current alliance but could team up again in the future, say the sources.

Earlier this year, at CES, the companies unveiled a 56-inch prototype OLED using new production technology.

Furthermore, the new push to 4K UltraHD resolution TVs has put OLED and any other new tech on the backburner for the time being.

Although it was never confirmed by Nokia, it has become clear that the company had begun working on an Android smartphone before it was purchased by Windows Phone maker Microsoft.

Prolific leaker @Evleaks has now posted pictures of the alleged prototype, codename "Normandy."

The device will never see the light of day due to Nokia's device and services division being acquired by Microsoft for over $7 billion.

Check the pics here:

Seagate announced earlier this week that they had acquired Xyratex, the premier maker of hard drive disk (HDD) testing gear, for $374 million which includes the $80 million the company had on its balance sheet.

Xyratex will be integrated directly into Seagate's supply chain. The deal will strengthen Seagate's "vertically integrated supply and manufacturing chain for disk drives and provide uninterrupted access to important capital equipment."

HDD have reached capacities as high as 5TB for consumer drives (which require extensive testing), and the vertical integration of Xyratex should help the company bring in up to $600 million in new revenue by fiscal year 2015, says Seagate.

"This is a strategically important acquisition for Seagate as we continue to focus on delivering best-in-class storage solutions for our customers," said Dave Mosley, President of Operations and Technology at Seagate. "As the average capacity per drive increases to multi-terabytes, the time to test these drives increases dramatically. Therefore, access to world-class test equipment becomes an increasingly strategic capability. As a premier provider of HDD testing equipment, Xyratex is an important partner and we are excited to integrate these important capabilities which will considerably streamline our supply and manufacturing chain for our core HDD business. We are also pleased to acquire Xyratex's storage systems and high-performance computing business, which provides us additional opportunities to serve our customers with a broader array of storage solutions."

Multiple reports are claiming that HP is looking to get back into the the smartphone business, aiming new devices at emerging markets.

Supposedly the new 6-inch phablets will sell off-contract for less than $250, which would certainly be a stretch as even the best value 5-inch smartphones now sell for $350 off-contract.

There have been rumors for months of HP itching to get into smartphones (after a failed attempt with Palm), and CEO Meg Whitman even noted that new devices were not expected for 2013 but could be a reality in 2014.

Moving into consumer mobile devices earlier this year, HP already released Android and Windows 8 tablets as well as their Slate 7 tablet.

Sony has agreed to sell of its Gracenote audio-recognition software division to Tribune for $170 million, following a few months of searching for buyers.

Tribune, which provides digital data on TV shows and also movies along with its print media divisions, will integrate Gracenote into its existing media-services division.

Sony has been actively looking to narrow its focus and Gracenote did not really fit the plans after being acquired for $260 million in 2008. The unit provides over $150 million in annual sales.

Gracenote provides the technology that lets iTunes, Windows Media Player, Soundhound (and more) to identify songs when transferred from CDs, or downloaded from sites.

"Together we will become an even greater force in the global entertainment data business," Shashi Seth, president of Tribune Digital Ventures, said in the statement.

Somewhat quietly, both Apple and LG released the best 8-inch tablets on the market over the last couple of months.

With a larger display and a $100 cheaper price tag, it would appear right off the bat that the G Pad 8.3 may have the upper hand, but after using the tablets for weeks it is clear the "fight" is much, much closer, with both tablets performing excellently across the board.

Read ahead to compare and contrast would one writer argues are the best tablets in the world at their size.

Specs and Design

Apple's iPad Mini with Retina Display has incredible specs. The 7.9-inch LED-backlit Multi-Touch display with IPS technology has a 2048 x 1536 resolution and a record 326ppi pixel density. Under the hood is the company's proprietary A7 chip with 64-bit architecture and M7 motion coprocessor, allowing the tablet to be futureproofed to a certain degree at least for the coming generation of devices.

According to CEG TEK International, a company that "provides first-in-class copyright, trademark and brand protection offering in-depth business intelligence and comprehensive anti-piracy solutions to rights & content owners worldwide," classic holiday film "Home Alone" was 2013's most pirated in the genre.

The company measured measured activity on global BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks and came up with a list of the most pirated holiday related films.

Daily demand for the films was about 185,000, says the company, with Home Alone seeing 20,169 of those hits.

CEG TEK says they used "proprietary detection software, designed with several unique abilities, including tracking without actively participating in peer-to-peer networks, download demand activity was measured in the days leading up to Christmas."

Here is the full list:

According to Benzinga, gamers want the PlayStation 4 this holiday season, more so than any other console.

The poll asked three questions: "Which game system would you like to receive this Christmas?," "Which game system are you most likely to give as a gift?" and "What devices do you already own?" The company says the PS4 owned every question.

41 percent of respondents wanted the PS4 for the holidays, beating out the Microsoft Xbox One at 37.3 percent. 9.8 percent wanted a Nintendo Wii U, which is probably only due to its cheaper price tag. The Wii U was followed by the PS Vita at 5.9 percent and then the Nintendo 3DS at 3.9 percent.

Earlier this month we reported that Google Play Books had been updated to allow for native uploading from your mobile device.

Users with EPUB and PDF books were able to upload the files directly to your Books account, without needing to first send it to your computer and log in to the website like you had to do previously. When opening the book from your file manager or email, the new option reads "Upload to Play Books."

The PDF uploading portion was always said to be experimental and indeed I had many issues with it when trying out the service. Clearly others did, as well, as Google has pulled the option for PDFs for the time being, leaving just EPUB.

Google says the code should bring back PDF support in the future, but there is no timetable.