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Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto V pushes the ageing Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 console to their technical limits.

Leslie Benzies, president of Rockstar North, told GameSpot that the developer had sought to push the consoles to their absolute limit with its ambitious new title from the blockbuster Grand Theft Auto franchise.

"We wanted to push these consoles to their limit. I think we've squeezed every single ounce of power out of these boxes that we can," he said.

The game, when released, requires a mandatory 8GB install on both consoles. On the Xbox 360, the game ships with two discs but the developer said there will be no need to swap the discs at any point in play.

Rockstar also sought to make the game appear and feel as real-world as it technically can at this point, with even the placement of trees given all the thought it needs.

"Our goal was to simulate what's outside [in the real world], to make it feel good, and tidy up all the rough edges that we thought GTAIV had," Benzies said.

"It was to get it so the handling feels perfect, the gunplay feels perfect. And also the online side of it--that's been a goal for years. We've started it a few times before, but we've never finished it. That's what we wanted to do, basically."

Research from the University of Michigan suggests that Facebook may negatively effect the well-being of young frequent users.

A study tracked participants for two weeks, finding that checking Facebook regularly tended to make people feel worse about themselves and their lives. The social networking giant boasts a billion members, half of whom log in every day.

"On the surface, Facebook provides an invaluable resource for fulfilling the basic human need for social connection. Rather than enhancing well-being, however, these findings suggest that Facebook may undermine it," said the researchers.

It adds to a body of evidence that Facebook use can have negative consequences, but Graham Jones of the British Psychological Society reminded the BBC website that there is also researching showing it has positive effects too.

Participants in the study were sent several messages per day that linked them to surveys to fill out that asked questions about how they felt, whether they were worried about anything and about whether they felt lonely, and most importantly how much they were on Facebook since filling out the last survey.

Nintendo is on the hook to pay $15.1 million to Seijiro Tomita in a patent infringement case linked to its 3DS handheld.

Tomita was originally awarded $30.2 million in March, and this week was given the option of accepting half of the award or starting a new trial in which he could lose it all.

The case stems from a 2003 meeting between Tomita and seven Nintendo officials, where he allegedly showed a prototype of his technology. Four of the officials went on to assist in the creation of the 3DS handheld console.

Nintendo rejects the accusation that it used his patented technology in the 3DS, saying that the 2003 meeting was just one of many the company had with merchants selling 3D technology. Nintendo attorney Scott Lindvall also argued that key aspects of the patent in question are not used by the 3DS.

Nintendo plans to appeal the jury's verdict.

The Washington Post has said that its website was hacked by the supporters of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The website of Time and CNN were also reportedly caught up in the hack that targeted a third-party link recommendation service Outbrain,

"We are aware that Outbrain was hacked earlier today and we took down service as soon as it was apparent," Outbrain revealed on its blog.

"The breach now seems to be secured and the hackers blocked out, but we are keeping the service down for a little longer until we can be sure it's safe to turn it back on securely."

Links on the effected news sites redirected users to the website of the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA). The Washington Post said it was working to resolve the issue, while CNN said it quickly identified the threat and disabled the third party plug-in.

Time spokesman Daniel Kile said that the Time website itself had not been directly effected, only the Outbrain-powered module on Time's pages.

Market research firm Mintel is predicting that online retail sales will double in Europe by 2018, with Amazon in a prime position to benefit.

It conducted a survey of 19 markets in Europe, predicting that online sales will grow to €188 billion in 2013, up from €166 billion in 2012, and will likely hit €233 billion by 2018.

Britain, France and Germany will remain the biggest markets for online retail by 2018, though Norway and Sweden have the highest par-capita spend online. Amazon's marketshare on the continent reached 9.8 percent in 2012, up from 9.2 percent in 2011.

The retail giant could go on to double its European market share over the next 3-4 years, according to Mintel, even though it has been the subject of negative publicity in Britain over its low tax payments and had its German operations hit by strikes.

A team of security researchers has highlighted some popular YouTube video download tools that had been placing unauthorized advertisements on the video service.

Spider.io observed two programs - Best Video Downloader and Easy YouTube Downloader - placing ads on the YouTube site in clear violation of YouTube's rules. Even worse, some of the injected advertisements led users to malicious websites.

Some of the ad slots had been sold on through exchanges to the likes of Amazon, Blackberry, Kellogg's and Toyota, but those firms almost certainly weren't aware of the scheme. Unfortunately, malicious advertisers (malvertisers) had also managed to get their ads displayed.

"When a user who has installed these plug-ins visits youtube.com multiple display ad slots are injected across the YouTube homepage, channel pages, video pages and search results pages," Spider.io said.

"One example shows a fake alert, which suggests to the user that a Java update is required. If the user clicks the OK button, then the user is taken to the disreputable site."

EA is hoping to bump up sales and downloads of its Origin platform by doing a killer Humble Bundle this week.

By donating whatever you feel is right (starting at $1), you get Dead Space, Crysis 2 Maximum Edition, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Medal of Honor, Mirror's Edge and Dead Space 3.

If you pay above the average, currently at $4.76, you also get The Sims 3 (along with two expansion packs in The Sims 3 Starter Pack) and Battlefield 3.

Additionally, you get Steam keys for Dead Space, Crysis 2 Maximum Edition, Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box, Medal of Honor, and Mirror's Edge, along with the Origin keys.

Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload (and the new MEGA), is building a super-secure, encrypted email service that is said to be the best available.

The encryption technology will be "cutting-edge," says the report.

News of the service follow's Lavabit's exit from the market, with the claim that there is no longer privacy in the world thanks to the NSA. Lavabit committed what they call "privacy seppuku." The company preferred to go out on their own terms rather than allow the government access to their systems.

According Dotcom, Mega does not keep decryption keys for customer accounts they never will, making it impossible for them to read the emails or give information to the government.

Research firm Gartner has released their latest quarterly mobile phone market report, and smartphone sales have finally overtaken feature phone sales.

For the Q2, smartphone shipments jumped 46.5 percent year-over-year to reach 225 million, beating out feature phones at 210 million following a 21 percent drop year-over-year.

Growth was unsurprisingly largest in the Asia Pacific and Latin American regions, seeing 74.1 percent and 55.7 percent growth, respectively.

Android remains king, as well, taking 79 percent share of the global market. Apple remained in second but share fell to 14.2 percent despite a growth in shipments. Nobody else really mattered although Microsoft saw a nice boost for their Windows Phone devices.

The charts:

U.S District Court Judge Denise Cote has tentatively scheduled Apple's antitrust damages trial for May 2014.

Last month, the company was found guilty of conspiring with major book publishers to raise the prices of ebooks sold through the newly launched iBookstore.

Besides the US Department of Justice, 33 U.S. states and territories will also be part of the trial, and Apple's damages could be upwards of $500 million.

Earlier this month, the DOJ proposed a settlement which would have forced Apple to terminate all existing contracts and bar them from new agency model deals for the next five years. Additionally, the ban would be extended to music and video. Apple called the settlement "draconian and punitive."

Baidu has agreed to purchase the 91 Wireless app store for $1.85 billion.

The deal will be the biggest ever in China's IT market.

91 Wireless is currently owned by Netdragon Websoft, one of Asia's largest MMO creators, similar to Blizzard here in the States.

The app store is one of the largest in China by monthly users, and Baidu has been looking to diversify out of their standard search engine market. "The acquisition of 91 Wireless significantly strengthens our mobile app distribution capability," added Chief Executive Robin Li.

Earlier this week we reported that BlackBerry had confirmed it would be open to selling itself and going private in order to help its turnaround efforts.

Many scoffed at the idea as the company has very little, on the surface, to offer a potential buyer. Its hardware business has collapsed, its latest operating system cannot compete with Android and iOS and its popular BlackBerry Messenger application has been supplanted by Line and WhatsApp, which already have 300 percent more users.

That being said, the company's patent portfolio is potent.

The company has "5,236 active U.S. patents and about 3,730 active applications in the wireless communications space," says ATD.

Chris Marlett, CEO of MDB Capital Group, says that portfolio is strong: "$2 billion to $3 billion ... is easily justified ... as there are approximately 9,000 patent assets with probably 100,000 claims that someone could take a shot at you with in a lawsuit."

That is a basic figure, says Marlett as there could be a premium placed by competing companies. "If (there's) a bidding war, I think the number can go as high as $4 billion to $5 billion," Marlett added. "This is probably the last big and current [wireless] portfolio available. I don't expect any other wireless-focused portfolio this big will come up for sale again anytime soon, so there will be intense interest in this portfolio."

Facebook has begun releasing monthly data showing global web and mobile monthly and daily user counts.

In the U.S., there are 179 million active monthly users, with 142 million actively using mobile devices to browse the social network.

On a daily basis, the total active userbase is 128 million with 101 million using mobile.

Moving to a global basis, Facebook's mobile daily active userbase jumped 10 percent to 469 million since last quarter.

"We are doing this because we believe brands and businesses should think differently about how people engage with Facebook, especially on mobile. A lot of people focus on monthly active users or even registered users to demonstrate their size and scale. We think this is becoming on old way of looking at the media world. In this world, understanding who comes back at least once a month is only part of the picture. Instead, businesses should focus on people who come back online every single day," said the company in a statement.

Amazon's Silk browser, first introduced with the Kindle Fire, has seen its first major update in a year.

The browser was different because it promised to have faster performance due to letting a good portion of the browsing occur in the cloud.

However, speed was never as advertised and Amazon has only performed minor updates on the browser in the last year. This week's update is mainly an interface refresh including a fully redesigned navigation system.

Controls, new buttons, and a simplified reading view are also updated.

While the updates are a nice step, even the Amazon team admits that "we're in the early days of Amazon Silk, and there's plenty of work still to do."

(Pic via Verge)

Samsung has unveiled a strange smartphone in this day and age, a flip.

The company has unveiled the Hennessy, a dual-screen flip phone that runs on Android.

On the front is a touch screen and when you flip the phone open there is a another touchscreen and the dialpad.

The device has a 3.3-inch touchscreen with 480x320 resolution and the phone is almost strangely powered by a 1.2GHz quad-core processor. The phone runs on Android 4.1 with Samsung's own TouchWiz.

Additionally, the phone has a small 1500mAh battery, a microSD slot and a 5MP rear camera.

So far, the phone has only been launched for China, but it will work with dual-SIM capability and GSM/CDMA support so it should work almost everywhere.