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Thanks to a new report from Kanzatec IP Group, an intellectual property consulting firm, it appears that Apple is involved in a full 60 percent of all "major" mobile patent suits.

Reads the report: "With its growing global market share and huge amount of cash on hand for possible settlements, Apple is becoming a bigger and more attractive target for patent holders. I would speculate that Apple will continue to be at the center of the litigation map of large mobile IT companies for as along as it maintains its dominant place in the market."

Apple is both the defendant and the aggressor in the suits but the majority of the time it has begun them. Over the past years, the company has secured injunctions against Android products from Samsung, HTC and Motorola and has tons of others pending rulings.

Last week, Nvidia shut down its forums while citing a "system issue."

Today, the company has more details, claiming that they were in fact hacked on a large scale.

After an internal investigation, Nvidia says the hacker was able to gain access to usernames, emails, hashed and salted passwords and all "about me" profile info.

All passwords are hashed with a random salt value, making them secure, but the company still recommends that you change your password and is sending a temporary password once the services comes back online.

Nvidia adds (via Verge): "Three Nvidia sites were affected -- Nvidia Forums, which has about 290,000 registered users; Nvidia Developers Zone, with about 100,000; and the Nvidia Research site with about 1,200."

LG has confirmed it will pay $380 million to settle a civil lawsuit over LCD price fixing over the last decades.

The settlement will be the largest of the ten companies who have already settled the same case.

Additionally, Toshiba will pay $21 million and manufacturer AU Optronics will pay $170 million to settle.

The lawsuit had claimed that multiple companies conspired in the 90s and early 2000s to fix LCD prices, leading to much higher costs for end users of PC monitors, laptops, and TVs.

Toshiba would not admit wrongdoing, just saying the company "denies any wrongdoing on its part in the LCD business, and it entered into the settlement to avoid further expense and the distraction of protracted litigation."

Samsung, Sharp and Hitachi each settled earlier this year. Overall, the lawsuit will bring $1.1 million for the defendants, which is all buyers of certain electronics from 1998 to 2006.

Amazing Alex, the latest game from Angry Birds creator Rovio has jumped to the top of iOS game downloads in its first day of availability.

The game, which is of the chain reaction puzzle variety, costs $0.99 for the iPhone and is the top app in 35 countries. The iPad version, at $2.99 and in HD, took the top spot in 50 nations.

On Android, the game, which is available for free with ads, ad-free, and in HD at the same price points as iOS, is creeping into the top 10.

It appears that Apple's promotion of the game in 107 countries has significantly helped Rovio's chances at success.

According to the latest figures by the NPD Group, sales of video game hardware, software and accessories in the U.S. fell again, continuing a multi-year trend.

Overall sales fell 29 percent in June to just $700 million.

The industry has seen a prolonged slump as the market for systems like the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 mature and more casual gamers move away from hardcore consoles to stick with Android/iOS and Facebook gaming.

Nintendo, which saw its first loss in years earlier this year, sold 155,000 3DS handhelds and 150,000 DSi/XL consoles, whilst also selling 95,000 Wiis.

"The 3DS is still up nearly 25 percent over where the Nintendo DS was in a similar point in time after release to market, and has topped portable hardware sales for the last 11 months," said Anita Frazier, the lead video game NPD analyst.

Microsoft remained the top console seller, with 257,000 Xbox 360 consoles sold during the month. Sony did not reveal their figure, but it was higher than the Wii and lower than the Xbox.

Thanks to Apple's decision to withdraw from an environmental ratings registry, the city of San Fransisco has said it will no longer buy Mac computers with city funds.

Apple has removed its products from EPEAT's (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) registry and will
also stop submitting its products to EPEAT for environmental ratings.

Officials with the San Francisco Department of Environment simply stated that Macs will "no longer qualify" to be purchased with city funds, although waivers can be procured through a long and tedious process.

EPEAT is a non-profit that strives to make it easier to buy environmentally friendly electronics. Most of the major manufacturers like Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Sony are in the registry.

According to sources, Amazon may have to delay shipments of its upcoming generation of Kindle devices.

Apparently, mass production is being delayed due to issues with the device's front-light design.

If the issues are not resolved, the device will have to be delayed until later in the third quarter, say the same sources.

The front-light design, which was introduced earlier this year by Barnes & Noble with their Nook Simple (with GlowLight), allows for illumination in low-light areas. Amazon will need to match the game-changing feature, and fast.

Reports indicate that Amazon has been forced to stop some parts shipments while the issues are worked out.

Sprint has confirmed that Samsung will remove the universal search function from its latest Galaxy S III device.

The removal will come via the next software update for the device.

Says the carrier: "The new software update does disable the universal search function on Galaxy S III."

Universal search is the ability to use the Google search bar to search for locally-installed apps, contacts, texts along with regular Internet searches.

The Galaxy Nexus will also have the feature removed, thanks to the ongoing Apple, Samsung lawsuit that has stretched across the planet over a range of patents. Both companies are seeking injunctions on the other's products.

Sony Music head Doug Morris has said that YouTube needs to lower the rates it charges VEVO or the companies may be headed for a divorce.

YouTube, owned by Google, charges a significant sum to host the music video site's content.

VEVO is a joint venture between UMG and Sony but they have content from EMI, as well. Warner is the big holdout from the Big 4 labels.

The company sells advertising on official music videos, and pays Google a technology fee from their revenue.

Morris says the rates are too high, however, considering how much traffic VEVO creates for YouTube. Morris also says YouTube rivals are actively looking for a VEVO contract.

Concludes Morris: "Google is charging us a lot of money to put our videos on their platform, and we would like them to reduce their fees. If not, there are at least three other companies who want to take our videos."

Payphone booths, once a staple of life before cell phones, will get a second chance at life in New York.

The city is piloting a program which will install free Wi-Fi hotspots in select booths.

For starters, the free Wi-Fi is headed 10 payphones in three boroughs and will be completely free to the public.

You will just need to agree to the terms and you will be redirected to the city's main tourism website. There are no ads currently but that could change in the future.

According to OM, "the payphones have been outfitted with 'military grade' antennas that provide service up to 300 feet away."

Van Wagner Communications will provide the installation for free, which would cost $2000 otherwise. The company owns most of the payphone booths.

There are 13,000 payphones around NYC.

The once-popular social sharing site Digg has sold for just $500,000 this week.

Bought by Betaworks, the company had raised over $45 million since foundation, making it a huge loser for many investors.

A few of the more notable investors were Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, and venture firm Greylock Partners.

Digg was once the go-to site for user-curated news, but was killed by sites like Reddit and even Twitter. Founder Kevin Rose, which made unpopular decisions at Digg that helped lead to its demise, saw the writing on the wall and left in 2011 to join Google.

Betaworks launched sites like Bit.ly and will use Digg to boost the tech for their latest startup, News.me, which is a daily news aggregator.

Today more than 450,000 login details for Yahoo have been leaked. A hacking collective that calls themselves D33Ds Company has taken responsibility of the breach.

D33Ds Company told Ars Technica that they used SQL injection technique for one of the Yahoo's subdomains. Their intention was to bring up the security concerns on subdomains.

The hackers posted all of the 453,492 plain text usernames and passwords for all to see. We won't be linking to the leaked list with passwords for obvious security reasons. However, we have gathered the list of affected email addresses and made a search that you can safely use to find out if your account is amongst the leaked. We do NOT store any of the passwords in the searchable database.

To see if you should be changing your passwords visit:
https://www.afterdawn.com/yahoo_password_leak.cfm

DirecTV has dropped over a dozen Viacom cable channels this week thanks to an ongoing dispute over licensing fees.

Popular channels like Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV have gone black while the two companies try to work out an agreement on fees. The dispute is expected to last for more weeks.

DirecTV has 19 million subscribers and is the largest satellite TV provider in the nation.

Says the company of the issue at hand: "Viacom is pushing DirecTV customers to pay more than a 30% increase, which equates to an extra $1 billion." The company adds that there has been declining ratings for many of Viacom's channels over the course of the last 12 months.

The company also notes that it wanted to keep the channels available for viewers but Viacom would not allow it: "Let's be clear, Viacom took these channels from DirecTV viewers."

Of course, Viacom took the other side, claiming the increase is "a fair deal that amounted to an increase of only a couple pennies per day per subscriber."

Viacom's channels currently cost between 16 and 50 cents per subscriber.

According to Asus, the Google Nexus 7 tablet will hit European markets in early September, costing €249 for the 16GB model.

The smaller capacity 8GB model will likely cost €199, although that was not confirmed.

Built by Asus, the device will hit American buyer's hands in the next few days.

Google's first co-branded tablet has a 7-inch 1280x800 HD (216 ppi) back-lit IPS display, is powered by a quad-core Tegra 3 SoC and comes in 8GB or 16GB models. Additionally, the device is the first with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and its new impressive features.

Additionally, the tablet has a large 4325 mAh battery for 8 hours of use, has built-in NFC, GPS and a 1.2MP front-facing camera.

Following their settlement over the trademark of the iPad name, Apple will begin selling the third-generation tablet on July 20th in China.

Last week, the company announced it would be paying $60 million to settle the year-old dispute.

The new tablet will sell for $500 base and the iPad 2 will fall to $399.

Chinese buyers can purchase the device online and through approved Apple retailers.

The third generation tablet was launched in March in the U.S. and many other nations but had been delayed in the world's most populous nation due to the lawsuit. The tablet brings Retina Display, a faster processor and other new features and upgrades.