Over the weekened, IGDA's Kevin Dent posted that video game developer THQ was cancelling its entire 2014 lineup, due to financial troubles.

The news would have been notable because the highly-anticipated "Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online" would have been cancelled, as well.

Dent's Tweet had read: "Apparently, The Game Workshops MMO has been cancelled by THQ because the company needs to preserve cash." Dent would then go on to say that the company was offering itself up for sale to Asian firms.

THQ was quick to respond, stating:

THQ has not cancelled its 2014 line-up, and has not made any decisions regarding the planned MMO.

As part of the ongoing review of our business, we have made decisions to ensure that the company is strategically addressing the most attractive markets. As we have previously announced, we have dramatically reduced our commitment to the kids' boxed games sector which leads to a significantly more focused release schedule moving forward. Our slate for calendar 2012 and beyond is focused on high-quality core games and continues to build our digital platform and business. We are excited for our pipeline of original and high-quality content along with our relationships with some of the best talent in the industry.

The Chinese Internet Network Information Center has announced today that the nation now has 513 million Internet users as of December 2011.

CINIC is China's government-run Internet registry.

The group says Web users increased 12 percent from 2010. Additionally, microblogging usage exploded, to 250 million users. That figure is 400 percent higher than 2010. That growth will likely slow significantly this year as new regulations put into place in 2011 by the government make freedom of speech less free. All microblogging services have to monitor postings more closely and remove objectionable material.

Twitter and Facebook are blocked in China, but Chinese sites like Sohu and Sina are not.

356 million Chinese go online using handheld devices, up 17.5 percent from 2010. The Apple iPhone 4S launch was shut down last week as angry fans threw eggs at the Apple Store when it did not open on time. The company cancelled the opening launch to protect its workers.

Hackers that claim to be Saudi have escalated their cyber war against Israel, this time attacking the nation's stock exchange and their El-Al national airline.

Earlier this month, a hacker calling himself OxOmar released personal information on 21,000 accounts hacked from a popular Israeli sports website. Overall, the hackers claim to have stolen 400,000 credit card accounts from the attack, although banks have called that number bogus.

The group calls themselves a "gift to the world for the New Year designed to hurt the Zionist pocket." The group claims to be pro-Palestine.

In retaliation for the first attack, Israeli hackers posted personal information on Saudis, Egyptians, Syrians and others.

The new attack took down the El Al Airlines website, but the company says no flights or booking were delayed. The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange website was "overwhelmed by electronic requests that slowed it down dramatically" but the site remained operational and all trading was unaffected.

Late last night, I received an email, as did 24 million other account holders, that our Zappos accounts had been hacked and we needed to change our passwords.

The popular shoe retailer owned by Amazon says that information such as names, email addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, the last four digits of credit card numbers and encrypted versions of account passwords were likely compromised.

Zappos says all credit card numbers and other payment information were not accessed, since they were housed in a different database.

Additionally, Zappo's discounted 6PM.com site was also hacked in the same attack. At 24 million compromised, the attack is the largest since Sony's PlayStation Network was taken down in April 2011, compromising data on 101 million gamers.

The retailer reset everyone's passwords, but has shut off its phone lines, meaning all customer service requests will go to email.

Rovio has teased its upcoming levels for Angry Birds Seasons.

The game, which is the most popular mobile game of all-time will see its second China-themed update, this one called "Year of the Dragon." Back in September, Rovio updated the game with "Chinese Moon Festival" levels, including hidden mooncakes.

Says the developer of the new levels: "Fireworks popping, lanterns glowing, red envelopes bursting with money - it's Chinese New Year!"

This year, the Chinese New Year falls on the 23rd, and the levels will launch on the 20th.

Angry Birds Seasons is available on iOS for $1 and free in the Android Market (with ads).

With all the reports of many measures in SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) being opposed publicly by a growing number of Washington politicians, you may have gotten the impression its opponents have won.

Many opponents aren't convinced, including Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales. Today he announced, via Twitter, that Wikipedia intends to replace all English language Wikipedia pages with information about SOPA and it's companion bill in the US Senate known as PIPA or PROTECT IP.

He said the blackout will affect all users worldwide who attempt to view any English language Wikipedia page during a 24 hour period starting at midnight Washington DC time (5 AM GMT). The exact contents of they page to be used in place of the requested content is still being determined via discussion on Wikipedia.

When it comes to Apple's patent campaign against Android, one patent arguably carries more serious implications than any other.

The patent deals with adding a multi-touch interface to a capacitive touchscreen - the standard interface and touchscreen used for smartphones and tablets. Apple claims their patent restricts other companies from selling standard multi-touch displays without their permission. It is named in numerous lawsuits against companies including Samsung, HTC, and Motorola Mobility in around the world.

Last Friday the US International Trade Commission (ITC) released a preliminary ruling on an Apple complaint against Motorola Mobility which shoots down three patent claims, including infringement on that patent. Analyzing the ruling for his FOSS Patents blog, patent expert Florian Mueller characterized the ruling as potentially damaging to Apple's similar ITC action against Samsung.

What is Bitcasa?

Bitcasa is a start-up begun by former execs at Mastercard, VeriSign and Mozy and is the latest entrant to the cloud storage market.

What makes Bitcasa different is that the service offers you truly infinite storage, all for just $10 per month. In fact, when you add your first folder, you are told that you have over 500TB of remaining free space, and the start-up says that number is only there because Windows and Mac machines cannot display higher numbers.

How does Bitcasa offer unlimited storage?

The company's CEO says it can offer unlimited storage, "because 60 percent of their data is identical." Simply, when you "cloudify" a music track or movie, the chances are someone else has the same exact track or movie on their computer.

Bitcasa uses "patented de-duplication algorithms, compression techniques, and encryption" to identify duplicate files and therefore the company only keeps a couple, (or even one) of of the files in its servers. By doing so, the company can keep its costs significantly down and offer infinite storage to its users.

Samsung has announced it will merge its own touchscreen OS, Bada, with the Linux-based Tizen OS.

Tizen is a joint collaboration between Intel and Samsung. Tizen was born from the ashes of MeeGo, which was an Intel-Nokia smartphone OS before Nokia left it for dead and jumped to Windows Phone.

Samsung launched Bada in 2010 in an effort to update the operating system on their low-end smartphones and their touchscreen feature phones. The OS has multi-tasking, an app store and a completely rehauled UI that looks somewhat similar to Android.

Over 10 million Bada devices were sold last year, making it a marginal success for the company.

Bada will fold into Tizen, but all current apps and the SDK is backward compatible with the new OS. There is a chance that Bada devices, like the Wave phone, will be updated to Tizen later this year via an OTA update.

In what has got to be one of the most idiotic attacks I have ever heard of, Kaspersky Lab is reporting today that Facebook users are being phished in an effort to steal their accounts and full credit card details.

The attack begins with a private message, purportedly from "The Facebook Team," that reads "Last Warning: Your Facebook account will be turned off Because someone has reported you. Please do re-confirm your account security by: http://apps-xxxx-xxxxx-user.de.vu."

If you are naive enough to click, you are led to a Web site that first asks for your first and last name, Facebook password, birthday and email address. When you complete that first page, you are then led to a page to fill out financial information.

On that second page, the nice scammers write "We will never ask you for your full credit card number, but we may ask for the first six digits." Despite that kind warning, the next page then asks for full credit card number, four-digit security code, expiration date and your billing address. As a note, the phishing page says the info will only be used to purchase Facebook Credits for games.

Writes Kaspersky Lab: "These scams are just getting more popular and we really recommend not giving out personal information, especially not email, password and credit card information over social medias. It is also recommend[ed] that you contact your security vendor and the social media vendor if you encounter these sites."

According to a small study conducted in China, an "addiction" to the Internet can lead to structural damage of your brain.

The research studied 17 teens with Internet Addiction Disorder and found that each had "structural and functional interference in the part of the brain that regulates organization, possibly causing cognitive impairment similar to that caused by gambling and alcoholism." (Mashable)

During the course of the study, researchers took MRI scans of the subjects to measure the organization of the brain via white matter. The method, fractional anisotropy (FA), was shown to be lower in the teens with IAD.

Reads the report: "Overall, our findings indicate that Internet addiction disorder has abnormal white matter integrity in brain regions involved in emotional generation and processing, executive attention, decision making and cognitive control. The results also suggest that IAD may share psychological and neural mechanisms with other types of substance addiction and impulse control disorders."

Notion Ink has released a fixed alpha of Android 4.0.3 for their Adam tablet.

The original software launch, in "pre-alpha," offered Ice Cream Sandwich goodness with a side of broken audio, Bluetooth and GPS. Each of the features should be working fine now, and there are other updates, as well. However, the company says the camera and USB mass storage will still not work, sleep mode is buggy, and HDMI output may still not have sound.

Notion Ink's 10-inch tablet uses a dual-core Tegra 2 and has a Pixel Qi sunlight-readable display. The device is innovative but the company ran into some issues with supply and orders and the Android version placed on the device was very buggy at launch.

There is much more information here on what is updated and what is coming, via Notion Ink.

Video of the OS in action:

T-Mobile will begin selling HTC's ultrathin Ville smartphone this spring, if the report from PocketNow is accurate.

The device has been seen in leaks for months, but is officially expected to be unveiled at next month's Mobile World Congress.

Here are the rumored specs (via AandMe):

1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4
Adreno 225 GPU
4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD display
Beats Audio
Backside-illuminated 8 megapixel camera capable of rivaling point-and-shoot quality
1650mAh battery

Additionally, the device will have Android 4.0.x and HTC's own Sense 4 UI.

According to Bloomberg, LG and Google are in talks for a new Google TV, one that would be released by the end of the year.

The current negotiations are to see if Google will give LG access (like it has to Android manufacturers) to its future Google TV software so it can create a "Nexus" model. In the Android world, phones like the Nexus One and Galaxy Nexus received the next software update before anyone else, and release the phones with a "Vanilla" offering, meaning no carrier or manufacturer bloatware or special user interfaces.

Google TV has seen a revival in the last two months, as the company finally updated the software for current devices and multiple big manufacturers announced plans for Google TVs or set-top boxes.

In an effort to boost its struggling revenue stream, Best Buy has reorganized and combined a few of its retail groups into the "connectivity business group."

The Group will sell connected devices, such as smartphones, tablets, PCs and e-readers, along with the service plans necessary to remain connected. The devices will be prominent in Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores.

CBG will be very similar to the current Best Buy Mobile initiative, but with a "broader mission," says Forbes.

The company is moving 35,000 employees to CBG, 20,000 from computers and tablets in standard Best Buys and 15,000 from Best Buy Mobile. Extra training will likely be required, up to 40 hours worth, so everyone gets to the same level. Each of the sectors emphasized by the group are the hottest trends in global electronics, with the exception of PCs, which have seen an extensive dip at the hands of the recession a few years ago and strong demand for tablets.

Best Buy did express hope that carriers would make activating their connected devices easier, as it can take up to 20 minutes to get started with your new 4G plan, for example.