Currently, government agencies and local police forces in the US, are only able to obtain permission to hack into the computers and other electronic devices of suspects in their region and only then once they have a warrant. However, now the FBI and other organisations want to expand that power …
Read More »Want to buy 50,000 Bitcoins?
In a rare opportunity, thanks to the United States Marshals Service and Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame, you are now able to bid on 50,000 seized Bitcoins. These Bitcoins are currently worth around £7.7 million (or $11.9 million USD) and were seized from Ulbricht when the feds snatched his laptop away from him in a San …
Read More »HTTP/2 is finished and will be coming to your browser soon
The Internet Engineering Task Force has just reached a consensus and finished finalising the next major update, to the HTTP standard that we all use every day. The specification builds upon and is an alternative to, but does not obsolete, the HTTP/1.1 standard that was first introduced in 1999, that we currently use whenever …
Read More »New Guild Wars 2 profession ‘The Revenant’ detailed
The latest Guild Wars 2 profession has been revealed, it's called ‘The Revenant' and being one will involve wielding the spirits of the past. The new profession will be the ninth in the game and will feature in the upcoming Heart of Thorns expansion pack. The Revenant has just been …
Read More »Early details of Xbox One universal apps and retail dev kit plans revealed
More details surrounding the Xbox One's integration in to the Windows 10 ecosystem have come to light, showing that the upcoming universal applications will be able to run in the background, bringing a higher level of multi-tasking to the console. Additionally, Microsoft may finally be bringing the option to turn …
Read More »The Stomping Land dev has gone silent again, model designer leaves
The Stomping Land has been a prime example of crowd funding gone wrong. The game managed to raise over $100,000 on Kickstarter before coming to Steam Early Access and then once it hit Steam, the main developer behind the project went silent. The project leader, Alex Fundora eventually spoke out …
Read More »The £85K charity bid for the very first 20th Anniversary PS4 fell through
A while back Sony held a charity auction for the very first 20th Anniversary Edition PlayStation 4 console. The auction appeared to be a success with the winner bidding £85,000, unfortunately, he failed to pay up but Sony still kept its own promise and matched the winning bid in a …
Read More »Gabe Newell death threat game makes it back on Steam
Paranautical Activity has reappeared on Steam, several months after being pulled when one of the developers threatened Gabe Newell's life over Twitter. Since then that particular developer quit and then rejoined the company and now the game itself is back on Steam. To make up for his transgressions, the team …
Read More »Amiibo will unlock portions of NES, SNES games
What Nintendo will actually do with its Amiibo figurines has been up for much debate since the little NFC equipped models were released last year. Off the bat they gave us extra costumes in certain games and our own AI cooperative partner in Smash Bros, but these are cross title …
Read More »Kaspersky claims NSA hid spyware in HDD firmware
Hot off of the heels of breaking news on the biggest digital bank heist run in history, Kaspersky labs, the anti-malware firm, has released a new batch of information that indirectly paints the NSA and the US government as having inserted malware into the firmware of commercial hard drives. While …
Read More »The New Nintendo 3DS sold 335,000 units in first week
Nintendo's new 3DS seems to be off to a good star, having sold around 335,000 units since its launch last week in Europe and North America. Two big contributing factors would be the launches of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. The information comes from …
Read More »Microsoft to notify Office 365 and Azure customers of government requests
Microsoft is now the first major cloud provider to make use of the ISO/IEC 27018 international standard for cloud privacy. From now on, Microsoft Azure and Office 365 customers will be notified when a government data request is received, allowing for more transparency. The standard was published by the International …
Read More »Xbox One ultimate game sale is live
Microsoft has launched the ultimate game sale on Xbox Live, bringing discounts on many Xbox One and Xbox 360 titles, giving Xbox gamers the chance to save up to 85 per cent on some games. Those who have an Xbox Live Gold subscription will get an extra 10 per cent …
Read More »Microsoft to charge $600 for extended Windows Server 2003 support
Microsoft has opted to put a price on extended support for servers running Windows Server 2003, after the software reaches its end of life over the summer. According to reports, companies will be charged $600 per server for the first year of support following the end of life date, which …
Read More »The Halo Needler is now a real dart gun
There are many iconic guns in the Halo series, but perhaps one of the strangest was the Covenants Needler (or Type-33 Guided Munitions Launcher as you may know it). It fired piercing needles that embedded into a target and then after a second or so each dart exploded with predictably bad …
Read More »Google to give developers more time to fix bugs before revealing
Google's Project Zero was announced last year as a new way to help improve online security by identifying vulnerabilities in software and services. Upon finding a vulnerability, it is reported directly to the company in charge of the software or service affected, the developers then have a certain amount of …
Read More »Dota 2 reaches over 1,000,000 simultaneous online players
One of the wonderful things about the Steam platform is that it is incredibly open with its statistics, showing how many people are playing different games and how many users are online at all times. This is something that is pretty unique amount digital distribution platforms and it allows us to …
Read More »Bungie adds new ‘loremaster’ to Destiny writing team
Bungie has gone ahead and hired former Guild Wars 2 writer, John Ryan, to be the new ‘loremaster' for Destiny, it has been confirmed. The company aimed to strengthen its writing staff working on the game, following the departure of lead writer, Joseph Staten, just a year before release. The …
Read More »Sony has abandoned The Last Guardian trademark
Sony unveiled The Last Guardian a number of years ago, initially as a PlayStation 3 exclusive. However, despite the long and troubled development cycle, the company has refused to announce its cancellation and has remained certain that it will come out eventually. Unfortunately, that may longer be true as Sony …
Read More »Dying Light patch brings mod support
Earlier this month, Dying Light developer, Techland, promised to bring full mod support to the zombie survival title. Now the studio has made good on that promise, with a new patch restoring the ability to mod the game. Full mod tools are also on the way. Patch 1.4.0 unlocks the …
Read More »Kaspersky details billion dollar digital bank heist
According to anti-malware security firm Kapersky, many of the world's major banks have been hit by digital thieves over the past year and a half, with the attackers making off with at least $300 million, but potentially as much as a billion (£648 million), after using malware and social engineering …
Read More »Microsoft responds to Turkey investigating violence in Minecraft
Minecraft is likely one of the last games you would expect to come under fire for violent content but that is exactly what has happened over in Turkey. The country's Family and Policies Minister, Aysenur Islam, has launched an investigation in to the game under the impression that it promotes …
Read More »Parallels 10 brings Windows 10 to Mac
You can now throw the Windows 10 Technical Preview on your Mac with the latest version of Parallels. Parallels Desktop 10 now gives Windows 10 as an option for the virtual machine, alongside Ubuntu and the older Windows 7/Windows 8.1 ISOs. Parallels works by creating a virtual machine on your …
Read More »Samsung to integrate baseband capabilities into its Exynos mobile APs
In an attempt to lower its dependence on Qualcomm, the world’s largest developer of application processors for mobile devices, Samsung plans to integrate baseband capabilities into its advanced Exynos system-on-chips. Such SoCs will emerge next year and will power devices the company will release in 2016. For years flagship smartphones …
Read More »Valve to showcase ‘the latest Steam Machines’ at GDC next month
Valve Software said this week that it will demonstrate “the latest” living room PCs running its own operating system at this year’s Game Developers Conference early next month. The company did not disclose whether those will be commercial products and the launch of appropriate hardware is imminent. This week Valve began …
Read More »PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are selling 60% faster than ancestors
Perhaps, new generation game consoles are considerably less powerful than the majority of gaming PCs; perhaps, they are not going to stay on the market for a really long time, like their predecessors. But here is a fact: Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 are selling dramatically faster than …
Read More »Obama signs order to protect America’s computer networks
In a move to help protect American online businesses and help them coordinate with US authorities, Obama has signed an executive order that will make federal agencies set up a way of sharing data between technicians in these businesses and federal agents. This information sharing will go both ways, with companies tipping …
Read More »The .blog gTLD is now owned by some guy from Panama
The number of Generic Top Level Domains (or gTLDs) has expanded rapidly since ICANN got around to opening up the bidding process, to allow people and corporations to apply for any gTLDs in 2012. After the application process had finished there were applications for 1,409 new TLDs. Some of these domains were …
Read More »Assassin’s Creed Unity and Rogue managed to sell 10 million copies
On the PR side of things, Ubisoft didn't have a great holiday season last year, with Assassin's' Creed Unity launching with all sorts of issues that took months to fix. However, on the sales side of things, Assassin's Creed Unity and the last generation title, Assassin's Creed Rogue, didn't do …
Read More »Here is what the Elder Scrolls Online’s new store will let you buy
You have probably heard by now that Zenimax Online is taking The Elder Scrolls Online in a new direction by dropping the monthly subscription requirement and adding in a micro-transaction ‘crown store' to the game. Now some details have come out, letting us know what we will be able to …
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