Australia has passed a controversial anti-piracy law allowing right holders to approach a Federal Court judge and get foreign-hosted websites that have the “primary purpose” of “facilitating” copyright infringement blocked at the ISP-level.

Dubbed Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015, the bill – which was introduced back in March this year – got passed the Australian Senate by a vote of 37-13. Read more »

If you own a smartwatch running Android Wear, you’ll be happy to know that Google has just pushed 17 new watch faces to the Play Store. These apparently originate from all over the world, according to the search giant.

Some of them feature “adorable” characters such as Angry Birds, Hello Kitty, and Moomin, while others have been created by designers or design houses like Cynthia Rowley and Lulu Frost. Read more »

Here Maps (still owned by Nokia, but that’s something that may change soon) has announced a new milestone today. The service now has live, real time traffic information in 50 countries across the globe. In the map below, every territory that’s blue is covered.

The light blue places are the newest additions, joining the other 44 countries from today. So, starting now you’ll also get live traffic coverage in Bahrain, Bulgaria, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and Romania. Read more »

Right on time, Pebble has opened pre-orders for the Time smartwatch today. The wearable can be yours for $199.99 if you’re in the US. You need to head to Best Buy to actually place your pre-order, since the mega retailer is Pebble’s exclusive partner for this launch stateside.

If you pre-order today, delivery is expected to happen by July 20. On the other hand, if you’re in Europe, you’ll have to pay a whopping €249 for the same smartwatch – that’s about $283 at the current exchange rates. Pebble’s own online store will help you pre-order the device if you’re outside the US. Read more »

It is no secret that AMD has been struggling to earn money lately. Historically, the legendary chip maker has maintained a steady “runner-up” position behind Intel, especially in terms of desktop hardware, but it looks like the huge shift to mobile devices took the US company by surprise and it is yet to fully adapt.

The possibility of various partnerships and buy-outs has been tossed around quite a lot recently and it really seems like AMD is way overdue for some kind of restructuring if it is going to survive. Industry sources now suggest that chief executive Lisa Su is considering the possibility of splitting AMD businesses, a move which was previously protested against internally and is still officially denied by the company. Read more »

Nearly a couple of weeks after Microsoft made official a 1TB Xbox One, Sony has followed suit by announcing a PlayStation 4 console with the same amount of built-in storage.

“Offering twice the storage of the existing PS4, you’ll be able to download more of the games you love to your PS4, extend your play with more great add-on content and save and share even more of your best gaming highlights,” the company said in a blog post. Read more »

Sony has announced the pricing and availability details of its X900C and X910C series 4K Ultra HD TVs. While the former is set to arrive beginning next month, the latter will be available for purchase sometime this summer.

As for the price, the 55-inch X900C model will carry a tag of $2,499, while the 65-inch counterpart will set you back $3,999. On the other hand, the 75-inch X910C model will cost $5,499. Read more »

In case you haven’t heard about it yet, Taylor Swift wrote an open letter to Apple regarding their iTunes store policies, specifically regarding the new iTunes streaming service that Apple is about to launch soon.

The letter, published on Swift’s personal Tumblr, talked about why she is not allowing her new album ’1989′ to be streamed on iTunes. She mentioned how Apple is not paying artists for first three months of the launch of the service. Read more »

Amazon brought the price of the Asus-made Nexus Player below $65 in the United States. The online retail behemoth is now offering the set top box for $64.78.

The price is well below the $79 which Google is asking for the device and includes free two-day shipping for Amazon Prime members. Read more »

In a bid to reduce traffic accident casualties, Samsung Argentina mounted displays on large trucks to make them “transparent.” The idea dates back to the Transparentius concept by Art Lebedev from 2009.

Dubbed Samsung Safety Truck, the Korean giant’s setup is quite simple and consist of a camera placed in the front of the truck and four large displays on its back. Read more »

Here are the best apps and games that came out this week. Read more »

We have the HTC One E9+ over at the office for our usual routine. As you probably know, that’s the company’s 5.5-inch QHD offering, the largest member of the 2015 One lineup.

Unlike the One M9, which is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, the rest of this year’s Ones, including the E9+, rely on the Mediatek MT6795 chipset. As it’s our first encounter with the SoC we were eager to test it out, and ran a few benchmarks, with the results coming after the break. Read more »

We recently gave the Huawei P8 a thorough review and, naturally, we didn’t skip on putting it through our rigorous battery testing procedure.

When examining the Huawei P8, and any of its siblings, for that matter, we really have to take into account the custom nature of their internals. Huawei has been straying from the herd and relying mostly on its custom Kirin architecture, courtesy of HiSilicon. So, even though, the ARM Cortex A53 cores, found it the handset are more or less standard, their performance and power consumption is slightly different from what Qualcomm or Mediatek offer. Read more »

The HTC One M9+ is the estranged big brother of the One M9 that grew up in Asia and learned a few new tricks. It is literally bigger, thanks to its 5.2-inch Quad HD display, has a fingerprint sensor, a MediaTek helio X10 processor, and even brings back the Duo Camera sensor from the M8.

The M9+ is only available in select Asian markets where the standard M9 isn’t available, and will be coming to certain parts of Europe later this year. If you were thinking of picking this up over the standard M9 or just stuck with this one option in your region, read on to find out more. Read more »

Microsoft will give Windows 10 Insider Preview users the opportunity to get the final version of the OS for free. Windows 10 will make its official debut at the end of next month, on July 29.

All interested users need to do is install the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview with build number 10130. Read more »