BlackBerry recently indicated it would be dropping the price of its Priv debut Android smartphone and now Canada is the first to see it in action. Carrier Sasktel is currently selling it for $249.99 CAD ($180 USD) with a two-year contract, a 38% cut over the previous $400 CAD (about $290 USD).

You don't have to live in Saskatchewan to buy it as the phone can be purchased online, although currently it's out of stock on the website. We've contacted Sasktel for comment on whether stock will be replenished soon and will update this story if we hear back.

The price cut is expected to hit other regions, although when we can't say.

In a milestone that pushes humanity one step closer to science fiction, ArcaSpace has created the world's first real hoverboard.

Unlike hoverboard "impostors" like the uni-wheeled gyro skateboard or Lexus' SLIDE board, the ArcaBoard actually levitates up to a height of one foot over surfaces. Although the ArcaBoard is an authentic hoverboard, it's very much unlike Marty McFly's 80's kistch sci-fi wonder: as the tech is still in its early stages, the board is quite bulky, weighing it at 180lbs. With that kind of heft, it's more like a floating coffee table rather than a svelte aerodynamic street-hopper.

The ArcaBoard's hovering action is powered by a massive array of 36 high-powered electric fans that generate up to 272 horsepower and 430 lbs of thrust. The board can also hit a top speed of 12.5 miles-per-hour. Sadly the levitating fun will be short-lived as the fan system drains the board's batteries in six minutes flat. Additionally, it takes about six hours or so to get the board charged again, but ArcaSpace also sells a quick-charging ArcaDock for $4,500 that will have you up and levitating again in half an hour.

Documents and marketing materials from South Korea have revealed Samsung's upcoming line of ultrabooks, each of which should please anyone who appreciates a compact computer.

The NT900X line is, as expected, powered by Intel Skylake CPUs and Windows 10, and offers 13.3'' and 15'' models. The former pack 30 Whr batteries and micro HDMI ports; the latter pack 39 Whr batteries and full HDMI ports in addition to mini Ethernet ports. Six of the seven models features a 1920x1080 display, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, two USB 3.0 ports, and an SDXC card reader.

The outlier is the NT900X3K-K36, which features a 13.3'' 3200x1800 pixel display, Intel Core i3-5005U processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of solid state storage. Measuring half an inch thick and weighing 2.4lbs, it includes a metal chassis, foldable screen, and a 44 Whr battery.

More than 20 years later and the original Doom is still putting hardware to the test, thanks to the Brutal Doom mod which adds "advanced and unique features such as extra hitboxes for heads and legs, and more gore, fire, and smoke particles than any modern AAA game".

The new elements have rendered the game a slideshow in many circumstances, until now: v20b boasts massive performance improvements thanks to some clever optimization. See for yourself in the video above.

Head here if you'd like to get started playing Brutal Doom. v20b will launch alongside Starter Pack maps and gameplay improvements December 31.

Over the holidays the makers of Rocket League, Psyonix, revealed that they have nearly 9 million registered players worldwide across the PS4 and the PC. That's quite the amazing feat for a game that was just released in July of this year.

And Psyonix isn't quite done yet, either. In the coming year they plan on bringing on a number of new and exciting things into the fray. We can expect support on as grand a scale as they've had with a ton of new content to keep those 9 million coming back. There'll be new modes, new DLC, new arenas and of course plenty of new themed vehicles as time goes by.

That 9 million isn't a concurrent player number though, as that might just break the multiplayer infrastructure they have in place. But even having 9 million interested and playing throughout a month is no laughing matter. For perspective, on PC alone you can find 25K people playing at the moment with an average of 19.5K per day. That means you won't be waiting around for competition.

The idea of a first party Surface Phone device in the same vein as the other Surface devices from Microsoft has long been hinted at, though nothing has ever materialized short of a few very interesting artistic renderings.

During a recent webcast for Windows Weekly, the Chief Marketing Officer, Chris Capossela, joined Mary Jo Foley, Paul Thurrot and Leo Laporte to talk about the future of the world of Window Phone and discuss the direction that they Microsoft can, at the very least, publicly discuss.

The landscape has been rather sparse, and news even more sparse, so Mary Jo Foley very pointedly asked Capossela to "give me something to hope for in the new year as a Windows Phone fan, Chris, because I'm abandoning hope." A strong statement to be sure, but one that expresses a lack of innovation on the mobile front, even with the impending rollout of Windows 10 for mobile for more devices.

The first shot of Michael Fassbender in the upcoming Assassin's Creed movie has been released by Entertainment Weekly, with Fassbender playing Callum Lynch.

Lynch is a character who doesn't appear in any of the Assassin's Creed games, but he acts like a kind of "cypher for all the time-traveling, first-person action in the games", reports EW. Fassbender however, didn't play any of the Assassin's Creed games before taking the role, only playing the games after he signed the dotted line.

Fassbender is currently in Spain filming the movie, where he said to EW: "I've played it since [being offered the job] mainly to get an idea of the physicality of the character. We're striving to find something special. We believe the whole concept around it is special and want to service that the best we can. The fans are really passionate: very specific and they expect accuracy and historical detail. We're really trying to capitalize and feed on and enjoy the fun element. We're working hard to make this something special".

Star Wars: The Force Awakens continues to break records, with its latest record-breaking achievement being the fastest movie to make $1 billion at the box office.

It only took 12 days for The Force Awakens to make its $1 billion, thanks to the holiday weekend seeing the latest Star Wars movie making $153.5 million domestically, and $133.3 million overseas. This brings The Force Awakens to around $1.09 billion in 12 days, making its second weekend bigger than all of the other biggest openings of all time, except nine of them. That's a huge achievement in itself, too.

Jurassic World was the previous movie to have the record, as it reached $1 billion in 13 days. I think we're going to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens break Avatar's box office haul of $2.78 billion - with The Force Awakens, in my opinion, to make between $3 billion and $3.2 billion. The next big movie to compete against it at the box office will be next year's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (which is the most expensive movie of all time, according to reports), which arrives on March 23.

North Korea may have successfully landed a man on the Sun, but it looks like the country is a bit paranoid when it comes to its own Linux distribution, Red Star OS.

Red Star OS has been pulled apart by researchers, showing just how closed off it really is. The Linux distribution watermarks files on USB sticks, so that Pyongyang can track contraband material, and the OS also doesn't like modifications. Red Star OS will reboot the PC immediately if it discovers changes to system files, too.

The built-in antivirus software and web browser both direct themselves to internal servers, with the encryption on Red Star OS custom-developed - most likely to keep the prying eyes of the NSA and GCHQ away. The walls that North Korea has built up within Red Star OS is to keep its citizens unaware of the world around them, so if they did modify the OS, they'd be tracked down immediately - and probably sent off to live on the Sun.

It's Christmas morning, and you see a box under the tree wrapped immaculately. You grab it, and feel the weight - you guesstimate that this could be what you've asked Santa for: a PS4. You open the box, and yes! It's a PS4! You tear the box that the PS4 comes in apart, and to your utter disappointment, inside there is just a block of wood - but with an upside, there's a dick drawn on the box.

Yeah, that was 9-year-old Scott Lundy's XMAS morning in a nutshell. Boston's Fox 25 reports that Lundy shouted "YES THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER DAD CAN WE SET THIS UP NOW?" But after opening the box for the PS4, the 9-year-old discovered that there was just a block of wood shaped like a PS4 inside, and his parents Kristin and Brian saw that there was a dick drawn on the box, with the message "From cock and balls with love".

Scott's step-mother, Kristin, said: "He's crying and he's upset and he's in the playroom by himself and he just wants to be alone so at that point. I was crushed". The Lundy's returned the package back to Saugus Target, where they had purchased it from, with the company giving them a $100 gift card and a free copy of The Uncharted Collection. Kristin posted on Facebook not long after, saying "This has ruined his belief in Santa".