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The number of stores and services now accepting bitcoins may top 100,000 worldwide, but it appears actual purchases using the volatile cryptocurrency remains low. There also is increased skepticism because of a continued drop in bitcoin value in recent months, frightening away potential investors and customers.

Bitcoin supporters say the cryptocurrency is far from dead - and urge owners to show patience during a rough time - especially as there are potential uses for bitcoin technology besides just finance.

"There are some breakthroughs in technology that are going to endure whether bitcoin survives or not," said David Yermack, professor of finance at the New York University Stern School of Business, in a statement published by the Boston Globe.

To help defend against cyberattacks, executives at private corporations need assistance from the US government and cybersecurity firms.

It took longer than experts would have liked, but it appears 90 percent of CEOs in the United States find cybersecurity strategically important, according to a PwC survey. The survey also found 87 percent are worried about cyberattacks, and 45 percent are extremely concerned about mounting attacks - many aimed at stealing employee and customer personal data.

President Barack Obama hosted a cybersecurity summit last week at Stanford University, seeking greater cooperation between the United States and Silicon Valley. "When you step back and look at the role of a company versus the role of a government, clearly if we're going to provide the safest possible [customer] experience in [the] aggregate, government and companies need to work together," said John Donahoe, CEO of eBay, in a statement to Fortune.

There is a blend of technology and modern medicine helping save lives, as smart medical implants are being used in select cases.

The US government is throwing its weight behind smart implant research, with the DARPA Electrical Prescriptions (ElectRX) program. University researchers also have received additional financial support to develop smart implants that can be used to enhance medicine. Doctors and researchers have successfully created hardware for the human heart, esophagus and other critical areas - but trying to make implants for the brain remains extremely tricky.

"We're like the Wright brothers at the stage where they were first trying to build an airplane," said Tim Denison, director of the Medtronic neuromodulation division, in a statement published by NBC News. "Before they could do it, they had to build a wind tunnel to understand the principles of flight."

The Operation Arid Viper campaign has successfully stolen more than 1 million files with current malware campaigns underway, though it's not the usual suspects, according to Kaspersky Lab and Trend Micro.

The Arab-speaking group, with ties to Gaza, have targeted foreign government offices, critical infrastructure, military, universities, and other high-profile targets. The attacks likely occurred starting in mid-2013 and a full investigation into their actions is underway.

"Whoever the real culprits are, it is clear that they are part of the Arab world, evidence of a budding generation of Arab hackers and malware creators intent on taking down their chosen adversaries," researchers said in a study. "Some of the black hats - be they mercenaries or cybersoldiers - are actively targeting countries such as Israel due to political motivations. We have seen all of the ingredients of a cyberskirmish guerrilla war that goes unnoticed by mainstream IT security media."

The United States Patent & Trademark Office has granted Apple a patent that the iDevice maker filed all the way back in 2008 for a headset design that would see you use your iPhone as a VR headset.

The design resembles the Galaxy Note 4-powered Gear VR, where you slot your iPhone into a device that sits on your face, where you use an external controller that helps you navigate through menus and more when motion tracking doesn't cut it. This is just a patent that Apple has filed, so we don't know if it'll turn into something just yet.

But judging by the amazing things Oculus VR has been able to do, all without a consumer VR product on the market, we don't think it'll be long before Apple unveils its own VR or AR headset.

In a surprising move from Microsoft, all Xbox One consoles will be turned into developer kits later this year, according to The Verge. The Verge's sources have said that Microsoft will tell the world more about it at its developer-focused Build conference in April.

Back in July of last year, then-Corporate Vice President of Xbox, Marc Whitten said "every Xbox One can be used for development". But with the expensive price of development kit units, it stopped smaller developers from making content for the Xbox consoles. We should also expect an expansion of Xbox One app development, which is limited to select developers at the moment.

A new SDK will be shown off in May, something that will provider developers with the ability to create apps as early as the summer.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi now controls 12.5 percent of its home market, ahead of Samsung's 12.1 percent share, according to the IDC research group. Xiaomi has seen smartphone sales increase 227 percent year-over-year, selling more than 61 million units in 2014.

However, Xiaomi continues to grow, while Samsung actually lost more than six percent in the competitive Chinese market - and analysts want to see how much higher Xiaomi can climb.

During Q4 of 2014, there were 107.5 million smartphones shipped to Chinese consumers, a 2 percent quarter-on-quarter growth, according to IDC.

Japanese infrastructure endured 25.6 billion cyberattacks in 2014 alone, with 40 percent reportedly traced back to Chinese sources, according to Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).

It wouldn't be surprising to hear Japan faced a large number of cyberattacks tied to China, especially with political turbulence between Tokyo and Beijing. There were a number of attacks originating from the United States, South Korea and Russia - as cybersecurity efforts continue to grow.

When the survey was first conducted, in 2005, there were just 310 million cyberattacks detected by the Japanese government. The latest NICT report discovered a growing number of attacks aimed at compromising home and business routers, IoT-enabled systems, networks, and security cameras.

ASRock has jumped out ahead of Computex 2015 in June, announcing some new USB 3.1-capable motherboards and PCIe cards. The company has announced that it will have a range of USB 3.1 products, including USB 3.1 PCIe cards that will either have two Type-A ports, or a combination of Type-A and Type-C.

Starting off with the motherboards, we have the Z97 Extreme6/3.1 and the X99 Extreme6/3.1. The Z97-based motherboard features a combination Type-A and Type-C card, where the X99 version includes two Type-A because the board already rocks a Type-C port on its I/O.

When it comes to the PCIe cards, which provide a huge 10Gbps of bandwidth that will be capable of saturating a USB 3.1 port. The two ports will have a combined throughput of 10Gbps, versus 10Gbps per port. The PCIe cards have power requirements, with the dual Type-A cards requiring a 4-pin molex connector, while the combo card requires a 4-pin custom/floppy-sized connector. Each card has up to 3 amps at 5V, which allows for 15W charging.

Rise of the Tomb Raider will have a totally different look to the reboot of Tomb Raider from Crystal Dynamics, with Tomb Raider's previous Art Director taking the position of Game Director for its sequel.

Brian Horton, the new Game Director for Rise of the Tomb Raider has reiterated the importance of a new look to the environment, where in Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft will venture out to Russia. Croft will be exploring a lost city, looking for answers about the immortal soul, with the new environment including various new challenges, and enemies.

Horton talked with Game Informer, where he said: "The concept art pieces that we do, generally have to accomplish a couple different things. They have to provide a sense of composition. You look at it and you go, 'Oh, I know where I am supposed to be looking. That is really interesting. I can't wait to get over there.' You create that interest through lighting, through complimentary color schemes, things you can say like I am in a very cold place or there is a warm light, or vice versa".

Allowing users to play Android games, run Android apps, browse the internet and watch Netflix,the ZRRO Box sets out to be a new-age console, telling Razer that "We'll Take It From Here" - as seen in their release headline.

Currently on Kickstarter, this project has raised $35,392 in only a few days and is looking at a $200,000 total target with 41 more days to reach it.

Set out to turn your TV into somewhat of a "huge tablet," the ZRRO Pad will track and mirror your fingers' 3D position onto your TV, meaning you hover your finger over the pad to move your position and press the screen itself to select. You can also pinch, swipe and drag - just like other portable devices.

The final entry in Peter Jackson's 'The Hobbit' trilogy 'The Battle of the Five Armies' might have disappointed a few fans mirrored in our own review, but that didn't stop the film from grossing nearly $1b at the worldwide box office and $3b for the entire series - an astonishing amount of money by any metric.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment have now announced the upcoming home media release of the film to be released on March 24th in the United States and March 26th in Australia. Coming in four flavours - a Blu-ray 3D Combo Pack, Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD and Digital, the Blu-ray is promising a number of behind the scenes featurettes including: Recruiting the Five Armies, Completing Middle-earth, The Last Goodbye: Behind the Scenes, The Last Goodbye music video and New Zealand: Home of Middle-earth, Part 3 along with an UltraViolet copy of the feature.

For those that want to hang on for a bit more 'Hobbit' action, it's expected that an extended cut of the film will be released sometime in the fourth quarter.

A recent flaw has been discovered in multiple Netgear router models, reportedly allowing hackers to bypass administrator authentication and gain full access to the device as found by Network engineer, Peter Adkins.

Adkins discovered that routers in the popular Netgear 'WNDR' range are running a Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) service as part of the Netgear Genie device administration application. Seemingly secure, he was able to bypass filtering and authentication for the SOAP service over a Wi-Fi connection without much effort.

Once the connection had been established, Adkins was able to extract the admin password, Wi-Fi interface credentials, station identifiers, the device serial number and even information on connected clients. He then notified Netgear of this security issue, however was met with a response which included "the network should still stay secure" - apparently due to hidden built-in security features.

Following news that millions of dollars have been stolen from banks by cybercriminals was yet another startling wakeup call for cybersecurity experts. Not surprisingly, hackers delivered the malware payload via social engineering phishing attacks targeted at reckless employees.

"Even after 20 years, social engineering is still the easiest way into a target's network and systems, and it's still the hardest attack to prevent," said Kevin Mitnick, legendary hacker and Chief Hacking Officer of KnowBe4.

Companies need to be aware that employees - in a number of different departments - are often untrained and rather careless when checking their emails. Spear-phishing tends to be a popular choice among cybercriminals, able to trick employees by using a customized approach.

Sony has announced its SmartEyeglass Developer Edition is available for pre-order in the UK and Germany, with sales opening up in the United States, Japan, France, Belgium, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain and Italy beginning next month.

The hands-free device superimposes images into the wearer's vision range, with Sony hoping it will be able to drive interest in the workplace. The company also was careful to create a more aesthetically pleasing product than Glass, which drew a high amount of criticism from potential wearers.

SmartEyeglass also uses a 3-megapixel CMOS image sensor, gyro, accelerometer, electronic compass and brightness sensor - paired with GPS data from a smartphone - to allow custom data to be shared with the wearer.

Apple is anticipating big demand for its Apple Watch smartwatch, asking Asian suppliers to prepare five to six million units ready for launch in April. The company will release three models and wants to ensure there is adequate stock of each one.

At least half of the production numbers will be for the Apple Sport, the company's entry-level smartwatch model, though production plans can be adjusted as needed.

The high-end Apple Watch Edition has seen small pre-orders to date, but Apple will produce at least one million units per month during Q2, according to sources. The watch has an 18-karat gold casing and could be extremely popular in China, as Apple products have become increasingly popular there as of late.

Kaspersky has some damning claims against HDD giants Seagate and Western Digital, where it has said that the NSA has spying backdoors installed onto the HDD firmware of the leading HDD manufacturers products.

The cyber-security giant says that the US spy agency has full access to raw data, agnostic of partition method (low-level format), file system (high-level format), operating system, or even at the user access level. Kaspersky has said that it has found PCs in at least 30 countries with the spying programs installed, with the most infections found in Iran. After that, we have Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China, Mali, Syria, Yemen and Algeria.

Kaspersky has said that the HDD firmware backdoors are used right now to spy on foreign governments, telecommunication giants, banks, nuclear researchers, the media, and many more. Kaspersky isn't outright naming the company that has designed the malware, but it has said that the company responsible has close ties with the development of Stuxnet. But it does get worse, as the company adds that each time you turn your PC on, the malware is activated, which means it has utter control to all of the critical OS components - possibly gaining access to your network, and file system.

The time has come for Samsung to tease to the world that it has started the mass production of its 14nm FinFET process technology, moving from its current node at 20nm.

Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing, System LSI Business, Samsung Electronics, Gabsoo Han, said: "Samsung's advanced 14nm FinFET process technology is undoubtedly the most advanced logic process technology in the industry. We expect the production of our 14nm mobile application processor to positively impact the growth of the mobile industry by enabling further performance improvements for cutting-edge smartphones".

This is quite the achievement, as the new 14nm FinFET processors offer up to 20% more speed, 35% less power consumption, and 30% productivity gain when compared to Samsung's current 20nm process technology. Samsung's new 14nm FinFET process will see its way into the company's upcoming Exynos 7 Octa later this year, as well as many other products in the near future.

If you didn't already know, Sony sold its VAIO brand off to Japan Industrial Partners last year, with the new owner of VAIO announcing new models in Sony's old PC brand. We have the new VAIO Z and VAIO Z Canvas laptops, which are some flashy new transforming Ultrabooks.

Starting with the VAIO Z which comes in two flavors, both with a 13.3-inch display, but you can choose between an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor. We also have a beautiful aluminuium carbon shell body, and an SSD that the company says can have the Ultrabook booting up in an impressive 0.3 seconds.

Better yet, a hinge on the rear of the Z's chassis allows the Ultrabook to turn the display on, so it can either be facing outwards to use it like a tablet, or flipped down to show others what you're doing. The VAIO Z is something Japan Industrial Partners calls a "monster PC" but it won't be going through its battery too quick. The company says that you should expect over 15.5 hours of use out of it, which is pretty damn impressive, and more than any other VAIO laptop released.

There was an interesting post that I read yesterday somewhere in the world of Reddit, but it was late and I was laying in bed. I awoke today to the news being spread throughout the Internet, that Apple could purchase Tesla Motors sometime in the next 18 months for an absolutely gigantic $75 billion.

The rumors are coming from Interent entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis, who is saying that all the dominoes are lining up for Apple to acquire Tesla. Calacanis said that he has no insider information, but he has said that Apple's all of the sudden interest in building cars, and Tim Cook's "obsession" with renewable energy are giant hints. Calacanis wrote: "No one else in the world could actually make a run at Tesla, because they either don't have the cash and, most importantly, they don't have the ability to give assurances to Elon that they won't f- it up. Apple's design team, software, and global distribution would actually LEVEL Tesla up".

Remember, this probably won't happen - I would dare say it will not happen, but the rumor is interesting nonetheless. Maybe Apple is testing the waters by pushing this rumor out into the world?