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The FBI is still unsure what hacker group successfully compromised Sony Pictures Entertainment, but said 90 percent of companies would likely fall victim to the same tactics. FBI officials also have reportedly met with Sony employees to explain how to protect themselves due to personal information being stolen as part of the breach.

"[T]he malware that was used would have gotten past 90 percent of the Net defenses that are out there today in private industry and [would have been] likely to challenge even state government," said Joe Demarest, assistant director of the FBIU cyberdivision, at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

Sony is working with Mandiant, a cybersecurity forensics company, and CEO Kevin Mandia confirmed that this type of attack would be difficult to prepare for. The Guardians of Peace took credit for the attack, with purported GOP members emailing the media additional details of the breach.

Nintendo will release Yoshi's Wooly World for the Wii U in early 2015, with the Good-Feel Company game developer firm providing assistance. Yoshi's Wooly World presents a unique gaming environment, featuring characters made of yarn, wool and other materials. The game was originally shown off during E3 2014 earlier this year, but Nintendo only confirmed it would be released sometime in 2015.

"We said we wanted to make a Yoshi game, but we asked them to use the yarn and fabric as materials for creating new gameplay mechanics to create a new kind of Yoshi game filled with those kinds of elements," said Takashi Tezuka, Nintendo video game designer, during a Nintendo Direct presentation.

It has been an extremely busy time for console manufacturers and game studios, and Nintendo has enjoyed recent success with the Wii U. The launch of Yoshi's Wooly World in early 2015 could help generate additional sales for the gaming unit.

NASA is developing a new bio-drone that could splash down in a body of water, disintegrating while not hurting the environment. The biodegradable drone's chassis is made of mycelium, which is a fiber found in mushrooms - and can also be found on or in soil located near mushrooms.

"If you have living organisms acting as biosensors and the plane crashes, there certainly could be problems as the plane interacts with the environment," said Lynn Rothschild, NASA developer spearheading the project, in an interview with the team. "Hopefully people could think of this in advance, and design such that this never becomes a problem."

Drones that crash can have a significant impact in the immediate area, such as if it crashed on coral reefs and other sensitive habits that are being studied. Flying this type of custom drone allows researchers to get a closer look at unique locations, and researchers are continually making adjustments to make it as eco-friendly as possible.

If you're still on the hunt for Christmas presents, ASTRO have just issued a newsletter email that will get the young console or PC player in your family extremely excited. They're offering up to 25% off some gaming bundles, tailored towards Xbox One, PS4 and PC platforms.

The ASTRO Xbox One: Legendary pack comes with their Xbox One edition A50 headset, an accompanying headset case, a scout backpack and a 5 panel hat. Their PS4 offering comes with all of the same goodies, but an ASTRO edition A50 is supplied, followed up by their PC: Legendary pack which comes with an ASTRO edition A50, a BETA USB Tx (transmitter), a headset case, mission bag and 5 panel hat.

To ensure that you receive your deals in time, they suggest that you order before the 18th if you're wanting to ship via ground, by the 19th if UPS 2nd day service is what you're after, or the 21st if UPS next day air tickles your fancy.

Peter Sunde, citing the network's loss of vision over the years, apparently doesn't mind if The Pirate Bay never sees the light of day again. Commenting that it's now "ugly" and how the new owners haven't taken precautions to improve the experience for the community.

This news comes as we've reported multiple stories in recent months of the controversial site being the centerpiece of multiple arrests, closures and server shuffles.

Further commenting on his claims, Sunde stated "the site was ugly, full of bugs, old code and old design. It never changed except for one thing - the ads. More and more ads was filling the site, and somehow when it felt unimaginable to make these ads more distasteful they somehow ended up even worse." He also mentioned that the original spirit and direction of the site had completely disappeared from his time serving the torrent community - commenting that he would rather the website die a noble death rather than continue to live in on it's current (or former) state.

We've just received reports that Microsoft will be releasing their "next chapter" of Windows 10 on January 21, 2015. This will be hosted in the form of a Webcast and in-person event held in Redmond.

Led by Chief Executive Satya Nadella and accompanied by senior executives from Microsoft's Operating Systems division (Terry Myerson, Joe Belfiore and Phil Spencer), this forum will see new operating system specifications and information as expected announcements.

After the reveal of Windows 10 in September by Myerson, this version was originally quoted as an enterprise product containing an interface that would look and feel familiar to those using the previous versions of 7 and 8 or 8.1. He went on to mention that "they [users] will find all the tools they're used to finding, with all the apps and tools they're used to today".

Marking a turn of events, Microsoft has claimed that their Xbox One model has bested Sony's PlayStation 4 in monthly sales across the United States and the United Kingdom throughout the month of November, 2014.

Alongside this being a record month for Xbox, they've finally edged ahead of their main competition in two of their major countries. Mike Nichols, corporate vice president of Xbox marketing couldn't be happier with the reports, claiming the response to their holiday lineup of games as "incredible, with Xbox One fans buying more games in November in the U.S. than any other gen eight platform and enjoying over 357 million hours of gameplay globally".

Nichols added "In fact, more fans logged into Xbox Live across Xbox One and Xbox 360, and enjoyed more entertainment, than any other month in the history of Xbox".

The launch of Driveclub on the PlayStation 4 has been nothing but a mess, and even though Evolution Studios has been doing an amazing job patching up the game since its launch, Sony's UK Managing Director Fergal Gara, isn't happy.

Gara spoke with IGN, saying that he and the Driveclub team are "embarrassed" by the performance of the game so far. He continued: "It's a disappointment. When you lay your soul out as being '4ThePlayers', then what you certainly don't want is games that are not fully ready. It certainly wasn't any ill-intention on behalf of the team. It's ambitious as a game; they're as embarrassed as we are and all you can do in those situations is say sorry. We apologize to any players affected and are doing our damndest to make things right. So that's what we've been doing and the game is pretty near-complete now. We don't want to introduce the PS Plus Edition until we're confident the servers can take the load".

Evolution Studios have been patching up the game, with the latest update to Driveclub introducing some super impressive dynamic weather effects to the already very pretty driving title.

In regular fashion, Razer have announced yet another product that we can barely pronounce - a professional grade microphone named the Seirēn. As just published on CEO Min-Liang Tan's Facebook page, this product is quoted to have been designed by working "closely with some of the top streamers and Youtubers".

This news comes linked with Razer's announcement of sponsorship for upcoming streamers and YouTube personalities in a bid to add to their already large list including hits such as PewDiePie and Swifty.

If you're a regular watcher of Razer sponsored streamers, it's likely you've already heard the Seirēn. It's claimed that this device has been used by sponsored streamers over the past few months - reportedly being hid behind a black card to hide it's identity.

As seen through his personal Twitter banner, Peter Lik has just nabbed himself a hefty paycheck, selling a recent black and white photo titled Phantom for a cool $6.5 million.

Born in Melbourne-Australia and currently residing in the United States, Lik now lays claim to four of the 20 most expensive photo's sold in the world. This latest piece is a black-and-white nature shot taken in Arizona's Antelope Canyon - located in the south-west corner of America. Commenting that he is often drawn to this area due to it's natural beauty, he's been able to capture this monstrous canyon carved out by natural flowing water in all its beauty.

Sold to a private buyer, this marks the third large-priced acquisition by the same party, seeing them also gathering Lik's Illusion photo for $2.9 million AU and Eternal Moods for $1.3 million AU - it becomes obvious that someone has expensive tastes.

There have been trading cards now publicized for the much-anticipated release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens - these have been used as a slightly unusual method to announce the latest heroes and villains to the public. Said to look like the original playing cards released a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away - we'll cover for you a select few of these announced characters.

Leaked originally to Entertainment Weekly, these cards have been designed to look like the original 1977 releases, with each card containing a still from the highly-regarded teaser trailer.

Firstly we have the lovable droid, named BB-8.

Valve has just given one of Counter-Strike's most famous maps a new look and feel, with Train being updated with new higher-end graphics and a bit of a tweak to the gameplay, too.

The company reworked the map from the ground up in order to "improve both the visual appearance and competitive gameplay balance of this iconic location" the company wrote on its Counter-Strike blog. Valve continued: "Our primary goals were to improve the gameplay balance of the map while simultaneously upgrading the overall visual experience. This meant making more intuitive layout changes, then re-interpreting large and small-scale environment elements to improve judgement of space and distance".

Valve have a before-and-after shot available on their Counter-Strike blog, which gives you a great look at just how much work they've done to Train. We've taken a screenshot of that above, to give you a quick look at what to expect. The company goes into great detail on the big, and subtle changes it has done to Train, so check out the full blog article here.

As according to a newly issued press release, networking giants Barracuda have just placed Ken Grohe on their payroll. This well-known storage expert has just come off employment with some large name companies spanning his massive 26+ year campaign in the industry.

Barracuda is a provider of cloud-connected security and storage solutions, with their goal set to simplify IT. Their solutions are reportedly used by more then 150,000 organizations worldwide. With Grohe appointed as their Senior Vice President & General Manager of Emerging Products, he will oversee the CudaTel and CudaEye product lines while helping drive sales for the Barracuda copy (file syncing and sharing) and SignNow (eSignature) services.

Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst at ESG praised Grohe's previous achievements and work ethic, stating that he "an industry star joining a growing company", further stating that "Barracuda continues to impress with its talent acquisition and its relentless execution."

The creator of DayZ has officially announced his new studio, as he leaves his first job behind him at Bohemia Interactive. Dean Hall has promised to continue helping the team finish DayZ, which is preparing for a 2016 launch.

Hall spoke with Polygon, which asked if he was officially no longer with Bohemia Interactive, to which Hall replied "While my role as project lead officially winds up, my involvement continues as the creator. Bohemia are not only people I've worked with, but they're close friends. We have an ongoing relationship and I'm committed to providing whatever support and assistance that is appropriate and required for the title to continue to succeed. I'm excited by the continued progress of DayZ into a much more streamlined and traditional production development cycle".

There's not much known about Hall's new studio, but he did say "Not much to really say at the moment, the focus of the studio is to make games that we want to play. As a consumer I get quite frustrated when movies/games are announced very far in advance. I know why it's done but I don't like it and hopefully I can make games without having to resort to that. So for the moment I'm keeping quiet about what we are doing until I have something worthwhile to say".

Sony has been accused of launching distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against websites hosting its stolen content, using Amazon Web Service as a launch pad, according to unnamed sources speaking with Re/code. It would seem extremely unlikely - and easily identifiable - if Sony decided to use AWS to launch any form of DDoS attacks, with network monitoring company CloudFlare suggesting Sony didn't launch any counter-attacks.

Amazon sent the following statement to TweakTown:

"AWS employs a number of automated detection and mitigation techniques to prevent the misuse of our services. In cases where the misuse is not detected and stopped by the automated measures, we take manual action as soon as we become aware of any misuse. Our terms are clear about this. The activity being reported is not currently happening on AWS."

Last month we reported that Director Ridley Scott had passed on directing the long gestating sequel to his 1982 sci-fi epic 'Blade Runner' but in comments he's made udirng publicity rounds on 'Exodus: Gods and Kings', it seems that he's softened his stance a little.

Talking to MTV News, Scott revealed the following:

With, or without Scott at the helm, 'Blade Runner 2' is expected to go into production next year, for a 2017 release to mark the 35th anniversary of the original.

The world of NVMe is expanding at a rapid clip. More devices are becoming certified every week that support the optimized register interface, which radically boosts performance with non-volatile memory devices of all flavors. As outlined in our Defining NVMe Article, NVMe delivers on its promises and has the potential to revolutionize how we address flash storage.

OCZ Storage Solutions, a Toshiba Group Company, joins the fray with the new Z-Drive 6000. The Z-Drive 6000 is a high-performance datacenter SSD that features a PCIe 3.0 connection in a 2.5" enclosure. This is made possible by the SFF-8639 connector, which brings front-bay access and serviceability to PCIe connection. Obtaining the NVMe 1.1b certification from the UNH-IOL interoperability lab guarantees that the Z-Drive 6000 is fully functional and NVMe compliant. Many of the current shipping NVMe products are compliant with older versions of the NVMe specification, and new features with NVMe 1.1b offer enhanced compatibility and capabilities.

OCZ is flush with flash now that they are part of the larger Toshiba conglomerate, and this affords them access to advanced engineering and the ability to offer more competitively priced products. The SSD is powered by the popular PMC Princeton controller, which has recently made a trip through our labs, and leverages OCZ-proprietary firmware optimizations. The Z-Drive 6000 touts whopping capacities up to 6.4TB and rumored performance north of 3GB/s, which should satiate the needs of even the most demanding users. The Z-Drive 6000 is currently shipping to selected customers, and general availability is slated for early 2015.

Sony is still reeling from its major cyberattack and brutal data breach, now deciding to use the Amazon Web Services (AWS) to allegedly launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against websites. Movie studios have tried to counter piracy hubs by flooding them with fake files - and launch cyberattacks against them - with varying levels of success.

"The AWS acceptable usage policy explicitly prohibits initiating denial of service attacks from their service; it's unlikely that Amazon would let this activity continue," said Tim Erlin, Tripwire director of security and risk. "Taking the step to 'hack back' against perceived legitimate targets, based on their own assessment of guilt, presents a myriad of potential legal problems."

If these accusations are true, trying to launch attacks against websites hosting stolen Sony movies isn't the best idea.

The reclusive China regime, and its hordes of censors, have kept consoles out of the country for the last 14 years by instituting an all-encompassing ban. This draconian ban was lifted just a few short months ago, and Microsoft capitalized on the opportunity by quickly shipping units into the country. Now, four months later, Sony is following Microsoft's lead. The Sony PlayStation 4 will debut in China on January 11th.

Entering the China market isn't easy. The games must make a run through the censor gauntlet, which routinely denies 'licenses' for many of today's top games. It's safe to say that Grand Theft Auto isn't going to make the cut. Microsoft's console is selling in China with only 10 games that passed muster with the censors, but Microsoft predominantly submitted sports games that faced little chance of being flagged by 'cultural censors'. Sony is being a bit more aggressive by applying for licences for 30 games, and several have already made it through. The Sony PS4 will go on sale for roughly 2,899 yuan ($468 USD), in comparison to the more pricey Xbox One at 3,699 yuan ($568 USD).

Entering the China market holds untold profits from a massive audience that doesn't have access to older platforms. Users in the US and other countries tend to hold off on upgrades, simply because they tend to have older units with an extensive amount of games and accessories. This makes upgrade cycles drag out over long periods of time. China has no existing console market, so every customer will pony up their hard earned yuans for the new consoles, accessories and games. China also has the largest pool of customers on the planet, so the earning potential is through the roof.

Microsoft plans to show off its Windows 10 operating system to the consumer world in January, while analysts believe it should be made available in a freemium format. There were previous rumors that Microsoft could introduce a "Windows as a Service" cloud-based, subscription service, which would be a significant shift in tactics.

If Microsoft plans to have Windows 10 run on billions of devices, then providing a freemium approach could be a lucrative option. It's possible Microsoft could offer Windows 10 free for end-users, and provide features and services based on a subscription fee.

"Microsoft is the only company who still builds a significant business selling an operating system," said Steve Kleynhans, Gartner VP. "Today, consumers see the OS as part of the device and don't really distinguish it as a component to be paid for separately."