Computer manufacturer Lenovo will no longer pre-install the controversial Superfish adware on PCs and laptops, due to growing public backlash from customers. Cybersecurity experts warned Superfish potentially left them vulnerable, after injecting advertisements to browsers.

"The way the Superfish functionality appears to work means that they must be intercepting traffic in order to insert ads," said Eric Rand, researcher for Brown Hat Security, in a statement to Reuters. "This amounts to a wiretap."

Lenovo must now answer questions regarding its use of Superfish, including how long it was pre-installed, and how much data was collected by the software. Superfish was installed on consumer PCs and notebooks only.

Swedish citizen Alex Yucel, 24, has pleaded guilty for his role in being co-creator of the BlackShades malware, which infected more than 500,000 PCs across the world. Yucel pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of malicious software, and faces a maximum sentence of 10 years.

In exchange for his guilty plea, there is a stipulated agreement that will see Yucel receive a sentence ranging from 70 to 87 months. "I do actually want to plead guilty," Yucel said in his court appearance. "I knew that the program would be used to cause damage."

Yucel was arrested in November 2013 while in Moldova, and was extradited to the United States. As the operator of the criminal organization, Yucel hired administrators, marketing and customer support staff to interact with customers - generating upwards of $350,000 in revenue.

The gaming market is alive and well, with PC and console gamers both enjoying hardware and software titles available to them. Sony and Microsoft have a lot to be thankful for, as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox are enjoying appealing titles able to keep gamers interested.

Both saw strong year one shipments - and the global install base for both consoles has been extremely successful.

"Despite reports to the contrary, the game console market is not dead," said Eric Smith, senior analyst for connected home devices at Strategy Analytics, in a statement published by Venture Beat. "Core gamers have moved faster to this current generation than in any previous generation. The main difference in this generation is that casual gamers who bought a Wii are remaining largely on the sidelines as free-to-play casual games and mid-core games on tablets and smartphones have captured this segment of consumers."

With the total eSports revenues of 2014 said to equal $194 million, Newzoo's latest report claims that this figure will climb to a massive $465 million in 2017.

This report was conducted in conjunction with Repucom, a sports market research company. Their findings also state that the number of eSports enthusiasts is likely to climb from 89 million as seen in 2014 to 145 million in 2017 - with another 190 million said to be included as casual viewers. Relating this to the general (public) sporting field, this means that eSports will generate a similar fan base to the traditional sports of Volleyball, American Football and Ice Hockey.

ESL is one of the largest names in the eSports world, conducting numerous tournaments spanning many different titles each year - seeing tens of thousands of live spectators and hundreds of thousands of online fans watching their every move. Their global managing director, Heinrich Zetlmayer, is excited by this news, stating "Reading through the first, most extensive and comprehensive report that puts some realistic numbers on the esports industry was a pleasure. Especially the comparison to traditional sports is a valuable insight that will help everyone understand better what this business is about and the potential it has."

The Sony PlayStation 4 will see its sales dominance over the Microsoft Xbox One continue, with the Japanese console outselling its American counterpart 40 percent by 2019, according to Strategy Analytics.

Through the first 14 months, the PS4 has sold 18.5 million units - and is on track to mimic the same success the PlayStation 2 had years ago. Strategy Analytics believes the PS4 will sell 80 million consoles by 2019, a dominant lead over the estimated 57 million units for the Xbox One.

The PS4 dominated the Xbox One for most of 2014, and has recaptured its lead in 2015 - and predicting extended dominance wouldn't be overly surprising. Even if Microsoft is unable to catch up to the PS4, there is still plenty of room for both consoles to rack up impressive sales figures.

Project Cars has been delayed again, with Slightly Mad Studios announcing that it will be missing its March 17 release for an April 2 release on Steam for the PC, and April 7 on the PS4 and Xbox One. In Europe however, it will release on all three platforms on April 2.

The simulation racer was meant to launch last November, but it was pushed out to March 17, and now to April 2. The latest delay to the game has come from "final adjustments in the game that are required to provide fans with the best gaming experience they can have" according to publisher Bandai Namco.

Slightly Mad Studios' boss, Ian Bell, explains: "Moving the release date was not an easy decision to make, as we know our fans are eager to get their hands-on on Project Cars. But we know that these extra days will allow us to provide the best game experience that our fans deserve. We assure you the wait will be worth it when the game does arrive early April".

We know to expect some big things from DirectX 12, but the more we hear about it, the more we want it now, now, now. AnandTech has completed a deep-dive into the upcoming API from Microsoft, noticing some huge improvements across a range of hardware.

We've written about Brad Wardell, the CEO of Stardock and his impressions of DX12, but he has said that using an "unreleased GPU" he was able to see a huge 100FPS difference between cards. He tweeted that he "did a test of DirectX 11 vs. DirectX 12 on an unreleased GPU with an 8core CPU. DX11: 13fps, DX12: 120fps. Lighting and lens effects".

When pressed, Wardell said he was using a Crossfire system, with an Intel Core i7 CPU. Since he's using an "unreleased GPU" we can gather he might be using the new Radeon R9 390X, which is another nice nugget of information, it means that they're out in the wild. Better yet, Wardell said that "one thing it does make it easy to treat multiple GPUs as a single identity". This is something we reported on not too long ago, where we reported that the VRAM on multi-GPU systems would be seen as one.

Well, my 100/40Mbps fiber connection has just become quite slow compared to what researchers over at the University of Oxford have been playing around with. These researchers have reached a new milestone in networking technology by reaching bi-directional speeds of 224 gigabits per second (Gbps) using light fidelity (Li-Fi).

Considering 100Gbps fiber optic core networks have only just come into play, achieving 224Gbps over an LED light bulb is simply amazing. This connection would be capable of downloading a gigantic 27GB/sec, capable of blowing through terabytes of data in seconds. This new technology is being worked on as a possible alternative to Wi-Fi, as Li-Fi uses the visible light spectrum to transfer data. When mixed with a high-speed fiber Internet connection, researchers believe that we could see speeds far higher than anything Wi-Fi has on offer.

This means that the future of Internet connectivity could be delivered through light, which doesn't pass through walls, to most areas. We could have light bulbs providing super-fast Internet connectivity, with one of the pioneers behind Li-Fi, Harold Haas, stating that the future of every LED lightbulb could be used as an ultra-fast alternative to Wi-Fi. During a TED Talk, Haas said about Li-Fi: "We have the infrastructure there. We can use them for communications. All we need to do is fit a small microchip to every potential illumination device and this would then combine two basic functionalities: illumination and wireless data transmission. In the future we will not only have 14 billion light bulbs, we may have 14 billion Li-Fi's deployed worldwide for a cleaner, greener and even a brighter future".

AMD is on the verge of announcing and releasing its new Radeon 300 series of cards, but according to a new report from Sweclockers, the codename Fiji GPU will be the only new chip in the Radeon 300 series family. The rest of the cards, will have the current GCN cores, with the GCN 1.1 and GCN 1.2 architecture powering them.

The Radeon R9 390 and R9 390X should feature the new Fiji architecture, with the R9 390 arriving with the Fiji Pro GPU, while the R9 390X will rock the Fiji XT core. When it comes to the Radeon R9 395X2, we don't know if we'll see two of the Fiji XT or Fiji PRO GPUs on it just yet. We do know that we should expect the Radeon R9 390X to feature 4096 cores, 4GB of 4096-bit (1024-bit per channel) HBM memory and hopefully, much more. These new cards will be the first video cards in the world to feature SK Hynix's HBM memory, as well as the first look at the latest GCN 1.3 architecture.

The biggest beast of the new cards will be 'Bermuda' which is the R9 395X2 dual-GPU offering, which should feature the new GCN 1.3 architecture and the super-fast new HBM memory. We don't know what else to expect, but I would like to see AMD make two versions of its R9 390X available: one with 4GB of HBM memory and the other with 8GB of VRAM. Another nice touch would be to have two versions of the R9 395X2: one with 8GB of VRAM (4GB per GPU) and another with 16GB of VRAM (8GB per GPU).

Companies are under cyberattack, and many of them are being caught off guard when a data breach occurs. More than half of small and midsize businesses (SMBs) don't have an appropriate breach response plan currently in place, according to a survey from Software Advice.

There are 47 states with breach notification laws that force companies to disclose data breaches when personal information is impacted. However, just 33 percent of SMB decision makers feel "very confident" they understand their state laws regarding breach notification - and it remains a confusing matter.

"Most of the time, when [valuable] information leaks out of a company, it is instantly being monetized on underground forums," said Bogdan Botezatu, senior e-threat analyst of the Bitdefender antivirus firm. This data can be moved quickly, as cybercriminals tend to want to exploit data before changes are made - and companies must inform their clients and customers promptly.