From InfoWorld: Sony will offer partial refunds to customers to settle U.S. Federal Trade Commission charges that its ads in 2011 and 2012 for the PlayStation Vita console's cross-platform sharing and other features were deceiving.

Sony Computer Entertainment America will provide people who bought...

From PC World: Amazon is dropping the price of the Fire Phone again, at least for a limited time. The online retailer is now selling its debut smartphone for just $199, unlocked and contract free. As before, Amazon also includes a free, one-year Prime membership with every purchase. The latest sale...

From CNET: Samsung Group, South Korea's largest conglomerate, has been rapidly merging its various affiliates this year to ease control and streamline its key businesses -- electronics, finance and construction.

According to executives of component suppliers to Samsung's defense and chemical...

From DailyTech: Back in 2011 Sony Corp. (TYO:6758) was facing the onslaught of Lulzsec, a small, tightly-knit group of hackers. The hack began with the breach of the PlayStation Network (PSN) maintained by Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC (SCEA) and the Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) gaming...

From PC World: In time for the holiday shopping season, Microsoft has refined how Office 365 handles bulk promotional emails from vendors like Amazon, eBay and Macy’s.

Those messages, which contain special offers, newsletters and other sales incentives, fall into a gray area between legitimate...

From CNET: T-Mobile has agreed to give its customers more accurate information about the speed of their mobile broadband connection, even when their speeds are being throttled.

The FCC announced Monday that T-Mobile will provide its customers with tools to allow them to accurately gauge the...

From DailyTech: It's been three years since Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) first launched its Instant Video service for Prime subscribers. Now it's rumored to be preparing to decouple the service from Prime, allowing it to stand on its own, supported by ads.

While these reports remain the stuff of rumors...

From InfoWorld: Like many cloud services, IBM's Bluemix PaaS has nominally been a multitenanted system -- a boon for sharing resources, but not so great if you worry about performance or security issues. The newest version of Bluemix, though, aims to win over those who want their cloud to be their...

From PC World: Symantec researchers have identified a particularly sophisticated piece of malware, called “Regin” that was likely developed by a nation state and has been used to spy on governments, infrastructure operators, businesses, researchers and individuals since at least 2008.

“Regin...

From CNET: The European Parliament is getting ready to call for a breakup of Google, according to a report (subscription) Friday by the Financial Times.

A draft motion cited by the FT suggests the separation, or "unbundling," of the Internet giant's search engine from its other services, as one way...