From CNET: Microsoft has cut the annual cost of an Xbox Live Gold subscription.

Instead of paying the usual fee of $60 a year, you can become an Xbox Live Gold member for $40. The fine print doesn't indicate whether this is a temporary promotion and, if so, when the sale might end.

Want do you get...

From DailyTech: Controversial as it may have been at the time, late Apple, Inc. (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs' tirade against Adobe Systems, Inc.'s (ADBE) Flash multimedia player ultimately appears to have been vindicated. Even as Adobe shows signs of giving up on Flash development -- transitioning its...

From InfoWorld: The tap-and-pay mobile payments market in the U.S. is getting a little less confusing.

On Monday, Google said it had reached a deal with three of the country's major cellular carriers to acquire "technology and capabilities" from Softcard, a competing mobile wallet app developed...

From PC World: Pretty soon chats in Outlook.com are going to be all Skype, all the time. Microsoft is pulling the plug on Google Talk and Facebook chat in Outlook.com. The company recently sent out email notifications to Outlook.com users to let them know about the change.

Microsoft doesn’t explain...

From CNET: Apple has been ordered to pay $533 million in damages after losing a patent lawsuit case tied to iTunes.

A federal jury in Texas found Tuesday that Apple infringed on three patents held by patent licenser Smartflash, Bloomberg reported. The patents in question concern digital rights...

From DailyTech: It's been two years since Google Inc. (GOOG) announced the Chromebook Pixel, a 12.85-inch high-resolution, ultrathin laptop which debuted at $1,299 USD. At the time of its launch in Feb. 2013, the device appeared ahead of its time with a number of unique ideas like its 3:2 aspect...

From ComputerWorld: ARM and IBM want hobbyists to make their own connected devices in a matter of minutes with a new development kit announced Monday.

The ARM mbed IoT Starter Kit -- Ethernet Edition will allow users to make cloud-ready Internet of Things products that could receive or transmit...

From PC World: Remember the good ol' days when Valve and Oculus were buddy-buddy and sharing all sorts of virtual reality R&D back and forth? It seems like those days might be over, if a recent Valve post is anything to go by—the company revealed it's bringing "SteamVR" with it to GDC next week...

From CNET: Apple may have quietly acquired a small audio developer, according to filings with a UK government agency.

Centuries House, the UK's corporation-listing entity, on Monday published a new address for Camel Audio that matches Apple's UK headquarters. In addition, the company's director is...

From DailyTech: NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) faced heavy criticism for bricking unlocking on laptop PCs, via a driver update. The move threatened to alienate some loyal gaming customers, who had purchased laptops from various OEMs which billed overclockability of NVIDIA's GeForce 970m and 980m GPUs (second...