The President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, has claimed that the country’s cryptocurrency has enjoyed booming business on the first day of its pre-sale. Apparently, investors have snatched up US$735 million worth of Petro digital currency. Meanwhile, Bitcoiin2Gen (B2G), which has the masterful Steven Seagal as its celebrity ambassador, is currently lagging behind with a still impressive US$27.97 million in its pre-ICO fundraising round.

Apple has made an international regulatory filing with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) that suggests the company is preparing to release two new products in the iPad line-up. The filing lists two tablets with model numbers that have not been associated with the iPad before: A1954 and A1893. There is some speculation that the devices could be the next iPad refresh.

The successor of the ZTE Blade X Max is rumored to launch in mid to late spring. Apparently ready to hit the market as the ZTE Blade X2 Max, it looks a lot like its predecessor. The list of rumored specs includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450, 3 GB or 4 GB RAM, at least 32 GB internal storage, as well as a 6-inch full HD display. This phablet will probably launch with Android Oreo customized by ZTE onboard.

Instead of using malicious apps or website exploits, hackers just hijacked Tesla's cloud servers and made sure their illicit cryptomining endeavors would not seem suspicious.

The 'Blackshark" comes equipped with a Snapdragon 845 SoC coupled with 8 GB RAM and 32 GB of internal storage. It also integrates a 2160 x 1080 screen and runs Android 8.0. The AnTuTu benchmark results place it above the Samsung Galaxy S9+.

At the end of last week, the Huawei Mate SE was listed on both Amazon and B&H Photo Video. Even more, it also got an official page on Huawei's website. However, all these listings of the rebranded Huawei Honor 7X were removed since then. The US$249.99 Mate SE apparently will come in grey and gold, but now it looks like we have to wait for it to get a proper release.

Google has officially rolled out Google Play, its feature rich competitor to Apple Pay. The new app will work everywhere that Android Pay was already accepted while the company will continue to add new features and work with partners to extend its reach.

Google is priming Chrome OS to compete directly with Apple's iPad in the tablet space, if the latest update to the Chrome OS on its alpha build Canary channel is any indication. The latest update allows users to run Android apps in split-screen, greatly enhancing the utility of the operating system.

The new Samsung PM1643 drive has a 30.72 GB capacity that makes it the industry's largest Serial Attached SCSI SSD for use in next-gen enterprise solutions. Its specs include four times the random read and three times the sequential read performance of the Samsung SSD 850 EVO. The lineup will be expanded later this year with models ranging between 800 GB and 15.36 TB.

The Xperia line may be a getting a refresh in the form of the Xperia XZ2 Compact if a photo posted on Xperia Blog is to be believed. The photo, which was posted by a commenter, claims to show off a prototype of the small form factor flagship rumored to appear at MWC 2018 next week.

Apple Inc. has been enjoying tremendous success in the global watch market according to analysts. Shipment data suggests the Cupertino-based company is now beating out famous brand watchmakers such as Swatch and Rolex with its series of smartwatches.

Facebook's upcoming smart speakers are expected to arrive in July, reveal insiders familiar with the matter. Sporting 15-inch touchscreen displays, they are also supposed to provide video chat and social features.

Bluehole, the game developer behind PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG), has announced a new map will be made available for players soon. This will be the third map released for the game and is expected to come out within the first half of 2018.

The cryptocurrency craze continues as a sovereign state and a controversial celebrity become involved in the virtual currency (VC) industry. Venezuela's government has made its "petro" currency available in a presale launch, while Steven Seagal has been promoting a digital currency called Bitcoiin 2Gen.

HTC is once again pushing the envelope for entry-level devices with the upcoming Desire 12.

The Ryzen 5 2600 desktop CPU performs considerably faster than the Ryzen 5 1600 predecessor, but the Geekbench leaked specs and results might not even be final ones, as AMD could further improve base and boost clocks before the April official launch.

The Nokia 8 Pro is expected to hit the market in August-September with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 onboard. Obviously, nothing has been confirmed by HMD Global yet.

Apple has released a patch that will fix the so-called 'Telugu bug' on iOS, MacOS, tvOS and WatchOS. When users receive a message or notification that contains a certain Indian character, the app crashes and becomes unusable. In some cases, the bug even results in the device entering a bootloop.

Nuance will stop the development of the Swype Keyboard app for iOS and Android. The company has ceased all support for the standalone application and will focus its efforts on built-in keyboards for phone manufacturers instead.

The Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is Microsoft's technology stack that enables native Linux binaries to run in a Windows user environment without the need to install a full fledged Linux distro — native or virtual. This tutorial will help you to get started with getting WSL up and running on your Windows 10 PC. We will also look at some tricks to get basic GUI apps to work in WSL.

HP will be reselling Apple's iPhone, iPad and Macs to its enterprise customers. The new program is aimed at giving its customers a one-stop solution for the deployment and support of multiple devices and operating systems in the workplace.

Sony has released a new video clip in relation to the upcoming Mobile World Congress 2018 event that does not actually feature a physical handset. What new smartphone development is Sony possibly planning to reveal at the trade show in Barcelona next week?

South Korean tech giant Samsung has been granted a patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a flying display device. Illustrations of the device show it to look like a cross between a tablet and a quadcopter.

A firmware file has revealed the battery capacities of the upcoming Huawei P-series flagships. The larger P20 Plus will sport a 4000 mAh unit, while the regular P20 will come with a smaller 3320 mAh battery.

The Moto Z2 Force stopped by at DxOMark last week and mostly underachieved, with its video score, in particular, doing its best to remind us of 2015 flagships.

A report by analytics firm Digitimes has projected Xiaomi to overtake OPPO and become the second biggest Chinese smartphone brand in the world, just behind Huawei.

The United States Air Force has made bounty payouts totaling US$103,883 to hackers invited to test the force's systems and software. The event ran from December 9, 2017 to January 1, 2018.

Intel unveiled plans for a prototype of their discrete GPU at the San Francisco ISSCC (IEEE International Solid State Circuits Conference) late last week. The 14 nm dGPU, which is still in an early prototype stage, features 1.5 billion transistors and is clocked between 50 - 400 MHz, which may hint at a focus on efficiency over raw power.

The Samsung SM-T835 device that surfaced on GFXBench appears to have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor onboard, next to 4 GB RAM, 64 GB internal storage, and a 12 MP main camera. This 10.5-inch slate runs Android Oreo and is expected to feature a stylus, a detachable keyboard, as well as AKG-tuned speakers.

Two of the class-action suits involve Intel's own shareholders and board members, essential pitting Intel against Intel in court.

The test result for the unannounced i5-8269U ultra-low voltage CPU were added to the online benchmark archive on February 16. Compared to the i5-8350U, the i5-8269U has a higher base clock, but the boost clock was not yet revealed.

LG will be launching a successor to the G6, but it will come later this year with the Korean company targeting a June launch window. It won't have a pOLED display, but it will feature some interesting new LCD technology and pack a Snapdragon 845.

Google's flagship handsets, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, have been hit by more software bugs. This time, users are reporting overheating issues and poor battery life following the February security patch.

Essential has launched a further fresh color variant of its Phone PH-1. The new Halo Gray color is exclusive to Amazon and also comes pre-installed with Amazon's Alexa personal voice-assistant.

New evidence points to the existence of the highly anticipated Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S — the first smartphone touted to sport the Snapdragon 845 SoC. The Mi Mix 2S could also feature iPhone X-like gestures for navigation along with a side notch for housing the selfie camera.

Notebookcheck recently reported on a new smartphone being developed by HTC, however, the device was codenamed "Breeze" at the time. This new model is now expected to be the upcoming HTC Desire 12.

White House spokesman, Rob Joyce, doesn't believe the US government is ready to attempt regulating Bitcoin until the good and bad aspects of the cryptocurrency are fully understood. The US official was discussing the topic at the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

Apple Park may look like a futuristic marvel but apparently it has been causing a number of painful incidents for workers due to its abundance of glass features. It seems distracted Apple employees are walking straight into the surrounding glass panels.

The Airtop 2 models will be crowdfunded through a Kickstarter campaign starting on February 24. Inferno is the high-end Airtop 2 version that will feature an i7-7700K CPU, a GTX 1080, up to 64 GB DDR4-2400 RAM, NVMe SSDs + SATA 3 HDDs/SSDs combo and numerous connectors, all in a 0 db fanless compact case.

The Alcatel 5, Alcatel 3V, and Alcatel 1X were all introduced at CES 2018, and on February 24 they are scheduled to hit the market. Powered by MediaTek processors, they are all expected to target budget-conscious consumers.

Archos has announced the Vision 215, a new all-in-one system with a 21.5" display which focuses on the low-end market. The all-in-one uses an Intel Atom Z8350 soc and will have a price tag of less than US$375.