Renowned cryptographer Hal Finney, known for his work on PGP encryption software and on early Bitcoin development, has passed away on Thursday following a five-year battle with ALS – a terrible disease that’s currently enjoying a viral funding campaign thanks to the “Ice Bucket Challenge” meme – but the programmer hoped that one day technology will heal him. According to Wired, Finney has become an early adopter of a kind of tech that’s only seen in movies, human cryopreservation.

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Why did Netflix decide to cave in and pay Comcast for a better direct connection to its network? Because apparently slow Netflix streaming on Comcast was costing the company customers. CNN reports that Netflix this week explained to the Federal Communications Commission that the quality of Netflix streams on Comcast had become so poor that the company had no choice but to pay up for a better connection.

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It’s been a trying year for Nintendo as the Wii U struggles to compete with the PS4 and Xbox One, but with the holiday season approaching, the company has a few tricks up its sleeve to entice fans. Unfortunately, those plans do not include an upgraded home console on par with the next-gen system from Microsoft and Sony.

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Samsung’s latest tablet, the Galaxy Tab S, is one impressive piece of hardware. It’s received rave reviews from the press, consumers seem to love it and it even outclasses the iPad in many respects. In order to prove that last point, Samsung took to the streets of New York with an iPad Air and a Galaxy Tab S to see which device the average consumer would choose.

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Many Android users unhappy with what the mobile operating system has to offer have looked at various custom ROMs based on Google’s latest OS version that offered additional tools to improve their overall mobile experience. CyanogenMod is one such Android-based build that become so popular in recent years that its founder decided to turn it into a business, Cyanogen Inc. That company is apparently now tracked by various tech industry giants that are highly interested in the mobile business, The Information has learned, including Microsoft.

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The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 have been incredibly successful up to this point, but there’s no question that the new consoles would have benefitted greatly from a little more time in development before launch. By lacking a few key features, both consoles felt unfinished, but Microsoft has been hard at work getting the Xbox One up to speed. The latest update might be the most significant one yet.

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On June 19th of this year, Nokia was reborn. The company that had been known for years as a cell phone pioneer had sold off its devices business, and the world was waiting to see what new paths Nokia might take. There are a few, as it turns out, but one of them saw the company release a surprisingly innovative new Android app this past summer, and it just got a big update that users will love.

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It has been clear for a year that tablet market growth has been slowing down a lot faster than anyone expected. But nevertheless, the latest IDC numbers are a stiff shock. The firm’s previous forecast for 12% tablet sales growth this year was already really low considering how hot the growth was as recently as in 2013, when the segment expanded by more than 50%. But now IDC has cut its projection in half, as the brand-new estimate for 2014 global tablet sales growth is a pitiful 6.5%. What’s even more stunning is that no growth is expected to take place in North America and Europe during this year.

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A new episode in the complex Google–Samsung love affair was written on Friday, as Nokia announced that its Here maps service will be available free of charge (via a licensing agreement) to Samsung Galaxy handset owners. Samsung inked this exclusive deal with Nokia even though Galaxy handset users already have access to one of the best mapping products in the world, Google’s own Google Maps.

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