Paul Lilly
Paul is a seasoned geek who was first seduced into the world of computers and technology by the Commodore 64, and through the years he’s courted a number of OSes and platforms from DOS on up to the latest version of Windows. Having joined the HotHardware team in 2011, Paul is now a mainstay of the site covering the news beat and reviews, and resident wiseguy who keeps the mood light. He’s also an experienced freelance technology writer whose work has appeared in a number of online and print publications.
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
Barely eight months old (and just six months since launching to the public), the Vdio streaming platform is no more. Rdio has decided to pull the plug on the service without it ever having exited beta status, discontinuing a promising alternative to established streaming video services like Netlix, Hulu Plus, and...
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Amazon knocked it out of the park this holiday season. After announcing that it was able to keep the wait time for its "Mayday" live tech support feature on Kindle Fire HDX devices to just 9 seconds on Christmas day, the online retailer now says it also added more than 1 million customers to its Amazon Prime...
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Google would be foolish not to release another Nexus 7 tablet in 2014, so let's go ahead and assume the Mountain View company will keep the good times rolling with yet another winning product sometime next year. That still gives us plenty to speculate about, such as whether or not ASUS will once again build the device for Google, and what...
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When something seems too good to be true, it usually is. Such was the case when some lucky fliers discovered Delta's website was serving up some super cheap flights. By cheap we mean a mere $35 from Raleigh, North Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and $40 for a roundtrip flight from New York to Los Angeles...
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Holiday shoppers sat at their desktop devices and spent $42.8 billion online during the first 52 days of the November-to-December 2013 season, according to the latest data provided by comScore. That's an increase of 10 percent compared to last year when online spending reached $38.9 billion, though it still fell short...
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Security researchers at Gibson Security handed Snapchat what amounts to a lump of a coal on Christmas morning by exposing a security flaw that, when exploited, would grant hackers access to users' phone numbers without their permission. It's essentially a how-to guide for hackers with detailed instructions, and the reason Gibson Security made...
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An example of a buzz kill is waking up on Christmas morning to find an Xbox One sitting under the tree, only to later discover that it doesn't work because of a disc drive malfunction. Gamers first started complaining about the issue in November, with several YouTube videos showing the disc drive making a grinding...
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You've probably seen one of Amazon's commercials touting the new "Mayday" support feature in Kindle Fire HDX devices. Just tap the button and moments later a helpful support representative like Amy in the TV commercials will appear and guide you through whatever tablet troubles you might be having. We were always a...
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You're not bringing home one of Apple's newly released Mac Pro systems without spending a small fortune -- pricing starts at $2,999 for a quad-core model and $3,999 for a 6-core foundation, both of which are rocking dual graphics cards. There's some seriously powerful hardware inside these machines, but are they worth...
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Talk about closing out the year with a bang. The CyanogenMod team has plenty of reason to celebrate going into 2014, not the least of which is notching over 10 million downloads of its installer software to date, according to the CyanogenMod stats page. The most popular version so far is the Nightly-10.1 build -- it's...
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It's shaping up to be quite the pleasant holiday season for Windows Phone owners, especially those who are fans of the Temple Run series. Just in time for Christmas, Temple Run 2 is now available for Windows Phone 8 users with at least 1GB of RAM as a free download from the Windows Phone store. Better late than never, right? "It probably needs...
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RSA decided to publicly address recent reports alleging it inked a $10 million contract with the National Security Agency (NSA) to use what's considered a flawed and broken encryption standard called elliptic curve cryptography. In an attempt to set the record straight, the RSA stated in a blog post that it's all a...
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It's been more than two years since Tim Cook was named CEO of Apple, and while one could argue there have been any truly revolutionary products to come out of Cupertino since he took the reins, he's done a mostly good job keeping investors happy and consumers interested. This past year was especially busy with the...
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Clark Griswold went bat-crap crazy (NSFW) after receiving a Jelly of the Month Club membership from his boss for Christmas instead of an anticipated bonus check, the latter of which he planned to use to pay for an in-ground swimming pool for the family. Clearly Colts owner Jim Irsay has seen National Lampoon's...
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Can't get enough hell raising fun in Diablo III? You'll be devishly delighted to know the game's first expansion pack is on the horizon. Blizzard says Diablo III: Reaper of Souls will debut on March 25 for both Windows and Mac platforms, and while that requires a little bit of patience on your part, you can pre-order...
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As one of the most anticipated games of the year, Battlefield 4 also has the distinction of being one of the most buggy releases, and that's regardless of platform. Even worse, Electronic Arts and DICE can't seem to catch a break. To wit, there's a new patch available for the PC version, and the main reason it exists is to fix a bunch of issues...
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One advantage Microsoft has over the competition in the mobile space is that it owns a number of products and services it can integrate into its Windows Phone platform. Microsoft has done this before and it's doing it again, this time by giving every single Windows Phone user an extra 20GB of free SkyDrive storage for...
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Go ahead and file this one under "U" for "Unexpected," but on December 24, the Oppo N1 will ship to customers with Google's blessing. This is a historic moment in Android's timeline, as the CyanogenMod-powered Oppo N1 is the first phone to ship with a third-party ROM, making it a unique device in and of itself...
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Yahoo Mail users have had a rough time lately. First, Yahoo revamped its mail service back in October and removed some popular features, including tabs. More recently, a "complex" outage lasting nearly a week affected several users. The good news is things are looking up. Yahoo Mail has been fully restored, and that tab feature? It's making...
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Word around the web is that Samsung is getting ready to refresh its Galaxy line of mobile devices. It looks like the South Korean electronics maker will add three "Galaxy Pro" tablets to its portfolio sometime in the first quarter of Q1, along with a "Galaxy Lite" slate, the only one of the four that won't feature 4G LTE connectivity (it will,...
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Budding entrepreneurs take note, word of mouth advertising still plays a significant role in growth, provided you build solid product or offer a stellar service. Just have a look at WhatsApp, a cross-platform instant messaging service that allows users to send free texts, videos, photos, and audio messages to one...
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Perhaps much to the chagrin of Google, it's quickly becoming clear that there's no stopping CyanogenMod. Coming less than a month after Google removed CyanogenMod from the Play Store on the silly basis that his installer application wants to void warranties, CyanogenMod today announced it raised $23 million in funding...
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