How did you wake yourself up this morning? Perhaps through a morning run, or hitting the yoga mat. You might favor good old caffeine, or new-age nutritional supplements. Tom Rice, a London-based film producer in his late 20s, has a new routine. It includes a little fish oil, a shot of espresso, and 800mg of the cognitive-enhancement drug Piracetam.
“It enables you to think quicker and feel sharper,” says Rice. “Although I’ve only started recently so it’s hard to quantify the full effects.”
Rice has held a longstanding interest in nootropics-substances that improve brain function-as a means of enhancing his performance in a demanding business that requires tireless application.
The producer emphasizes the value of healthy sleep and balanced diet, but through research and networking, has also developed an open attitude to cognitive enhancement.

INSTAGRAM NOW BIGGER THAN TWITTER
Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, and share them on a variety of social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. A distinctive feature is that it confines photos to a square shape, similar to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images, in contrast to the 4:3 aspect ratio typically used by mobile device cameras. Users can also apply digital filters to their images. The maximum duration for Instagram videos is 15 seconds.
Instagram was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, and launched in October 2010. The service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users as of April 2012 and over 300 million as of December 2014. Instagram is distributed through the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Windows Phone Store. Support for the app is available for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Android handsets, while third-party Instagram apps are available for Blackberry 10 and Nokia-Symbian Devices.
The service was acquired by Facebook (which presently boasts 1.35 billion monthly active users) in April 2012 for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock. In 2013, Instagram grew by 23%, while Facebook, as the parent company, only grew by 3%
Instagram has told everyone it has the potential to “change the world” as it announced it has overtaken Twitter with 300 million users.
The company’s CEO Kevin Systrom described the milestone as “exciting” and said the company would “continue to grow”. Twitter claims to have 284 million users accessing the network each month.

SONY’S PLAYSTATION HACKED
A hacker group has claimed responsibility for attacking Sony’s online PlayStation store, which went down last Monday. Visitors to the site are greeted with a message that says “Page Not Found! It’s not you. It’s the internet’s fault”.
A group called “Lizard Squad” has taken credit for the outage, posting “PSN Login #offline #LizardSquad” as their Twitter status. The outage is the most recent in a series of attacks on tech giant Sony.
The Japanese firm’s Hollywood film studios’ corporate network was hacked into last month, followed by an online leak of unreleased movies, along with confidential information such as actors’ salaries.
Sony Entertainment Network has responded by tweeting that they are aware of the issues that users are having in connecting to the PlayStation network.
“Thanks for your patience as we investigate,” the company tweeted at about midnight GMT.
The disruption comes just days after the gaming console celebrated its 20th anniversary last week.
Meanwhile, the outage on the PlayStation network follows one on Microsoft Xbox network, which was down for at least a day last week.
Lizard Squad also claimed it was behind the attack. The hacker group had then said that its Xbox attack was just “a small dose” of what was to come over the Christmas season. Lizard Squad has claimed responsibility for attacks that have taken high-profile targets like EA games and Destiny offline in the past. Known as Lizard Patrol on Twitter, the anonymous collective has a Russian-based website.

Microsoft: Cheap PCs are here to stay
PC prices are the lowest they’ve ever been this holiday season. But even after the deals end, cheap PCs will be around for a long time. Concerned about the long-term impact of fading PC sales on its cash cow Windows and Office businesses, Microsoft has loosened its grip a bit on PC makers. That’s why Windows PCs have slipped below the $200 mark recently.
Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner acknowledged that Microsoft has been charging PC manufacturers less to install Windows on their computers at the Credit Suisse Technology Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., last week.
Microsoft has historically charged PC makers about $50 per Windows license. But PCs are an incredibly low-margin business; you can’t sell a $200 PC if Microsoft is going to be pocketing a quarter of the price. Can you?