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SpaceX and Boeing successfully completed milestones in their effort to launch astronauts into space, according to NASA during a press conference to discuss the Commercial Crew Program.

"I don't ever want to have to write another check to Roscosmos," said Charles Bolden, NASA administrator, during the press conference. SpaceX hopes to begin launching personnel into space starting in early 2017, and wants to fly 50 Falcon 9 missions before reaching its ambitious goal.

As NASA continues to develop its next-generation space shuttle, the US government has called upon private sector companies to help fill the void. Following political tensions, NASA stopped relying on the Russian government to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA previously relied on SpaceX launches to help resupply the ISS, as additional private sector companies try to jump into the business.

Surface tablet revenue has increased up to $1.1 billion in Q2 2015, according to Microsoft's latest quarterly earnings announcement. The increased figure was largely due to the Surface Pro 3 and sales of accessories for the device - an impressive year-over-year growth from $893 million.

Even though this is the first time Surface revenue eclipsed $1 billion, some people are beginning to wonder if Microsoft is going to pull the plug on Surface.

"It is currently out of stock [and] unfortunately we do not have specific dates on when products are back in stock, [so] you would have to check back on the site regularly," a Microsoft Store sales representative told Computerworld.

The adoption of Apple Pay, while still stirring controversy among retailers preferring a non-Apple-centric payment service, continues to help stimulate the mobile pay revolution.

For retailers, they have a monetary incentive to adopt Apple Pay: the payment service charges a fraction of what current credit card companies charge per swipe at checkout, which could help win over additional retailers in the future.

"I've never seen a bigger adoption of an alternative-payment system," said Brian Roemmele, a payments consultant, in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft reportedly shipped 6.6 million Xbox game consoles to retailers, including both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, during its most recent quarter that ended on December 31, 2014, it confirmed today. Even though it saw a "strong holiday season performance" for its Xbox 360 and Xbox One, Microsoft didn't provide a shipment breakdown for each individual console.

The shipment figures were a noticeable drop from 7.4 million Xbox One and Xbox 360 units shipped to retailers during the same time frame in 2013 - as the aging Xbox 360 is shown the door in favor of its next-generation counterpart.

Despite the Xbox One outselling the PlayStation 4 last November and December, Microsoft will have a lot of work cut out for itself in 2015.

Apple had a great Q4 2014, but its mobile payment system, Apple Pay, likely didn't have a major impact on that success, analysts believe. Despite drawing tremendous interest from consumers looking to embrace mobile payment, Apple Pay - and rival platforms - simply haven't been able to compete against cash, debit and credit card payments.

"Apple Pay is not likely to be a material revenue stream on its own anytime soon," predicted Colin Gillis, analyst at BGC Partners, in a statement published by CNN Money.

However, a growing number of retailers are interested in adopting Apple Pay, and that will lead to future iPhone adoption - along with one day hopefully moving the needle. Most credit card companies charge 1.5 percent up to 3 percent per swipe, while Apple charges just 0.15 percent per transaction.

Disney's 2013 animated smash hit 'Frozen' continues to smash records, be it from the highest grossing animated motion picture of all time, to Academy Awards and now it can add highest selling Blu-ray to that list too.

According to aggregate Blu-ray sales tracking from The Numbers, 'Frozen' has sold just shy of 7.5 million copies in the United States alone, which equates to around $158 million in gross sales.

Frozen holds the record for the fifth highest grossing film worldwide, with a total of nearly $1.3 billion. Disney studios are hard at work on an unannounced sequel along with a short film 'Frozen Fever' which will be released next year.

The Oculus VR Story Studio, an in-house laboratory, will be focused on creating movies and other content designed specifically for VR. Facebook opened up the checkbook to acquire Oculus, and while VR continues to impress many consumers, the company understands there must be an incentive for users to adopt the Oculus Rift.

"Oculus is getting focused on films," said Edward Saatchi, producer for Story Studio, in a statement to the Wall Street Journal. "Story Studio is designed to inspire and educate - inspire by making awesome movies and educate by sharing our information with the community."

Story Studio consists of about 10 people, and includes Pixar Animation Studios and Lucasfilm veterans, to help streamline film production.

NVIDIA's 900 series has proven to be a big hit, but a recent issue with the GTX 970 has many users complaining. The problem with the 970 occurs when the GPU memory on the card is fully utilized. Once the 970's GPU memory is filled past 3.2 GiB the bandwidth drops below 20% of expected performance. The precipitous drop leads to speeds as low as 22 GBytes/s, which is much less than the 150 GBytes/s average.

This problem seems to be confined to the GTX 970; the 980 still performs within expectations when GPU memory is full. The net result is severe stuttering during gaming, and many users have taken to the NVIDIA forums to complain about the issue. NVIDIA has issued a statement that they are exploring the problem and will provide an update soon.

GPU memory architecture is somewhat similar to the overall design of all computer systems. The memory bus is a linearly scalable bus, which means all RAM components connected have to respond with the same latency and bandwidth, regardless of how much RAM is present. GPU's are also designed with the same approach, so the results are definitely not expected. The problem is most likely a firmware bug, in light of the fact that these memory subsystems are almost identical on the GTX 970 and GTX 980.

Ubisoft has taken the questionable action of banning gamers without warning over the last several weeks. The issue stems from Ubisoft's distaste for several services that sell game licenses at steep discounts.

The affected users have had their licenses for popular games, such as Far Cry 4 and AC: Unity, revoked without warning. The issue stems from the fact that these gamers purchased their keys from services such as G2A.com and Kinguin. G2A.com and Kinguin provide steep discounts for game licenses by purchasing license keys in countries with reduced prices, then making them available to anyone globally.

It's disconcerting to see Ubisoft targeting end users, instead of the companies undertaking the questionable buying/selling policies. It is certainly possible that many who purchase the games are simply unaware that these sites are redistributing game keys to disparate regions, or that there is an issue with the practice.

Netflix has been stepping up their efforts to combat piracy of their services, such as blocking VPN users, but it seems their largest threat comes from external competitors. Netflix recently sent a letter to their shareholders noting that piracy is one of their primary competitors, and specifically mentions the Popcorn Time app.

Popcorn time is an app that streamlines pirating a movie. It simply wraps the actual nuts-and-bolts of torrenting in an easy to use app, then streams the contents to the user. Instead of typical torrenting, where the user searches and then waits for the download, Popcorn Time starts streaming the torrent almost instantly. Popcorn Time is still just piracy in a slick wrapper, but the simplicity has made it a fearsome foe for Netflix.

Netflix cites a Google Trends graph that illustrates the growing popularity of Popcorn Time in the Netherlands. The results point to Popcorn Time gaining rapidly, surpassing such standard fare as HBO, and achieving parity with Netflix. On a global scale Popcorn Time is still a small player, so it is a bit puzzling that Netflix is so concerned about Popcorn Time's popularity in the Netherlands. However, for Netflix the trend highlights the overall growing threat from the piracy app, and in todays copy/paste app world there will likely soon be other apps that provide similar functionality.

The beleaguered Sony has announced a delay in reporting their third-quarter earnings. The delay comes as a result of the intense hacking attack suffered at the hands of the North Korean government, if you believe the FBI. The hack was purportedly undertaken as a means of punishing Sony Pictures for the forthcoming movie 'The Interview', which soundly blasts the benevolent Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jung-un.

Sony has requested an approval to delay their earnings report, chalking the issue up to damaged network hardware and the loss of a large amount of data. The reference to network hardware likely means their networked storage, such as HDDs in a SAN or NAS, as the bug wiped the drives clean once the hackers were done stealing data.

Sony continues to experience severe disruption of its internal computer systems in the wake of the attack. They initially shut down the entire system, but parts are now functioning again. However, crucial segments, such as financial and accounting applications, are shuttered until the middle of February.

The Apple Watch is expected to hit the market sometime this spring, and analysts believe it's going to be a major seller - quickly becoming the most popular smartwatch. More than 40 million smartwatches and fitness bands will be sold in 2015, according to CCS Insight, and that number is going to be boosted by the Watch's release.

Both smartwatches and fitness trackers may have received a lukewarm reception in 2014, and trying to keep people using their wearables will be a major challenge - but Apple will be ready to support app developers, hoping they make wearable-centric offerings.

"Apple has access to the best developers in the world, so they've given them all the tools they need to make apps for the Apple Watch, and they will now be having a beauty contest with all of those developers, saying come and show us what you've done," stated Ben Wood, chief of research at CCS Insight. "Then out of those thousands of apps they can pick five knock-out ones that really make the Watch sing, and use them to bring it to life."

Xiaomi's estimated valuation could reach $100 billion due to increased interest from potential investors, according to billionaire investor Yuri Milner. The Chinese smartphone maker has seen a continued rise of its low-cost smartphones and tablets, while expanding in select markets outside of China.

"I was attracted by the size of the opportunity ahead of them," said Yuri Milner, a billionaire investor, in an interview with Bloomberg. "I don't think there's any company that has reached $1 billion in revenue as fast as Xiaomi. In every conceivable benchmark, it's almost unprecedented in terms of its speed of growth."

Xiaomi wants to become the first major global consumer brand from China, and while the company avoids the United States, will develop its business in China, Brazil, and other select nations.

All Google vs Bing jokes aside, Bing is now almost-everywhere and used by many different programs, social medias and applications for their translation and content services.

Twitter has followed Facebook in providing users with a translate function thanks to Bing. Unfortunately this new feature isn't quite as easy as seen on it's big blue brother - in Facebook all you have to do is click a little grey text link that automatically translates and displays the English version directly in front of your eyes. However with Twitter, it's a little harder of a task. A small globe will appear in non-English Tweets at the top right, once clicked it will take you to the 'details' tweet page, then once clicked again you'll be displayed with the English translation.

As you can see in the image above, we've been informed by the president of Mexico that he went to a cool meeting, or something. Although not as perfect as a real person, this translation tool is now available on web, iOS and Android platforms. However you must be logged in to access it, as we just found out.

Social media platforms like Facebook are being closely watched alongside the tech giant Google - not just for their updates, technology advancements and product launches, but their apparent sale of your personal data to advertisers.

Back in 1990, the Wall Street Journal released an article titled "Computer Disc Spurs New Fears About Privacy," publicizing a concern that marketers are buying your personal data on computer disks. We were reminded by Gizmodo that this information came around due to a company named Lotus selling disks of basic information to companies who would use this for direct mail marketing.

This was a big deal in 1990, with the article stating: "Privacy advocates are raising the alarm about a new Lotus Development Corp. product that lists names, addresses, shopping habits and likely income levels for some 80 million U.S. households. Due for release early next year, Lotus Marketplace packs the data on palm-sized compact disks aimed at small and midsized businesses that want to do inexpensive, targeted direct-mail marketing".

A man from Queensland, Australia has just received a harsh reminder of the drone flight regulations after receiving an $850 fine thanks to uploading drone flight videos to YouTube - in which he displayed illegal activities.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) rang up the Queensland resident, notifying him of multiple breaches he had conducted. He's gotten off lightly as according to CASA, with the investigator stating that "while each individual breach was not major in itself, the number of breaches has caused me concern," as seen on EFTM.

As a quick recap of the basic rules, CASA states that non-commercial drone flight must not be conducted:

We only just reported on the first rumor of Call of Duty: World at War II, but it looks like this could be wrong. Instead, Activision will reportedly announce Call of Duty: Black Ops III. Whichever one gets announced, we know a new COD is on the way.

When the news first broke, we were teased that Activision would reveal a new Call of Duty title on May 4. Soon after this happened, Xbox Canada's Community Manager, Ray Patel, tweeted a teaser image which had a hidden message inside. When translated, it matched up with what the leaked poster had to say about the May 4 reveal. Industry insider "shinobi602" has now chimed in, tweeting: "This should be real entertaining since it's not happening," adding "More info regarding Call of Duty: World at War 2 coming soon".

This is where it gets confusing, as shinobi602 replied to a fans tweet, where he said: "Bookmark this reply. Come May, and watch when World at War 2 doesn't happen". After that, he replied to a tweet that asked which era the new Call of Duty would be based in, to which he replied "Just remember what Treyarch's big games are". Something that could hint toward Black Ops III. It's all a big whirlwind of mess right now, but I'm sure the picture will become much clearer in the coming months.

SSDs are already ridiculously cheap compared to what they used to be a few years ago, but Apacer is predicting that 256GB SSDs will be priced at under $70 by the second half of the year.

According to CK Chang, the General Manager of Apacer Technology, 256GB SSDs will cost under $70 while 128GB drives will be priced at around $40. Chang revealed the news during an interview with DigiTimes, adding that SSD are becoming much more reasonably priced, and that shrinking manufacturing technologies and the falling cost of NAND flash memory chips will continue to push the price of SSDs down.

The top NAND flash makers are moving over to 14nm, 15nm and 16nm fabrication processes, as well as the push toward triple-level cell (TLC) NAND and vertically-stacked NAND will only help further the reduction of cost to SSDs. We should expect to see mainstream laptops with 256GB SSDs in the near future, as their price is reduced as we moved into the second half of 2015. With the 256GB SSDs reducing in price, we can expect the 512GB drives to drop, which will hopefully see 512GB become the new 256GB, and 1TB become the new 512GB. Or am I reaching too high, too fast?

The images of the purported PS4 Slim are coming from Italian site Multiplayer.it, but they didn't state who was behind the original image. What we are seeing are press images for the PS4 Slim, which is going under the codename of "Monolith". The PS4 Slim looks to be around half the size of the current PlayStation 4, with a slight change to its shape, too.

We should hopefully see Sony showing off the new smaller, thinner PS4 Slim at either E3 or Gamescom later in the year. As for when we should expect it, we should expect it in 2016-2017 going by previous Slim iterations of the PlayStation consoles. Let's hope its sooner, rather than later.

Update: SK Hynix has reached out to us to clarify that it does not own or run the new KLEVV brand. The SK Hynix rep said: "KLEVV has NO relationship with SK Hynix Inc and is NEVER owned or launched by SK Hynix Inc.. KLEVV is a brand name under the company ESSENCORE (which is a subsidiary of SK C&C)".

The high-end DRAM market has been dominated by a few players in the last couple of years, with the likes of Corsair, G.SKILL, Crucial and a few others. But it looks like this could all change with the introduction of a new company, KLEVV, which was showing off its new DDR3 and DDR4 modules at PAX South this weekend. The KLEVV website has only opened up in the last 24 hours, which you can check out here.

KLEVV is a partner of SK Hynix, who sell their DRAM IC to companies like Corsair or G.SKILL, but now it could be providing its top binned (best chips) to KLEVV, giving it a serious edge against the competition. This means that KLEVV will be a force to be reckoned with within the DRAM market rather quickly, without having to worry about securing the best IC and paying through the nose for it, as it will be cherry picking the very best thanks to its strong connection with its parent company; Essencore, which falls under the SK Hynix umbrella.