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Whilst it was a hugely satisfying and emotional conclusion to the 'Toy Story' franchise, 'Toy Story 3' did gross over a billion dollars worldwide, so as if Disney and Pixar were going to let the franchise sleep.

Today, Disney head Bob Iger officially announced production on a fourth 'Toy Story' is about to get underway, to be directed by Pixar CEO John Lasseter, who will return to the franchise for the first time since the 1999 sequel.

Whilst details are currently scant, and it's not yet been confirmed that Tom Hanks and Tim Allen will return to voice Woody and Buzz, it's impossible to imagine the film without them. What we do know is 'Toy Story' 4 is coming in 2017. And it will be great.

Far Cry 4 will be released by Ubisoft later this month, and the official minimum and optimal PC requirements were recently released. The game will be available on November 18 for the PC, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Xbox One, Sony PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.

Minimum system requirements:

OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8/8.1 (64-bit only)

HGST led the way with 6TB drives by developing their HelioSeal technology, which fills the HDD with helium and seals the drive. This delivers a number of benefits, lower internal air resistance reduces flutter and allows use of thinner and lighter materials. With less air resistance the drive also doesn't have to work as hard to spin the platters, even while increasing the platter count to 7, thus producing radical reductions in power consumption. HGST is leveraging the benefits of HelioSeal technology to move forward with the new He8, an 8TB version of the previous-generation drive.

In a sign that 8TB drives will experience a rapid uptake, Aberdeen announced today they are integrating the new He8 into their AberNAS and storage server products. This will provide increased density for their customers and also tremendous reductions in power consumption. The He8 drive will deliver instant benefits and boost capacity of just one 4U rackmount up to 192TB. We took a deep-dive with the first commercially-available helium drive in our HGST Ultrastar He6 6TB Helium Enterprise HDD Review, and found it to deliver on its promises. Head to our IT/Datacenter section for more competitive performance analysis of leading enterprise HDDs and SSDs.

Google Glass has proven to be an appealing wearable for some consumers, but there is an elephant in the room that is now receiving more attention: potential vision problems suffered by wearers. It's not the software that could be doing it, instead it's the physical frame structure of the glasses that limit peripheral vision - and creates safety hazards.

"But I almost got into a car accident when I was driving with it. And the device was even turned off at the time," said Dr. Tsontcho Ianchulev, clinical associate professor in the ophthalmology department at the University of California, San Francisco, and lead author of the study.

Dr. Ianchulev explained how they used a rather simple, yet effective way to study how Google Glass impacted the vision of wearable owners.

One of the most challenging aspects of data storage is long-term archival. All forms of data storage have a finite lifespan, and complex storage mechanisms, such as HDDs, have delicate moving mechanical parts that will eventually fail. One of the benefits of optical storage, such as CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray's, is their lack of moving parts and relatively long life time of up to 100 years. The problem has always been capacity, optical storage has reached a diminishing point of returns in terms of data stored due to the limitations of light itself.

A team of engineers at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia have conquered that challenge by enabling storage up to 1,000 Terabytes of data, or 40,000 HD movies, onto a single DVD. The process they developed uses a secondary laser to refine the refraction limit of light, which is around 500 nanometers. Since light cannot shrink below that limit, the current technology cannot write information smaller than 500 nanometers. The Australian researchers employed two 500nm lasers. One actually writes data, and the other blocks the light beam, except for a sliver that is only 9 nanometers in length.

Cramming 1,000 TB of data onto a single disk has its challenges, but if coupled with new technology that extends the lifetime of a DVD (to 3x10E20 years), data storage can become nearly infinite. Even at temperatures as high as 189 C (372 F), another new type of DVD being developed at the University of Southampton in the UK is expected to last 13.8 billion years, which is nearly as long as the universe has existed. Of course, all of this seems unreal and not destined for any real applications, but companies such as Facebook are already using innovative new storage arrays consisting of 1,000 Blu-Ray discs to store up to a Petabyte of information at a time. The question is, do we really want our Facebook pictures to be around for 13.8 billion years?

It looks like we should expect Just Cause 3 to be announced soon, if the leaked screenshots are anything to go by. Four leaked screenshots from the alleged title are coming in from the Xbox One version of the game, which popped up on the Xbox-Underground forums now too long ago.

The four shots show the main character, Rico, and an overview of a massive, massive island. Eurogamer is reporting that it has a source close to the game itself, confirming that we are looking at images from Just Cause 3, going on to say that it is showing off the game's "Black Market". The anonymous source added that the PC version was meant to be entirely free-to-play, while the console version of Just Cause 3 would be financed through microtransactions.

Eurogamer has added though, that "the plan changed and this may no longer be the case". When it comes to the microtransactions argument, Avalanche Studios' boss, Christofer Sundberg, said last year on Twitter: "Microtransactions, subscriptions, and other biz models will be the next generation of games. It is that simple. We'll never compromise on quality or sell our souls for a quick buck. Things are changing and we need to adapt".

We already know that there should be a new Xbox One next year, based on AMD's shrunken 20nm system-on-chip, but thanks to Sony using the same APU from AMD, the PlayStation 4 should receive a similar upgrade.

Rumors are now floating around that Sony will adopt the 20nm SoC sometime next year, which should see Sony release a refreshed PS4 sometime in 2015. We're already seeing 16nm technology on the other side of the fence, so a shrink down to 20nm for the consoles would usher in more performance, slimmer consoles, and reduced power consumption. Right now, both consoles are using AMD APU's based on the 28nm process.

Microsoft and Sony haven't had any competition in the console space this year, but 2015 is going to be a very different year for the two tech giants. Oculus VR is positioning itself to release their first consumer version of the Rift VR headset, and Valve should usher in the Steam Box, Steam OS, Steam Controller and much more - competing in the living room directly against the likes of the Xbox One and PS4.

Oculus VR gets all the headlines when it comes to VR, but Avegant has just secured itself $9.37 million in series A funding, which was lead by Intel Capital, NHN Investment and... Snoop Dogg. Yes, the rapper. Avegant says that the injection of funds will "help carry Avegant through its manufacturing milestones".

Avegant has an interesting HMD in the Glyph, as it is a head-mounted display that has built-in over-ear headphones, something where the headphone band can be tweaked down to position something the company refers to as a "virtual retinal display" in front of users' eyes. It is let down by its 45-degree viewing angle, but the company is pushing it as a unique display tech device, with a portable form-factor.

At the Intel Capital Global Summit, it was announced that Avegant had raised an additional $9.37 million in series A funding, an investing roun that included Kaiwu Capital, Crunch Fund, 500 Startups, DN Capital, Calvin Broadus Jr., and the Michigan Angel Fund. Avegant's final design of the Glyph will be shown at CES 2015, where we will hopefully get some hands-on time with it.

A few months ago we heard that some of the developers from Infinity Ward had formed Reload Studios, a VR-based first-person shooter studio. Reload Studios is now teasing its upcoming multiplayer VR shooter, which will arrive as a VR first-person, arena-based multiplayer shooter which currently has no name.

Founder and CEO of Reload Studios, James Chung, has said that the studio is aiming at VR as the primary platform for their unnamed shooter, acknowledging the challenges that building an FPS for VR gives them. Chung said: "Our focus is on virtual reality because you can't just port or make a non-virtual reality game and expect it to work. The games on VR have to be made from the ground up. So we are making a game from the ground up to make sure it will work on VR".

Although an FPS from the ex developers of Infinity Ward, who focused on FPS titles like Call of Duty, is something that isn't breaking the mould, making a VR-focused FPS is. Chung continued: "Trying a shooter in VR is actually difficult because nobody has a solution on how to make the experience compelling, especially on the controls issue. A lot of people have a lot of points on what not to do, but not a lot of people are coming up with what to do. And that's the side that we're trying to resolve".

Four years ago, the Unity Asset Store opened its doors, and by the end of the year it should see close to one million users. The Unity Asset Store is a marketplace for user-created development tools, services, assets and more, including environment art, animation tools, sound effects, shaders and more.

In the first three months of it opening, the Asset Store saw 10,000 users sign up, and fast-forwarding to today, the top sellers are making over $30,000 a month from their creations. Unity took to their Asset Store blog to announce the news, adding that the store has over 15,000 pieces of content right now, from over 3,800 creators.

Unity said in its press release: "Unity estimates that the Asset Store ecosystem, empowering Unity developers to create games and apps with a more efficient and effective production process, saves developers 6 million workdays over a 12-month period, which roughly equals a savings of $1.4 billion".

There will be quite a few of you shocked by this news, but Zalman are finished. The company has filed for bankruptcy in Seoul, after years of its owner, Moneual, bleeding billions of dollars out of the company. But this isn't the only part of the story, it is a full-blown conspiracy with layers of details.

Futurelooks is reporting that former Moneual employees are now dishing out the goss, with these insiders saying that CEO Harold Park, VP Scott Park, and VP Won Duck-yeok working out a deal between them that would see Zalman "produce inflated sales and fabricated export data, allowing the company to qualify for increasingly large bank loans". This worked well for the trio, as over five years, the company were able to secure $2.98 billion in loans under false pretences.

The documentation, which was fraudulent, showed that parts were exported to the US "since the finished product is larger and more expensive" than the parts themselves. This trick allowed the company to false quality for bigger loans, but the ride is obviously over. Zalman Tech Co. Ltd has halted trading of its shares, with the company filing for bankruptcy protection in the Seoul Central District Court.

As a result of a class-action lawsuit against HP and Intel, the chipmaker will have to give $15 to those who have purchased an Intel Pentium 4 processor about 15 years ago.

As of now, this applies to those who are residing in the United States and have purchased computers for personal/general use with Intel Pentium 4 processors between November 20, 2000 and June 30, 2002. The lawsuit points out that Intel and HP have deliberately manipulated benchmark scores for the Intel Pentium 4 processors at the time it was facing tough rivalry from AMD. There were also allegations that Intel Pentium III and AMD Athlon line ups at the time performed better in comparison to Pentium 4 line ups.

The lawsuit states that Intel secretly wrote benchmarks which would favour Pentium 4 processors. The company also paid software companies to make changes to favour Pentium 4's performance scores for third-party benchmark software, so that it will stand out against AMD. The benchmarks that were in question were WebMark2001 and SysMark 2001. Both companies have denied these allegations but said that they were willing to settle the matter via compensation. You do not require to show a purchase invoice that you've bought a Pentium 4 powered PC during that time frame, but you will need to present some proof such as the retailer's details and date of purchase.

Reports are circulating that the recent failures of 128 GB iPhone 6 Plus models are due to the use of TLC NAND. Apple is the world's largest flash consumer, and has made a concerted effort to utilize technology to expand their use of less-desirable flash (ie 'cheap'). TLC NAND, which holds more bits per cell than MLC NAND, has a higher capacity than other types of NAND. Using cheaper flash provides Apple with better margins, and also helps during periodic flash shortages by expanding the pool of flash they can purchase.

Apple actually purchased Anobit in 2012 to integrate their MSP (Memory Signal Processing) technology, which extends endurance for less-desirable flash. It is rumored that the 128GB iPhone is one of the few select models that utilizes TLC NAND, and users are reporting widespread crashes or reboot loops. This problem has persisted even after the latest update to iOS 8.1. The problem may be confined to the NAND controller on the iPhone, but with no direct confirmation from Apple, users are left to speculate.

This news comes on the heels of problems with TLC-powered Samsung SSDs, but that problem was also relegated to a firmware bug. TLC is becoming a widely-used form of NAND, and NetApp is even developing TLC platforms for datacenter usage, so these teething problems are likely specific issues with endurance-extending techniques, such as DSP, wear leveling, and read-retry/disturb.

It seems Apple will not be able to rid itself of "BendGate" anytime soon, after saying just nine iPhone 6 Plus units were bent, with a website showing 300 bent devices. One of the Nine wanted to collect photos of bent iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus units from customers, and while there wasn't a lot of publicity to promote the website, more than 300 photos were collected.

It's possible some iPhone owners haven't reported the problem - or are unaware it has happened - but considering the millions of devices sold, Apple is quietly trying to resolve the problem that has hit a small number of owners.

"We are most definitely not anti-Apple though and I am a massive Apple product user myself and an iPhone 6 Plus owner (yes... it bent)," according to the website's founder.

Major League Gaming (MLG) has partnered with ESPN and will host a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive gaming tournament during the winter X Games Aspen in January. Eight teams consisting of five players per team will compete in the first MLG CS: GO tournament.

"Our fan base was really electrified with the idea of having MLG competitions at the X Games and having our pro players earn X Games medals in Austin, where it was a tremendous success," said Mike Sepso, MLG co-founder and president. "We're thrilled to announce that Austin wasn't a one-off."

It's a rather unique offering after ESPN president John Skipper said eSports is "not a sport," and doesn't have interest in showing it on ESPN. However, with a large crossover in X Games and video game demographics, the X Games Aspen tournament could be a lot of fun.

Seagate has announced their Kinetic HDD, which connects via dual Ethernet ports and leverages the Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform. Seagate has developed an entire ecosystem to support the new approach, which removes the need for a dedicated storage tier. The goal is to reduce the price of infrastructure to realize a TCO reduction of 50%. The open-source Kinetic API utilizes object storage, which circumvents the hindrances of normal file system architectures. This removes the software stack and allows applications to communicate directly with the Kinetic HDD.

Kinetic HDDs reside in backplanes that have two embedded Ethernet connections for each drive. This provides a dual port active/active connection. The typical deployment then utilizes two 10Gbe Ethernet connections to communicate with the server. HDDs can also speak directly to each other, without going through the operating system, streamlining operations such as disk-to-disk replication and minimizing overall network traffic to the server. Ethernet is widely deployed and presents the ability to use existing infrastructure for IP-based management.

The Kinetic platform also provides performance benefits. Seagate has observed a 4X increase in random write speed, due to the lack of metadata and queuing processes from legacy filesystems and operating system interaction. The new 4TB Kinetic drive is available for customer qualification now, and general availability begins at the end of November. For the latest in enterprise HDD technology head to our IT/Datacenter section for in-depth competitive performance analysis of Seagate and other leading manufacturers latest HDDs.

Acer has an impressive new tablet on its hands with the new Switch 12, which is a 5-in-1 device that is marketed as a 2-in-1. The Switch 12 features a 12.5-inch Full HD IPS display, with an anti-fingerprint coating and Gorilla Glass for ultimate protection. From there, Acer is using Zero Air Gap bonding technology, which should improve viewing angles, and display performance in direct sunlight.

Acer's new Switch 12 tablet is powered by Intel's super power-efficient Core M processor, which is joined by 4GB of RAM, a choice of 30GB or 120GB of SSD storage, dual front-facing speakers, micro USB 3.0, and micro HDMI ports, as well as 2x2 MIMO wireless technology. Battery life is something Acer has worked on, with up to eight hours of video playback, and Windows 8.1 slapped on for its operating system.

Switch 12 features a kickstand, as well as a magnetic, latch-less detchable keyboard. The company teases that it has five modes of operation: notebook, pad, display, tent and desktop. The company hopes to launch the Switch 12 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa during Q4, starting at a price of $813 or so, while the US and Canada should receive the Acer Switch 12 sometime early next year.

You might remember Rahul Sood as the founder of VoodooPC, especially when he cut his birthday cake with that first-gen MacBook Air all that time ago. Well, Sood has left his post at Microsoft, to form his own gaming company known as Unikrn.

Sood took to his LinkedIn page where he said that he's leaving a dream job, but adds that "this is the kind of crazy shit entrepreneurs do (or at least I keep telling myself that!". Sood started VoodooPC, something that was purchased by HP in 2008, and has been a part of the gaming community since, even joining Microsoft as the GM of Xbox, but moved over to helping early stage startups.

In his blog post, Sood said that his "gaming past continues to drive unrest inside me, starting with Voodoo, and then advising various companies including Razer and Vrvana, and now...".

A couple of months ago now, we reported that Rockstar would reveal a first-person mode for Grand Theft Auto V on the Xbox One, PS4 and PC and now we're here: with official confirmation from the developer.

Due to technical reasons, the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game won't enjoy the first-person mode, but the current-gen consoles and PC will. During a recent interview, Animation Director Rob Nelson said that one of the most compelling things that they could add to the game was a first-person mode, something that caused Rockstar to "pretty much change everything" in order to get it right. Nearly every aspect of GTA V had to be changed in order for it to work properly, as virtually everything you interact with is seen from a totally different perspective.

Sitting down in a car now displays a fully functional dashboard with a working speedometer, tachnometer, and even the track title of the song playing on the stereo. Jumping onto a motorbike will have your character putting on a helmet, which cuts off your field of view, as well as suppressing the amount of noise hitting your ears, just as it does in real life.

Everyone is wondering when Oculus VR will launch their consumer Rift headset, with its current broad ETA being 'sometime in 2015'. But after his speech at the Web Summit 2014 in Dublin, Oculus VR CEO Brendan Iribe said that the Rift is months away from a consumer launch, not years away.

He said: "We're all hungry for it to happen. We're getting very close. It's months, not years away, but many months. We've gone out there and set this bar and said, 'We want to get it right.' We don't want it to be four or five years. We're eager for this to happen". Many months could still see it being released late next year, and during an investors meeting last week, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook and owner of Oculus VR said that the Oculus Rift could only be "meaningful" as a computing platform if it sold 50 million to 100 million units over the next 10 years.