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Battlefield 4 players may have experienced an excessive amount of server disconnects over the past weekend, and while many may have attributed them to bugs released with the game, EA says that they were the result of a massive DDoS attack. A new report from Bit-Tech claims that an EA employee has confirmed that Battlefield 4 was targeted on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

While Battlefield 4 players have come to expect random server crashes, the number reported this weekend seemed to rise exponentially despite the fact that EA released an update around the same time that was said to fix the issues. It is still unknown who launched the denial of service attacks, or why they did it. The rep from EA did say that the company was working on preventing this from happening in the future, and they are continuing to work out bugs in-game that affect gameplay.

Many of those who bought PlayStation 4 consoles early are experiencing frequent and sometimes system bricking errors, and today we are learning that replacement systems will not be arriving until 2014. Call it sabotage, an acceptable margin of failure, or poor design, the fact still stands that many PlayStation 4 owners will have to wait months to get their consoles replaced.

The issues range from poor thermal dissipation which leads to overheating, while other reports suggest a red-ring-of-death type event where the PS4 will fail to boot, and will flash the status LEDs indicating an error. While this is common for the first devices off the assembly line, the true cause could be much more nefarious and could involve internal sabotage at the time of manufacture.

A report from Geek.com says that Sony is now telling customers that replacement PS4 units will not be available for shipping until February . If you purchased your dead PS4 from Amazon.com and opted for the extended warranty, then you could get your replacement console as early as January 2014, but you should expect to wait until Feburary like everyone else. Best Buy and GameStop also could see replacement units arrive as early as January, but that is still up in the air as well.

2013 has undoubtedly been the year for wearable technology as many of the major players in the industry have released smart devices including fitness tracking bands and smartwatches. While many of these products feature a Qualcomm processor or other technology, it appears that the mobile processing giant will be releasing its own smartwatch in just a few weeks.

Dubbed the Toq, the new device from Qualcomm features an ultra-low power Mirasol display that is designed to give the device a exceptionally long battery life despite the fact that its display is always-on. Qualcomm says that the inclusion of this display will enable the device to have "multiple days of battery life" and will be brightly visible in even the brightest of sunlight.

The Qualcomm Toq will connect to smartphones via Bluetooth 4.0 and will display call information as well as text messages and calendar alerts. Additional apps for weather, stock tickers, and music playback will be featured for download as well. Qualcomm will bundle a pair of wireless earphones with the device as well that will showcase the companys WiPower LE wireless charging technology. The watch will also be charged using this technology as well. The Toq will release on December 2nd and will retail for $350.

In the past 9 days or so Bitcoin prices have soared to levels no one expected to see after the shutdown of Silk Road. The surge is most likely the result of senate hearings that begin today in which several US agencies will testify to the legitimacy of Bitcoin, and the impact it is having on the global economy.

Today the value of a single Bitcoin soard past $650 and while it has since declined a little, the fact still stands that the digital currency was sitting at a value of just $85 a few months ago. The increase in value can also be attributed to the fact that Ben Bernake, Chairman of the Federal Reserve said that his agency has no intentions of attempting to regulate Bitcoin anytime soon.

"The FBI's approach to virtual currencies is guided by a recognition that online payment systems, both centralized and decentralized, offer legitimate financial services," said Peter Kadzik, principal deputy assistant attorney general, in a letter ahead of the Senate hearing. "Like any financial service, virtual currency system[s] of either type can be exploited by malicious actors, but centralized and decentralized online payment systems can vary significantly in the types and degrees of illicit financial risk they pose."

This morning, Segate Technology announced the launch of the companies latest storage product for business. The new Business Storage Windows Server 4-bay NAS is designed for offices, workgroups, and other entities up to 50 employees. This new NAS will allow employees a centralized location to store files as well as offering a secure storage medium for PC backups.

The new Windows Server 4-bay NAS from Seagate allows businesses with existing Microsoft Windows IT infrastructure to seamlessly upgrade office storage capacity while easily integrating users from an existing directory. The device is powered by a dual-core Intel Atom processor that is clocked in at 2.13GHz. The device utilizes Seagate's NAS HDD drives to ensure a reliable and high-performance experience.

"Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 introduces groundbreaking new storage functionality for organizations of all sizes, and the Seagate Business Storage Windows Server 4-bay NAS takes advantage of these advances to serve the growing demand from small- and medium-sized businesses," said Brian Hillger, director, product marketing, Microsoft. "We are happy to have collaborated with Seagate in developing a NAS solution that integrates into existing server infrastructures."

We know quite a bit about the surface of Mars, and have visited the red planet's surface several times now. One thing we do not know very much about though is the composition of the clouds and the very thin Atmosphere that surrounds Mars. Today NASA will launch a new probe aimed at the 4th planet that will study these things and lend us further insight into what Mars once was, and what it is today.

Today at 1:30pm Eastern, NASA will "Light the candle" otherwise known as an Atlas 5 rocket, and set MAVEN on its way to the Martian atmosphere. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution or "MAVEN" probe will be put into a highly elliptical orbit around Mars and the probe will actually dip deep into the atmosphere to collect and study gasses that are present in clouds and the atmosphere in general. The purpose is to understand how Mars' atmosphere reacts with the Sun and what might have caused it to mostly disappear over the last several hundred million years.

MAVEN will orbit the planet and when its mission is done, the orbiter will be crashed into the surface of the planet. While this may seem like a waste, after several thousand dips deep into the atmosphere of Mars, MAVEN will have become quite weathered and its instruments, surface, solar panels, and other hardware will be near failure. Crashing the probe into the surface is the safest way to decommission the probe at the end of its life. For those who wish to watch the launch take place today at 1:30PM Eastern, NASA is streaming the launch live on NASA TV.

Paul and I are packing and in two days we'll show more than just pictures of the new LSI SandForce SF3700. The new controller series is nine channels and supports both SATA III and PCI Express. On the latter, the SF3700 can read up to 1800 MB/s if your PCIe 2.0 bus is up to the task. Using four lanes, 1800 is a good starting point but we're more interested in overclocking our enthusiast motherboards to get more and we hear the new controller can handle a bit of a bump to get past the 1800 MB/s hump. Who's ready for SSD overclocking? Can I get a NGFF water block with my order?

The new SF3700 controller's design is for both consumer and enterprise products much like SF-1000 and SF-2000. Early on, we expect to see enterprise products demoed first but in the end, consumer drives may hit the market first due to the long validation period for enterprise products.

One controller to rule them all, the new SF3700 is a modular design with registers for features that manufactures can enable or disable. The modular design is also the basis for future products. If a few front-end interface is required, LSI can simply design a new interface and mate it to the core architecture. This reduces time to market for next generation products.

I still remember the days of HDDs being in the megabytes category, but moving into GBs was a big thing... TBs now seem like nothing with cloud storage, and storage giant, Western Digital, is pushing the bar much, much higher.

At a Chinese trade show, the storage company demonstrated its new heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) technology, which should pave the way for some massive increases in HDD storage. HAMR was first developed by WD's rival, Seagate, but WD believes it can hit five times the areal density of current drives using its spin on the HAMR tech.

Right now, the highest density HDDs have an areal density of around 750 gigabits per inch, but HAMR could expand this out to a whopping 4 terabits per inch. To you and me, this means we could see 60TB drives within the next couple of years. The way that HAMR works is by heating the hard disk's surface with a laser while the magnetic head is recording data, which causes the data bits to shrink, thus, increasing areal density.

Normally I wouldn't like to write about porn in my news, but hey - the porn industry defines what medium is going to come in next, like it did with VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. But, it looks like the PS4 is the system of choice for Pornhub, and this could be a big, big thing.

Pornhub is the first porn site to completely support the PS4, and it could be a big tipping point against the Xbox One. The porn site already supports the Nintendo Wii U, but what about Microsoft? It might not support the Xbox One, but I'm sure we'll see support, especially considering the Xbox One is more of a multimedia entertainment unit, versus the PS4 being a pure games console, with other content on the side.

What I want to know is: will it include trophy and achievement support...

Well, the small number of PS4s that are experiencing issues could be the result of interns at the Foxconn manufacturing plant in Yantai, China, sabotaging it. Yes, sabotage!

The news broke on the IGN forums, but the forum was eventually locked. This particular manufacturing plant has hit the news headlines before, from the mistreatment of staff, and more. The intern notes that because Foxconn didn't treat them well, they sabotage the manufacturing of the PS4. The intern said: "The ps4 console we assemble can be turned on at best."

This would explain some of the issues some owners are experiencing, but if this is true, those interns are going to be in quite a lot of trouble with Foxconn.

It looks like AMD is hitting a new stride if this new tablet is anything to go by, which was unveiled recently as it won a CES 2014 Innovation award for its included Mullins-based APU. The new AMD-powered slate goes by the name of "Project Discovery."

AMD's Project Discovery is a Windows 8-based tablet, which seems destined for gaming, and could compete with many of the powerful tablets and touch-based devices on the market, like Razer's Edge. An AMD spokesperson has confirmed the system, and said it will be shown off in more detail at CES in January 2014: "AMD's goals are to show the world what we can do in the tablet space around our next generation APU, Mullins."

Would AMD be hurting its OEM partners with its new Project Discovery device? It doesn't look like it, with the AMD spokesperson stating: "AMD does not plan to enter the market with a branded tablet and peripherals at this time." The pictures show off Project Discovery in a docking station, with AMD's DockPort technology, and DisplayPort 1.2, which should allow the AMD-powered slate to run on most displays.

The People at Ubisoft shipped out Assassin's Creed Black flag at 900p to make sure the GPU and CPU ran the game at a consistent 30 frames per second. They will be sending an update to make the game native 1080p. The update will also include an anti-aliasing which will improve jagged edges in the graphics. Anti-aliasing will be available on both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One. Ubisoft says the update will be available shortly after launch.

Community manager Gary Steinman: "Finishing the game at 900p gave the development team the extra room in terms of the GPU and CPU usage to ensure the frame rate never dips below 30 frames per second. The team then used the time between the ship date and the release to focus on a title update that could deliver native 1080p resolution on the PS4."

Associate producer Sylvain Trottier: "The most important part of this title update is not necessarily 1080p native resolution. It's the fact that even when we were done with the project, even when we were finished with the certification and everything else, even when most of the engineers had started to work on other projects - like we always do at Ubisoft - some of my engineers continued to work on Black Flag and they even developed a brand-new anti-aliasing technique."

If Crucial Memory's promotional page is anything to go by, we could expect DDR4 RAM to be released next month. But, this will require new motherboards, and even if you did that, is there a benefit?

Yes, and it's quite the improvement, and a bigger improvement than we had moving from DDR to DDR2, and even DDR2 to DDR3. DDR4 memory will use 20% less power, deliver speeds of up to 100% faster, and is 100% denser than its predecessor. Most DDR3 is around 1066MHz, but DDR4 kicks things off from 2133MHz, which is a huge increase.

Another benefit is going to be the amount of RAM per stick, with DDR3 seeing 1Gb when it was introduced, and while we have more per stick now, DDR4 will have a sweet 4Gb density. This means we should see much higher GB kits of DDR4, where we should hopefully see kits being at a minimum of 8GB, although I'd like to see 16GB. We should finally see a world of 16GB per module, which will be great for 64GB kits when Haswell-E arrives.

After almost a decade, the PlayStation 4 is here, and the folks over at iFixit have wasted no time in tearing the next-generation console down to its basic components. Using nothing but a T9 Torx driver, two phillips drivers, and a pair of tweezers, iFixit was able to completely disassemble the PlayStation 4.

It appears that tearing down the PlayStation 4 is just about as easy as tearing down a common PC, and rightfully so as that is basically what a PS4 is. The teardown images from iFixit do lend some interesting insight into the PS4 though. Anyone who was hoping that they could upgrade the AMD processor inside will be sad to learn that the chip is permanently soldered to the board and is not even branded as an AMD device. Instead, the chip is labeled as a Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. CXD90026G, a SoC that features AMD Jaguar CPU Cores, and Radeon Graphics Cores.

Additionally, places around the APU, are 16x Samsung K4G41325FC-HC03 4 Gb (512 MB) GDDR5 RAM for a total of 8GB of video RAM. Samsung's K4B2G1646E-BCK0 2Gb DDR3 SDRAM is also present in a capacity of 8GB. The PS4 should have no cooling issues either, as a massive air-based cooler is present that appears to be made mostly of copper for maximum thermal dissipation. When it was all over and iFixit had removed the last screw, they awarded the PlayStation 4 a repairability score of 8 out of 10, which means that it will be easy to fix in the event of any hardware failures.

If you're like me, you hate having to carry around your wallet and smartphone, as an all-in-one solution would be so much better? On one hand, I want a digital currency to roll through, something I can have "on" my smartphone, like Bitcoin - but I don't see the powers that be letting that happen anytime soon.

Well, until then, we have nio Card on Kickstarter, which is an upgrade for your smartphone, turning it into a wallet with NFC and high-tech sensors. This means that when the nio Card and your smartphone are within range of each other, you'll also gain a bunch of exclusive nio apps that will "keep your digital life secure and your personal possessions safe."

The nio Card is only 4mm thick, and connects through Bluetooth for the utmost simplicity. This means that the nio Card will fit anywhere, your pocket, wallet, bag, and more. You can store your banking details, passwords, and more through the nio Safe app, which can only be accessed, and opened by you, or your nio Card. Better yet, nio can even offer up dual-factor authentication for super, business-class security.

The PS4 launched in the United States today, but it looks like it is already having issues with some customers. Not only that, but some media are having issues, with Kotaku's PS4 review stating that the first retail unit it received from Sony "didn't work", and Kotaku even said that editors also used "one pre-release PS4 and three retail PS4s with no problems".

Customers who had received the borked PS4s reported that the next-gen console didn't boot, with Reddit user 'arogon' winning a PS4 through Taco Bell, receiving a DOA PS4. Another user, 'yearsoflove' claimed to also receive a dead on arrival PS4, but a replacement was currently being shipped from Sony. But all is not lost, because Sony has your back.

President of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, tweeted earlier today: "Be assured we are investigating reported PS4 issues. The number is very small compared to shipped, we believe they are isolated incidents".

Global gaming PC manufacturer CyberPower Inc. is now working with EVGA and are now offering mini-ITX based gaming rigs that come in a compact liquid-cooled chassis. The Hadron Hydro is designed for users that want power and space for their gaming hardware along with liquid-cooling for your GPU and CPU in a compact package. The chassis of the Hadron Hydro is 6.6" wide x 13.7" high and 12.1" deep and only 1.7" taller than the Hadron Air.

It features the same minimalist look on the front panel of the Hadron Air. The Hadron Hydro is powered by a 500 watt gold rated power supply, the Hydro can accommodate many Mini-ITX form factor motherboards including Intel's B85 to Z87 express chipsets, 4th generation IntelCore Haswell processors, and even full size GeForce GTX Titan video cards.

The water cooling kit features a 240mm radiator, high performance CPU block, stainless steel fittings, tubing, and coolant. You can choose from nine different top of the line Intel processors. Hadron Hydro has two 3.0 USB ports, support for slim slot optical drives, HD audio in/out, and two 2.5/3.5in drive bays.

When it comes to video cards designed for supercomputing, it does not get much better than AMDs new FirePro 10000 video card. The GPU features 12GB of RAM, and is optimized for use in big-data high-performance computing environments. Featuring full support for PCI Express 3.0 and the OpenCL compute programming language, this card is made for some serious number crunching.

"Our compute application customers asked for a solution that offers increased memory to support larger data sets as they create new products and services," said David Cummings, senior director and general manager, Professional Graphics, AMD. "In response, we're announcing the AMD FirePro S10000 12 GB Edition video card to meet that additional memory demand with support for OpenCL and high-end compute and graphics technologies."

"AMD is proving again to be a key player in providing outstanding 3D graphics and GPGPU compute solutions based on the OpenCL Khronos Group standard for the industry with the announcement of the new AMD FirePro S10000 12 GB video card," said Nicolas Duny, VP R&D Technologies, Dassault Systèmes. "AMD is an industry innovator by responding to our customers' needs with cutting edge technology. The AMD FirePro S10000 12 GB card will be a welcome addition to the market and to our customers."

If you have ever wanted to visit the streets of Venice and be escorted through its historic waterways by a serenading gondolier, then you do not have to wait any longer. Today Google rolled out a very extensive and thorough look at the city of love via its Street View service.

The tour through Venice not only hits the tourist highlights, but little visited areas of the city as well. Google utilized its Trekker backpack and Trike Street View imaging devices to capture the beautiful city in 360 degrees of glory. Head over to the source link below to visit places like Piazza San Marco and St. Marks' Cathedral, the Synagogue of the first Jewish Ghetto and even the Devil's Bridge in Torcello island.

"The narrow roads and bridges of Venice show off the need for the Trekker to bring imagery of more breathtaking places online for the world to see," a Google spokesperson said in an Interview. "Other pedestrian-only places we could take the Trekker include hiking in the natural forests and climbing the steps of ancient temples and castles."

Coin is made by a company that is based in San Francisco. It looks like a credit card but can store up to eight different cards that can either be debit, credit, gift or even membership cards. Coin uses an app and a card reader adapter for your smartphone to input all your cards into one. It uses a magnetic strip on the back much like a regular card but with a press of a button it can cycle through your cards and change the strip. Coin detects if you get certain distance away from it and will tell your smartphone with an alert sound if you accidently leave it behind. It does this using Bluetooth Low Energy, which is the same thing used in most smartwatches and fitness tracking devices. The device does not have a changeable or rechargeable battery, but the battery in the Coin lasts two years and at that point you replace the unit.

Coin isn't available yet, but you can get your hands on one next summer. The company has started a campaign through their site and is looking to raise $50,000. At launch it'll be available for $100 but early backers can get them for $50.