It wasn't too long ago that Hugo Barra joined Chinese manufacturer, Xiaomi, but if you forgot who Barra is, well, he was only the former Vice President of Global for Google.

The first smartphone to launch while Barra is with the company is the new MI3, which is quite the smartphone indeed. We have multiple versions of the phone, which are all limited to China unfortunately. The first is a WCDMA model, with the second being a CDMA2000 model. These two models will feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor, with four cores clocked in at 2.3GHz each.

If you purchase the TD-SCDMA version for China Mobile, then you'll enjoy an NVIDIA Tegra 4 SoC. All variations of the MI3 feature 2GB of RAM, but when Xiaomi claim "the fastest smartphone ever" it is referring to the MSM8974AB model which features the Snapdragon CPU, which boosts the clock speeds for the memory interface and Adreno 330 GPU.

Facebook has been banned in China for what seems like forever, but now Beijing has lifted the ban on the Internet access within the Shanghai free-trade Zone to foreign websites that were previously considered politically sensitive by the Chinese government.

These websites included Facebook, Twitter and The New York Times, but now according to government sources who told the South China Morning Post, the authority in charge of the Hong Kong-like free-trade zone in Shanghai is a first in mainland China. This would also see bids coming in from foreign telecommunications companies for license to provide Internet services within the new zone.

One of the government sources told the South China Morning Post: "In order to welcome foreign companies to invest and to let foreigners live and work happily in the free-trade zone, we must think about how we can make them feel like at home. If they can't get onto Facebook or read The New York Times, they may naturally wonder how special the free-trade zone is compared with the rest of China."

Earlier today, HighPoint announced that it has began shipping the RocketU 1144C, which it says is the world's fastest USB 3.0 controller. The USB 3.0 controller card is powered by HighPoint's per-port performance architecture and a fast PCI-E 2.0 x4 host interface that is combined with UAS technology, which is responsible for this controllers abnormally fast speeds.

Today, Mellanox announced the immediate release of its MetroX TX6100 solution that enables InfiniBand and Ethernet RDMA connectivity between data centers. Mellanox says that "MetroX allows for rapid disaster recovery and improve utilization of remote storage and compute infrastructures across long distances and multiple geographic sites."

"A common problem facing data-driven researchers is the time cost of moving their data between systems, from machines in one facility to the next, which can slow their computations and delay their results," said Mike Shuey, HPC systems manager at Purdue University. "Mellanox's MetroX solution lets us unify systems across campus, and maintain the high-speed access our researchers need for intricate simulations -- regardless of the physical location of their work."

Purdue University recently deployed MetroX TX6100 over six kilometers to connect their computational clusters to storage facilities thus providing access to its remote-based supercomputers and allowing Purdue University to organize limited access to data center space more efficiently resulting in higher facilities utilization.

Throughout the day, Gmail users have been experiencing spotty performance issues as well as downtime when trying to access their email. Sluggish load times and delayed receipt of emails are the major nuisances, while some users, including myself, were unable to access the service altogether several times throughout the day.

Google has confirmed that as many as 50 percent of users may have been affected by the performance issues and service disruptions, which appeared to start around 2:05PM Eastern Time. Google says that they are working diligently to return things to normal and as of this posting, all of my issues seem to have been resolved.

Update: Google appears to still be dealing with issues pertaining to the GMail service. Per their update page, Google says that "Gmail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future. Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. Gmail message delivery delays and attachment download issues have been corrected for most affected users. A majority of the delivery backlog has also been cleared. We hope to clear the backlog completely in the very near future."

LSI Corporation announced they are working closely with VMware to deliver breakthrough desktop density for VMware Horizon View deployments. VDI can be a challenging environment for the storage infrastructure with its 'bursty' random write workloads. For HDD-based solutions, be they SAN, NAS or direct attached storage, these workloads closely mirror the absolute worst-case scenario for an HDD. Throwing more spindles at the problem isn't the best of solutions, as this leads to drastically over provisioned storage resources to tackle a problem that can be addressed with a simple slip-in solution that provides lower power consumption and exponentially better latency performance.

Many administrators mistakenly think that throughput and IOPS can address every performance challenge, but the secret to maximum performance actually falls to the latency of the storage solution.

Enter the LSI WarpDrive, which brings a healthy helping of flash and places it as close to the processor as possible, delivering massive performance improvements with a minimum of configuration. Above we can observe the VSImax rating of 280 obtained before the system maxed out the CPU.In collaborative testing with VMware Horizon View using a single LSI Nytro WarpDrive application acceleration card, the WarpDrive comfortably delivers concurrent support for 200 active virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) workloads on a two-node cluster with no storage latency.

Last week we broke the news that Valve was prepping for three big announcements this week surrounding its Steam gaming platform, and today the company released its first announcement by unveiling a new operating system. The new SteamOS is a free, open-source operating system that is designed around steam and built on Linux.

Valve says the new OS is capable of running on "any living room machine" which presumably means custom-built HTPCs, Laptops, and almost certainly the mystical Steam Box many industry insiders expect to be launched during one of the company's next announcements on Wednesday or Friday. Unfortunately Valve did not clue us in on an actual release date, but did say that the new OS would be available for download "soon."

"As we've been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we've come to the conclusion that the environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself," Valve stated. "SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen. It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines."

Earlier this year amidst its growing financial troubles, BlackBerry announced its plans to sell off its two Dassault Falcon medium-range private jets. The two smaller jets would be replaced by a a long-range Bombardier Global Express Jet. The Bombardier would cost the company roughly $25 million at a time when the company was already struggling financially.

Fast-forward to the past week when BlackBerry announced that it would be leaving the consumer market space as it planned to lay off 4,500 employees. Today the once king of smartphones announced that it will be selling all three of its private jets, including the two Dassault's that it never managed to get rid of after the Bombardier arrived several months ago. Analysts are suggesting that all three jets could be worth a combined $50-65 million, but that depends on the planes condition, and current market value.

"Several years ago, the company bought two medium-range Dassault aircraft," BlackBerry said in a statement. "Earlier this year the company decided to sell both planes and replace them with one longer-range aircraft. The company considered several options and selected a used Bombardier aircraft, which was eventually delivered in July. In light of the company's current business condition, the company has decided to sell that aircraft along with the two legacy aircraft and will no longer own any planes."

Microsoft also announced its Surface 2 slate today, which is powered by NVIDIA's Tegra 4 SoC. Its bigger brother, the Surface Pro 2 is powered by a full Intel fourth-generation Core processor.

Microsoft wants to see people get more productive on the Surface 2, instead of consumption-only devices like the iPad. It seems as though Microsoft was just as excited about the Surface 2 as it was for the Surface Pro 2, which is great. The Surface 2 is both lighter and thinner than its predecessor, and it also comes in silver, too.

The display has been increased to 1920x1080, which is a great bump for the tablet over its predecessor. Microsoft says it has "increased the CPU speed dramatically" on Surface 2. The Surface logo is on the rear of the device, instead of the Windows logo, just like the refreshed Surface Pro 2.

We've been hearing about the Surface Pro 2 tablet from Microsoft for quite a while now, and while that $1 billion write down on the Surface RT may have hurt the Redmond-based giant, that hasn't stopped them from delivering quite the upgrade to the higher-end Surface Pro 2 today.

Microsoft's Vice President of Surface, Panos Panay, took the stage at its NYC event today to unveil the second-generation Surface slates, of which have been under development for over 18 months now. Panay says that the Surface Pro 2 "is literally faster than 95 percent of laptops today." The graphics performance on Surface Pro 2 has been increased by 50%, too.

The kickstand on the Surface Pro 2 has been greatly improved and there is no more Windows logo on the rear of the device, just the Surface branding. The Surface Pro 2 operates cooler, quieter, and includes more battery life - much more battery life. Microsoft has said the Surface Pro 2 features up to 75% more battery life than its predecessor.

Earlier this morning we saw AMD's Radeon R9 290X leak in a series of photos and benchmark test, but that was not the only upcoming GPU to surface in leaked images. AMD's Radeon R7 260X has also appeared in some newly leaked photographs that show off a uniquely designed ducted cooling solution.

The R7 260X is an upper mid-range graphics card that is said to be based off of the "Bonaire" silicon that is featured in the company's Radeon HD 7790 high-in the GPU, but as TechPowerUp reports, it is more likely that the card is based on the "Curacao" architecture given the PCB and component layout on in the photo below. AMD is hosting a press event in Hawaii this Wednesday the 25th and is widely expected to launch its Hawaii-based GPUs. Our own Shawn Baker will be on hand covering the event so stay tuned.

On top of BlackBerry having serious issues, and diving out of the consumer market and letting 4,500 people go, its BBM rollout for Android and iOS has now been put on hold. The Canadian phone maker has said that leaked versions people were using were having "issues" and that they are hard at work to getting it released.

We saw a tease yesterday of the new status bar with gray icons in Android 4.4 KitKat, but now we have another look from 9to5Google, which gives us a closer look at the redesigned stock apps on Android 4.4.

You can see from the images above that we have the Messaging app, and the Dialer app, which both look quite nice in their updated form. Controls for the Messaging app have been shifted to the top right of the app, and the Dialer app gets a much more streamlined look, with a nice blue color scheme. We should expect Android 4.4 KitKat to arrive mid next month on the rumored Nexus 5 handset.

AMD is expected to unleash it's "Hawaii" GPUs this week, with the newly named Radeon R9-290X leading the pack. There's now a new leak, with some naked shots underneath the heatsink and fan, in all its naked glory.

As you can see, the full PCB features the usual 8+6-pin PCIe power connectivity, which should provide a GPU that comes under the 300W TDP. We can see the numerous GDDR5 chips spread around the GPU socket, but eagle-eyed readers should note there are 16 GDDR5 chips... which means we could expect 4GB and 8GB versions of the new GPUs. This is going to be great for Eyefinity and 4K display setups.

This could all lead down the rabbit hole of a 512-bit memory bus, which would give the new Hawaii GPUs some incredible memory bandwidth. There are some benchmark scores, which I wouldn't put too much faith into right now, but if that's something you want to check out, by all means be our guest!

Apple only started selling its freshly baked iPhone 5S with its TouchID fingerprint scanner built-in, and the biometrics hacking team of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has already hacked the biometric security of Apple's TouchID.

The CCC used everyday means of hacking the ToucHID, where they grabbed a fingerprint of the phone user, photographed from a glass surface, which was "easy enough to create a fake finger that could unlock an iPhone 5S secured with TouchID."

A hacker who goes by the name "Starbug" performed the experiments that ended up being successful, said: "In reality, Apple's sensor has just a higher resolution compared to the sensors so far. So we only needed to ramp up the resolution of our fake. As we have said now for more than years, fingerprints should not be used to secure anything. You leave them everywhere, and it is far too easy to make fake fingers out of lifted prints."

Battlefield 4 is a day closer to being played on our PCs or consoles, and now there's a new post on the official Battlefield 4 website that details the second-screen application for BF4, Battlelog.

Battlelog will allow gamers to use a PC, smartphone or tablet for maps, leaderboards and much, much more. The service for BF4 will allow gamers to track how many of their friends are online, and just how many active missions are accessible. Gamers will be able to create emblems, which will be displayed on soldiers and guns in the multiplayer portion of Battlefield 4.

When gamers are away from their PCs or consoles, Battlelog on their smartphones for example can let them view status, access forums and leaderboards, customize their loadout and more. Battlelog is also capable of giving players the chance of remotely joining new servers quickly. The update on the BF4 website says:

Bloomberg Businessweek enjoyed an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook last week, where Cook reiterated that he believes the tablet market will overpass the PC market within 2 years.

Cook said: "We're 24 months away from that" which isn't too far away at all. Cook also said that most of this growth in the tablet market in coming from PC makers who are making low-cost Android devices as a 'defensive maneuver.' Cook also used the time to talk smack about Android tablets, which is something he has done on more than one occasion.

Cook said: "I think if I bought [an Android tablet] and used it, and I thought that was a tablet experience, I'm not sure I would ever buy another tablet. The responsiveness isn't there. The basic touch is really off. The app experience is a stretched-out smartphone kind of experience. It's not an optimized experience."

Rocking an iPhone 5S and think you're 'sticking it to Samsung' when you use it? Think again. The South Korean giant, and main competitor to Apple, is the company who is making the A7 processor inside each and every iPhone 5S.

Chipworks says that it found design and manufacturing processes on the A7 chip that match up with Samsung-built chips such as the Samsung Exynos Application processor that is baked into the Galaxy S4 smartphone. Samsung will also reportedly supply Apple with components for its upcoming second generation iPad mini tablet.

So while they may be competitors, they still require each other to make money. Apple wouldn't have as many iPhone 5S units if it weren't for Samsung, and Samsung wouldn't be racking in billions manufacturing hardware for Apple.

We should expect Twitter to go public in the next couple of months, but according to a report on Reuters, the social networking site might push its IPO before Thanksgiving.

One source has told Reuters that Twitter could raise over $1 billion in its IPO, and while it may sound like a lot, it is less than 1% of Facebook's record-breaking IPO which smashed through $105 billion. We don't know what Twitter will do when it goes public, but we should expect the biggest Twitter apps to go under the knife and come out looking just a little different. Let's just hope this doesn't happen to Twitter, like it did Facebook.

BlackBerry is about to cut 4,500 staff from its books, which represents the 40% layoff numbers we heard a couple of days ago now. But the news gets worse: BlackBerry is leaving the consumer market.

This is something we've been expecting here at TweakTown, but the news is quite sudden. This all comes from the failure that is the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone, which has cost the Canadian phone maker $1 billion in losses in the last quarter alone. BlackBerry says it will take a "primarily non-cash, pre-tax charge against inventory and supply commitments in the second quarter of approximately $930 million to $960 million" due to the Z10.

In the second quarter of this year, BlackBerry shipped only 3.7 million smartphones, most of which were running BlackBerry 7, not the company's BB10 OS that ships on the Z10. BlackBerry didn't reveal how many BB10-based devices it sold in the quarter, which should give us a hint in where those numbers must lie.