Today, Origin announced that it has started offering full refunds on EA-published Windows or Mac games if you decide you no longer want it within 24 hours of the first run. "If something doesn't work out - you aren't riveted by the storyline, or sucked in by the action, or even just if the game doesn't play well with your video card - we've got your back," EA said in a statement.

To obtain a refund, you must simply apply within 24 hours from the first launch of the game or within seven days from when it was purchased. Pre-ordered games can be returned for a full refund within seven days of the game's release as long as it was purchased from Origin's digital storefront. This gives Origin a clear advantage over other digital game dealers as it is the only service with a solid 100 percent money back return policy.

Let's face it: everyone loves CPUs that are clocked to astronomical speeds. It is the reason many of us run enthusiast grade unlocked processors that we push to the limits. When AMD first announced its 5GHz monster--the FX-9590--I'll have to admit I was a little speechless, as was most of the tech world, but not for the fact that it was able to Turbo to 5GHz, but for the fact that AMD priced it at $900.

Generally known for their low-cost, high-performance CPUs, that $900 price tag shocked many AMD enthusiasts. In the professional world, many reviewers and industry analysts cried foul saying that a $900 price tag would never work. AMD has apparently heard those statements and cries loud and clear and today slashed the price of the FX-9590 by $500, making it cost just a mere $400.

The owners of the popular "Open Source" legal advice website Groklaw announced today that they will follow in the footsteps of Lavabit and close their doors forever. The official announcement says that Groklaw planned to shut down after Lavabit's owner announced that he had stopped using email and that if we "knew what he knew then we would stop too."

That announcement must have shook the Groklaw owners to the core as they say that without secure email there is no way their website can continue to exist. The official announcement goes on to hit on topics such as Scripture, 9/11, and even into the personal break-in and burglary of the owner's home. I feel like Groklaw is taking the situation as an easy way out and using recent events as a scapegoat to justify the closure of their website. Below is an excerpt from the official announcement which can be found at Source #2 below.

A catchy name is everything in the mobile app world. After all, there were hundreds of photo filter apps like Instagram; they did the same thing but never caught on. As a result of its popularity, Instagram has seen parts of its name used in dozens of third-party applications that in some form or another tie into the Instagram Service, and this unauthorized use of its name has the Facebook-owned company in an uproar.

According to a report released today by TechCrunch, Instagram has began sending cease-and-desist emails to companies that feature the "Insta" or "gram" wording in their applications. The first to receive the hit is the app Luxogram, an application that allows you to use Instagram via a web browser. In an email sent to the Luxogram team, Instagram had the following to say:

Earlier today at the Gamescom event taking place in Germany, Microsoft announced that it will launch Project Spark in beta form for Windows 8 in October. For those of you who have never heard of Project Spark, it amounts to an inception-like video game development tool within a game that allows players to build custom worlds, developed characters, and render custom animations all from an Xbox One or Windows 8-based PC.

The development suite will let player-developers utilize a Kinect sensor to include voice and motion capture as well as allow players to capture facial animations and body motion to bring the characters they design to life. Users can also record their own face and superimpose it on an in-game character or record custom body motions, which they can then assign as a player's attack moves within a game.

Gamers also have the ability to fully customize the in-game world to build out that entire fantasy round they have always dreamed. The video above highlights some of the high level worlds and animations that are possible using Project Spark. Microsoft says that the closed beta will begin for Windows 8 devices in early October, and the Xbox One will receive Spark access sometime in January 2014.

Plants vs Zombies 2 released worldwide just five days ago and has already surpassed more than 16 million downloads, landing it at the top spot of EA's most successful mobile game launch in history. The sequel to the popular zombie killing game also found itself amongst some of the top grossing games on opening day the Apple App Store has ever seen.

"We are grateful and delighted with the incredible reception Plants vs. Zombies 2 has received from consumers around the globe," said Tony Leamer, Franchise Business Director for Plants vs. Zombies. "We certainly had high hopes for the game, but to see fans playing the game so quickly and in such huge numbers is truly amazing."

EA says that in the five days since launch, Plants vs Zombies 2 rocketed into the number one position in the App Store in over 137 countries worldwide on either the iPad or iPhone charts. It currently has an average rating of 4.5 to 5 stars throughout those countries and has received rave reviews from critics and consumers worldwide. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, it pits garden-variety plants against a horde of period correct zombies throughout different historical time periods. EA has released the game under its free-to-play model and we found it in the Apple App Store in seven different languages.

Today, HTC confirmed that the company will release an update that upgrades its flagship device, the HTC One, from Android 4.1 to Android 4.3 just as soon as the software has been certified. The company expects this to happen sometime in September with the update beginning to roll out later that month.

The confirmation comes via a leak, albeit barely legible, from the company's president, Jason Mackenzie, who said: "Lots of questions re 4.3 release for One. We r wrking hard (needs cert) to release 4.3 across all US, Canada skus by end Sept. DNA as well." I'm not joking, that really was his tweet, you can check it out for yourself at Source #2 below.

As an HTC One owner, this is some very exciting news. During my quest for a new smartphone, many tried to turn me away from the One as it ran Android 4.1 and everyone claimed it would be over a year before an update was available. I knew that HTC had to release an update soon to put it on par with the new Android 4.3 devices that will be arriving this fall. With the addition of Android 4.3, I officially think that the HTC One is the best smartphone ever made, and that nothing released or releasing soon by Apple or Samsung is able to compete.

In a little over two weeks from now, Samsung will unveil its Galaxy Gear smartwatch at its Unpacked event being held at the IFA 2013 conference in Berlin, Germany. Today, thanks to website GigaOm, we now have an idea of what hardware the Galaxy Gear will feature.

The report states that Samsung has managed to cram a 2.5-inch flexible OLED screen, a dual-core processor, and an unknown amount of RAM into the small wrist package. The report says that "decent" battery life can be expected from a lithium-based battery and that a camera alongside speakers will be embedded into the device's wrist strap. Other sensors rumored to be on board include an accelerometer, a gyroscope, Bluetooth 4.0, and some form of gesture support.

The report went on to say that Samsung will offer incentives to developers to offer apps for the smartwatch through its proprietary app store rather than posting them on Google Play. Over the last few weeks, I've done a lot of thinking about smart watches, and while I feel that there definitely cool, I honestly see them as a passing fad. By this time next year or the year after, I suspect we will look back and wonder why we all spent so much money on smart watches.

Today, EA and Maxis clued us in on the first details of what is expected to be one of the hottest games of 2014. The companies released the first gameplay trailer of the highly anticipated life simulator, The Sims 4. EA says that the game is built on an entirely new technological platform and that players will now be able to create and control an entirely new generation of Sims like never before.

This new technology allows game developers to build upon a foundation that allows the Sims to become more intelligent, emotionally rich, and relatable. Each of them evolves into something that is affected by the interactions and emotional states of other Sims. Now for the first time ever, each Sim is capable of having its own emotional state which is affected by the environment and other Sims around. As you saw in the video above, this makes for very dynamic gameplay. EA has officially opened pre-orders for The Sims 4 Digital Deluxe Edition on Origin, and you can grab your copy at Source #2 below.

"Over 10 years ago, we created a genre, now we're taking our most revolutionary step forward by focusing on the heart of the franchise, the Sims themselves," said Rachel Franklin, VP and Executive Producer for The Sims 4. "The magic of The Sims has always come from the combination of the player's creativity and the Sims' free will, and in The Sims 4 we're taking this further by unlocking more possibilities and deeper gameplay opportunities. The Sims 4 is the bold leap for the franchise where each Sim now has a rich emotional center that drives meaningful social interactions. Your ability to affect the mind, body and heart of these new Sims brings your stories to life in a way that is more personal than ever before."

All Twitter users are being advised today to log into their account and revoke access to all third-party applications after an Islamic hacker managed to pull the entire OAuth database for users of Twitter. Calling himself the Mauritania Attacker, the hacker from the West African country of Mauritania posted details from just over 15,000 Twitter users earlier today and claims to have millions more. It's not clear whether he attacked Twitter or a third-party site. The latter is much more likely. Twitter says they are looking into the situation.

Twitter says that the stolen files do not include passwords, but do contain all of the usernames as well as OAuth access keys used by third-party applications to manage your Twitter account on your behalf. Security expert Allen Woodward, of the University of Surrey in the UK, told website Gigaom that the easy way to protect your account is to log-in and delete all third-party access to the account. Then by simply reauthorizing those accounts, a new key will be generated and everything will be safe again.

"Personally, I do regular housekeeping where I go into the Apps settings of Twitter and delete the third party apps that have access. The reason is that at present Twitter OAuth tokens once issued do not expire. You have to manually revoke them," said Woodwars. "So, I think best thing one could [do] is to go in and revoke third party's apps rights and then just relogin when/if you want to reaccess Twitter via that app. This way a new token will be issued."

Electronic Arts and DICE announced today the long anticipated Battlefield 4 Premium pack. EA says that this new pack provides an exclusive membership for Battlefield fans and will provide access to all of the scheduled expansion packs to keep the battle raging all year long. This includes the China Rising, Second Assault, Naval Strike, Dragons Teeth, and Final Stand expansion packs.

"Fan reaction to Battlefield 3 Premium has been nothing short of amazing. We are humbled to see more than 4 million people join in," said Patrick Bach, Executive Producer, Battlefield 4. "With Battlefield 4 Premium we continue to roll out the red carpet, treating our fans like VIPs with a massive amount of new gameplay, exclusive new content and even more benefits at an incredible value."

Battlefield 4 Premium membership includes five digital expansion packs featuring new multiplayer maps and in-game content:

This morning, Microsoft officially released the list of games that will be available on launch day for the Xbox One. The list contains 23 titles of some of the biggest series that will debut this fall. The genres range from first-person shooters to RPGs and casual games such as Peggle 2 and Zoo Tycoon. I have listed out all of the "Day One" games below.

Additionally, Microsoft announced that all pre-order versions of the Xbox One in Europe will come bundled with a free FIFA 14 download. I'm sure for some of our friends across the pond, that is incentive enough to preorder their copy of the next-gen console.

What a treat! I get to write two SpaceTT posts in one day! Stargazers across the northern hemisphere are witnessing a rare occurrence happening right before our eyes. A nova in the constellation Delphinus has brightened over the last couple of days to a magnitude 5.0 and has allowed naked eye viewing of the astronomical phenomenon.

In the upper left-hand corner of the image above, you can see Nova Del 2013 appearing as a large star shining brightly in a sea of fainter stars. What you are actually witnessing is a binary star system in which the larger star is having its hydrogen stripped off by the much smaller white dwarf star. As is fresh layer of hydrogen grows thicker and more dense, the lower layers erupt in a runaway hydrogen-fusion reaction. As the reaction takes place, the star grows much hotter and brightens in the night sky.

To get an idea of how large this explosion is, one can simply imagine what a hydrogen bomb the size of the Earth would look like. The nova was discovered on August 14 by astronomer Koichi Itagaki of Yamagata, Japan, around 2PM EDT. It was originally listed as a magnitude 17 in brightness, and has since grown 100,000 times in brightness. The event will most likely only last for a few more days, so if you have clear, dark skies, you might just be able to see it with your naked eye. Tossing in visual aid from binoculars or a telescope will greaten one's chance at observing the nova.

As sales of Windows RT-based devices continue to decline, Dell has announced that it will no longer be selling the standalone version of its XPS 10 tablet. The Windows RT-based device first saw signs of trouble when the company slashed its price to $299 back in May, but that deal is no longer available as users are only able to pick up an XPS 10 in a bundle version that includes a keyboard dock.

This keyboard dock increases the price by more than $179, bringing the total price up to $479.99 for either the 32GB or 64GB model. A version with integrated LTE can be had for $579.99. Industry analysts suspect that Dell has nixed the standalone version in hopes of promoting the XPS 10 as more of a productivity device over a content delivery package.

In my opinion, Windows RT will never catch on as its lack of x86 compatibility is a major drawback for anyone wishing to use the tablet for anything other than simple Office functionality or Internet browsing. With Microsoft writing off $900 million on its Surface RT inventory, this is just another nail in the coffin for Windows RT.

With rumors of a fingerprint scanner on Apple's iPhone 5S debunked, the rumor mill has turned to a new smartphone and leaked photos that are said to be of a fingerprint scanner on HTC's upcoming One Max smartphone. In the image below, you can see what appears a black square below the One Max's camera lens. The photo is quite pixelated, which instantly throws red flags for me.

For now, we will take website ePrice's word and assume that the HTC One Max will indeed feature a fingerprint scanner and assume that this photo is the real deal and that it's not just a black piece of tape. Assuming that it is real, I am left asking the question, "what would we use a fingerprint scanner for?" It may be cool to unlock your phone with your fingerprint or use it for password authentication, but is it really needed in today's smartphones?

Before I close this article out, I really would like to send a request out to all those leaksters out there who provide the world with early photos of unreleased devices. Please take higher quality photos! In the case of this photo, there is a perfectly good HTC One right beside the One Max. As a One owner, I know that the image quality would been far better than what was posted.

Headphone maker Beats by Dre is looking to sever its partnership with smartphone manufacturer HTC in hopes that it will pick up a new investor who can pump new money into the company. The midrange audio accessory manufacturer is said to be planning to buy out HTC as it begins talks with an investor that will provide debt financing and who will take a minority ownership in the company in the coming weeks.

The two companies first partnered up in 2011 when HTC began losing ground to rival Samsung. The partnership was expected to breathe new life into sales of the Asian smartphone manufacturer's products, but the numbers that were predicted never materialized. HTC invested $300 million for a 50 percent stake in the company as well as exclusively of the Beats audio IP used in smartphones.

Earlier this year, HTC sold back 25 percent of its stake to Beats for $150 million but retained the mobile exclusively rights. With a final buyback imminent, sources are saying that HTC will most likely retain those exclusivity rights after the deal is finished. On the bright side, the deal will inject some much-needed cash into HTC's coffers, which could set it up to once again claim the top spot in the mobile market.

Today, LinkedIn announced that it has launched a new Page for Universities feature that allows post-K-12 educational institutions to have their own featured page similar to the pages companies currently have. LinkedIn is hoping that this new feature will better help high school students choose the right university for them.

The program launched today with over 200 universities participating worldwide. Each university's page displays very important metrics such as where the majority of the institution's alumni work and what careers many of its alumni go into. Universities can set up their respective page for its community similar to how pages on Facebook work. They can then assign page managers who can post announcements and updates to the page for anyone that is following. LinkedIn's Christina Allen officially announced the new Pages for Universities in a blog post that I have copied below (source #2).

Every PC in use today has a small piece of hardware built into the chipset that is known as a real-time-clock. This is a piece of hardware that keeps accurate track of time even when the PC is turned off. This little piece of hardware is used by all benchmarking programs to keep an accurate track of time to determine how well a system performs. Unfortunately, Microsoft decided to change things up in the way their software accesses the real-time-clock in Windows 8, and as a result, popular benchmarking results website HWBot has made the decision to ban the operating system from their results.

The issues arise when users attempt to change their clock frequencies in software and not at boot time. By changing the CPU-based clock frequency , the software algorithms that Windows 8 employs to keep track of time are massively skewed, which greatly hinders Windows 8's ability to keep accurate time. YouTube user Massman89 has posted a video that demonstrates this by underclocking the BLCK from 130 MHz to 122MHz. In the video, Windows 8 loses track of time by 18 seconds over a five minute period. If you increase the clock rate by 6 percent, Windows 8 internally gains 18 seconds.

These extra 18 seconds per five minutes means that a benchmark that is set to run for five minutes will actually run for five minutes and 18 seconds, giving the benchmark an extra 18 seconds to render 6 percent more frames or complete 6 percent more floating-point calculations. This skews the benchmark score by around 6 percent. While some may see this as an easily fixable issue, HWBot is taking things quite seriously and has decided to ban Windows 8 results altogether.

As many of us are either gamers or PC enthusiasts, we often overlook the more office / productivity oriented mice and keyboards that are available on the market. Today, Microsoft unveiled two new keyboard and mice combos to its Sculpt line of Ergonomic peripherals. The company designs these new models based on the input from more than 5,300 workers that say they experience discomfort on a daily basis when working with traditional keyboards and mice.

First, we have the boomerang shaped Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop bundle, which features an oddly shaped key layout with a wide split in the middle. Microsoft says this split provides the perfect angle which allows users to rest their hands more naturally on the keyboard. This set also includes a separate wireless number pad and wireless mouse, which has also been redesigned to fit more naturally in the user's hand.

The second offering unveiled today is dubbed the Sculpt Comfort Desktop Bundle and features a more traditional looking keyboard with a curved typing service and flat numerical keypad. A detachable palm rest is present alongside a split spacebar. The mouse included in this set also features a new design that integrates a Windows touch tab that allows users to swipe over this blue button to view or cycle through open applications.

It looks like Google pressed a wrong button on Friday, most likely in the TGIF celebrations, taking down every single service that the Mountain View-based giant has to offer. This obviously includes Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, and every service in between.

According to analytics firm GoSquared, worldwide Internet traffic dropped by a whopping 40% during those hectic 120 seconds, as you can see in the graph, above. Most companies and website owners were scratching their heads for a few minutes, because when Google goes down, it would be like not being able to breathe oxygen for those two minutes - sheer panic. Google came back online two minutes later, to the relief of, well, everyone.

Google should hopefully come out with a report next week, which should stun, and scare thousands across the world.