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Many of you will remember when Samsung launched its V-NAND 3D NAND product back in August. Samsung has said that 3D NAND is the future of storage and it fundamentally changes the way NAND flash is manufactured. As with any cutting edge technology, wrapping our head around how this new NAND flash works is a little tough.

Fortunately, our friend Jim Handy of Objective Analysis has taken it upon himself to educate the world on what 3D NAND is, why it is needed, and how it is made. Handy has started a new series on his personal blog, The Memory Guy, that will span over 9 weeks and will educate us on everything 3D NAND. Handy has posted an overview of the series and we highly encourage you to head over to his blog and check it out!

Early this morning, Samsung announced its fifth generation of green memory solutions that greatly reduce energy consumption and save customers money. The unveiling came at the company's Memory Solutions Forum that is being held today in Seoul Korea and were presented under the theme of a "New Memory Paradigm."

"With the introduction of these innovative memory solutions that maximize IT investment efficiency, we have set the stage for sharply strengthening the value of advanced memory," Executive VP of Sales, Young-Hyun Jun, said in his keynote. "We will continue to benefit society with the introduction of green IT technology in cooperation with our global partners to lead the global IT industry in creating greater shared value for customers."

Samsung says that the new memory solutions are optimized for the next-generation of data centers which feature cloud computing that is based around big data. Samsung offered three new green solutions to the market including DDR4, PCIe SSDs and a combo of the two technologies. These solutions have been designed to achieve dramatic improvements in performance and energy savings over existing IT technology.

During IDF back in September, Intel announced its new 14nm Broadwell processor and said that we should see it begin to ship to OEMs sometime around the end of 2013. Unfortunately, that will not be the case. During the company's quarterly earnings call, Intel said that Broadwell has been delayed until the first quarter of 2014.

The delay is due to a recent issue with defect density in the silicon wafers that were being produced. Intel says that this issue has been fixed and yield levels are back up to an acceptable number. Some analyst speculated that the delay was actually due to an excess of Ivy Bridge inventory to which CEO Brian Krzanich replied "absolutely not." From the beginning, Broadwell has been expected to go retail in 2014, and a setback of three months is not that big of a deal.

A transcript of Krzanich comment on the matter is below:

One of the most anticipated games of this year, Watch Dogs, has been delayed until spring of 2014. Ubisoft announced in the last 24 hours that its open-world title will not be launching this year, citing that it wanted more development time.

Ubisoft said "Our ambition from the start with Watch Dogs has been to deliver something that embodies what we wanted to see in the next-generation of gaming. It is with this in mind that we've made the tough decision to delay the release until spring 2014. We know a lot of you are probably wondering: Why now? We struggled with whether we would delay the game. But from the beginning, we have adopted the attitude that we will not compromise on quality. As we got closer to release, as all the pieces of the puzzle were falling into place in our last push before completion, it became clear to us that we needed to take the extra time to polish and fine tune each detail so we can deliver a truly memorable and exceptional experience."

It's disappointing that Watch Dogs has been delayed, but let's hope that the increased development time gives us an even better game. It might give Ubisoft more time with the next-gen titles to squeeze some more performance and increased graphics, which will filter over to the PC so we all benefit.

Today Cooler Master announced the all new HAF Stacker series of PC chassis, and to kick things off the company released three new PC cases that are connectable and configurable. The HAF 915F and 915R are both mini-ITX cases that support extra long GPUs and even water cooling. The HAF 935 is a full-tower chassis that is stackable with the 915 cases and supports the latest extreme performance hardware.

The HAF Stacker series is anchored by the HAF 925 which is your typical full-tower HAF case from Cooler Master. The chassis features all the standard features we have come to expect from the HAF line, but what makes this case unique is its ability to be stacked on top of, and/or have other cases stacked on top of it. This is accomplished by Cooler Masters new patent pending rail system that is said to be inspired by the accessory rail found on many military rifles.

HAF 915F

Many cellular customers around the country are currently on voice and data plans that are no longer offered by their carriers. This type of plan is known as a "grandfathered" plan, meaning that the contract was signed before changes were made, and perpetuated by both the customer and the carrier for years since the plan was stopped being offered.

Often times, these plans are costly to a cellular company's business model, and it appears that T-Mobile is looking to dump them as fast as possible. Today T-Mobile has confirmed that it will be laying to rest all plans that are considered to be "grandfathered in." A spokesperson for the company told Engadget that customers affected by the closure of legacy plans will be offered new plans with similar or even better features at the nearly the same pricing point.

T-Mobile's full statement can be read below:

During the GPU14 event in Hawaii a few weeks back, AMD touted its new Mantle API as being the great unifier between consoles and PCs and would allow more pc games to see "console like performance and optimization." This really struck a nerve with many PC gamers as they feel that the consoles should catch up to the faster PC gaming market rather than the PC being dumbed down to console levels.

Many of us in the industry assumed that this meant that Sony and Microsoft would be using the Mantle API to power its consoles which run AMD APU processors. Unfortunately that does not appear to be the case. In a recent blogpost, Microsoft said that its upcoming Xbox One console will not run AMD's Mantle API, but would feature the company's own Direct 3D 11.2 API. Additionally, AMD has also pointed out that Mantle will actually be exclusive to the PC.

VMworlds 2013 - LSI announced today that its Nytro XD Application Acceleration Solution now features integrated support for VMware Software. The combined solution utilizes a PCIe flash card with intelligent, host-based caching software that has been designed specifically for virtualized environments.

"With a relatively small investment in PCIe flash storage, the Nytro XD solution delivers an incredibly cost-effective method for improving application performance and VM density for existing storage infrastructures," said Robin Wagner, senior director of marketing, Datacenter Solutions Group, LSI. "For key applications such as databases and virtual desktops, the ability to intelligently cache hot data in low-latency PCIe flash storage accelerates access to data and helps enable faster boot times and greater business productivity."

The Nytro XD solution customer benefits include:

Today Jeri Ellsworth released a new video on her YouTube channel that gave us a look into what has been going on in her world since she was let go from Valve. Jeri says she has been working on a project that was started about two years ago when she was recruited by Valve to develop an all new way to play video games using augmented reality and virtual reality.

To summarize a long story, Jeri stumbled across a neat effect using special image projection glasses and a sheet of retro reflective material. When combined, the two pieces of technology created a beautiful holographic gaming experience that does not cause headaches from eye strain. Jeri said that she had a hard time selling the new discovery to Valve as they did not see how this could fit into the types of games they were developing.

Jeri teamed up with a developer at Valve named Rick Johnson who began developing games for the system in his spare time after hours at Valve. Jeri continued working on the headset and managed to shrink it down drastically and at the same time, she developed a "magic wand" that was used to control characters on the gaming surface. The gaming system became popular and Jeri says that Valve employees would stop by her office at the end of the day and spend hours playing games on the system.

2013 has not been kind to the SSD manufacturer OCZ, and it appears that is just what some companies were holding out for. Sources have told TweakTown that electronics giant Toshiba is taking a serious look at buying the floundering companies consumer storage division.

This could land Toshiba some very valuable technology that it would not have to license which could be very lucrative for the company. As for OCZ, this could be its saving grace, as the company continue to spiral downward towards a hard rock bottom. As soon as I saw this rumor come in, I messaged our Senior Storage Editor, Chris Ramseyer for his thoughts. "If the report is accurate this is a win-win for everybody. Toshiba will gain a controller to go with its flash and OCZ will escape from the low margin consumer market it created," Ramseyer Said. "OCZ CEO Ralph Schmitt recently stated that OCZ had issues in 2013 securing flash in large volumes. Toshiba 19nm NAND flash has been proven superior to IMFT 20nm flash yet most of OCZ's recent products shipped with IMFT 20nm flash due to Toshiba 19nm shortages."

Honestly, I have to agree with him, and I have not seen anything exciting come out of OCZ on the consumer side of things in many months now, and I feel that Toshiba could take the IP from OCZ and create a new product that would greatly improve its Laptop, Tablet, and PC business. If the deal also comes with a NAND flash deal for OCZ it would work out well for the company.

During a recent interview, DICE's Director, Lars Gustavsson alluded to the company officially supporting Linux with a port of the new Frostbite Engine 3. He said that all it will take is for a single killer game (such as Battlefield 4) to be ported to the free OS and the platform would become as popular for gaming as Windows.

Gustavsson says that DICE wants to create the "Halo" of Linux, referencing the Bungie title that made the Xbox a success overnight. He said that the company will port Frostbite 3 over to Linux and that means that we could see games like Battlefield 4, and other big name titles coming to Linux machines everywhere. A big factor in this will be Valve's SteamOS which has support from AMD and NVIDIA and is needed to get the high-end graphics support needed on Linux.

After weeks of build-up, leaks, and speculation, HTC this morning announced the launch of the HTC One MAX. The One Max is the Phablet version of the HTC One, and does not sacrifice power for a larger screen unlike many of the phablets on the market today. HTC has also kept to their word, and retained the aluminum unibody chassis its flagship One is so famous for.

The new HTC One MAX features a 5.9-inch full 1920x1080-pixel display which is quite impressive as many phablets on the market today do not even boast a true 720p resolution. HTC also managed to retain the quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor which is featured in the smaller HTC One. 2GB of RAM is on hand to keep everything nice and smooth while onboard storage in 16GB and 32GB configurations is present. Unlike its little brother, a microSD port is featured and can support cards up to 32GB. This gives the One MAX a total storage capacity of 64GB.

"The addition of the HTC One max means that we now have an HTC One phone for everyone. The family has been built on quality and game-changing innovations and the HTC One max is certainly no exception," said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. "The upgrade to HTC Sense 5.5 will provide our most amazing mobile experience yet, with the HTC One max delivering the size and power required to do everything you want, and more, without compromise."

Following the announcement earlier this year that Sony Pictures has picked up the rights for the debut Angry Birds feature film, comes the announcement of the Australian Blu-ray release of the first volume of Angry Birds Toons, previously accessible through the Angry Birds app, or on pay TV.

Whilst Sony Pictures Australia have not detailed the discs specifications, look for the set to feature the first 26 episodes with 1080p vision, along with behind the scenes featurettes, an art gallery and a special Christmas themed episode. Look for the first volume to hit Blu-ray shelves on December 5th.

Rovio's franchise continues to go from strength to strength and has truly taken the world by storm, including much publicized tie-ins with established franchises, including Star Wars and tons of merchandising taking over stores.

Linux is definitely getting into the headlines more lately, with the huge push that Valve is making with SteamOS but now we have DICE's Creative Director, Lars Gustavsson saying that DICE would love to get into Linux.

During an interview with Polygon, Gustavsson said "We strongly want to get into Linux for a reason. It took Halo for the first Xbox to kick off and go crazy - usually, it takes one killer app or game and then people are more than willing [to adopt it] - it is not hard to get your hands on Linux, for example, it only takes one game that motivates you to go there."

He added "I think, even then, customers are getting more and more convenient, so you really need to convince them how can they marry it into their daily lives and make an integral part of their lives," he explained, sharing that the studio has used Linux servers because it was a "superior operating system to do so."

It looks like the NSA's latest data center based in Utah is having all sorts of issues, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that it has seen 10 meltdowns happen in the last 13 months alone thanks to electrical surges.

This means that the NSA is using so much power trying to keep track on every human being on Earth that it is killing its data centers. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars in hardware has been killed, not to count the amount of man hours that would be pumped into the data center to try and fix things.

The WSJ somehow got its hands on a project documents that detail the issues the NSA is facing at its Utah data center, with arc fault failures being the core issues. An official who spoke with the WSJ described it as "a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box" that caused huge explosions, melting metal and outright destroying circuits inside the data center.

Lenovo has confirmed it is working on expanding its range of Android-powered devices, starting with the Lenovo IdeaPad A10. There had been some speculation that the IdeaPad A10 had been cancelled, but Lenovo has said "the product has not been canceled, it will be going out to the market."

There aren't many details on the IdeaPad A10, but we should expect a budget-based machine, with a 10-inch touch-capable screen, with a "HD" resolution, a quad-core Rockchip A9 processor at 1.6GHz, up to 32GB of storage, and up to 2GB of RAM.

The Lenovo IdeaPad A10 will also reportedly sport a trackpad for mouse support, a front-facing camera, and an SD card slot. We should also be greeted with USB ports (both normal sized, and microUSB), HDMI, and a 3.5mm jack.

Windows users will remember their fair share of BSoD's (Blue Screen of Death) over the years, but those days are mostly behind us thanks to Windows 7, and up. But, it looks like some iPhone 5S users are experiencing their own BSoD screens.

The BSoD isn't what it used to be in the early Windows NT days, where it usually resulted in the installation of a bad driver, but it looks like those who are installing the free iWork apps, then trying to multi-task, a BSoD appears briefly before it restarts. Some iPhone 5S users are also reporting that they're experiencing random reboots, too.

Apple's latest iOS 7.0.2 doesn't address the BSoD or random reboot errors, but it does appear to fix up the security holes found in the lockscreen, thankfully.

Following in Google's footsteps, Apple is looking to gain from BlackBerry's ongoing demise. Unlike Google who opened up an engineering hub just down the road from BlackBerry, Apple is looking to poach employees from the failing company via LinkedIn.

Just days after BlackBerry announced that it would be laying off more than 4500 employees, Apple began sending out invitations via LinkedIn to a recruitment event that was being held just 15-minutes down the road from BlackBerry headquarters. Normally, poaching employees is frowned upon, but with BlackBerry now resuming talks of being split up and sold off, I am sure that these engineers see these acts from Google and Apple as a blessing.

The entire invitation read as follows:

NVIDIA has its own GeForce Experience software suite, which tweaks your PC and in-game settings to provide you with a 'better' gaming experience, and now the Red Team has announced its own software: Gaming Evolved Control Center, which is still in beta.

AMD teamed up with Rapr to maek the suite, which offers tools for chat, taking screenshots, and tweaking in-game settings for better performance. Gaming Evolved is heavily spun with Rapr's community data, which determines the best configuration for your PC and games. Rapt's rewards system is mixed in, offering beta access to certain games and free DLC for using the service, which is a nice bonus.

Through AMD's new software, you can stream directly to Twitch, with the added ability of simultaneously watching someone else's broadcast while you're blasting around in another game. AMD says that its new software is designed to "make PC gaming as simple to use as consoles" but I disagree. PC gaming is not meant to be "simple," as it takes away the major difference between consoles and PCs.

Valve have teased us quite a bit in the last couple of weeks with its unveiling of the Steam Box, Steam OS and Steam Machines, with the latter being announced with NVIDIA GPUs.

Most thought that the Steam Machines would run AMD GPUs too - like myself - but this wasn't full confirmed, leaving many to believe that maybe, just maybe, NVIDIA had secured a very tight contract with Valve. The Half-Life developer has come out and confirmed that the Steam Machines would indeed support the three primary graphics vendors today.

Valve spokesperson, Doug Lombardi, said: "Last week, we posted some technical specs of our first wave of Steam Machine prototypes. Although the graphics hardware that we've selected for the first wave of prototypes is a variety of NVIDIA cards, that is not an indication that Steam Machines are NVIDIA-only. In 2014, there will be Steam Machines commercially available with graphics hardware made by AMD, NVIDIA, and Intel. Valve has worked closely together with all three of these companies on optimizing their hardware for SteamOS, and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future."