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Last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced his retirement in an aptly named internal memo titled "Moving Forward." The memo depicts Ballmer leaving the company on his own decision, but many industry analysts are speculating that the sometimes wild CEO was actually being forced out by the company's board.

GigaOm journalist Barb Darrow said in a recent article that "Several former and one current Microsoft execs told me that there was no way Ballmer would step down unless Gates withdrew his long-time support" when this is paired with Ballmer's own statement from the memo "My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our transformation to a devices and services company focused on empowering customers in the activities they value most." It's easy to interpret Ballmer's retirement as a not so voluntary departure.

The article on GigaOm goes on to quote another former vice president who it says is still tightly connected with Microsoft; "Bill must have flipped the bit on Steve," said the VP, adding that the recent reshuffling of most major executive roles--Ballmer's his own--"lined everything up behind Steve."

VMWorld 2013 - Today, Mellanox and LSI announced the results of a collaborative solution they designed to enable greater virtual desktop density per server based on VMware's Horizon View technology. This new low-latency solution is built using a Mellanox 40GbE NICs and the LSI Nytro MegaRAID application acceleration card.

The two devices once paired up create a unique solution that integrates onboard flash capacity with intelligent caching software and hard drive rate management. This gives the customer a new lower cost alternative to traditional storage solutions. Mellanox and LSI say that this solution enables the virtual desktop infrastructure workload to support up to 1500 desktops across 10 vSphere servers with a hardware cost of less than $25,000.

"Providing acceptable response times to virtual desktop users while maximizing the number of desktop sessions per server can be challenging," said Manish Muthal, vice president of product management and strategy, Accelerated Solutions Division, LSI Corporation. "The low-latency LSI Nytro MegaRAID card, combined with Mellanox's 40GbE NICs, delivers an intelligent and cost-effective VDI solution compared to all-flash solutions that can cost upwards of $100K."

Today, Samsung opened up registration for its first major conference, which will be held October 27-29 in San Francisco, California. Samsung DevCon 2013 is aimed at enticing North American developers to focus on creating software for devices made by the Korean electronics powerhouse.

I first covered Samsung's announcement about its Developers Conference 2013 back in July and Samsung has kept pretty quiet about the event until now. Unfortunately, Samsung is still remaining silent on who will speak, what new products it might announce, and what incentives it might offer to developers who attend the event. You can sign up to attend the event at the source listed below, but be prepared to pay $299 for the ticket that will include access to keynotes, sessions, and developer events on the first night of the conference.

Samsung hopes to convince developers that by creating applications for their smart TVs, tablets, smartphones, and other smart devices, they will see a major return on investment. Additionally, Samsung hopes that developers will be convinced to code programs that will run exclusively on its devices over creating apps that will run on all Android devices. I think that's a very hard pill to swallow because even though Samsung has a major portion of the Android market, there are just far too many other Android users out there for developers to overlook.

VMWorld 2013 - Today, Mellanox Technologies teamed up with Micron to announce a collaborative solution that enables higher storage performance and efficiency for virtualized environments running VMware's ESXi 5.1. Consisting of Mellanox's ConnectX-3 40GbE NICs with iSCSI over RDMA (iSER) and Micron's 1.4TB P420m PCIe SSD cards, this new solution takes advantage of the iSER protocol and allows Micron's flash storage to deliver superior performance.

Mellanox and Micron say that this combo, when ran on a single ESXi 5.1 host, can deliver an aggregate bandwidth of 11GB/s or 527,000 IOPS using only two interconnect cards in a 3U box. The companies evaluated the solution on a Supermicro 6037R-TXRF that supports 10 PCIe Gen3 x8 slots with two Mellanox 40GbE RDMA NICs and 8 Micron 1.4TB P420m PCI SSDs.

"Selecting the right interconnect technologies is vital when selecting Flash-based storage in a virtualized infrastructure. The performance benefits of Flash can easily get trapped behind slow interconnects," said Jared Hulbert, SW Research Manager at Micron. "Mellanox's 40GbE with the iSER protocol gives virtualized applications access to higher bandwidth and excellent 4KB random throughput that only Flash can provide."

VMWorld 2013 - Today, Lenovo announced that it has expanded its end-to-end enterprise solutions portfolio with the addition of a new thin client. The Lenovo Think Centre M32 is powered by Intel's Celeron platform and includes rich legacy support that provides enterprise-level functionality while delivering great value to customers who need a desktop virtualization solution.

"The ThinkCentre M32 is a small form factor thin client that adds value to our quality desktop products and helps enterprises meet end-to-end IT solutions for desktop virtualization," said Victor Rios, vice president and general manager of Think desktop, workstation, and visuals. "It has the Energy Star 5.2 green certification, making it great energy saving solution at a great value for virtual desktop environments."

Offered in Linux, LeTOS, or Windows Embedded Standard 7 operating systems, the Lenovo ThinkCentre M32 also features Lenovo's Terminal Manager software that allows IT managers an effective, secure, and easy-to-use management software. Lenovo says that the M32 will be available starting October 2013 and will sell at a price point of approximately $259.

Early Sunday morning, the Chinese government says that it faced what is described as the largest Direct Denial of Service (DDoS) attack that the country has ever seen. The attackers targeted China's Top Level Domain (TLD) .cn and effectively took down all Chinese websites using the .cn TLD.

China's Internet Network Information Center said that the attacks began around 2 AM early Sunday morning and lasted for about two hours with the DDoS attack falling off around 4 AM. The Wall Street Journal spoke with web host CloudFlare about the incident and how it affected Internet traffic. It said that there was a 32 percent drop in traffic across all the Chinese domains hosted on its network during the attack. "It is not necessarily correct to infer that the attacker in this case had a significant amount of technical sophistication or resources," CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince wrote to the Journal. "It may have well have been a single individual."

At the moment, Chinese officials and industry analysts are not sure why the attacks occurred or if there was a specific target they were hoping to take down. With the attacks lasting only two hours, not much damage occurred, but we've seen this sort of thing in the past with short attack serving as a way to test the waters for a much larger future attack. In 2013, China has come under several major cyber attacks but has also led several cyber attack campaigns itself.

Another big rumor for this morning, is that Apple's upcoming iPhone 5S smartphone would run the next-generation A7 processor from Apple. The A7 processor is said to be roughly 31% faster than its predecessor, the A6.

This is according to a tweet by Fox News' Clayton Morris, who says his sources have also mentioned a "separate chip devoted to motion tracking." At the moment, we don't know what this motion tracking chip on the iPhone 5S would be capable of, but it could bring something to the iPhone 5S that matches some of the motion features of Samsung's Galaxy S range of smartphones.

This would make sense, since a profile of Apple's Jony Ive by Bloomberg earlier this year hints at this possibility: "Longer term, Ive also has shown interest in altering how people control their computers. He has met with makers of gesture technology that lets people navigate their gadgets by moving their hands -- without touching the screen, said a personal familiar with those interactions."

It isn't often that I find myself still thinking about a display at a trade show a week later, but the marriage of SMART Storage Systems' Guardian Technology and Diablo's Memory Channel Storage (MCS) displayed at Flash Memory Summit 2013 has the potential to be a game changer that can alter the very shape of the datacenter.

We are very familiar with this display of SMART Storage Systems products; we have actually posted product evaluations for all of the SSDs, and are waiting in tense anticipation for the opportunity to test the new UltraDIMM which resides at the top of the SMART product family in this display.

A close-up of the UltraDIMM reveals that the underlying MCS technology allows NAND to be addressed as a storage volume, but with the unique placement of the NAND into the ultra-fast memory slots. Each DIMM has two SMART controllers to manage two banks of NAND, and a Diablo Technologies controller to aggregate the NAND pools and present them to the memory bus as a single device.

Julian Assange. Bradley Manning. Michael Hastings. Edward Snowden. These are all men who are either dead, stuck in another country, in jail or are in the run because they exposed US government secrets. This is wrong, and the reverse should be happening.

These men should be awarded for exposing the lies from within the biggest government in the world, but instead, they're paying the price for exposing things that the Obama administration promised would be more 'transparent.' Now there's news that the National Security Agency (NSA) hacked into encrypted communications of the United Nations' internal video conferencing system.

The news is coming from Germany's Der Spiegel, a source we used when we were the first mainstream site to report that a German government official considered Microsoft's Xbox One console a "monitoring device." This even landed us on the front page of Reddit, with multitudes of sites reporting on the story afterwards.

We already know that Diablo III has been experimented with on consoles, but it looks like the upcoming expansion for the game, Reaper of Souls, could hit the consoles, too.

Diablo III will be released on consoles on September 3, but there are those who are wondering if the expansion will be released onto consoles, too. During an interview with Polygon, game director Josh Mosquiera teased that this might just happen. He said: "We've got Diablo 3 on PC, we released it and then a small team splintered off to work on Diablo for the current consoles. Now the team's really focused on Reaper of Souls for PC. So if you look at the past, you can probably infer what the future might bring."

One of the biggest releases of the year is nearly upon us: Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V. But, over the last couple of days, there has been some controversy over the open-world title about to break sales records.

Leaks of gameplay and story details made their way to the Internet, all from a file in the European PlayStation Store's digital pre-order download of the game, forcing Sony and Rockstar to both make announcements regarding the leak. PlayStation Social Media Manager, Sid Shuman, said that the pre-order file has since been removed, and has apologized to "Rockstar and GTA fans across the world who were exposed to the spoiler content."

Rockstar also made a statement, on a Rockstar Newswire post, where it was "deeply disappointed by leaks and spoilers being spread in advance of the game's launch. GTA5 represents years of hard work by many people across the world, and we all couldn't be more excited to finally share it with you properly this September 17."

Steve Ballmer, the current CEO of Microsoft, has announced he's stepping down in 2014, but what is his biggest regret as his time as Chief Executive Officer at the biggest software company in the world?

Oh, you guessed it already: Windows Vista. Ballmer spoke with ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, where he said: "I would say probably the thing I regret most is the, what shall I call it, the loopedy-loo that we did that was sort of Longhorn to Vista. I would say that's probably the thing I regret most. And, you know, there are side effects of that when you tie up a big team to do something that doesn't prove out to be as valuable."

But, from the doom and gloom of Windows Vista was one of Microsoft's most successful operating systems: Windows 7. This was while Ballmer was CEO of course, so he can at least give himself credit for something big.

Before the new year rings in, Sony's next-generation console, the PlayStation 4, will have seen 33 titles. These 33 games will be a mix of first- and third-party games, as well as these titles being a mix of physical and digital titles.

What about post-launch? Sony Worldwide Studios' president, Shuhei Yoshida, has said he's confident that the post-launch stall of last-generation consoles won't be repeated and that Sony is pushing for a developer-friendly approach this time around. Yoshida spoke with Polygon during Gamescom, pointing out that the indie community in particular is cranking along well, with a slew of original games and ports that will keep the PS4 library growing.

He said: "We started preparing for the Gamescom press conference after we finished E3, and at that point, we had no idea what we'd be able to announce from these smaller teams. It was only a couple of weeks ago that I was informed by our third party teams that this was the lineup of games we had prepared. I was like, 'Oh! That's amazing."

The Metro series of games has been popular for publisher Deep Silver, who has revealed that they will continue developing more games in the series. Deep Silver recently acquired the rights to Metro from THQ earlier in the year for $5.9 million.

During an interview with Joystiq, Deep Silver CEO, Dr. Klemens Kundratitz said: "I'm very glad we acquired that brand. While it launched in a very dry space in the gaming calendar this year, it still got a lot of attention. Our ambition is to absolutely continue with that brand."

Deep Silver will need to acquire the rights from Dmitry Glukhovsky, who wrote the series of Metro novels, in order to continue with a sequel to Metro: Last Light. Kundratitz said this shouldn't be too hard, as Glukhovsky is a huge fan of the games, and has enjoyed contributing to them. Kundratitz also added: "He has been very positive contributing to the last game. I think he can play an active role for whatever comes in the future."

Can it get any worse? When will the people of the United States realize the Constitution is, and has been worthless for years? This latest news should help boil that kettle a little hotter...

The Guardian, who also broke the NSA PRISM news thanks to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, is now reporting that US-based tech giants such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook all received funds from the NSA so they could meet new certification demands after a ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court.

This was declassified by the Obama administration during the week, but happened back in October of 2011. The document states something that Edward Snowden himself talked about, the Special Source Operations division which he called the "crown jewel" of NSA's PRISM system, and that they relied on "corporate partnerships" with telecommunications companies and ISPs in order to access communications data. Mad yet?

Everyone knows that I am an avid maker of things, and when I see two young students taking ordinary hardware and building extraordinary devices, I feel a special warmness in my heart. Alyssa Dayan and Tom Hartley, a pair of secondary school students, have developed an amazing all-in-one weather station based on the Raspberry Pi.

Dubbed the AirPi, the device was designed as an entry for the PA Consulting Raspberry Pi competition held earlier this year. Contestants had to design something around the Raspberry Pi that "makes the world a better place." The two students say that the AirPi is an open source weather and pollution monitoring system that is capable of recording and streaming data, and it does it all of that for just $90 US.

After some successful research and development, the two students decided to sell the device as a kit on electronics hobbyist fundraising website Tindie. For a mere $90, you get a build-it-yourself kit that features sensors to measure humidity, UV, NO2, CO2, light, temperature, and air pressure. Keeping with the open source mantra, the students have released all of the source code, instructions, and bill of materials needed to build your own. They even released the PCB files and schematics online. Head over to Source #2 for the Tindie campaign to get your own, and to Source #3 for all of the open source files.

The hits just keep coming for Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. Earlier this year, the US Department of Homeland Security had seized $2.9 million from Mt. Gox's Dwolla account, and now reports are coming in that say an additional $2.1 million was seized from the company's Wells Fargo accounts.

That brings the total of the seizures up to $5 million and explains why recent withdrawal attempts from Bitcoin traders failed to process. On June 19, the $2.1 million held in Wells Fargo accounts was seized, which was one day before Mt. Gox suspended all US withdrawals.

The legal issues arose when Mt. Gox opened a Wells Fargo business account for Mutum Sigillum LLC (Mt. Gox's American subsidiary) but declared it as a business not engaged in money services. This was a falsification and the US government does not like it when you falsify financial documents. Head over to Source #2 to read the full seizure warrants.

It's that time again: it's Friday and that means more Science Friday news posts here at TweakTown! Today, a new report straight from NASA says the sun fired off an intense solar storm in the form of a Coronal Mass Ejection, or CME, that was aimed directly at the Earth early Wednesday morning.

The event took place around 1:24 AM EDT and sent billions of tons of charged particles steaming full speed ahead straight at Earth at a rate of 380 miles per second, or 1.3 million miles per hour. The storm is expected to reach the Earth on Saturday, however, do not let that scare you as our atmosphere will effectively block all of the harmful radiation that is headed our way. Those in the extreme north and south of both hemispheres can expect to see some awesome aurora over the next few days.

A statement from NASA confirmed that no one need to fear as this sort of event happens all the time. "These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground," NASA officials explained in a statement. Head over to Source #2 to see an animated GIF of Wednesdays CME taking place.

Moving forward. That's the title of an internal memo that went out to Microsoft employees this morning. While internal memos are nothing special at Microsoft, today's memo was probably the most important one of the decade. Today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced his plans to retire within the next 12 months.

In the memo, he says that there's never a perfect time for this type of transition but right now he feels it is the right time. He goes on to refer to his recent restructuring initiative and says that the time is now right for the company to face the new opportunities and challenges ahead. He mentions that in his time at Microsoft, they have grown from a $7.5 million company to a corporation worth more than $78 billion. He said that when he first started, they employed just over 30 people and now they write paychecks to almost 100,000 individuals.

Ballmer concluded that by saying this is a very emotional event for him and that he knows Microsoft has its best days ahead and that he takes pride in being one of the largest owners of the company. I speak for all of us here at TweakTown when I wish Mr. Ballmer nothing but the best in whatever endeavors the future holds for him. It's kind of sad to see him go, but we look forward to seeing what new leadership may bring to the Redmond, Washington-based computing giant known as Microsoft. I have posted the entire retirement announcement memo below.

Apple is poised to press the all-systems-go button for iTunes Radio, but Pandora is striking its hammer now, with company CFO Mike Herring announcing during Pandora's earnings call yesterday that the company will remove its 40-hour listening limit on mobile devices.

Last we heard they had started a 40-hour listening limit per month because of an increase in royalty rates, but now mobile users can enjoy the same unlimited music streaming goodness that desktop users can enjoy, without the $36 per year charge. Just what accounting magic did Pandora perform to provide mobile listeners with unlimited music, for free? Herring explains: