LG is looking to combat rival Samsung's Galaxy S4 head on with its flagship Optimus G Pro, which features similar hardware included in the Galaxy S4. With some planned software tweaks and a "Value Pack" upgrade, the Optimus G Pro will even more closely resemble the Galaxy S4 in function.

The Value Pack will introduce a "Smart Video" feature which like Samsung's Smart Pause, will pause video when a user's eyes are not focused on the screen. Also included in the upgrade pack is the ability to pause live recording and start it again in the same video file. Users will also be able to use both the front and rear cameras to capture both a photo of the subject and the user at the same time.

Existing Optimus Pro smartphones in the Korean market will begin getting the Value Pack upgrade beginning today, with further roll-out taking place in the coming weeks.

Earlier today we were invited to the GIGABYTE headquarters here in Taipei, Taiwan to get a look at the motherboard maker's brand new pride and joy. No, for once we're not talking about a new motherboard... we're talking about a new lab.

Staff at GIGABYTE had been pushing senior staff at the Taiwanese company to sign off on a new "OC Lab" for its employees to spend their days overclocking and tweaking new GIGABYTE motherboards and video cards. HiCookie, a famous Taiwanese overclocker, joined GIGABYTE some years ago now and I can indeed confirm each time I visited him, he was slowly taking over cubical by cubical, with all of his overclocking hardware and gear. He and others at the company needed such a new place to be free and overclock, till they can overclock no more.

Eventually the bosses at GIGABYTE signed off on the overclocking lab, known simply as the "OC Lab". GIGABYTE invited some local press and overclockers there earlier today, where we christened it with a couple of drinks. It will be the new home for HiCookie when he moves into the OC Lab next week - he would have been in there by now if it were not for IDF Beijing, which he just returned from.

Nokia seems to be one of the few brands taking the time to update older mobile hardware. Microsoft's updates are sporadic at best and non-existent at worst. However, Nokia is taking care of the issue by releasing updated firmware for its popular Lumia 920, 820, and 620 devices.

The updates, said to be rolling out over the coming weeks, is already available on some users' devices. It brings various improvements, which are listed on the Lumia 920 support page:

The 820 and 620 are also getting the improvements listed above. The 620 is also gaining the following improvements:

We reported the bad numbers of PC shipments in Q1 earlier today, and since then Microsoft stocks have dropped by around 4.4% to $28.93 at the time of writing. Not only that, but other technology stocks have dropped, too.

Dell, HP and Intel were down in stock prices riding the news of Q1 shipment numbers. Research firm IDC had partly blamed Windows 8 for the drop in PC sales, noting that HP's shipments declined 24% year-over-year, backed up by Dell's numbers which dropped 11%. Now several Wall Street analysts have downgraded Microsoft stock, so I'm sure we'll see it tumble more in the coming days and weeks.

Today, NVIDIA is hosting its investor day at which CEO Jen-Hsun Huang showed off graphics produced with its next-generation mobile GPU. The new GPU is currently known as Kepler Mobile and Huang said that NVIDIA made a huge investment to take its high-end Kepler products and shrink them down for use in mobile devices.

The interesting benefits of this is that smartphones and tablets could soon be able to play games that utilize DirectX 11. "We want to get multiple years ahead of the competition. It was worth the sacrifice," Huang said.

To show what Kepler Mobile is capable of, Huang demoed Kepler Mobile playing Battlefield 3. The future of tablet gaming looks bright indeed.

Google has introduced a new tool that Facebook and other sites with lots of personal information should take note of. Called Inactive Account Manager, the new tool allows you to decide what to do with your data after your death or inability to access Google's services.

Like the name implies, the tool keeps track of how long it has been since you last logged in to a Google service. Once it passes a certain threshold set by each user, Google will either delete the data, allow someone else to access it, or something else. Before the inactive period time is up, Google will warn you with a text message and e-mail.

Intel has detailed overclocking the new Haswell architecture at IDF Beijing and not much has changed from overclocking Ivy Bridge. One major difference between Ivy Bridge and the upcoming Haswell architecture is that Haswell features just one voltage input that can be as high as 3.04v. Ivy Bridge had numerous different voltage inputs that were controlled externally.

The one new rule of thumb for overclocking Haswell is that the input voltage (VCCIN) needs to be at least 400mV higher than the core voltage (VCORE). This yields VCCIN >= VCORE + 400mV.

Other changes include an increased max multiplier--80x vs 63x--though this doesn't mean Haswell will be able to achieve 8Ghz. Intel has also included BCLK ratios that are present on the X79 platform.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently offered $100,000 to anyone who could improve the condom. While many of us snickered at the idea, some people are taking the challenge very seriously, and are creating some truly innovating concepts.

Many of us are familiar with the Slingshot Channel on YouTube where Joerg Sprave builds some monster sized, rubber band powered, projectile firing weapons of mass destruction slingshots. When he heard about Bill Gate's call to action, he did the only natural thing any self-respecting slingshot maker would do, he made a condom firing slingshot.

In the video above, Joerg Sprave shows off a slingshot-esque "Condom Gun", which looks to be as painful, as you were just imagining. The device works by "cocking" a sliding condom application apparatus. The gun is then placed in position, the trigger is pulled, and the condom is applied in the blink of an eye with a loud thud.

I'm a huge fan of high-resolution displays, and simply cannot wait for 4K to arrive just that little bit cheaper - I really want 4K 120Hz-capable displays - I'm dreaming, I know. But it looks like Apple could be pushing forward with 4K, refreshing iMacs, Cinema Displays and MacBook Pros with the high-resolution goodness.

Rumor has it Apple is moving toward 4K thanks to the new Intel Thunderbolt release, which the chipmaker showed off during a demo called "Thunderbolt Technology Update". This is basically the second-generation Thunderbolt technology, which is capable of pushing "4K video file transfer and display simultaneously". Marco Armanet, co-founder of Tumblr and founder of Instapaper, has said on his blog:

We heard Microsoft's Adam Orth talking about the always-on debacle that is sure to light up Internet messageboards and social networks across the world in the coming months and years, but it looks like the Microsoft creative director is no longer working with Microsoft.

A close source of Orth has told Kotaku that he resigned from the company, and wasn't fired. Microsoft were asked to confirm the news, with a spokesperson for the company responding with "we do not comment on private personnel matters". Microsoft did apologize because of Orth's comments, hours after his rant on Twitter.

One would gather that all of the publicity he received from the Internet has caused the former MS creative director to resign from his position. I'm sure he'll talk about it soon enough.

The local arm of Disney has announced the multi-tiered home video release of 2012 CG animated flick Wreck-It Ralph for the 24th April, available on DVD, Blu-ray double play (with DVD) and 3D release featuring the 3D and 2D versions on two discs, along with a DVD.

Wreck-It Ralph, utilizing the voices of John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman was released to both critical and financial acclaim and features cameos from video gaming history's most beloved characters such as Sonic The Hedgehog, Bowser, Zangief and Q*bert.

Both Blu-ray releases feature a number of worthwhile additional features, such as behind the scenes featurettes, faux video game commercials, and the Disney short Paperman which appeared before the theatrical release. On the 3D release, the short is also featured in 3D.

The developer behind the PlayStation 3-exclusive game Heavy Rain, is hiring staff for some upcoming multiplayer title(s). A job listing spotted by Kotaku states that the developer is looking for a "creative lead online programmer with a passion for online gaming in order to be with us for our future AAA projects."

Quantic Dream says they're looking for an experienced programmer with a "strong understanding of the multiplayer genre". Up until now, Quantic Dream's games have been single-player experiences, driven heavily by their story. Next-gen consoles might help all of this, where we might see some multiplayer elements.

The thing is, Quantic Dream are no normal developer - they don't just release a game, they invest so much time into the details within the game world, that this multiplayer news should excite all gamers. Multiplayer within a Quantic Dream game could see gamers playing characters, within the single-player world. What if it was your job to play a detective, and you could lie or tell the truth, kill the main character or not, and have multiple choices through an open-world game?

With no real competition in the server/workstation space, Intel aren't just rushing out their 2013 update to their Xeon platform of processors. Toward the end of this year, we should expect the Ivy Bridge-based Xeon E5 and E7 processors, while the Xeon Phi MIC/co-processor/accelerator gets segmented into more SKUs and thanks to a new stepping, we're seeing clock speeds pushed from 1.1GHz to 1.238GHz with nearly the same TDP and form factor.

What we will see when the new Xeon processors arrive, is a 12-core part with 30MB of cache and quad-channel DDR3-1866 server memory paths per socket with clock speeds pushing 3GHz and Turbo Boost to boot. Power consumption on these insane 12-core processors should see a helping hand from its 22nm FinFet '3D transistor' process.

Toward the end of the year, we should expect the E5-4600 v2 series, which is the same as the above solution, but 4-socket-enabled where the dual QPI links make a square interconnection layout between the CPU. At around the same time, we should see the 15-core IVB-EX enterprise Xeon processors - the E7-4800 v2 and 8800 v2 - which will replace the Westmere-EX processors we have had for the past couple of years now.

OCZ has confirmed the existence of a new solid state drive, believed to be the Vertex 5. Current estimates place the launch as occurring sometime next month, though OCZ would not confirm naming or launch window. They did say that it features an updated Barefoot 3 controller and 20-nanometer NAND flash.

The Vector SSD is currently OCZ's fastest SSD and is based off of the Barefoot 3 platform. It's possible that the next solid state drive could be called something like Vector 2, but Vertex 5 makes more sense. Earlier this year, OCZ updated the Vertex 3 to use 20nm NAND flash and called it the Vertex 3.2. All other features remained the same.

Last year, OCZ had some financial troubles that resulted in mass layoffs and discontinuation of numerous product lines.

It seems that at least once a month for the past several years, the Pirate Bay has had to make moves to evade action taken against it in order to keep the ship afloat. This time the popular torrent tracking site has had to switch up its top level domain.

The change comes in the wake of Swedish authorities announcing that they will seize the current domain, thepiratebay.se. This is not the first time similar actions have been taken, with the site previously being located on the .org TLD back in 2011.

This move not only creates a dilemma for Swedish authorities, but it completely messes up all of the pending DMCA take down notices that have been filed with Google recently. Since the domain name has changed, every request that has not been executed will have to be resubmitted to Google.

If you've been looking to build yourself a NAS (network attached storage) system, then you might want to stop by Giada's new motherboard, the Giada N70E-DR. The motherboard packs an integrated Celeron C1007U processor, which chews on just 17W of power.

The motherboard can handle native RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 with data security protection and some high-performance Intel 82583V gigabit ethernet ports for some great networking speed and reliability. Also included are some smart hardware monitoring and management capabilities, which allows customers to keep a check on the health of their system.

There are six SATA ports, with two of them being of the SATA 3.0 standard. Two USB 3.0 ports are featured on the Giada N70E-DR for some speedy external connectivity. There's one DDR3 DIMM slot, and a PCI-Express x16 port for some speedy graphics if that's what you want your NAS to be capable of.

Batman: Arkham Asylum and its sequel, Arkham City, have been some of the most memorable, and most successful games of this generation. These games were developed by Rocksteady Studios - but there has now been a third game in the series announced today, Batman: Arkham Origins.

Batman: Arkham Origins will be released for the PC, PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360 - with no mention of next-generation consoles. It is being put together by WB Games Montreal, and has the game world of Origins set years before the events of the previous Arkham games. Players take control of a younger Batman, who meets many of the series' iconic characters for the very first time.

From my perspective, it looks like Warner Bros. are pulling an Activision here, with their Call of Duty series. Back in its hey day (I guess it's still there, isn't it?) it was being pushed between Infinity Ward and Treyarch - the former releasing the best COD titles, the latter selling the lesser quality titles. It made lots of money for Activision, but the entire series has been run into the ground (again, in my opinion).

Google has announced that there are now seven new countries that Google Play Music has extended into: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Ireland, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Portugal. This now allows users to buy music through the Google Play Store on both the web or their Android device, as well as the cloud associated with their Google account which will hold 20,000 songs for a user.

The streaming service is made available to 10 devices at a time, with the settings allowing a user to tune the authorization and deauthorization of devices. You can check it out by downloading Google Play Music from the Google Play Store.

If you're like me, you've been waiting patiently for Neill Blomkamp's second movie, Elysium. His first movie, District 9, was a smash hit, and now the director is ready to launch his second movie which is due out in August.

It also stars District 9 actor Sharlto Copley, with Jodie Foster playing a government official. The trailer above doesn't show you too much, but what it does show you is enough to impress, that's for sure. Elysium is set in the year 2159, where two classes of people that exist, the extremely wealthy (today's equivalent of the 1%) who live on a perfect, man-made space station called Elysium. The rest? They live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth.

The full synopsis, is below:

It was only at the unveiling of Sony's PlayStation 4 that third-party developers discovered there was 8GB of GDDR5 RAM inside of the machine, as they were told that the PS4 would only come with 4GB of GDDR5 previously.

These developers even received development kits before the PS4 was announced, and were still not aware of the bump in RAM until the PS4 reveal. Just Add Water's CEO, Stewart Gilray, spoke with VideoGamer.com, teasing that they're working on a mystery title for the PS4, said that third-party developers were told that the PS4 would feature just 4GB of RAM, but were very surprised when the PS4 system lead architect, Mark Cerny, announced the 8GB of RAM cranking along inside of the PlayStation 4.

Gilray told VideoGamer.com: