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According to a new study, the world's GPS system is open to hackers who could hack virtually any and all GPS units and take control of commercial airliners, for example.

The tools required are simple: a laptop, a small antenna, and an electronic GPS "spoofer" which would cost $3,000. The report comes from GPS expert Todd Humphreys and his team at the University of Texas who took control of a sophisticated navigation system that was built into an $80 million, 210-foot super-yacht in the Mediterranean Sea.

Humphreys told Fox News: "We injected our spoofing signals into its GPS antennas and we're basically able to control its navigation system with our spoofing signals." The team hacked into the yacht's navigation system by sending it counterfeit radio signals and were able to navigate the ship off course, steering it in any direction they wanted.

I'm only 30, but when I was in school we were still using pen and paper, and were barely enjoying Internet as we were one of the first high schools in my state to receive brand new Windows 95 PCs and we had dual 128k ISDN, which was amazing at the time.

Now news has broken out that the Los Angeles school board have signed a $30 million agreement with Apple that will see an iPad in the hands of each student in the Los Angeles Unified School District. CiteWorld have reported that the program will launch this fall, with 31,000 iPads being delivered to the district.

By 2014, this program will have expanded out to see 640,000 tablets delivered to all students in the district. The iPads that students will receive will have educational applications and other apps installed designed to help students with their studies. The program hopes to prepare students for the real-world by exposing them to technology that might not be available at home.

The refreshed Nexus 7 has barely even been released yet, but there's already updates being pushed out to the 7-inch slate.

The first update will start beaming to your device as soon as you connect to Wi-Fi for the first time, which is usually done during the setup process. The tablet will shut down, boot into recovery, apply the update which brings the slate up to build number JWR66N, and then brings the user back to the setup screen to resume signing into a Google account.

The second update is downloaded in the background, which then sends a notification for the update into the notification tray. Once the user accepts the update, it is applied and a new build number of JSS15J is applied. Both updates are minor, featuring some fine-tuning and last-minute bug fixes. All in all, the Nexus 7 is looking like the tablet to buy right now, it's even easy to repair, too.

Before next-gen consoles are here, and they usher in a kind-of-1080p gaming experience for us, 4K (or Ultra HD) was announced. We've seen a few sites play around with 4K gaming, but how do three 4K displays handle a game? What kind of insane rig do you need for this?

Well, Microsoft have done it, where they've slapped three Ultra HD-capable Sharp PN-K321 displays with the help of AMD and ASUS with three ASUS DirectCU II 7970s to show off some insane Ultra HD gaming. Dirt 3 was chosen as the game for its wide panoramic effect, with a single ASUS DirectCU II 7970 capable of pushing out 35 FPS, oh, at 11520x2160.

Yes, 11520x2160... I'll let that sink in for a minute.

The second-generation Nexus 7 was unveiled a few days ago, but iFixit have gotten their grubby mits on it and torn it apart as they always do. Their complete teardown can be viewed here.

The refreshed Nexus 7 scored 7/10 for repairability, which is great. Entry into the refreshed Nexus 7 seems easy enough, as it only requires a plastic opening tool, but it might take a while for you to feel the back off of the 7-inch slate. Inside the tablet is a large battery, and an inductive charging coil.

If you want to continue tumbling down the refreshed Nexus 7 rabbit hole, you'll find out that all fasteners are actually just Phillips screws. Nearly all tablet users wouldn't ever have to dive that deep into their tablet, as it would get quite complicated to fix and is easier to send it back in to Google to get fixed.

We all know that Microsoft's mobile OS, Windows Phone, isn't doing that well against the current champions found in iOS and Android. But when your strongest partner, Nokia, starts talking smack about your mobile OS, you should stand up and listen.

Nokia's Vice President, Bryan Biniak, spoke with IB Times UK on Friday, where he said that Microsoft haven't done enough to push their mobile OS against iOS and Android. Biniak added: "To give you a reason to switch. I need to make sure the apps that you care about on your device are not only on our phones, but are better. I also need to provide you unique experiences you can't get on other devices".

Biniak finished with: "We are releasing new devices frequently and for every new device, if there is an app that somebody cares about that's not there that's a missed opportunity of a sale. We are trying to evolve the cultural thinking [at Microsoft] to say 'time is of the essence.' Waiting until the end of your fiscal year when you need to close your targets, doesn't do us any good when I have phones to sell today."

When Google first announced Chromecast, I instantly knew it was going to be big. The $35 media streaming dongle has become an instant hit among technophiles everywhere in the US. When originally launched, Google offered the device for $35 and included three months of Netflix for free, which essentially made the device cost a total of $11 if you are already a Netflix subscriber.

Today, we found out that device has sold out on every online outlet it was being offered at. In just 36 hours, so many units were sold on the Google Play Store that shipping times were eventually listed as 6 to 8 weeks. Amazon and Best Buy's online store have both sold out, but Best Buy says that they still have some units available in-store.

I placed my order for the Chromecast just an hour or so after it was announced and selected two-day shipping, but Google has still not sent any shipping info to me, so tonight I'm going to head to my local Best Buy and see if they have any units in stock so I can bring all of you readers a wonderful review the first of next week.

Apparently, Intel does not like its customers overclocking their new Haswell chips on non-Z87-equipped motherboards. Several of the large motherboard manufacturers have released workarounds that allow their customers to overclock their Haswell processors on motherboards that did not feature a Z87 chipset.

Unfortunately, those workarounds will only function for just a little bit longer as Intel prepares a microcode update that will firmly lock overclocking abilities to only the Z87 hardware. The update appears to be scheduled for this coming week and it's not clear yet on how the update will be pushed to your system. Intel has also not released word on if the microcode update has already been implemented on new retail processors, but we're sure that they will begin pushing it to them soon.

It has been several months since I have made a Science Friday post here at TweakTown and I have been wanting to bring it back. So many of you have mentioned how much you enjoyed them, so I am going to attempt to make 1-2 science related posts every Friday. Today, NASA released a breathtaking image of Comet ISON taken with the Hubble Space Telescope back on April 30. The image shows ISON streaking through our solar system with many stars and faint galaxies in the background.

The image is comprised of five photos that the researchers at NASA stitched together to form such a wide field of view. "The result is part science, part art," Josh Sokol of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., which operates Hubble, wrote in a blog post last week. "It's a simulation of what our eyes, with their ability to dynamically adjust to brighter and fainter objects, would see if we could look up at the heavens with the resolution of Hubble."

Comet ISON, is a sungrazing comet discovered on September 21, 2012, by Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok. The discovery was made using a 0.4 meter--16 in--reflecting telescope. As the comet warms as it moves closer to the sun, its rate of sublimation (a process similar to evaporation in which solid matter transitions directly into gas) will increase. The comet will get brighter and its tail will grow longer. The comet is predicted to reach naked-eye visibility in November.

Today, Apacer introduced us to some new RAM that they say will "once again bring overclocking techniques to a new level." The new ARES DDR3-3000 series is the same APACER RAM that broke records at Computex Taipei 2013 with a pair of modules reaching 3225MHz. The series includes 2800MHz, 2933MHz, and 3000MHz modules that are available in two different capacity packages. A 2x4GB and a 2x8GB kit are available to bring extreme overclocking to extreme players.

Apacer says that every module of ARES RAM has been thoroughly checked to ensure that they conform to the highest standards. The ARES series features an 8-layer PCB that was specifically designed for overclocking efficiency and to provide better noise and interference reduction which can otherwise prevent world class overclocks from happening.

T-Mobile USA announced today that it is updating its popular Un-Carrier strategy tomorrow to now offer all devices for $0 down. This means that customers can now upgrade their smartphones for free without signing a contract and just pay a monthly payment on the phone for 24 months. For example, you could upgrade to a new Samsung Galaxy S4 tomorrow for $0 down and just pay $25 per month over the next 24 months. That works out to $600 for the phone with 0% APR.

"The number of reasons not to switch to T-Mobile this summer is ZERO," said John Legere, president and chief executive officer, T-Mobile US. "This is a fantastic offer and we're making it easier than ever for customers to get the latest amazing devices. Adding Zero Down in addition to JUMP!, and Simple Choice with no contract is all about making wireless work for consumers and shaking up this industry."

From the release by T-Mobile:

Chromecast may just be the kick in the pants that Google TV needs. According to one employee, Google will be providing Google TV support for Chromecast. With all the talk of a new Google TV set-top box being readied for launch, this could mean that you would be able to plug your Chromecast into this new box, or it could mean that Google is bringing a Google TV app to Chromecast.

Warren Rehman, an employee of Google said that "Google TV isn't dead" and went on to confirm that Google will be integrating Chromecast into Google TV in some form. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that earlier this year at CES, they got a closed doors, private demo of Google's upcoming set-top box. The new Google TV box is said to feature a built-in camera, motion sensor, and have support for Google Hangouts.

There has been a lot of discussion about the destruction of Metropolis in Zack Snyder's reboot of Superman, Man of Steel. Sure, there's insane amounts of destruction, but when two God-like (fictional) beings fight each other in an otherwise realistic portrayal of a city, what do you think would happen? Other than it causing an estimated $700 billion worth of damage, it would be an intense few nanoseconds.

The video above goes into the science of what would happen if Superman punched you, and has so many numbers and facts that it'll make you laugh out loud at how ridiculous it would be if Superman really did punch someone in real life. The punch itself would be so quick, you wouldn't even see it for one. Secondly, it would have so much force it would create a 1km deep crater in the ground.

It would take just a few nanoseconds for it to happen, before a blast radius of several kilometers engulfed into fury and flames. So, what we see in Man of Steel is more 'realistic', but it could've been so much worse. I loved the destruction in Man of Steel, and thought it was one of the more realistic superhero movies to depict God-like beings fighting in a city.

Some interesting information is coming out from Intel engineer Ronak Singhal, who has spent most of his 17-year career at Intel developing relationships with the top computer experts in the world.

The experts he has worked with include huge companies such as Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and more. Singhal spoke with EE Times during a break in a press briefing in regards to Intel's latest Xeon and Atom server chips, where he said: "When three of them all tell you they want the same thing, you know you are on to something."

But, as you can imagine, some companies don't want the same thing and want a CPU that is custom-made to their specific needs. In the last couple of years, Intel have been providing some of their biggest customers like eBay and Facebook, with custom versions of their CPUs. Intel is taking this slow, and isn't rushing into custom-made processors for companies just yet, though.

Intel have provided some details on their new SSD 530 Series of drives, which include some M.2 form factor models. There will be four M.2 form factor models, coming in at 80GB, 120GB, 180GB and finally, 360GB. The 80GB drive will be capable of up to 540MB/sec sequential read speeds, and up to 480MB/sec writes. We'll have 24,000 IOPS for random 4K reads, and up to 80,000 IOPS for writes.

When it comes to the 120GB, 180GB, and 360GB drives, Intel kicks it up a notch by offering up to 540MB/sec sequential read speeds, and up to 490MB/sec writes. As for random 4KB read/writes, we can expect 41,000 IOPS and 80,000 IOPS for the 120GB and 180GB drives, and we see a big drop to 37,000 IOPS for random 4KB writes on the 360GB model.

There will be plenty of other models, with four mSATA-based models coming in at 80GB, 120GB, 180GB and 360GB and six models in the usual 2.5-inch flavor. We should expect the 2.5-inch form factor to see 80GB, 120GB, 180GB, 240GB, 360GB and the biggie: 480GB. All six of these drives are capable of 540MB/sec and 490MB/sec for sequential read/writes and 41,000 IOPS and 80,000 IOPS for random 4KB read/writes, respectively.

Ever since Google's Chromecast media streaming dongle was announced yesterday, I have been curious as to what hardware lies inside. I am after all, one of the type of people who enjoy taking things apart to see how it ticks. Thanks to the FCC and Anandtech I do not have to wait for my Chromecast to arrive. The FCC Chromecast documents have been released and they contain images of the naked Chromecast PCB.

Powering the device is a Marvell DE3005 chip while AzurWare silicon handles the Wi-Fi duties. For those interested, you can view the full FCC documentation along with the photos and even the devices user manual by visiting Source #3 below. I placed an order for a Chromecast unit shortly after the announcement yesterday. No shipping info has been provided yet, but we are hoping to have our unity by Monday or Tuesday and will have a full review up shortly thereafter.

Julian Assange has launched the WikiLeaks Party in Australia, all the way from his current 'home' in London's Ecuadorian embassy. The WikiLeaks Party have announced their candidates, shortly after their site went down due to a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack from an American "hacktivist".

The candidates for the WikiLeaks Party for the upcoming federal election in Australia are standing for New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. In New South Wales, we have human rights lawyer, Kellie Tranter, and academic, journalist and former public servant with the Department of External Affairs and Department of Foreign Affairs, Dr Alison Brionowski.

Journalist, Gerry Georgatos and economist and CEO of the Epilepsy Association for Western Australia, Suresh Rajan, are standing for Western Australia. Victoria will see Julian Assange himself standing, as well as author, ethicist and activist, Dr Leslie Cannold and RMIT lecturer, Dr Binoy Kampmark.

Today, Reuters has reported that Yandex Co-Founder and CIO of the Russian search giant Yandex has been pronounced brain dead. Llya Segalovich was recently diagnosed with a treatable form of cancer and has been receiving treatment for some time now and this turn of events came abruptly and was quite unexpected.

"Mr. Segalovich had been diagnosed with a treatable form of cancer and was responding well to treatment and working a full schedule, before unexpectedly succumbing to complications last night," the Russian company said in a statement at 10:55 a.m. in Moscow, after receiving information that he had died.

"We want to clarify an earlier statement that the company put out. We have since learnt that Ilya is in coma and on life support although not showing any brain function. Our thoughts are with him at this time," Arkady Volozh said on a conference call later in the day.

You can always count on NVIDIA to release something that gets your wallet craving an emptying, and today is no different with the announcement of their new professional-grade GPU, the Quadro K6000.

NVIDIA are calling their new Kepler-based, professional GPU "the fastest and most capable GPU ever built." It has replaced the Quadro 6000, and features an insane 12GB of DDR5 RAM, 2880 streaming multiprocessor cores, ultra-low latency video I/O and the ability to pump graphics out to four simultaneous monitors at 4K resolutions. Yeah, nice, isn't it?

Just how fast is NVIDIA's Quadro K6000? Well, Nissan have said they can nearly load almost-complete vehicle models using NVIDIA's new GPU. Impressive. It's actually not too badly priced either, comign in at $2250.

Finally. The day has arrived: Google have unleashed Android 4.3 to the world, keeping the "Jelly Bean" codename intact. What exactly does Android 4.3 bring to the tablet versus Android 4.2?

Well, we have a bunch of multi-user settings, which includes the ability to restrict profiles for younger people. This is a great feature to keep your content, or the ability to access adult content, from children. You can restrict app content at the user level, with a user enjoying the ability of restricting a number of puzzles within a game to a specific profile.

On top of this, you can prevent kids from going crazy and racking up huge bills with the in-app purchases. This is a must-have for all parents, in my opinion. Apple, where are you?