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This has been going on for a while now, but judgment has finally been served in the Panasonic price fixing case. Panasonic will plead guilty to US government charges that see the Japanese company falling on their sword over price fixing in two huge markets.

The first, is the laptop battery pack market and the second is auto parts. Panasonic have agreed to pay $56.5 million in fines for the two separate conspiracies, with 15 executives at several companies will be facing jail time as part of the deal. Hopefully you're sitting down for this one, but Panasonic's price fixing has been going on for quite some time in the auto parts industry, dating back to 1998.

Panasonic have been working with other companies behind closed doors in order to "fix, stabilize and maintain the prices" of lighting equipment sold to manufacturers such as Honda, Mazda and Nissan. The Japanese company also worked with other corporations where price fixing was applied to switches and sensors for auto steering wheels, doors, wipers, turn signals and other parts of a car's control system that were sold to fellow Japanese company Toyota.

PAX Australia 2013 - There was just one single game that I truly wanted to see, and play at PAX Australia 2013, with that game being Ubisoft's Watch Dogs. It looks absolutely incredible, and Ubisoft had it on the show floor. It wasn't playable, but some pre-recorded footage. We weren't allowed to take video, but we were allowed to take photos.

We have a plethora of photos, but we were greeted to two videos - the first was some footage of the game for PAX Australia and then the E3 trailer. The main trailer had Jonathan Morin, the Creative Director on Watch Dogs, explaining the game to the crowd. Both videos were impressive, and have shown off more of the super connectivity the game has to offer. Everyone and every thing is hackable, and the video really drove this home. Watch Dogs is a day one purchase for me, and I'm sure there are thousands of our readers who think the same.

Something I loved seeing in the demo of Watch Dogs was the fact that the public's opinion can be swayed about the protagonist, Aiden Pearce. If you're the type of gamer who saves people, and doesn't screw them over by hacking their accounts, or killing them, then the public will support you as a force against the system and government. But, if you're the type of gamer who likes chaos, and causes damage and violence, the public will hate you.

After a week full of rumors and much championing by Google executives during earnings calls, we will finally get to see the long-awaited Moto X Phone revealed. The unveiling will take place during an event scheduled for August 1 in New York City. This is no rumor, tip, or speculation. Today, Motorola began sending out invitations for the event to tech journalists all over the country.

This unveiling will come after months and months of rumors, speculation, and leaks which all came to a head last week when the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, was spotted using the device at a CEO get together at the Allen & Co Business Summit in Sun Valley. We knew a launch was imminent when multiple executives from Google made mention of the phone during their earnings calls this week.

As always, we will be offering full coverage via a live blog that will take place during the event. Stay tuned to TweakTown and keep an eye out for our news post announcing the live blog.

This morning, PC liquid cooling giant Swiftech announced that it will be withdrawing the H220 CPU Cooling Kit from US sales due to a conflict with a patent held by AseTek. Back on June 7, 2013, Swiftech's parent company, Rouchon Industries, received a letter from AseTek claiming that the H220 CPU Cooler infringed on US patents 8,240,362, and 8,245,764.

The letter demanded that Swiftech cease and desist all manufacturing, sales, and importation of the H220 CPU Cooler into the United States. The company says that on June 27, 2013 their counsel responded to AseTek stating that SwiftTech does not believe the H220 infringed on any patents held by AseTek. Swiftech says that they then asked AseTek if AseTek would be willing to offer a nonexclusive license for the asserted patents in an effort to avoid any unnecessary litigation.

On July 12, 2013, AseTek responded and stated that the company does not offer licenses on its patents. Swiftech says that it continues to firmly assert its position that it is not infringing on any patents but in an effort to avoid costly litigation, they have decided to pull the H220 CPU Cooling Kit from the US market. In a statement, the company had the following to say:

Today, the popular version control code repository GitHub issued a statement to the media announcing that it has been fending off a massive attack on its system which managed to knock it servers off-line early Friday morning. The company said that around 10:40 UTC the site was struck with a massive DDoS attack from unknown sources.

Roughly an hour and a half later, the company had implemented processes that began to alleviate the load on their servers but things were not yet back to full functionality. "We've put mitigation in place that should deflect the attack, and services are recovering. We're continuing to monitor closely," GitHub said in a statement.

This is the second large DDoS attack against GitHub this year with the first happening back in March. Before that, the site experienced another massive attack in September 2012 and one before that during February 2012 that lasted for a whole week. It is unclear who keeps attacking the site or what motivates them to try and bring down the service.

In an expansive investor call yesterday Micron inadvertently revealed a new SSD and controller combo that will sport the NVMe interface during the question and answer session. This is important news, as Micron has previously relied upon third party controllers and a jointly-developed controller with IDT for the P320h. When asked about the possibility of utilizing NVMe in future products, Edward Donner replied:

The 520 will be able to saturate the PCIe 3.0 interface, and might come in the traditional PCIe SSD HHHL form factor and possibly even a 2.5" drive as we have seen with the P320h. The importance of the development of a Micron controller is significant. The SSD market is beginning to consolidate, and those who own a fab or controller IP enjoy a significant advantage. Having both the NAND and controller will provide Micron with even more of an advantage against their competitors. Naturally, our next question would be whether this new controller will migrate to other products, such as the wildly popular consumer offerings from Crucial (the consumer arm of Micron). Luckily, this question was answered in a roundabout fashion during the Q&A session (emphasis added):

Micron's new internally developed controller is being developed as a platform for rapid expansion into other areas. This type of modular controller structure is important to create a flexible base for multiple product stacks. Intel and others employ this type of structure to allow multiple products to utilize the same controller. While some manufacturers stick entirely with their own proprietary solutions, others will utilize multiple vendors if the need arises. Micron answers this question handily:

After a long 23 years in the industry, THQ is finally no more. Today, Judge Mart F Walrath approved the request for liquidation by once gaming industry powerhouse THQ. The liquidation will serve to pay off creditors as much as possible with whatever money is made from the sale of THQ's remaining assets.

THQ originally filed for bankruptcy in December 2012 in hopes that some major company, investor, or individual would swoop in and save the day. Unfortunately, this was one sinking ship that was deemed unrepairable. It is expected that the sale of the company's assets could recoup anywhere between 20 and 52 percent of what US-based creditors are owed. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether or not foreign investors are entitled to recovery as well, and this could leave US investors receiving much less compensation than they had originally expected.

All of THQ's studios and intellectual property has been sold off which includes heavy hitter Relic Games who brought us titles such as the Homeworld series, the absurdly popular Saints Row, Company of Heroes, and Warhammer 40,000. As a longtime fan of THQ, I think I speak for everyone at TweakTown when I say goodbye old friend and we will miss you.

This morning, Apple has laid to rest the number of issues that have been plaguing the new MacBook Air since release. A new software update has just been released that is said to fix certain Wi-Fi issues that were causing network connections to be dropped. This issue arose shortly after launch and caused a small uproar on the Internet when users were unable to connect to their networks after spending a small fortune on the next-gen device.

At the same time, other MacBook Air owners said they were experiencing a severe flickering of the screen when using Photoshop. Going into detail, they said that the issue seem to be more prevalent when using large brush tools or other high resolution add-ons for the popular image editing program. Additionally, a fluctuating volume issue arose early last week which affected video playback on some of the new machines.

Even though the Cupertino-based company never officially acknowledged any of these issues, this morning Apple released an update that is said to repair all of these problems. After scanning a few forums and doing a couple searches, it appears that this new update has indeed washed these bugs away forever. If you have a new MacBook Air and have not downloaded this update yet, head over to Source #2 below for the full download.

Today, Evernote updated its app for iOS and added some new features that are sure to make its users happy. The update mostly includes features that make organization much easier including things like Shortcuts, Related Notes, and Skitch integration. This new support for Skitch allows users to have the app annotate their images and notes with Skitch and they will show up at Evernote.

As you would expect, the newly integrated Shortcuts feature allows users to "shortcut" important notes, notebooks, and even tags so they are easily accessed for quick use. Additionally, your shortcuts will sync across all devices and versions of Evernote which makes cross-platform organization much easier. The new shortcuts feature is similar to the old "Favorites" section which only allowed the pinning of notes.

Don't worry premium users of Evernote, you are not left out in this update as you now have the ability to annotate PDF documents using Skitch. Another new feature called Related Notes will search when a new note is started and recommend additional posts that may be helpful or related. Evernote for iOS is available for free in the App Store with a premium version costing users $4.99 a month or $44.99 per year.

PAX Australia 2013 - When I go out to a bar, I generally drink, like most people do - but would you want to go to a bar and enjoy some virtual reality gaming? Well, Virtual Reality Insanity are hoping you do, as they are opening up a new VR gaming bar in Melbourne, Australia.

We're currently in Melbourne, Australia for PAX AU 2013, and our first meeting was with VR Insanity, where we got to use Oculus Rift in Team Fortress 2. It was my first test with Oculus Rift, and I was blown away. Later in the day we had a meeting with Oculus VR themselves, but this was our first toe in VR water. Team Fortress 2 was phenomenal on Oculus Rift, something that I soon hope to play much more when Oculus release Rift to the public.

As for the VR gaming bar, VR Insanity are going to open up a 6v6 VR gaming bar, which will include Oculus Rift, Onmi, Razer Hydra controllers and more. It's going to be quite kick ass, as there'll be tournaments and matches versus your friends, all in virtual reality. We hope to attend the opening night of this, and should have some content if we get to that point.

TweakTown has lead the coverage of NGFF (m.2) products with a preview from Computex using ADATA products, finding retail products currently shipping with m.2 SSDs and now a quick look at performance from a Samsung m.2 drive in a retail ultrabook.

Although still rare in the channel, m.2 form factor SSDs are set to take off like a rocket later in this year. The form factor comes in two flavors, SATA based and PCIe based, the second being the quite exciting since it breaks through some of the SATA III performance limitations. In the video above, we see a CDM performance run with a Samsung based SATA III SSD and a new PCIe based m.2 drive.

Looking closely at the performance on screen we were surprised to see the SATA III drive score higher performance in the 4K read and write test. This tells us Samsung still have some optimization work left to do.

A firmware update coming around the September timeframe adds true AES 256-bit hardware encryption to Samsung's 840, 840 EVO and 840 PRO SSD products.

Two flavors of encryption are covered, Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Opal and Microsoft's eDRIVE, part of Windows 8 BitLocker.

Class 0 SED is an important feature for businesses and end users who would prefer to only have the NSA steal their data. While we've had access to encryption for several years, hardware based encryption lessens the overhead and reduces the amount of resources needed from surrounding components.

PAX Australia 2013 - I have been waiting since Oculus first reached Kickstarter to try out their Rift VR headset, and today my day came. We first went to another booth and tried out the 720p Developer Kit version, which we'll have a video uploaded shortly on.

The first story I wanted to write from PAX AU was about Oculus. We had a 2:30PM meeting but turned up 30 minutes early by mistake, but the Oculus guys were happy to accommodate us. We were sitting there, in one of the smallest booths at PAX AU and while it's small, it had heart and soul, and most of all: passion. We were introduced to Joseph Chen, who is head of Product at Oculus, who mentioned that Nate (the Vice President of Product at Oculus VR) would be on-hand soon.

We were been greeted with the Full HD 1920x1080 version of the Oculus Rift, which is different to the HD 1280x720 version of Rift which is found in the form of the Kickstarter backed Developer Kits. These devices are much higher resolution, but as we were told, are more like 'alpha' units.

A report from Dutch website Tweakers.net just arrived that says Dell may be working on a laptop that will compete with Apple's top-of-the-line MacBook Pro with Retina display. The report says that a 15.4-inch Dell Precision mobile workstation is in the works and features a whopping 3200 x 1800 display. This is a pixel density much higher than the 2880x1800 Retina display featured on the MacBook Pro's.

Reportedly named the "Precision M3800," the device will feature a matte black surface with aluminum edges. The device will be powered by an Intel Haswell Core i7 4702MQ, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB HHD or 512MB SSD. Graphics crunching duties will be handled by an NVIDIA Quadro GPU, and the entire device will weigh in at just 4.5 pounds.

Engadget was able to confirm the existence of the Precision M3800 from Dell, but the company declined to reveal any other details saying that everyone can "stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks." The report from Tweakers.net suggests that the new device will cost between $1699 and $1999 which puts it in at $200-$800 cheaper than the equivalent Apple device.

Today, XSPC released a safety notice regarding its D5 Dual Bay Reservoir in regards to the top of the reservoir warping and allowing a tiny gap to open up. The company says that in most cases this warping will not cause a leak and is purely a visual issue, but there have been a few cases where it led to a very slow leak of coolant. XSPC says that it appears that this issue is only present in 2.5 percent of the first batch of reservoirs it shipped and is due to a flaw in the material used.

XSPC says that it believes the issue was caused by water temperatures beyond normal limits which caused the top plate to warp. The company says it has fixed the issues it had by changing the material used on the top plate and revising the mold. They have put the new model through rigorous testing which placed it far beyond normal usage temperatures and pressures and have found no further warping or leaks.

The revised design started shipping in April, so all current stock at resellers will already be version 2. If you have bought the product recently, it's likely you already have the revised model. The photos below show the difference between version 1 and 2. You can check the back of your reservoir against the photos above. If you see a leak from the highlighted area, you will need to get the reservoir replaced. If you are affected by this issue, please contact your local reseller to arrange a replacement, or contact technical support at support@xs-pc.com

OUYA has announced that it will match some of the funds raised on Kickstarter for games being developed on its Android-powered console beginning next month. Dubbed the "Free the Games Fund," OUYA will match donations up to $1 million total for eligible game projects that are posted on Kickstarter between August 9 and August 10.

The project owners can set funding goals at any level they wish but to receive the extra funding that OUYA has promised, the game developers will need to meet their Kickstarter goals and raise at least $50,000. OUYA says that they will match every dollar raised beyond that amount up to $250,000. There is, however, a small little catch to receiving the funding: the game must be exclusive to the OUYA for at least six months after launch. Additionally, the company will give a $100,000 bonus to whichever eligible game raises the most funding.

I really hope that this incentive will create some really good games for the OUYA as my experience so far has been less than satisfying. I have played several games on the device and clocked in a few hours of total game play. To me, everything seems laggy with some games being virtually unplayable due to the near half second pause between pushing a button on the controller and it causing a reaction on the screen.

86 years ago, the University of Queensland in Australia began conducting an experiment in which the flow rate of a piece of pitch was measured. For those of you who may not know what pitch is, it's a highly viscous liquid which, for all intents and purposes, appears to be solid. Bitumen is the most commonly used form and at room temperature, this tar pitch flows at a very slow rate sometimes taking up to a decade or more for a single drop to fall.

The University of Queensland is not the only institution studying this phenomenon. Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland has also been conducting their own experiment since 1944. Finally after 69 long years, the first drop of pitch has finally fallen. The drop occurred on July 11, 2013 at 5 PM local time and webcams that were set up last April were on hand to catch this extremely rare occurrence.

While some of you may not understand the excitement, I find in things like this let me break down how many times human eyes have missed seeing this event take place. According to Prof. John Mainstone of the University of Queensland, he has missed several opportunities to witness the drop happening with his own eyes. First in 1979, Mainstone said that he skipped one of his usual Sunday campus visits and coincidentally the drop happened the same day. Then again in 1988, Mainstone left his lab to grab a snack and apparently missed the drop by just five minutes. Finally in 2000, fed up with missing the drop, Mainstone set up a camera but unfortunately a glitch at the moment of the drop prevented any video of the event occurring.

We will most likely see Android 4.3 unveiled at next week's mystery press event being held by Google, but today we get to learn all about the next iteration of Android thanks to a video that has surfaced on the web. The video below (courtesy of AndroidCentral) was taken of a Nexus 4 running Android 4.3 which was purchased from a Google employee.

While most of the updates are minor and the user experience will feel much like that of Android 4.2, one of the most notable new features is the ability for the phone to automatically suggest phone numbers from your contact list as you dial. Additionally, as I speculated yesterday, Android 4.3 will also feature the updated camera application that has been spotted on the Google Play editions of the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Other new features include the ability to let apps turn on Wi-Fi to get a lock on your location before turning Wi-Fi back off again. This feature will prevent apps from pestering you about turning on Wi-Fi. Also in line with speculation is Android 4.3's ability to utilize Bluetooth Low Energy technology as well as the inclusion of OpenGL for Embedded Systems 3.0.

Today, the NCAA said that they will not allow Electronic Arts Inc. to use their name or logo in any future video games. In a statement, the NCAA said that it has no plans to enter into a new contract with EA Sports after the current one expires in June 2014. While not official, industry analysts suggest that this is due to a number of pending lawsuits against the NCAA from former college athletes who state that EA profited off their likeness.

EA Sports says that they will still produce college football video games which will still feature all of the powerhouse colleges such as Alabama, the University of Georgia, Ohio State, and many others as it is the schools who license their name and logos, not the NCAA. This is usually handled through the Collegiate Licensing Company who manages the trademarks of the majority of the colleges in the country.

"EA Sports will continue to develop and publish college football games, but we will no longer include the NCAA names and marks," said EA executive vice president Andrew Wilson. "Our relationship with the Collegiate Licensing Co. is strong and we are already working on a new game for next generation consoles which will launch next year and feature the college teams, conferences and all the innovation fans expect from EA Sports."

This morning, HTC officially announced a smaller version of its HTC One. Dubbed the One Mini, this new handset is a 4.3-inch version of the company's popular flagship device. Unfortunately, appearances and software are where the similarities end. HTC says that they will be offering the One Mini "at pricing points below that of the HTC One" and as a result, a few hardware downgrades have had to take place.

Included in the trade-offs is a step down to QUALCOMM's Snapdragon 400 dual-core processor which is clocked at 1.4GHz. It also features 1GB of RAM, 16GB of non-expandable storage and there is no NFC present. Additionally, HTC has removed the optical image stabilization from the One Mini as well as the IR blaster that gave the phone the ability to control your home entertainment system.

HTC one also switched out the LCD from a 1080p panel to a 720p super LCD, which features a pixel density of 341 ppi. Battery capacity was also reduced and now features an 1800mAh which was expected due to the overall smaller form factor. It appears that BoomSound has stuck around as well as the aluminum unibody. HTC says that it will roll out the One Mini starting in August and two colors will be available: silver and black.