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Demonoid was taken down by a DDoS attack on July 24, with early reports suggesting that the site's downtime was temporary. But, it has gotten a lot worse: Ukranian authorities have announced they ordered ColoCall, the nation's largest datacenter and host of Demonoid, to disable to site and hand over data.

This would've been a coordinated, international effort, but it wasn't clear if Demonoid was being used as a "gift" from the Ukraine to the US. We've seen how the US wants to play dirty against MegaUpload, and founder Kim Dotcom, but this is crazy. London-based international record label consortium, IFPI, and INTERPOL have since revealed they were involved in organizing the strike, which wasn't limited to Ukraine.

It seems as though Mexican authorities are involved, too, as they have reportedly made more than one arrest as well as seizing assets. IFPI anti-piracy director, Jeremy Banks has said:

It looks like Microsoft is going all-in with their Surface-branded tablets, with the company looking for more people to work for company in the form of hardware and software engineers that will have the tak of working on the next generation Surface tablets.

The first Surface, due out in two or so months, should be Microsoft's biggest fight against Apple, ever. Since the Redmond-based company is looking for people for the next Surface, before the original has even been released, we know that the fight is going to be epic. One of the job listings seems to be on the request for a senior electrical engineer who would be working on "the electrical design and qualification of AC-DC power supplies and adapters", so it looks like we should expect battery-powered devices, too.

Something else worth pointing out is that the company is looking for engineers to work on "alternative power sources", meaning we could see fuel cell-based power (or similar tech) in future Surface devices.

uTorrent user? You'll soon be eye balling ads, as the creators of the torrent program have announced that the upcoming version of the popular torrent software will sport "in-client offers". In-client offers is just some fancy translation of ads.

uTorrent Plus users won't have to experience the ads, but you'll be coughing up USD $24.95 for the privilege. Considering that uTorrent features over 125 million active users each month, it shouldn't come as a surprise. uTorrent's parent company, BitTorrent Inc., has made some nice spare money from their optional tool bar, seeing between $15 to $20 million from the tool bar alone. The ad-supported client should make the wallets of uTorrent that little bit bigger.

What is changing with µTorrent offers?

TechPowerUp has updated GPU-Z to version 0.6.4 and with it brought some interesting changes. According to TechPowerUp, "version 0.6.4 adds/refines support for several upcoming NVIDIA GPUs, such as GeForce GTX 660 Ti, GeForce GTX 660, GeForce GTX/S 650, GeForce 610, and GeForce GTX 680M; Intel GMA 3600 (ROP count); AMD "Trinity" APUs (clock reading accuracy) and AMD FirePro 2270."

Usually software like this is updated shortly before the release of a new product, such as the NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti, rumored to be launching soon. Support for the NVIDIA 650 also shows that the September launch period is likely an accurate rumor. TechPowerUp also instituted several other changes in the newest version:

You can pick up the latest version of the software from TechPowerUp's website.

Continuing with a theme of science and space Friday, we would like to give you something to do over the weekend. It's time for the yearly Perseid meteor shower in the northern hemisphere and it promises to be a good one. NASA has called it the "best meteor shower of the year" so you really don't want to miss it.

The shower will run from August 11 to 13, with the night of August 12 expected to be the best. NASA is predicting that at its peak rate people could be making 100 wishes an hour. In other words, NASA expects it to peak at 100 shooting stars an hour. "We expect to see meteor rates as high as a hundred per hour," NASA's Bill Cooke says.

Heading to the countryside away from city lights is usually advisable. According to NASA, "a visit to the countryside will typically triple the number of meteors you see." The best viewing time will be in the early morning darkness just before dawn. The show should start sometime after 10PM. I'll be heading to a remote location in the Northern California Sierra Nevadas to escape the Sacramento city light pollution.

It would appear that Google has partially caved to the music and movie industry. An update to the way search results are ranked will see pirate sites and other illegitimate content sources showing up lower in the results. As you may or may not know, Google looks at around 200 different signals to rank pages and the newest one is directly tied to piracy.

The latest signal to be used in ranking pages will be directly related to "the number of valid copyright removal notices" received for a given site. This means that sites which receive a large number of valid removal notices may appear lower in Google's search results. Google explains why this is a good thing:

It's time to start getting excited for Crysis 3 and CryEngine 3. I already gave it an award from when I saw it at E3 and it continues to impress. The creators of Crysis and CryEngine, CryTek, have given us a new glimpse into the technical capabilities of the CryEngine 3 graphics engine, the engine that powers Crysis 3. Make sure to watch the video below in 720p and full screen--it makes it that much better!

Words aren't really necessary, but I'll attempt to get them back after watching that video. The video highlights the technical achievements managed by the CryTek team. Lens flares, dynamic cloud shadows, dynamic fog shadows, cloth and vegetation simulation, and tessellated vegetation all combine to make the game world incredibly beautiful.

And then there's the "top secret tessellated toad tech." Not sure why they have this, but it certainly looks good. I wonder if it will rain toads in Crysis 3 as a sign of the apocalypse. No? Well, I'm sure it's there for a reason. Tell us what you think about the video in the comments or on our Facebook page!

Are you the owner of a 7 series Gigabyte motherboard? Tired of all those hackers plugging flash drives into your computer and giving you viruses? If so, Gigabyte has the download for you! Today, Gigabyte has announced a new piece of software which will disable certain types of USB devices from connecting to the computer.

The software features an easy-to-use GUI that allows you to select what can and cannot be seen by the operating system when physically connected. The software will currently run on Intel Z77, H77, B75 and H61 based motherboards produced by Gigabyte. Gigabyte has provided some excellent use-case scenarios:

The new line of hard drive docks from XIGMATEK are called the Secure III and are USB 3.0 compatible. The USB to SATA converter allows for transfer speeds up to 5Gbps, almost as much as the SATA3 spec calls for. This means its compatible with SATAII/III HDDs and SSDs of up to 3TB in size. It does all of this while looking great.

The features, as provided by XIGMATEK, are as follows:

A good keyboard can make all the difference in the world for a typist. Every person likes something slightly different, whether it be red or blue Cherry switches or the newer keyboards without switches. That's why companies make so many different models--to give you the choice to see what works best for your hands and typing style.

Das Keyboard has announced the release of a new Professional Model S that comes with the added functionality that media keys bring to a keyboard. They say that "fans have asked for a Das Keyboard with media functionality for a while now" and that this is the reason they have crafted this keyboard.

PC gamers are definitely getting looked after when it comes to United Front Games' title Sleeping Dogs. The developer is working with Square Enix's London Studios, and are looking to make the PC version of the game something special indeed.

A new post on the official Sleeping Dogs' website shows that a bunch of PC-specific features will bring the Hong Kong island to life. If you've got the horsepower, there's optimizations for the latest AMD and NVIDIA-based GPUs that'll impress. Sleeping Dogs will ship with a high-resolution texture pack, "bringing eye-watering detail and crisp clear rendering to everything from city skyscrapers to crumbling ancient temples."

The developers have added another layer of depth at higher resolutions, using increased small object detail which renders items from a much greater distance with an "incredible sense of scale and detail". In-game shadows have also received some lovin', where they'll have support for high-resolution shadow textures, high quality shadow filters and support for Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO).

Samsung have just announced their brand new Exynos 5250 SoC, which is now called the Exynos 5 Dual. Samsung's Exynos 5 Dual is the world's first Cortex A15-based chip, and should be baked into devices later this year. The first of which should be Samsung's 11.8-inch tablet that sports the 2560x1600 resolution, that we've talked about a few times now. The important specs are:

So, this chip is quite the powerhouse it seems. It sports USB 3.0, SATA III and has enough power to decode 1080p video at 60ps on what seems like most codecs. The Exynos 5 Dual isn't all about the CPU, either, it also includes a next-generation GPU, too. Both the CPU and GPU are designed by ARM, who changes their GPU architecture every five years or so. This means that the GPU side of things, the Mali T604, is the first GPU design based on the company's new Midgard architecture, sporting unified shaders, OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenCL 1.1 full profile.

This gives the Exynos 5 Dual an incredible 12.8GB/s of bandwidth, which is really required when pushing a 2560x1600-based display. Not only is the GPU required to be fast, but the memory bandwidth needs to be there, too. The Exynos 5 Dual includes support for the aforementioned 12.GB/sec, with two port 800MHz LPDDR3 RAM.

Chinese researchers have achieved something quite grand, where they've overcome some challenges in regards to open-air quantum teleportation. The team developed a highly accurate laser pointing and tracking system, reports Ars Technica.

The team of researchers teleported a qubit (which is a standard unit of data in quantum computing) 97 kilometers (!) across a lake, all using a small set of photons without fiberoptic cables, or other such technology. Juan Yin and his team developed the laser targeting device, and the team were necessary to counteract the minute seismic and atmosphere shifts that would usually break the link between the two locations.

Point-to-point accuracy problems are solved by fibreoptic cables, compared to open-air systems, where the cables are used to carry entangled photons, which carry the data required for quantum teleportation. But, this can cause what's referred to as "quantum decoherence", or the corruption of the proton's entanglement data. It's incredibly exciting, and while it's not teleporting people around yet, the aim of it is to transport data, which would require quantum repeater satellites to build the network required.

Rumors are circling that AMD could be an acquisition target, and these rumors have inflated AMD's share prices by close to 8%, where they hit $4.34 per share. MarketWatch hasn't gone into much length about the rumors themselves, where they've only quoted Evercore Partners analyst Patrick Wang.

Wang has said that Qualcomm and Samsung were both potential buyers with a possible bid on the chipmaker. Wang doesn't believe the rumors have much solidity, where he says "I think it's unlikely they get a take-out offer". But, we've seen what acquisition talks can do to a company's share prices, where rumors of OCZ being scooped up by Seagate saw OCZ's shares blow up by 22%.

EE Times' reporter Syvie Barak wrote a story listing the potential candidates of an AMD acquisition, where she pointed out Qualcomm as the number one suspect. She notes that Qualcomm have already acquired assets from AMD's done-and-dusted handheld business a few years ago. Barak also notes that by acquiring AMD, it would give Qualcomm "increased leverage with manufacturing partners like TSMC and Globalfoundries".

According to a Microsoft job advertisement, it has revealed that the next-generation Xbox will support Skype. Xbox maker, Microsoft, are looking for a "UI Designer & Prototyper - Xbox", to work at the company's UK-based Skype division on projects that are related to the "next-gen Xbox". The job ad also says:

The job ad also states that the successful candidate would be "working with the Xbox team directly in Redmond, USA. (both current Xbox and next gen)". Well, is that enough proof of the next-gen Xbox? Or will Microsoft also deny this, and claim it never happened and was taken out of context? Are you surprised that the next-gen Xbox will support Skype? I'm not. The company acquired them, and the next-gen Xbox is going to need to throw everything including the kitchen sink into the next-gen Xbox if it wants to survive in the market when it hits.

The developer behind successful titles such as the recently released Diablo III, and World of Warcraft, oh I suppose we can't leave out StarCraft, has posted an "important security update" to its official website. Blizzard have announced that their security team found an "unauthorized and illegal access into our internal network here at Blizzard".

The developer quickly took appropriate steps to close off access, and started working with law enforcement and security experts to investigate into the matter. At the moment, Blizzard have found no evidence that financial information (such as credit card details) or billing details and real names were compromised. Blizzard's investigation is ongoing, but there's nothing suggesting that these pieces of information were accessed.

What was accessed, were lists of email addresses for global Battle.net users, outside of China. This mens that players on North American-based servers, such as North America, Latin America, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia had their personal security question, and information regarding to Mobile and Dial-In Authenticators were accessed. Blizzard have noted that based on what they currently know, this information is not enough for anyone to access Battle.net accounts.

It looks as though Xbox Live could soon be doing away with Microsoft Points, even as Microsoft claims the change is just a glitch. On Wednesday, some Avatar items showed up on Xbox Live with real, local currency price tags instead of Microsoft Points. Later that day, the prices reverted back to the traditional Microsoft Points.

Was it a slip? Signs point to yes and this is a good thing. The idea behind virtual currency is that it gets consumers to spend more money than they otherwise would. Hence a change to real currency would be much appreciated by many as users would no longer need to do the conversion to figure out just how much they are spending.

Microsoft told GamesIndustry yesterday:

Facebook is trying out a new feature that allows users to send a postcard with one of your pictures on it to a friend. The new feature is powered by Sincerely and allows you to mail a physical postcard to a friend. You can even add a message that will be sent to the friend with the card or send prints of their pictures.

Of course, Facebook isn't doing this for free. The sender is charged a fee, right now at varying price points for the people who have access to the trial, and the card goes out in the mail through Sincerely's service. Sincerely is the company behind Postagram, the service that does basically the same thing for Instagram pictures.

This feature came about from a Hackathon project. If successful, and instituted, the new service could garner Facebook some more earnings through increased interaction with pictures (higher advertising value) and through a possible small profit from the selling of the postcards and prints.

Google needs your help so that they can better help you. Earlier this year, Google launched a stock image library as part of its Google Drive product. Thanks to lots of positive feedback, they are now planning on expanding that library with images that are selected by the people who use the product. That's why they've enlisted your help.

Want to help decide what goes in? It's a simple task, really. Just head over to ThinkStock.com, select up to 10 images to nominate, and fill out Google's nomination form with the information they require. Easy, and you have helped make Google, and the Internet, a better place. Not to mention you should then be able to use these photos in your Google Drive docs.

Google explains the process in a bit more detail:

Google: "Don't be evil." However, it would appear that the Federal Trade Commission feels that Google might have overstepped that by a wee bit, okay, a large bit, judging by the size of the fine levied against the company over the Safari tracking incident. The FTC announced today that Google has agreed to pay $22.5 million to settle the claim, the largest fine ever levied by the FTC.

The FTC charges that Google "misrepresented to users of Apple Inc.'s Safari Internet browser that it would not place tracking 'cookies' or serve targeted ads to those users, violating an earlier privacy settlement between the company and the FTC." Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC: