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Californian courts have been busy this week, first we had the Samsung vs. Apple patent infringements, and now we have a Californian jury decreed that Toshiba is guilty of conspiracy involving other Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese LCD manufacturers to keep LCD panel prices artificially high between 1999 and 2006.

The jury found that Toshiba is liable for $87 million in damages, $17 million to businesses, and $70 million to consumers. Under antitrust law, defendants can be assessed damages of three times the jury's ruling, so in this case, $261 million. Toshiba was the only defendant in the suit, and have claimed they've done nothing wrong.

Spokesman Julius Christensen said in an e-mail statement: "Toshiba plans to pursue all available legal avenues to correct that finding." He adds that Toshiba has "consistently maintained that there was no illegal activity on its part in the LCD business in the United States."

Ever wondered what the interior of a ship from the super-famous first-person shooter Halo would look like, if rendered using Crytek's CryENGINE 3? Well, a DICE artist currently working on Battlefield 3 has put together a mockup, and what a mockup it is!

See that? That to me, is amazing. That to me, is next-gen gaming. The lighting, the detail, the anti-aliased everything, is just perfect. If this could be done with next-gen physics, particle effects, A.I. and a flat 60fps minimum, I'd be excited for gaming again.

Halo 4 will end up looking good, but it won't look anywhere near this good. 343 Industries should be able to squeeze a few extra goodies out of the now aged Xbox 360, but if it were to look like this, it'd have to debut on the next-gen Xbox.

The rumor of an iPad mini from Apple have been around for quite a while now, even as far back as October last year. We've reported on them many times, and it is the perfect path for Apple to take to combat the impending Google Nexus 7 tablet, as well as the Amazon Kindle Fire, and upcoming next-gen Fire.

The latest reports are coming in from the Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg, both claiming anonymous sources with "knowledge of the plans" confirming a screen between 7- and 8-inch in diameter, and the component suppliers in Asia are preparing for a mass production of this new product in September.

The WSJ reports that screen suppliers will be LG Display and AU Optronics, with a rumor yesterday stating that Sharp would be supplying IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide) displays, measuring at 7.85-inches, which would give a better image on a thinner screen, with a potential pixel density of 330 ppi. One of the most interesting bits of this new information is the speculation that Apple may choose not to use the iPad name, in order for the company to avoid flack for contravening to late co-founder Steve Jobs' assertions that 7-inch devices are "tweeners - too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with the iPad".

The flick has been switched for the most powerful GPU supercomputer, Emerald, at the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire, U.K., the two systems working together "will give businesses and academics unprecedented access to their super-fast processing capability".

The insane amounts of power will allow researchers to run simulations that range from health care to astrophysics. The supercomputer combo will be used to look at the Tamiflu vaccine's effect on swine flu, Square Kilometre Array project data, climate change modelling and 3G/4G communications modelling. The official launch of the e-Infrastructure South Consortium took place at the same time, coinciding with Emerald's unveiling.

This is a consortium of four U.K. universities, Bristol, Oxford, University College London and Southampton, who will collaborate with RAL and work with the supercomputers. The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded the supercomputers with a £3.7 million grant. The EPSRC press release has a tonne of details and specifications for the supercomputers, and also states:

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have done it, after more than 30 years of experimentation, and billions upon billions of dollars in research and the use and construction of the Large Hadron Collider, have found the Higgs boson, or "God particle".

Some might dismiss this as nothing, but this is considered an absolutely mind-blowing achievement for all scientists, researchers and everyone in between. The Higgs boson is a subatomic particle which is thought to give everything in our universe, mass. Mass is a physical property which gives matter its weight here on Earth, and other bodies which exert gravity.

But, you don't just stumble upon this, and when you do, you require some serious confirmation before you make these types of claims. Scientists are 99.99999999999-percent certain, and this is about as close as one can get. The scientists were able to calculate that the new particle is very near the "five-sigma" level of significance, meaning that there is less than a one in a million chance that their results are a statistical fluke.

DDR4 is coming, and it'll be here sometime in 2014. At the same time, we should expect GDDR6 to arrive, the memory that gets slapped onto our GPUs. But, first off, in order to enable the complete platform qualification made up from processor, motherboard, chipset, memory modules and more, Samsung have begun sampling the key industry vendors with DDR4 memory modules.

Enter the first DDR4 server module which arrive as "Registered Dual Inline Memory Module" sporting no less than 16GB (128 Gbit) of RAM. DDR4-2133 is what it should arrive as, and it brings quite the performance crown with it, providing 2.1 billion transfers per second. Power consumption has been reduced, by as much as 40-percent, with the operating voltage dropping from 1.35V to just 1.2V, with Amps remaining the same.

Samsung have said that the initial DIMMs will be made on a 30nm process node, but the shipping DIMMs should feature 20nm DDR4 DRAM. As soon as 20nm hits, Samsung should be able to offer 8GB, 16GB and 32GB DDR4 modules. This should mean that Intel's Haswell-EP and Haswell-EX platforms should support 256GB of memory per CPU, or 1TB on a single quad-socket motherboard. Impressive, isn't it?

Research in Motion may have hurt BlackBerry lovers last week, announcing the delay of the BlackBerry 10 OS until 2013, but between now and then, there's sure to be tonnes of news to keep us happy. A leaked hardware roadmap has been leaked, and gives us a good idea of what to expect from BlackBerry 10-based devices in 2013.

But, before 2013, we should see a release of the BlackBerry PlayBook 4G which should be launched in Q4 of this year, perfect timing for the holiday season. This device does pre-date the BB 10 launch, so there shouldn't be much to do hardware-wise with the PlayBook 4G.

Q1 2013 is where the fun begins for RIM, with the launch of BB10 and the first full-touchscreen BlackBerry device, which is the BlackBerry London/L-series device. After the London/L-series device launches, we should see the BlackBerry Nevada/N-series, sporting a full QWERTY pad.

Spam e-mail is nothing new. Most users have figured out ways to combat it either through the use of spam boxes or spam blockers on the e-mail servers themselves. This spam is traditionally sent out via compromised computers that have been pulled together into a botnet. The botnet can be ordered to do whatever nefarious activities its commander wants.

With Windows becoming more secure, however, it has been harder for hackers to gain these computers for botnets. Terry Zink of Terry Zink's Cyber Security Blog on the MSDN noticed something interesting about the spam he has been receiving lately. At the bottom of the message it says "Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android."

Furthermore, he examined the headers of the e-mail and found "Message-ID: 1341147286.19774.androidMobile(at)web140302.mail.bf1.yahoo.com" I'm sure you can see where this is going. A spammer somewhere has a botnet that lives on Android devices, much like the rumors we've all heard. What's even more interesting is where these devices are located.

According to an ex-SCEA R&D director's LinkedIn profile, the next generation PlayStation has been in development since August 2010. His profile has a listing citing his work on the "Next Generation PlayStation" from August 2010 to April 2012. His work on the PS Vita is listed separately which implies that the "Next Generation PlayStation" he is referring to is the PS4.

"In 1998 I started as the first engineer in the Playstation US R&D," reads Vass' profile. "I worked on graphics ( COLLADA, PSGL ) and a lot of network related technologies ( advertising, telemetry, PVRs ) for the Playstation2-x, PSP, Vita and Next Generation platforms. Platform security was occupying most of my time at the last years... "

SCEA boss Jack Tretton also recently let loose some information on the next generation system when he said that "we've never been first, we've never been cheapest, it's about being the best. If you can build a better machine and it's going to come out a little bit later that's better than rushing something to market that's going to run out of gas for the long term."

Once again, Apple's OS X is being confronted with a security risk. The latest backdoor has been discovered by Russian security firm Kaspersky Labs and is being used as part of a Advanced Persistent Threat campaign. This is just the latest in a series of security risks present in the Mac OS X operating system.

Kaspersky researchers found that Uyghur activists in China were being targeted by hackers. These hackers sent e-mails with a compromised attachment that was in the form of a JPEG. The code hidden inside the JPEG was a new form of the MaControl backdoor and is compatible with both the PowerPC and i386 Mac variants.

Costin Raiu, Director of Global Research & Analysis at Kaspersky Lab:

Once again proving that users of the Internet are capable of influencing politicians, the European Parliament has done their job by listening to the people and voting against ACTA. ACTA, for those who don't remember, was a treaty that would have been extremely dangerous for users of the Internet. It was deceptive and pushed by special interest groups.

The vote ended up having 478 against, 39 in favor and 165 abstentions. Thanks to SOPA showing the world that Internet users wouldn't allow special interest groups to pressure the government into making laws, the unknown ACTA was brought to the forefront of the Internet users' attention and they rallied again, this time against ACTA.

It truly was the activists that made this happen. Members of the European Parliament have been thanking and praising activists across the EU for bring their attention to just how bad of a treaty this was. However, technically the treaty could still come into force between the United States and several other countries.

Google have just filed a very interesting new patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) where it would see the company using the filed patent to use video frames to generate clusters of face representations that are attached to a given person.

The system would then record what a person looks like from various angles, and the company could then attach a name and face whenever that person is shown in a clip, even with bad lighting conditions or angles. This would give YouTube viewers the same abilities as Flickr, where they could tag people in videos, but could also spot people in augmented reality apps and get their details.

Considering Google have Project Glass, this seems like such a natural evolution of the project. Imagine being able to wear the Glasses, and see someone in front of you - the system could eventually be smart enough to pull details of that person from the cloud. You'd never forget their birthday, or important conversation starters - like stats on the person, married, kids, new job, etc. Google are really going to make this work with Glass in my opinion.

Hazzan, an Indonesian overclocker has broken the world record for overclocking graphics cards, using 3DMark 11. Hazzan used a 4-way GEFORCE GTX 680 setup, pushing a score of P33190, 39 points ahead of the previous record.

In order to get the record-breaking score, Hazzah had to go to some pretty serious lengths, as you can see from the pictures. He stood over his PC with an open bottle of liquid nitrogen (as you do), and kept pouring some in every few minutes or so, just to keep those pesky temps down. His entire rig consists of:

The Next Web is reporting from an e-mail they received explaining that Google says that extensions developers can now start monetizing via Google Adsense, where Google state:

Google seem to be giving developers the ability to put ads in extensions that feature more persistant visual elements, TNW have used an example by adding them to the TNW extension for Chrome:

With the way the industry is going, a totally-digital approach just doesn't seem as crazy as it did 5, or 10 years ago. EA have been one of the first companies to come out and say it's "inevitable" that they will soon become a 100-percent digital company.

EA already make bundles of cash from the sale of digital content, with the company expecting to make nearly $2 billion from digital content this financial year. EA are already imagining a future where all of their money is made from digital content, and that future is sooner, rather than later. EA Labels boss, Frank Dibeau has told GamesIndustry International:

Google's Nexus smartphone may have been banned from selling in the U.S., but don't think that Google are going to sit around just googling a solution to this problem. Samsung and Google look to have a software patch that they believe avoids infringing on Apple's patent that led them to the injunction in the first place. This update is said to be pushed out 'immediately', according to Google.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled late last week that the GALAXY Nexus had infringed on four Apple patents, but the injunction was issued based specifically on a patent related to universal search. Google and Samsung will most likely challenge the validity of the patent, where they will seek a re-examination by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

If you have a GALAXY Nexus and see the patch - do let us know by commenting on this story, e-mailing us, or posting on our Facebook wall.

As most of you would know, we post tonnes of rumors about the next-gen consoles, as they will most likely shape the future of gaming, and therefore, the future of PC hardware. As we get closer to the release of the next-gen consoles, more and more information surfaces. Whether this information is true or not, or just the company's way of throwing out so much information, you can't find the truth from the ocean of rumors.

The latest news on the next-gen Xbox is that Microsoft Corporation won two disputes they filed in May with the National Arbitration Forum in regards to numerous Xbox-related domains owned by a resident of China who goes by the name "Cheng Juan". These domains are XboxPhone.com, XboxTablet.com, XboxLiveTV.com, XboxCompanion.com, Xbox8.us and Xbox8.org. As you can imagine, this opens our eyes to the next-gen console, and the future of Microsoft.

At the moment, no one knows what the next-gen Xbox will be called, so anyone trying to say it will be a certain name (Xbox Next, Xbox 720) is just guessing, or reporting the news as they see it. The name isn't in concrete, and we're seeing Microsoft change things up lately with Windows, making hardware for tablets, and just their general way of doing things is morphing into something completely different.

Google's $199 Nexus 7 tablet is barely even available and the team at iFixit have torn one apart and looked around inside the tablet. Nexus 7 is just a millimeter thicker than Apple's iPad, but that 1mm can make a huge difference when it comes to repairability according to iFixit, who gave the Nexus 7 a score of 7 out of 10.

To compare this against other popular tablets, Apple's iPad scores a repairability score of two out of 10, Amazon's Kindle Fire scores an eight, and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet takes home a six out of ten. iFixit said in their report:

NVIDIA have been pumping out some regular drivers, which is a nice change of pace for the company and today we have the release of the GeForce 304.79 beta drivers. These new drivers have a special inclusion in the form of the March-announced TXAA. TXAA is said to smooth more aliased edges than MSAA, all while significantly reducing temporal aliasing.

But, what titles support TXAA? Funcom MMORPG, The Secret World, does, which launched today in North American and Europe. NVIDIA has promised a future in-depth look at TXAA in The Secret World, but for now, they've offered a launch-day interview with Funcom's CTO and lead designer instead. TXAA is only supported by the GEFORCE GTX 600-series of GPUs, if you didn't know.

As with all the other driver releases, the new GeForce 304.79 beta brings with it new, or updated SLI profiles for The Secret World, End of Nations, Nexuiz, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Tornado Force and Tribes: Ascend. There are various bug fixes, such as fixing the compatibility issues that plagued the GTX 400 and GTX 500 series of GPUs in Civilization V, flickering or missing mouse cursor with hardware cursor enabled, PCs to reboot instead of shutting down, and a black screen after driver installation.

In a ruling sure to have far-reaching consequences for how online speech is treated under the law, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Sciarrino said that public Tweets do not have the same protection as private speech. In other words, what you say online publicly, i.e. Facebook update, Tweet, or otherwise, can be accessed and used against you in court sans a search warrant.

"The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences for your public posts," wrote Sciarrino in his ruling. "What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you."

A little back story: Harris, the person directly affected by this ruling, was arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests when he, along with many others, walked down the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge as opposed to the sidewalk. Before this march, he had deleted several Tweets that prosecutors believe contain evidence that directly contradicts one of his defenses.