Latest News - Page 3093

BREAKING: Germany-based computer hardware retailer, Caseking, have just acquired British-based Overclockers. Overclockers UK have had a long-standing achievement of being one of the biggest sellers of computer hardware in the UK.

They've been in a band of just a few, with companies such as Ebuyer, Scan Computers International, Novatech, and Aria PC in selling PC hardware. Overclockers UK have been around since 1999, and have had their HQ in Newcastle-under-lyme.

The takeover involves 40 members of staff who currently work for Overclockers UK, but at the moment it is not known what the acquisition has in store for both Overclockers UK and its employees. The value of the deal is not exactly known either, but it is estimated to come in at 'less than €50 million'. The deal took place on February 1, 2012, and as you probably have guessed, both companies have been quiet about it.

Microsoft launched one of the most recognisable components of computing, the Start button. It was launched 17 years ago, with a huge advertising campaign, where its hard for people to not know the Start button now.

When it comes to Windows 8, Microsoft are changing it up, not just a bit, but considerably. The removal of the Start button marks a serious change, where the Start button is replaced by the "hot corner." Instead of clicking the Start button to show the full-screen Metro-style Start Screen, you just flick your mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen, or touch it with your finger, and voila - Metro-style Start Screen.

Why would Microsoft do such a thing? Well, they save some on-screen pixels by removing it. That's it. Imagine long-time Windows users, booting up for the first time, not aware of this news and virtually unprepared for there to not be a Start button. They would think the OS is faulty, or a non-legit version. New users, would be OK, but how would they know to push to the bottom left of the screen to display the Metro interface?

Motorola have been stirring up some problems for Apple in Germany, where they won an injunction on iCloud and also enforced a previous ruling where it requires Apple to pull some iPhone mobiles from stores in Germany. The sales ban last just hours, after which Apple managed to win a suspension later in the day.

New details have emerged from the battle between Motorola and Apple, where they've said that Motorola Mobility's legal complaints against Apple, want 2.25-percent of Apple's sales of wireless devices in exchange for a patent license covering Motorola's intellectual property. If Motorola wins this, they could receive $2.1 billion in retroactive fees from iPhone revenues dating back to 2007, which amount to a slither under $93 billion. This is before factoring in 3G iPad sales.

Which patent do Motorola have a grip over Apple on? Its 3G/UMTS patent, has recently been declared essential in implementing open industry standards and because of that, Motorola must license it under FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms to any competitor that requires it.

BTJunkie was one of top five BitTorrent sites out there, and has after 7 years in operation, decided to voluntarily shut down. This closure is sure to be in relation from the growing pressure from authorities in the U.S. and around the world, with MegaUpload taking the first big blow, as well as The Pirate Bay.

BTJunkie wasn't attacked by the authorities, so this looks like a preemptive move to avoid future legal action, and/or arrests. BTJunkie had boasted 80 million users at one point, and in its farewell message, BTJunkie wrote:

Every time a new tech product comes out that I want, I make an excuse to how I can justify its purchase. Two Christmas' ago, I got myself some GTX 570s in SLI, just after my birthday last year, a Galaxy S II, and my birthday coming in March (March 12th to be precise, so all of your presents get to me on time) and now there's something I want.

9to5Google reported on this back in December, with some early information:

A 23-year-old League of Legends gamer has died in a Taipei gaming centre, where his body sat in front of his glowing monitor for 9 hours before anyone noticed that something had happened. Police have reported that Chen Rong-Yu was found sitting rigidly in front of his PC, hands stretched out towards the keyboard and mouse.

It is believed that the gamer had a pre-existing heart condition, but with the mix of low temperatures in the cafe, lack of movement and extreme fatigue, all contributing to the heart attack.

Gamers were taking part in a 400-percent bonus IP event in League of Legends. Chen was involved, and had even been taking regular naps at his desk during the event, which meant that the 30 or so players around him in the cafe did not notice a thing. A cafe employee found him, attempted to wake up, found his body cold, and called the police.

Anonymous have had an eventful 2012 thus far, with news today that they've intercepted and recorded a conference call that took place between the FBI and the British police cybercrime division of Scotland Yard on January 17.

Anonymous have now released an audio recording of the nearly 15 minutes of conversation online. During the call, the two parties discussed something quite important, a hacker plot called "Project Mayhem". What is Project Mayhem you ask? Well, it's only a strategy for bringing down Anonymous, you can now understand why this is of importance for Anonymous.

The two parties specifically talk about back arrests of members known as "Kayla" and "Tee-flow", as well as getting Ryan Cleary's indecent images which were found by the USAF who examined his hard drive and 15-year-old "Tehwongz" who has claimed to of hacked 32,000 Steam user names, logins and credit card details.

GFACE launched back in 2007, and until now it has been in "MAXIMUM STEALTH" mode. GFACE has been formed as a separate company headed by Crytek chief, Cevat Yerli. GFACE is designed to offer gamers a social networking site where they can communicate, collaborate, and play. GFACE's motto? 'Play. Together. Live.'

GFACE doesn't really bring anything new to the table, and it has some seriously hard competition in the form of Facebook, Google+, Steam, etc. Members do have the ability to view ongoing games live within their browser, all while they chat in both voice and text modes.

GFACE will be a freemium business model, where the core functionality of the new social networking service to remain free.

THQ are going through some rough times, and those tough times are now pushing back to sequel to Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light. The game has been pushed back to an early-2013 release.

Developer, 4A games has said in a statement:

We hunted high and low for hardware at the Taipei Game Show earlier today when we were there, but being a game show, it was obviously dominated with a strong gaming focus. Along side the Razer Blade eyes-on video we just posted, one of the other really hot bits of hardware was the Thermaltake Level 10 GT case mod by Brian Carter.

Brian named it the "COD" and it follows a really kick-ass Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 theme with a motorized and spinning gun at the front of the case, a rocket launcher at the top and on the side panel you'll find the medic kit for your war wounds as well as an ammo pack to keep on killing.

Back in the day we would just had some neon lights to our cases and call it a day when it came to case modding, nowadays they are doing crazy good stuff like this. I love it!

AMD's client roadmap has revealed Hondo, a 4.5W APU with 1-2 low voltage Bobcat cores as well as an on-die DX11 GPU built on a 40nm process. Windows 8 will be the OS to receive some of AMD's Hondo lovin'. AMD is wanting to get serious of entering the sub-2W market, with mobile being a very important path for AMD.

AMD has talked about being "ambidextrous" when it comes to architectures, implying that AMD's future products will include chips with ARM-based CPU cores for markets where it makes sense. AMD have also said they will take advantage of all sorts of ecosystems, including Windows 8 and Android.

The AMD 2013 Client Roadmap unveils some interesting things indeed, with 2013 mobile chips "Kaveri", "Kabini", and "Tamesh" being three new APUs to be introduced. Kaveri will sport 2-4 "Steamroller" CPU cores, as well as a GCN-based GPU with HSA Application support. Kabini will feature 2-4 "Jaguar" cores backed up by a GCN-based GPU, and finally, Tamesh sports 2 "Jaguar" CPU cores, and a GCN-based GPU.

Alan Wake on PC has finally gotten a firm release date, just two weeks from now. February 16th is the day you should buy some batteries for your flashlight, and it has a decent price of just $30. Remedy have been putting a nice amount of polish on Alan Wake for PC, where it includes not just improved graphics, but multiple monitor support, and 3D.

Remedy's CTO, Markus Mäki has said:

Apple don't have a TV on the market, where their biggest competitor in the smartphone market, Samsung, sure do have that market with their fist around it, tightly. The latest coming from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, has said that the Cupertino-based company has been checking out the TV component supply chain, in preparations of entering the TV market.

Munster wrote in a note to clients today:

In a conference call with EA's Vice President of Investor Relations, it was said to analysts:

The rumor of an 'all-American DLC' has come from some YouTube comments where they've stated:

I've never heard of Crackle until now, so I've just pushed that rock up off my back and thrown it to the side for now. Crackle is part of Sony Picture Entertainment's video entertainment network, and now gives UK, US, Canadian, and Australians access to a bunch of TV shows and Hollywood movies, all for free.

For free! Free, as in, nothing? Well, Crackle is ad-supported, but it's not a direct competitor of paid-for video-on-demand services such as Netflix, which is also available on the Xbox Live hub, but instead Crackle offers a range of old movies, TV shows and animated series.

Phil Lynch, VP Digital Networks and Games at Sony Pictures Television says:

First off, some back story. This will end up as a mini-editorial, but some of you will find this very interesting. Lake Vostok is a large (10,000km2), presumably fresh water body located under some 4km of ice in East Antarctica. The lake is not some little pool of water, its a gigantic, 250km long and 50km wide.

Because the lake is under kilometres of frozen ice, it has been untouched by todays technology and hence, the hands of man. The contents of this secret under-the-ice lake, have not seen the light of day for more than 20 million years. Because of this long period of pure isolation, it is believed that the water inside Lake Vostok could contain new, never-before-seen lifeforms, and unique geochemical processes.

For the past five-plus years, Russia and the United States have been seeking to probe Vostok in order to discover its underlying secrets from this pure, pristine body of water. The problem associated with such an untouched body of water is that as soon as it is discovered, tested and exposed, we would have contaminated it in multiple ways. Because of its long period of isolation, it cannot be explored without the introduction of the outside world, i.e. us.

We started the day off with a RumorTT about the iPod Nano, and toward the end of the news posting day, another RumorTT is here, about the iPad 3. I did originally say that it was weird posting a RumorTT piece about an Apple product that wasn't an iPhone or iPad... but mere hours later, here we are.

A "source claiming to be in possession of an iPad 3 prototype" provided BGR with images that contained juicy details on Apple's next-generation iPad. From the above photo, which contains the output from an iPad 3 using a development and debug tool called iBoot, we can see tonnes of information on the iPad 3.

First, J1 and J2 (iPad3,1 and iPad3,2) are two different models, not different devices. A single iPad 3, available in Wi-Fi-only and another that sports GSM/CDMA/LTE for all carriers. Also spotted in the photo is the first news of the chip being slapped into the iPad 3: an A6 processor with the model number S5L8945X. To compare this to previous Apple chips, the Apple A4 model was S5L8930X and the Apple A5 is the S5L8940X.

This has been going on for quite a while now, but just a few moments ago, Sweden's Supreme Court handed down its decision to not grant leave to appeal in the long-running Pirate Bay criminal trial. What this means is that their previously determined jail sentences and fines handed out to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström will stand.

During the original 2009 trial, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström all had their sentences decreased, but ordered to pay increased damages that added up to millions of dollars to be handed over to the entertainment company plaintiffs.

The three men filed for a hearing of their case at the Supreme Court, which happened today, and their request was denied. This means that the previously-given sentences now stand, and are final. Peter Sunde aka Brokep, will face 8 months in prison. Fredrik Neij aka TiAMO, is looking at 10 months. Businessman Carl Lundström has just 4 months behind bars. They are all still required to pay a combined $6.8 million in damages.

Facebook has finally, after all this time, speculation and rumors, finally reached their status of hitting an initial public offering (IPO) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It raised $5 billion, less than the previously speculated $10 billion.

In their S-1 filing, Facebook also mentioned they would begin selling public stock as soon as possible. On top of the IPO news, they released some statistics on Facebook, which are very mind-blowing: Facebook now receives 845 million active users per month, 100 billion friendships, 2.7 billion likes and comments per day, as well as 250 million photos being uploaded every day.

We also found out that Facebook has been profitable for three years now, with revenue of $777 million on profit of $229 million in 2009 alone. Revenue grew 154-percent to $1.974 billion in 2010, and another 88-percent in 2011 to $3.711 billion. Facebook earned $1 billion last year, and are sitting on cash reserves of $3.908 billion.

Samsung has confirmed with TechRadar, that the successor to the super-awesome Galaxy S II, the Galaxy S III won't be seen at Mobile World Congress this year. The Galaxy S II was announced at last year's MWC, but the successor will miss the show. Boo.

It was revealed that the Galaxy S III will receive its own separate event to show off the new phone: