I'm sure most of our readers have been following the legal proceedings in the Apple v Samsung lawsuit. Yesterday, Apple was awarded just over $1 billion in damages for Samsung willfully infringing on their patents. However, Apple's Tim Cook says in a memo to employees that it wasn't about the money, it was "about values."

The memo, sent to Apple corporate employees, is an interesting read:

Today was an important day for Apple and for innovators everywhere.

Many of you have been closely following the trial against Samsung in San Jose for the past few weeks. We chose legal action very reluctantly and only after repeatedly asking Samsung to stop copying our work. For us this lawsuit has always been about something much more important than patents or money. It's about values. We value originality and innovation and pour our lives into making the best products on earth. And we do this to delight our customers, not for competitors to flagrantly copy.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the jury who invested their time in listening to our story. We were thrilled to finally have the opportunity to tell it. The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung's copying went far deeper than we knew.

The jury has now spoken. We applaud them for finding Samsung's behavior willful and for sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right.

I am very proud of the work that each of you do.

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It's a sad day for the space community. Pioneer astronaut Neil Armstrong has passed away at age 82. For those of you who don't know who Neil Armstrong is, a little back-story is in order. Armstrong commanded the Apollo 11 mission, the first space mission of any country to land humans on the moon.

Once on the surface of the moon, he spoke the famous words that will forever be used to describe a great achievement that advances science for the better of the world: "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong was one of only 12 Americans to ever set foot on the moon.

Hot on the heels of their loss to Apple in their patent case, Samsung have unveiled a teaser video for their upcoming Windows 8 hybrid device. The video below shows off some of the upcoming features of the Windows 8-based device.

The video is quite the tease, with just mere seconds of glimpses of the device itself. Samsung have used images of clockwork solar systems, Old Master diagrams, and mathematical formulae, to tease their upcoming product. Samsung uses all of this, and calls it an "evolution of technology".

The device looks to be similar to current notebooks, sporting a headphone port and other inputs that are usually found on tablets on its upper edge. Things like an USIM slot, a microSD reader, and USB port. There was a Series 5 Hybrid Samsung device shown off earlier this year, featuring a detachable 11-inch, 1080p tablet screen that magnetically connected to a keyboard dock.

American Airlines Flight 1318 - High in the skies, somewhere between Dallas and Indianapolis we would like to interrupt your morning with this special announcement.

Just moments ago we received confirmation that Kingston has released firmware version 5.0.3, AKA The TRIM FIXING FIRMWARE, for the HyperX and HyperX 3K!!!!!!!!!

Using Kingston's Toolbox, a free SSD utility located on the Kingston's support website, HyperX and HyperX 3K owners will be the first to gain access to the new firmware that fixes TRIM in Windows.

Obviously since we are in the air we have yet to update our sample HyperX 3K but we have installed the FW in beta form. This is a non-destructive update but I would suggest treating this update as destructive.

Flash Memory Summit 2012 - Micron was demonstrating their newest Micron-designed PCIe SSD controller at the Flash Memory Summit. This controller has allowed Micron to develop the P320h standard PCIe SSD, but also take a new approach to PCIe SSDs.

There are two approaches, the standard SSD that plugs into the PCIe slot, and then a device that looks strikingly similar to a typical 2.5" SSD.

This standard looking SSD is actually connected via a PCIe connection. Even though the connector resembles a standard connection, it is actually an extension of PCIe which allows for superb latency and much higher throughput speed.

I woke up this morning to my wife sitting across from me asking "did you hear about the Apple vs. Samsung case? Apple won". I immediately grabbed my Galaxy Note (wink) and read up on it. Today is a dark day for technology, my dear readers.

The jury on the case found that Samsung were guilty on infringing six out of the seven Apple patents, with the results of this pushing Samsung to pay just over $1 billion in damages to Apple. On Samsung's side, the jury ruled that Apple did not infringe on Samsung's patents with their iPhone 3G and 3GS phones, and have awarded Samsung absolutely nothing in damages.

The jury ruled that Samsung infringed on Apple's '381 bounceback patent, with all of their products in question, all 21 of them. In regards to the '915 patent on pinch-to-zoom, the jury ruled that all but three of Samsung's device infringed on the patent, and even worse, found that Samsung's executives either knew, or should have known their products were indeed infringing on the said patents.

Flash Memory Summit 2012 - NVMe is an emerging specification that looks to take over both SCSI and SATA as the go-to specification for SSDs. This new method of accessing SSDs allows for performance above and beyond the current methods of accessing storage. Many of the performance limitations of flash solutions are actually being held back by archaic storage interfaces, and the advent of the NVMe specification looks to remedy that situation.

Of course the first step to achieving this is working silicon, in the form of controllers that are already integrated into usable solutions. IDT has rose to the challenge, beating many others to actually producing the first operating devices capable of supporting this solution that has been in development for years. This demo unit had a rather large fan over the processor to keep it cool during operation.

This board is the higher capacity version that supports more NAND packages onboard a PCIe gen 3.0 compliant interface. The sheer aggregation of flash dies allows for a more linear scaling in performance from the device, leveraging 32 channels via the 89HF32P08AG3 controller.

Computer sales have been slow, especially considering we are in the third quarter, a time when sales are usually peaking due to back to school shopping and other factors. This slow down in sales has caused a drop in demand for DRAM and quite the stock pile of RAM back at the factories. Most have pulled in production, but they still have a 3 month surplus.

Hopefully, Windows 8 PCs and the release of Windows 8 will drive PC sales back up to where they should be. This should help clear out the back up as sales pick up. Some sources have reported OEM PC factories have a surplus of 6 months. This huge pile up is bad for the industry but good for consumers looking to upgrade their RAM.

Some sources are saying that RAM prices could be 10-15 percent lower in October than they are today--good news if you need to expand your RAM offerings or are looking to give RAM as a gift. Elpida and Rexchip Electronics have cut production by 25-30 percent in order to stop prices from dipping even further.

Bottom line: if you can hold off buying RAM for another couple of months, it should be 10-15% cheaper.

We may just have a piece of good news here for users of the Android Facebook app. As most of you know, the thing sucks. I'm not going to use pretty language like "subpar" or other sanitized language when describing it. Facebook updated the iOS version of the app with a completely rewritten version that is faster, more stable, and generally better than the previous iteration--and the previous iteration was still better than the current Android app.

Facebook management has come to realize just how bad the Android app is and is working on getting their employees to fix it. But, if they don't use it, they won't really know just how bad it is or where the problems are. This is where Facebook's new "policy" comes into play. I say "policy" as it's not an official policy, rather a suggestion (with some coercion).

Facebook is suggesting employees, and has even ordered a few, to give up their iPhone and use an Android phone and the Facebook app all day, every day. Hopefully if they are stuck with the terrible app, they will become more interested in fixing it up to where it is at least competitive with the iOS version.

Android users, rejoice! Facebook appears to finally be taking their Android app seriously. Now we will just have to wait for an update.

If you've ever been camping and sat around a campfire, you know how hot your face can get. While in war, many soldiers wear camouflage face paint. The issue with the current face paint is that it is a concoction of oil and wax which, when exposed to high temperatures such as a bomb blast, melts and burns the skin.

Furthermore, any face paint is required to have Deet, an insect repellent, included in the formula so that soldiers don't get bitten to death in jungles and other settings. The problem with Deet is that it is highly flammable, not exactly something you want exposed to high heat. This is where the scientists come in.

Scientists have invented a new face paint which "resists intense heat from bombs" and can resist temperatures of up to 600*C for up to 15 seconds. Considering bomb blasts last just two or three seconds, this face paint can protect soldiers' skin from the heat produced by the blast.

The new paint is produced using silicone, something that reflects heat rather than absorbing it. The Deet problem was solved by mixing it with a water-rich hydrogel substance to keep it from catching fire. Scientists are now working on producing a clear version for firefighters so they don't have to wear warpaint when running into a burning building.