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Most people not familiar with IT (and even some who are!) think that Apple's, and more specifically, Mac OS X are impenetrable, Terminator-like machines. But, they are not. Not only can spyware and malware attach to your browser, and not through an executable, but now there's news of a newly discovered malware threat that targets Mac OS X systems.

It comes in the pirated copies of image editing software "Graphic Converter". The malware is known by DevilRobber or Miner-D, and attempts to steal personal information and uses your machine's GPU to generate Bitcoins. If you didn't know what Bitcoins were, they are a digital currency that can be exchanged by online by users without the need for an intermediary bank or payment service.

For those of you who don't know, there is a 400m-wide asteroid called "2005 YU55" that will fly past us (and in-between the Moon) on November 9. It will fly past at just 324,600km away, which is 0.85 the distance of the Moon itself, it won't kill us; but it is close enough to be news-worthy.

According to NASA, the "trajectory of asteroid 2005 YU55 is well understood", so there's no dangers whatsoever. The asteroid won't have any gravitational influence on Earth, so it won't make volcanoes go off or cause Earthquakes, etc. But, our gravitational pull might re-direct 2005 YU55. This is something NASA don't really cover, because it will [of course] most likely cause panic.

Also remember, that on the same day, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) along with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will be running a nationwide event coordinated by those agencies and administrations. Come November 9, there will be a test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) in which the test will be heard on the radio and seen on local, cable and satellite TV.

If you think back to 2009, you may remember a teaser trailer from Piranha Games for a new MechWarrior title. But recently, they announced MechWarrior Online, a free-to-play multiplayer mech simulator set in the Battletech universe.

In a dev blog, Creative Director of Piranha, Bryan Ekman, explained how the company's attempts to secure a publishing deal redefined and ultimately derailed the MechWarrior project they had planned. The original game was pitched as an Xbox 360/PC release, but "the scope and budget required to develop a console reboot needed the support of a PS3 SKU and we just couldn't convince publishers to take risk."

Now we have MechWarrior as a PC-exclusive, it will feature a first-person cockpit view, and Ekman hopes to include joystick support. Ekman has also bragged of urban combat zones and "information warfare" as MechWarrior Online's two big design pillars.

Seagate currently have their GoFlex external drives using the 1TB platter technology, but they feature 5400 RPM and are not as fast as the usual 7200 RPM drives. But, with 7200 RPM drives, there's usually less GB per platter. Seagate don't want this, and neither do we.

Seagate will now intro a bunch of new drives sporting the 7200 RPM spindle rate, with 1TB platters on a SATA 6Gbps interface. The new drives will have a model number ending in M00x which represents the new drive and its 7200 RPM speed.

Tech wise, platter capacity plays quite a big role in just how much storage a hard drive can hold, but it can also impact performance. Areal density is key, which is a measurement of how many bits are squeezed into each square inch. The more bits per square inch, the more data passes under the drive head with each revolution of the platter.

A few days ago we reported about the battery life issues hurting some iPhone 4S customers, but now Apple have confirmed they have found a few problems that are leading some iPhone users to experience less-than-expected battery life with iPhones powering its latest iOS 5. Apple said in a statement to AllThingsD:

A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices. We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks.

In the past few weeks, there have been various reports not only from tech sites, but from users, that their battery life on the iPhone 4S has been less than stellar. The problems seems to stem from what network a user is on, usage patterns and other factors. Apple has of course been quiet about it (don't want to hurt those precious iPhone 4S sales or make people think Apple products aren't invincible!) but the support forums are filled with posts on the issue.

Any reason to show off some more Sandy Bridge-E / X79 related goodness is a good one, especially now with it being one of the hottest topics thanks to the launch right around the corner. And thanks to Biostar we can give you some more of it with pics and details on their upcoming TPower X79 motherboard for the next-gen LGA-2011 platform from Intel.

The board, while being by Biostar who tend to be renowned for delivering a more no frills, lower priced piece of hardware, looks to be quite strong by design overall, with no real shortcomings over the many other X79 motherboards we've been lucky enough to see pre-launch; unless of course you compare it directly to something like ASUS' Rampage IV Extreme.

Google have rolled out their new Reader design over the last few days and it now sports the Google+ features that were mentioned a week ago. Reader now features a new look that is cleaner, faster and nicer to look at. It also includes the ability to +1 a feed item (which replaces "Like"), with an option to then share it with your circles on Google+ (this replaces "Share" and "Share with Note").

Google say that integrating Reader with Google+ helps them streamline Reader overall, so with the rollout, Google have cut away friending, following, shared items and comments and replaced them with similar Google+ functionality. Google are loving the new layout and have also rolled the layout onto GMail also. Personally, I use Reader every single day for my news here at TweakTown and I really don't like the new layout.

DICE GM Karl-Magnus Troedsson has confirmed that development for Battlefield 3 switched from lead platform on PC to consoles half way through the development "in order to meet release on time". Troedsson elaborates:

We said originally that the PC was the lead SKU of the game, but in mid-production we switched to console as lead platform to make sure we could get all the versions done for release. Our ambition at DICE is to use the power of each individual platform to get the most out of the game. In the case of the PS3... I understand that if you compare it to a high-end PC, it's not going to look as good. But if you compare it to other games on the PS3, including other games we've done previously, I have to say I'm very happy with how it looks. Hopefully people will agree when they look at it in the same way.

Even though Sandy Bridge-E is about to drop, Apple might not be interested in investing anymore time or money into their full-size workstation line outside of this year because of limited sales of the Mac Pro. Apple has reportedly developed a revision to the Mac Pro, that may or may not even get released according to people familiar with the matter said management as far back as May of this year.

Apple have reportedly had discussions about the future of the Mac Pro, and that their days were inevitably numbered. Internal discussions have gone as far as mentioning that the sales of the Mac Pro to both consumers and enterprises have dropped off so considerably that the Mac Pro is no longer a particularly profitable operation for Apple. Then there's the Thunderbolt issue.

Thunderbolt was introduced this year, and allows the other, more popular members of the Mac family to assume the vast majority of the roles that once required the high-end Mac Pro's.

The state of gaming is in disarray, but the problem is that 90-percent of gamers don't really notice it. It's the old-school gamers, the early FPS titles that were remembered, the fast-paced, PC-exclusive, hardware-loving, crazy-insane FPS titles from the 90s that are the most enjoyed FPS games of all time. Back in a day when gaming wasn't mainstream, when a PC gaming system would give you hours of joy with hard games, not corridor shooters, with puzzles and hours of head-scratching now just simplified, easy games.

There's a video I found online, saying that if id Software's FPS defining Quake were built today, what would it be. Check it out below:

First we find there's a million and one load screens and advertisements before the game starts, as the game starts we find the main menu displayed. In the main menu is "new game", "options", "DLC" and "exit". The video shows "options" and within options, "graphics". Graphics has an awesome display of "on" and "off", which is taking the piss out of the current console ports like Crysis 2 which feature lack lustre graphic options when compared to even the original Crysis.