Peter Sunde was one of the original The Pirate Bay founders, and his stint as the official spokesman for the popular torrent site earned him prison time. In comments on his blog Peter outlined his disdain with the current state of The Pirate Bay and expressed his feelings on the matter. "The Pirate Bay has been raided, again. That happened over 8 years ago last time. That time, a lot of people went out to protest and rally in the streets. Today few seem to care. And I'm one of them."

Much of Peter's angst stems from the fact that The Pirate Bay has devolved into a soulless entity hell-bent on running garish ads to receive as much money as possible, at least in his eyes. "The site was ugly, full of bugs, old code and old designs. It never changed except for one thing - the ads. More and more ads were filling the site, and somehow when it felt unimaginable to make these ads more distasteful, they somehow ended up even worse," Peter writes. The suggestive ads began when The Pirate Bay was sold to Reservella, a shadowy company based out of Seychelles. Reservella made several moves to monetize the site, but made very few improvements in actual function and design.

The Pirate Bay owns several other domains that can be used to bring the site back online, but so far there hasn't been a trace of the trusty old pirate ship. There are several scam sites popping up that are attempting to charge subscription fees, so readers are warned to steer clear of those particular bands of pirates. The Pirate Bay pioneered torrenting, and its widespread use has led to an entire constellation of other trackers on the web. This proliferation of alternatives may blunt the blow of The Pirate Bays untimely demise, but many expect the ship to pull back into port soon.

Qualcomm is releasing new chipsets for access points that leverage MU-MIMO technology. Current-gen Wi-Fi systems can become easily overwhelmed when multiple users access the system simultaneously. The core reason is because Wi-Fi wasn't designed to serve multiple users at the same time. Wi-Fi sends a single stream of data to a user, then that transmission is terminated and another stream initiates for another user, but there is never more than one active data stream. These snippets in time become increasingly smaller and more frequent as more users log in, effectively throttling the network bandwidth and speed for all users.

MU-MIMO (Multi-User Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output) is a revolutionary new antenna technology that enables communication with multiple devices simultaneously over multiple streams of data. This enables the host router to act more as a switched ethernet fabric and will exponentially increase the ability for wireless routers to handle groups of users. Qualcomm's new chipsets will enable this capability with 802.11ac networks. Qualcomms offerings are going out to the enterprise first, and several vendors will begin offering products supporting MU-MIMO in the middle of 2015.

The only drawback is that most current receivers do not support the technology. Qualcomm's existing Snapdragon 801 and 805 processors support the technology, but will need a software update to operate correctly. MU-MIMO will enter the consumer space as well in 2015, and will allow users to experience much smoother performance on large-scale networks.

Avago has announced the expansion of their successful 9300 HBA series to include two new 12Gb/s SAS 16-port models. The ever-changing datacenter has necessitated high port-count solutions to address DAS and external configurations. The 9300-16i and 9300-16e address these requirements with 16 native ports in internal and external flavors. Avago has accomplished this feat by merging two SAS 3008 controllers onto the same device. Each of these controllers, in tandem with the Fusion MPT 2.5 architecture, deliver plenty of grunt power to handle challenging workloads.

In aggregate both controllers deliver nearly 2 million IOPS for the HBA. The HBA's connect to the host via an x8 PCIe 3.0 connection and are backwards compatible with previous SAS and SATA revisions. The Fusion MPT (Message-Passing Technology) architecture leverages in-box drivers for ease of deployment and wide compatibility while delivering maximum host CPU offload capability.

Both adaptors are full-height and feature mini-SAS HD ports that can control up to 1024 non-RAID devices. Power draw weighs in at 27W for the internal and 28.6W for the external versions. There is an auxiliary power connector for power-constrained PCIe ports. For a look at the latest competitive performance analysis of Avago (previously LSI) components head over to our RAID/HBA category in the IT/Datacenter section.

We've seen a trend of global technology companies come and go with their local branch Facebook pages, often opening them up in each region and then shutting them down later when they realize how much work and money is required to keep them properly functional.

We've just received information that Corsair are the latest company to do this, shutting down their Australia and New Zealand Facebook page - moving everything to the global page and all under one banner.

There are obviously a few positives to keeping it all under one roof, these being things such as: streamline of content delivery, much less work for staff, only one page to distribute advertisements through and the feeling of a larger community (as they're all-in-one place). But, if you've got the local staff there on the ground, I feel that the benefits quite outweigh this.

The FBI has tried to crack down on the Anonymous hacker collective, including turning a former high-ranking member into an informant - but the group is still alive and well. Hector Monsegur, operating under the hacker name of "Sabu," admits to a large number of attacks against select targets.

Since being flipped by the FBI, Sabu spent three years communicating with Anonymous and LulzSec members, with the government listening in. His actions reportedly helped prevent more than 300 major cyberattacks against government and NASA PCs and networks.

Sabu says he didn't identify Anonymous members and turn them over to the FBI - and cooperated to help identify attacks, and work to prevent them in the future. "It wasn't a situation where I identified anybody. I didn't point my fingers at nobody. My cooperation entailed logging and providing intelligence. It didn't mean, 'Can you please tell me the identity of one of your mates?'"

MKV files are finally receiving some desktop support from Microsoft, where Matroska Multimedia Container (MKV) file support is now native under Windows 8.1, meaning you won't need to find a third-party piece of software to play them.

Even though MKV files are mostly associated with high-end pirated copies of TV shows and movies, Microsoft baking native support for the container could see this change. Windows 10 will also have native support for MKV files, as well as FLAC files. The company recently rolled out an update for the Xbox One that provided support for MKV, too. Microsoft is really changing lately, especially with this type of news happening, and it's a good thing.

Evolution Studios has been working around the clock to make it right with its PlayStation 4 exclusive Drive Club, with the latest patch for the game not only fixing up some of the issues with the game, but it is offering up some damn impressive dynamic weather effects.

Driveclub is now sitting at version 1.08, with the latest update coming in at 1.4GB, adding rain and snow to both the offline and online modes for the game. There are also two new tracks: Norway's Atlanterhavsvegen and Canada's Sinclair Pass as well as the improvements that the developer promised not too long ago. The patch provides:

But don't worry, Evolution Studios is promising another patch before the end of the year, something that will add:

iHeart is a new tool tailored towards health conscious consumers. Coming out of Vancouver, BC - this product and app claims to measure your aortic stiffness, said to be able to give you a readout of your physiological age among other things.

'Vitalsines' is the Bio-Tech start-up company behind this venture. Their president Dr. Jess Goodman explained their goals in a recent press release as "[wanting] to provide people with a system that objectively shows how positive lifestyle choices extend lifespan". She goes on to explain their new development as "a product that is complimentary to other fitness tools on the market. iHeart is a window to the life sustaining world within. It gives people the positive reinforcement to continue with their positive lifestyle changes".

This product comes in two parts - a Bluetooth fingertip 'oximeter' and a paired iOS application. Explained as a 'non-invasive' technology, this device will conduce a 30 second scan on your arterial pulse signal, sending the information directly to your iOS device with the free application installed. You'll then be able to see the readout of your Aortic stiffness and physiological age immediately with this information being stored locally on your device and the www.iHeartalive.com webpage - allowing you to track progress.

We know that both Target and Kmart Australia have banned Grand Theft Auto V from their shelves, with a petition that has been fired back by peeved gamers that want to see the Bible banned from sale, too. Well, now Take-Two Interactive's Chairman and CEO, Karl Slatoff has stepped up to talk about it all.

Slatoff talked at the BMO Capital Markets 2014 Technology & Digital Media Conference, where he said that people who find individual pieces of content offensive should simply not purchase that product. He said: "It's one thing for someone to not want to buy a piece of content, which is completely understandable. And that's really the solution. If you don't like it and it's offensive to you, then you don't buy it".

He also talked about the petition, and that the results were an infringement on free speech, where he added: "For a person or a group of people to try to make that decision for millions of people... We have 34 million people who bought Grand Theft Auto, and if these folks had their way, none of those people would be able to buy Grand Theft Auto. And that really just flies in the face of everything that free society is based on. It's the freedom of expression, and to try to squelch that is a dangerous and slippery slope to go down".

Microsoft has a nice exclusive for the Xbox One next year, with Rise of the Tomb Raider hitting its console sometime in 2015. The company's Head of Global Product Marketing, Aaron Greenberg, announced the news on Twitter. Greenberg said: "Yes we are publishing Rise of the Tomb Raider".

The company announced its exclusivity of the sequel to Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider at E3 2014 earlier this year, and then at Gamescom 2014, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President Phil Harrison announced that Rise of the Tomb Raider would be a timed exclusive for the Xbox One. This means the PlayStation 4 and PC could see Rise of the Tomb Raider sometime after it hits the Xbox One, but that timed exclusive for Microsoft could be months.

The reboot of Tomb Raider from Crystal Dynamics has been a big hit for the company, with Tomb Raider selling millions upon millions of copies across the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. It was then released for the PS4 and Xbox One as Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, and then we've just had the launch of Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris, too.