Starting on Black Friday, and only available while supplies last, Samsung is offering a free Far Cry 4 download with any purchase of an 840 EVO SSD. The offer is only available from participating retailers, most notably Best Buy, Amazon, Newegg, Microcenter, Fry's, and Tiger Direct. Users will be able to download the game at a Samsung-hosted web address (Samsung.com/fc4) until September 1.

The 840 EVO is a value SSD that delivers tremendous performance. Our resident SSD expert, Chris Ramseyer, recently took a look at the 840 EVO in his Samsung 840 EVO 500GB SSD Review - An SSD with a Good Price and Performance article. Chris found the 840 EVO to offer a great mixture of price and performance, and the EVO won the TweakTown Editor's Choice award. The 840 EVO is currently selling at roughly 45 cents per gigabyte, and adding in the free Far Cry 4 game is the cherry on top.

The 4K TV market is finally expanding rapidly as we enter the holiday shopping season. The total sales figures for retail 4K TV's year-to-date weighs in at 6.4 million units, but over 3 million of those TV's shipped in the last quarter alone. Retailers are obviously stocking up for huge Black Friday sales, and the continued price reductions for ultra-high definition TV's are obviously fueling the healthy sales figures.

Surprisingly, China has led demand and has consumed 60% of the shipments thus far. Samsung occupies the leadership position, but low-cost panels from relatively unknown manufactures, such as Hisense and Changchong, are creating more competition in this space. Plasma TV's aren't faring as well, and several companies have ceased manufacturing them entirely. The overall TV market has been somewhat sluggish and only grew at a 4% rate last year. The growth is fed largely by 1080p LCD panels, but most consumers have already upgraded to 1080p at this point, and the catalyst for future growth will likely be yet another transition period as we move to 4K televisions.

Aside from excessive price, another significant reason many have forgone the move to 4K televisions is the lack of 4K media and players. Many of the early adopters are videophiles with impressive home theater systems, and the emergence of sensibly priced 4K-capable receivers is finally a reality. As the ecosystem of 4K capable devices continues to develop we expect a rapid increase.

Do you want to be a drone pilot? There is increasing need for private drone pilots, with salaries often starting at $100,000 per year - and the demand for these specially-trained workers is only increasing. The market is expected to create around 100,000 new jobs over the first 10 years, with a growing number of drones entering private US airspace.

Even with potential Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) problems, Amazon, Facebook, and other companies are interested in utilizing drones for various reasons. Some companies are already paying $50 per hour, and salaries will only increase even further above $100,000 per year, according to Al Palmer, University of North Dakota Unmanned Aircraft Systems director.

Expect more university programs dedicated to helping groom the next generation of drone pilots.

Audiophiles, rejoice! Windows 10 Project Manager Gabriel Aul has announced via Twitter that Microsoft will offer native FLAC support in their latest operating system. FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a commonly used lossless audio format that provides a more accurate reproduction of recordings. In other words, it sounds better than other formats, such as MP3, which compress recordings down to a more manageable size but lose quality in the process.

FLAC audio files are very large, but the audio quality is superb. Windows has long forced users to turn to downloadable third-party audio codec packs to support FLAC, along with several other codecs. Microsoft has finally seen the light and is integrating FLAC directly into Windows Media Player 12 and the music app. Microsoft has also pleased the world at large by finally supporting MKV as well, so perhaps there will be less third-party codec downloads with insidious bloatware installers in our future.

Discerning ears want to know what took Microsoft so long to support the popular FLAC codec, but in some ways it makes sense. MP3, while of inferior quality, creates files that are small and can be flung out to mobile devices which have limited capacity. MP3 also produces 'good enough' quality for the majority of users. FLAC files are absolutely huge, as anyone who has downloaded them (legally, of course) is well aware of. As new dense storage technologies are working their way to market, such as 3D NAND, we will begin to see portable devices with enough capacity to easily store our precious FLAC files. In the interim, storage on PC's is plentiful and cheap. Prices are hovering around 2.5c per GB, and users can easily store tens of thousands of recordings relatively cheaply.

The floods in Thailand in 2011 sent a tidal wave of high prices through the HDD market. The ripples of the flood are just receding and HDD prices are finally rebounding. Black Friday sales are going to feature HDDs for roughly $25 a terabyte, and expect many of these great deals to come without the normal mail in rebate programs. External drives are also going to be exceptionally low priced and feature speedy USB 3.0 interfaces.

After years of declining sales the PC market is also finally improving. Storage devices are somewhat of a litmus test for the PC market. When sales of PC are bad the HDD market declines. Users seem to be turning back to their home computers. Sales of tablets, which helped eviscerate the PC space, are also starting to decline. The personal storage category has rebounded with a 4.8% increase in overall units shipped last quarter, according to IDC.

More units means lower prices and better deals as we hunt for Black Friday deals. Most consumer HDDs are somewhat similar in performance if they feature the same speed, and nearly all feature the same warranty period. If you are looking for the best hard drive price should be a major factor, as there is little to separate drives of the same speed.

It looks like one of the bigger rumors for CES 2015, at least for me, is the news of Sony launching its new Xperia Z4 smartphone at the Las Vegas-based event in January 2015.

Sure, the Xperia Z4 will launch with an impressive Snapdragon 805 processor from Qualcomm, a sure-to-be gorgeous 5.4-inch QHD display (which I'll presume is their "Triluminos" panel), Android 5.0 Lollipop, and more than likely, 3GB of RAM will be great - but it's the image sensor in the camera that has me interested. Sony is rumored to be using its next-gen Exmor IMX230 camera sensor, which will have the Z4's camera turning some heads.

The new image sensor works almost like anti-aliasing when it comes to pictures, giving them a much sharper look as if you were using a much more powerful camera. All the other specifications and grunt under the Z4 hood is just gravy, baby.

To counter package theft, and make e-commerce shopping and delivery easier, San Francisco Bay Area startup Doorman will deliver packages to customers. The service costs $4 per package, or frequent ecommerce buyers can pay $19 or $29 per month for the silver and gold packages. Deliveries are made from 6:00PM until midnight, currently available only in San Francisco.

"Once it arrives, we notify you on your phone and then you use the Doorman app to schedule a delivery on your phone until midnight, seven days a week," said Zander Adell, Doorman founder.

Doorman is designed to make it more convenient for residents to receive their packages, while also helping prevent against theft. Throughout some parts in the Bay Area, package theft - taken off house porches and from apartment doorsteps - as thieves tend to take packages while people are away from their house in the afternoon.

Many cybersecurity specialists working for the NSA and GCHQ tend to get burned out, and then head to the private sector. It provides a unique opportunity to hear more about some of the efforts the US government have employed to conduct organized cyberespionage against foreign governments.

For regular Internet users, it doesn't matter whether it's the government or a foreign cybercriminal, cybersecurity must be appreciated and not overlooked. As former government programmers and security experts abandon their government jobs in favor of the private sector, companies want to rely on technology advice from intelligence officials - providing valuable insight into how governments are conducting increased surveillance.

"Whether they're cybercriminals or state sponsored actors, I think a lot of times they can get into a network using a less sophisticated approach or a variant of a known piece of malware... it's a lower risk operationally for them," said Jim Penrose, former NSA employee and part of the department's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group. "They don't want to fire silver bullets unless it's absolutely necessary; like a zero day or something like that, or a previously unseen piece of malware. Those are really high quality and you want to save those for a time when it's absolutely critical."

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has enjoyed a meteoric rise to become the No. 3 smartphone company in the world - but don't expect it to jump into new markets just for the sake of expansion. Xiaomi is focusing on China, India and Indonesia, for example, while Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Turkey and Thailand will have to wait until later down the road.

"We have to build better and better products making sure they're catered to each market and sold at the best possible price," said Hugo Barra, Xiaomi VP of global operations.

As Xiaomi continues to grow, the company will likely need its own manufacturing plants - and lessen the burden on its partners. However, it appears Xiaomi management is prepared to have new markets wait as it is able to establish itself further - showing impressive logic that other companies don't necessarily appreciate until it's too late.

Last week we reported on Thimbleweed Park, the "true spiritual successor" to the super-awesome Maniac Mansion, which hit Kickstarter with a funding goal of $375,000. Well, one week later, it has been met, and isn't stopping.

At the time of writing, they had $407,384 raised, with 22 days to go. If funding keeps up at this pace, they'll have a couple of million dollars to play with. Stretch Goals are now within reach, with $525,000 unlocking an iOS and Android version of the game. If the team reaches $625,000 they will provide "Talkies" with the team explaining "considered witchcraft and a fantasy of crazy people back in 1987, we'll be adding full voice acting to the English version of Thimbleweed Park. Hmmm... that's good thespian".

It'll be interesting to see backers flying past that $625,000 stretch goal soon, and even more interesting if we see new stretch goals introduced, or additional funding on their website ala Star Citizen.