The North Korean military is still likely years away from successfully launching a ballistic missile with nuclear capabilities, but the country now has a Soviet-era submarine that can fire ballistic missiles. South Korean and US military experts are concerned North Korea continues to develop a nuclear weapons program, and utilizing ballistic missiles is an important step in that process.

"While the potential threat from a future North Korean capability to launch ballistic missiles from submarines should not be ignored, it should also not be exaggerated," said Joseph Bermudez, a military analyst. "While the development of submarines carrying ballistic missiles could provide North Korea with a survivable second-strike nuclear capability... it also assumes that Pyongyang would entrust an operational nuclear-armed missile to the captain of a submarine who would, in time of war, most likely be out of communication with the leadership."

It appears North Korea is a step closer to the miniaturization of nuclear warheads that could be fitted to ballistic missiles - but whether or not the country could accurately aim these missiles towards South Korea or Japan - remains a frightening unknown. However, fitting a nuclear weapon aboard a submarine opens up new challenges to South Korea, Japan, and the United States, with launch tubes and installation of a fire system possible within the next two years.

Enmotus has announced the general availability of their FuzeDrive server software, which provides software-defined storage acceleration for server-side SSD and NVDIMM deployments, which are becoming more popular in clustered servers and hyper-converged architectures. FuzeDrive's MicroTiering storage algorithms load-balance data across devices, and allows the use of standard SSDs to provide seamless caching for server-side flash deployments.

Andy Mills from Enmotus demonstrated the actual use of FuzeDrive software for us at the 2014 Flash Memory Summit. FuzeDrive provides easy management capability integrated into the operating system's native file browsing tools. FuzeDrive also allows for file-pinning in the cache, which keeps desired data constantly in the SSD cache to deliver maximum performance acceleration for critical files. Users can also use a real-time at-a-glance visual mapping tool to monitor performance. FuzeDrive differentiates itself from caching solutions by providing low-impact acceleration that doesn't eat CPU cycles. In come configurations caching software can chew up to 50% of the host CPU cycles running cache management tables and algorithms, and also have limits on the amount of addressable flash capacity. Enmotus is currently working with a select number of solution and channel partners to make the technology available.

Marrying the capacity of HDDs with the performance of flash is one of the most common use-cases for server-side flash deployments, specifically because it can reduce network traffic, or even take the SAN out of the picture entirely. Samsung recently purchased Proximal Data to expand its base of technology, and other players in this space have already made significant investments in various caching/tiering software companies. It wouldn't be entirely surprising to see Enmotus acquired in the near future.

Rising electronics powerhouse Xiaomi plans to invest $1 billion in providing more online TV content to subscribers, which will complement Xiaomi TV and the company's set-top box.

China has more than 600 million Internet users, with a growing number watching online video via smartphones - and Xiaomi wants to compete against Alibaba, Tencent, and others in the growing market. The country was the second largest movie market in 2012, trailing the United States, with continued growth expected over the next several years, analysts predict.

Here is what Chen Tong, a recent Xiaomi hire and former Chinese Sina Internet company executive said: "We want to repeat the success of Xiaomi's hardware integration model in the television industry."

HGST has added another design win to the long list of FlashMAX design wins. StoneFly, a leading supplier of SAN systems, has announced integration of the HGST FlashMAX II into the flash-based version of their USS Hyper-Converged appliances. StoneFly's USS solution can be configured as iSCSI, Fibre Channel, or NAS (CIFS/SMB and NFS), and the hypervisors allow multiple VM's to run on a single physical host.

StoneFly runs all control logic as a software-based service on HGST FlashMAX II SSDs. The virtual storage controllers run on each cluster node to improve scalability and resilience. StoneFly USS appliances can begin with a single node configuration and then nodes can be added in increments as small as 2U (12 drive bays) to 4U (24 Drive bays). Each appliance can be scaled up to support a total of 256 drives per node. Cluster nodes and their expansion nodes can be seamlessly added one at a time with zero downtime. This provides a time to value deployment of under 30-minutes, with no disruption to ongoing operations.

The HGST FlashMAX II is a great fit for this type of deployment, we recently posted in-depth competitive performance analysis in our HGST FlashMAX II 2.2TB Enterprise PCIe SSD Review. One of the strongest features of the FlashMAX II lies in their enhanced software offerings that radically redefine typical expectations from a PCIe SSD. Advanced software features provide a host of new capabilities, which we cover in great detail in the article.

Memblaze has just announced their latest and greatest, the behemoth 8TB Eblaze4. Memblaze is one of the world's largest PCIe SSD suppliers, but their focus on the China market has kept them out of the limelight in North America. The release of the EBlaze4 continues the introduction of more Memblaze products into the North American and European markets. This PCIe SSD comes in the standard HHHL form factor and also is available in a 2.5" design. We recently took a close look at the PBLaze3L and found it to offer great performance and a wide variety of capacities to fit any environment.

The new EBlaze4 has a feature set geared specifically for SDS and hyperscale deployments. The EBlaze4 provides greater control through customization and programmability that manages the device down to a granular level. Users can tailor certain functions, such as garbage collection and wear leveling, to preferred settings, tying them closely to application requirements.

The EBlaze4 comes in 500, 700, and 900 Series and sports the NVMe interface. The 500 and 700 Series offer up to 3.6 and 3.2TB of capacity, respectively, and sequential speeds weighing in at 2.5/1.8 GBps read/write over a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection. The 500 Series offers 500,000/40,000 read/write IOPS, and the 700 series expands that to 500,000/150,000 read/write IOPS. The mammoth 900 Series brings a whopping 8.0TB onto a single device with blistering sequential speeds of 4.5/2.5 GB/s read/write. Yes, you read that right, 4.5 Gigabytes per second of read speed, easily the fastest on the market.

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson still plans to be a passenger on the first tourist flight into space, even though SpaceShipTwo suffered a "serious anomaly" and exploded during a test flight. The company plans to move ahead with construction on another aircraft which could be done before the end of 2014.

Even with the recent SpaceShipTwo test incident, the 800 passengers that have signed up for the $250,000 ride have reportedly voiced their support. In fact, two more people signed up and paid for a trip on a future Virgin Galactic flight, Branson said.

Here is what Branson recently told CNN: "There is no way I would ask others to go on a Virgin Galactic flight if I didn't feel it was safe enough myself. They want to see this happen, and they want to show their commitment."

NVIDIA and Ubisoft have teamed up for a new gaming development partnership that will give consumers who purchase new NVIDIA desktop GPUs or gaming laptops a free video game. NVIDIA also is promoting its GameWorks technologies, including HBAO+ used for realistic shadows, TXAA for smoothness, and 4K support, which developers can include in future video games.

The "Pick Your Path" promotion allows gamers who purchase a new GeForce GTX GPU, from the GeForce GTX 980, 970, 780 Ti, or 780 video cards - or a gaming laptop with GeForce GTX 980M or 980M - will receive a free copy of Assassin's Creed Unity, Far Cry 4, or The Crew.

"NVIDIA has worked hard, hand-in-hand with our development teams, to help provide the best experience for our PC players," said Jean-Francois St. Amour, Ubisoft Montreal Lead Graphics Programmer, in a press statement. "Their support and insight is even more important now, as we make a big technological leap into the next-generation of Assassin's Creed games."

Former California Highway Patrol officer Sean Harrington, based out of the Dublin, California office, surrendered to authorities on Monday. Harrington faces two counts of felony theft of computer data for stealing private photos from smartphones of people in police custody, and he recently resigned from the CHP. Harrington admitted to taking photos from around a "half dozen" female arrestees, with photos and commentary shared among several other officers.

Apparently, Harrington and several other officers thought it was a "game" to share photos of women, sending the photos to one another. In the most recent incident, a 23-year-old woman was arrested for suspected DUI and provided the officer her phone password so he could retrieve a phone number for her. While using her phone, Harrington sent photos to an officer, which the arrested female discovered when using her iPad after she was released from jail.

Here is what Michael Rains, Harrington's attorney, said to the local media: "You talk about paying the price for something you once called a game. You can't pay too much of a price for that, and frankly, it's not over. The women who were victimized by this deserve to be angry and upset because it's not a game, it's a serious matter."

Facebook-owned Oculus VR doesn't plan to release a consumer headset until motion sickness-related issues are resolved, according to company officials. Some users said they suffer from motion sickness while wearing the headset and playing video games or watching movies.

"We're really looking forward to this as an industry that takes off... A number of companies will come in, even companies we haven't heard of yet two or three or five years down the road," said Brendan Iribe, Oculus VR CEO. "At the same time we're a little worried about some of the bigger companies putting out product that isn't quite ready. That elephant in the room is disorientation and motion sickness. We're encouraging other companies, particularly the big consumer companies, to not put out a product until they've solved that problem."

Without naming Sony directly, it would appear Iribe is speaking of the Japanese electronics giant - which unveiled Project Morpheus earlier this year. Virtual reality isn't necessarily a new technology, but only recently became a realistic goal, as hardware and software makers look to the budding market.

Here we are, living in a world of Apple only just reaching 1920x1080 on its latest iPhone 6 Plus, while Japan's Semiconductor Energy Laboratory (SEL) working with Nokia on some truly groundbreaking OLED display prototypes. Back in June, the two unveiled a 5.9-inch 1280x720 (720p and 249 PPI) display that could be folded in two, or in three - with two different prototypes being used.

Well, SEL are back, showing off a new 8.7-inch AMOLED, with the resolution cranked up to 1920x1080 (1080p and 254 PPI). These new panels are touch-capable, and can be tri-folded with the single prototype. SEL has done this by utilizing their CAAS-OS (C-Axis Aligned Crystalline Oxide Semiconductor) backplane, as well as a WRGB structure. The panels themselves are less than 100μm thick, weighing just 6 grams.

SEL was also teasing their new super-high-resolution AMOLED display, which was just 2.8 inches, with a resolution of 2560x1440 - this provides the tiny little OLED display with a PPI of 1058. The company had a large viewfinder on-hand to better show off its incredible technology.