Intel is apparently working on 750 Series PCI Express interface based solid state drives for performance enthusiasts and professions, according to a news report. Recently, Intel released 730 Series SATA III SSDs recently, but it seems that Intel plans to introduce a PCIe version for the next series of SSD lineups.

Intel plans to release its 750 Series SSDs code-named 'August Ridge' which will use current gen MLC flash NAND with PCIe x8 interface. It will also have a M.2 form factor. These SSDs will come with storage variants of 180, 240, 360, 480 and 600GB. The performance of the 750 Series is said to be up to 1500 MB/s read and up to 1100 MB/s with random 4K IOPS to be 180/24k reads and writes.

Intel is planning to use a different interface as SATA 6Gbps are stifling the performance of a solid state drive. Many companies in the past used PCIe interface and even different form factors. It should be interesting to see how Intel 750 Series PCIe will perform, but we'll have to wait by Q4 2014.

Alleged British hacker Lauri Love is accused of hacking into US Federal Reserve computers, and his lawyers will "vehemently oppose" all attempts to extradite him. If convicted in the United States, Love faces up to 12 years in federal prison, according to FBI officials anxious to have him land on U.S. soil.

The UK national Crime Agency also is looking into Love's alleged hacking behavior, though the UK court system wants to see the "sophisticated hacker" stay in the UK.

"If there is an extradition request from the United States it will be vehemently opposed," said Karn Todner, Love's legal advisor, in a statement to the BBC. "We believe that if Mr. Love is to face charges that they should be, and will be, in the UK."

RSA 2014 - The bitcoin currency is extremely popular, and has become a great target for cybercriminals trying to steal a quick payday. Targeting Apple's OS X applications, the CoinThief Trojan is designed to steal bitcoins when hidden in pirated versions of mobile apps.

The CoinThief malware was discovered earlier in the month, and works by installing a browser plugin that remotely steals login information used on bitcoin wallet and exchange sites.

There are currently more than 100 forms of bitcoin-stealing malware in the wild, available for purchase starting around $25, according to security experts. Underground forums provide an ideal location for cybercriminals to show their wares - and if you are able to gain access and become a trusted member of the community - it's possible to purchase customized malware for next to nothing.

We take a grilling seriously here in Texas. Some people prefer charcoal, some prefer gas, whatever you use you need to amok sure you have enough of it. It's easy enough to look in the bag and see if you have charcoal and shake the lighter fluid bottle. It's not so easy to tell if you have enough propane left in your tank.

That means that more than a few grillers end up running out of propane mid cookout and cursing the fact that most grills and tanks have no way to tell how much fuel is left. A new propane tank system called Refuel has turned up that will prevent you from ever running out again.

The tank system is app enabled and the app will tell you how much gas is left in the tank. The system has a waterproof scale that sits under the propane tank and sends data to the Wink mobile app. The app will tell you how full the tank is and how long you can keep cooking based on how much you used in the past.

The number of mobile gamers out there that use smartphones and tablets is booming. Many of these mobile gamers are kids that download freemium apps that are supported by in-app purchases. The problem is that many of these apps don't clearly let players know that things in the game cost real-world money.

This often leads to accidental purchases by kids and adults alike. Officials from the European Union have announced that they are meeting with Apple, Google, and others on how developers are representing in-app purchases to consumers in Europe. The officials want to set regulations that will force app developers to be more transparent.

The ultimate goal is to prevent children from making accidental purchases. The EU justice commission says that the new rules will help to make customers aware of exactly what they are buying when they make purchases in-app.

Mobile banking users looking to access bank accounts from smartphones and tablets are becoming increasingly sophisticated and demand intuitive banking services. Mobile banking adoption also continues to see strong growth, so banks now have the ability to embrace customers across a variety of platforms.

In Europe, customers are twice as likely to log into mobile banking apps while using a tablet over a smartphone, though financial institutions must cater to both market segments.

"Mobiles and tablets offer banks a variety of benefits but in different ways," a recent Forrester blog claims. "While widespread mobile and smartphone adoption presents banks with a large opportunity to engage consumers today, surging tablet ownership rates over the next few years will demand a robust tablet banking platform as well."

In a series of news releases this week, IBM is sending a message to the market that it is serious about being a major player in cloud services. Building upon its acquisition of Softlayer last year, IBM announced that it has invested over $1B in bringing a suite of development tools to the cloud to deliver a PaaS (platform as a service). In addition to this investment, they also announced the acquisition of Cloudant, a DBaaS (batabase as a service) provider.

These new services are geared towards application developers and providing them on-demand infrastructure that can be scaled up or down as requirements change. As part of the announcement, they have launched a beta version of their DevOps in the cloud solution codenamed BlueMix. BlueMix includes services to store and manage code, a built-in Web integrated development environment, and Eclipse and Visual Studio integrations to let developers use whichever environment they prefer. The platform enables agile planning, tracking, and collaboration across team members during the development cycle. Plus, there is application deployment automation to streamline delivery. Combined, the PaaS and DBaaS enable application DevOps teams to start projects faster and complete them more efficiently.

IBM is being very proactive in changing its model to address the reality facing them. Traditionally, developers would make a change request to have resources allocated to them which in turn would drive the storage or server team to purchase more equipment from IBM. With the proliferation of cloud services, developers can now simply go grab resources on demand from any of the cloud providers; thus, speeding up their time to get the resources and reducing the need for more IBM hardware. Realizing that the model has shifted, IBM is now empowering development teams to not just get resources, but is adding value around those resources to make their solution much more compelling than run of the mill cloud service providers.

Mt.Gox was the third largest Bitcoin exchange in the world, and was also the most controversial as well. A few weeks ago the service suspended all withdrawal transactions citing a known bug in the system as the culprit, and just a week later announced that all trading and transactions would return to normal soon. Unfortunately that last statement proved to be noting more than hot air, when the service completely went down a few days ago.

Today Mt. Gox, a Japanese-based company, filed for bankruptcy protection and announced that it is more than $60 million in debt. Today in a Tokyo court, officials from the company said that it has lost more than 750,000 bitcoins stored in its system owned by customers and that 100,000 of its own were gone as well. At the current going rate for a single bitcoin ($574.79 via Coinbase.) the a coins lost value at almost $450 million for customers and more than half a billion dollars total.

In the last few days Bitcoin prices have fallen several percent due to the news of Mt. Gox failing. During the court appearance Mt. Gox founder Mark Karpelès said: "There was some weakness in the system, and the bitcoins have disappeared. I apologize for causing trouble." Unfortunately for thousands of customers, simple apologies will not return the millions they lost because Mt. Gox failed to acknowledge a bug in the system that had existed for years. Bankruptcy will save the company from debt, but there should be negligence charges filed in my opinion. To let a devistating software bug exist for that long while making hundreds of millions in revenue is simply unacceptable.

Fans of Halo have been waiting in anticipation for news on when the next game in the franchise will be available to play. We heard rumors that Halo 5 was delayed until late 2015. We have also heard rumors that Halo 2 Anniversary would be launching this year.

This week Microsoft Studios' Phil Spencer tweeted a tidbit that will make fans of Halo really look forward to E3 2014 this summer. Spencer tweeted that Halo news will be coming at E3. He also noted that 343 Industries has a great plan in place, exactly what plan he is talking about is unknown.

The tweet came in response to a gamer that tweeted at Spencer a question about what was going on with the next Halo game. It's always cool when a fan can ask a simple question and get a response from someone with Microsoft that knows. It's cool to get a response even if the response really doesn't offer any more information than wait and see.

Dish Network is one of the most popular satellite TV providers in the US. The company has a slick Hopper whole home DVR system that will shoot recorded shows out to any TV in the home. That DVR system can also be controlled using an app running on the iPad.

The app for iPad users is called Dish Explorer. Dish has announced that it has made some updates to the Dish Explorer app that users of the system will appreciate. The updates include the addition of new controls for volume and power. The ability to control TV volume and power was missed by many users of the app in its last iterations.

Along with the new controls, the app also gets new personalized program recommendations. The program recommendations are based on your previous viewing habits. The Dish Explorer app is a second screen app that gives viewers a way to integrate social networking with their viewing.