Cyber criminals accelerated their focus on attacking mobile devices in 2013, with more than 11.6 million devices compromised as malware becomes increasingly sophisticated.

Google Android devices made up 60 percent of infected devices, with mobile malware sampling drastically increasing 20 times in 2013. Smartphone makers installing Android - and software developers - are slowly making changes to ensure they are able to offer more advanced security software alternatives.

"Not only is Android the largest smartphone market, unlike iPhone and BlackBerry, it allows apps to be loaded from third-party sites," said Kevin McNamee, Alcatel-Lucent Security architect, in a statement. "This provides cybercriminals with an unpoliced mechanism to distribute their malware which can easily evade detection by device-based anti-virus. Thus, in 2013 we saw an increased trend towards operators offering network based anti-virus security to subscribers as a service."

We have been expecting to see NVIDIA's successor to its Kepler GPU for some time now, and this morning images were leaked on VideoCards.com that are said to be the first Maxwell architecture GPUs off the line. Although a but blurry, the GPU's are clearly visible, but something unexpected lies below the surface.

The GM107-400 and GM107-300 pictured above both feature the same CUDA cores found in the GK106 chip but utilize the memory bus of the GK107 which shrinks the die by about 30-percent. This also allows the cards to consume significantly less power, so much so that the GeForce GTX 750 cards featuring the GM107-300 will not require any power connector on the board.

The GM107-300 is built on a 28nm process with a die size of 156mm square. It features 768 CUDA cores with a 128-bit memory bus. The GM107-400 is also built on a 28nm process and has a die size of 156mm square, but differs with 960 CUDA cores. Both chips feature a TDP of about 75 watts with the GM107-300 variant being a little cooler. The GM107-300 is slated to be featured in the GeForce GTX 750 while the GM107-400 will find its way into the Ti variant of the same card.

Newly appointed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella plans to focus on mobile solutions and cloud computing during the early part of his reign as leader.

Nadella takes over for former CEO Steve Ballmer, as Ballmer leaves behind a 14-year-reign that has left many consumers and analysts disappointed. Nadella has served as the executive vice president behind Microsoft's cloud efforts, which doubled its growth last quarter.

The software giant has embraced cloud computing with success, as its Office 365 service is popular among businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions. However, disappointment with Windows 8/8.1 on the desktop and Windows RT and Windows Phone on mobile devices continues to frustrate users.

I still remember watching The Terminator, where they needed to smash the chip inside of the Terminator's head in order to fully destroy it. Well, DARPA on its path for ultimate robotic takeover of the world, is working with IBM on a self-destructing chip - something out of a sci-fi movie.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a contract to IBM that will see the company develop a CMOS chip that will self-destruct on command. The project is called Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR), that will prevent expensive, next-gen, classified military systems - such as a Terminator - from being captured, and reverse engineered by the enemy.

DARPA states on the webpage for VAPR: "It is nearly impossible to track and recover every [electronic] device [on the battlefield], resulting in unintended accumulation in the environment and potential unauthorized use and compromise of intellectual property and technological advantage".

Twitter has just posted its first earnings statement as a public company, with the social network posting a net loss of $511 million for Q4 2013, but ended the year with a total net loss of a staggering $645 million.

The company did double its revenue last year compared to 2012, hitting $664 million. Unfortunately, Twitter's stock price took a huge 16% hit after the news broke. CEO of Twitter, Dick Costolo, said: "Twitter finished a great year with our strongest financial quarter to date. We are the only platform that is public, real-time, conversational, and widely distributed, and I'm excited by the number of initiatives we have underway to further build upon the Twitter experience".

Twitter attributed the $645 million loss to "$521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, until the effective date of our initial public offering in accordance with [Generally Agreed Accounting Principles]".

Annual revenues from mobile augmented reality technology will eclipse $1.2 billion by 2015, according to Juniper Research, as the market continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

The mobile AR market reached just $180 million in 2013, as consumers and businesses become more familiar with mobile applications and services available. Specifically, video games, which accounted for 40 percent of AR downloads last year will help drive the industry in 2014 and 2015, respectively, though entertainment, lifestyle, and enterprise AR also is slated to increase.

As more companies appreciate the importance of mobile technologies, brands such as Nestle, Heinz, Uniliver, and other major corporations want to use AR to engage customers.

Today, ATP announced the release of the all new Velocity SI-LITE, an industrial-grade SATA II SLC SSD that is designed for use in rugged environments where flash storage is needed. The SI-LITE SSD utilizes the latest generation SLC Flash with industrial grade performance, endurance and wide temperature ranges to meet the unique requirements of the industrial market space.

ATP says that the Velocity SI-LITE features data-integrity-calibrated firmware technologies that protect the data storage device against various power-down and intensive read/write scenarios, which would damage lower-grade solid state storage. The drive offers sequential read speed of up to 181 MB/s and sequential write of up to 133 MB/s, and features up to 2,700 4KB Random Read IOPS.

"Data integrity is the key for a Flash storage device to survive rough industrial environments. The cutting-edge SI-Lite firmware has taken into account multiple power outage conditions during different read/write timing and the product has passed several thousands of power cycles during the strict product qualification process. The "AutoRefresh" feature provides automatic ECC checks before any uncorrectable failure occurs during read operations. AutoRefresh also moves data to healthy blocks before any failures occur, improving long-term data integrity. The high density SI-Lite has more than twenty times program/erase life cycles over other MLC Flash based industrial SSDs on the market and with more than 1500TB of total bytes written," the company said in a release.

Today, Linksys announced a new network attached storage system that is aimed at small to medium businesses that have a need for network video recording. The new LNR0208C is a standalone NVR system and is based on a Marvell 2GHz processor and a custom OS based on Linux. The device supports Linksys' full line of IP cameras as well as third-party cameras that utilize the ONVIF profile S standard.

The LNR0208C is capable of recording up to eight video streams at once and features remote live-view and playback capabilities. Additionally the device is capable of being linked up with any other NVR on the network to provide additional storage capacity. The LNR0208C features two hot-swappable bays for up to 8TB of storage capacity, with additional connectivity via dual eSATA ports, three USB 2.0 ports, and Gigabit Ethernet. The device also features four digital in and two digital out ports for connecting sensors and alarms that would trigger video recording.

By now most of you know that I live, eat, breath and sleep 3D printing, and its a hobby that I have enjoyed for the better part of a decade now. A few months ago during an interview with Sixense CEO, Amir Rubin, I was let in on a little project they were working on called MakeVR. Then just a few weeks ago at CES 2014 I had the chance to take a private demo of this software, and it turned my idea of 3D modeling for 3D printing upside down. Today Sixense launched the crowdfunding campaign for MakeVR on Kickstarter.

If Sixense's STEM system revolutionized the way we play games in Virtual Reality, then MakeVR will forever change the way we model 3D objects using VR. MakeVR is being billed as the worlds first immersive 3D modeling application that makes content creation for 3D printing natural, intuitive, and most importantly, fun! Over my years in the hobby, I have used or tried to use just about every 3D modeling program out there, and what I found is that many programs require a degree from a university just to be able to create anything more complex than a cube or sphere. With MakeVR things are so simple and natural that a kid can use the program to create very complex objects with little instruction.

With traditional 3D modeling programs, users have to deal with a mouse and keyboard interface. While this is OK for typical computing and gaming, when it comes to manipulating designs in 3 dimensional space a mouse and keyboard become a hindrance on fluid and dynamic creation. When talking to people about MakeVR I like to compare it to the way Tony Stark manipulates his designs and models in the Iron Man movies. You really do get to just grab the model out of thin air, and mold it into anything you imagination can come up with. In the image below, you will see a sort of cartoonish fire hydrant. In a normal modeling program this would take hours to build, but I watched the model for that hydrant built-in literally less than 20 minutes.

Lockheed Martin has fired the highest powered laser ever tested, with its new 30-kilowatt electric fiber laser. The record-breaking power output was reached by combining many fiber lasers into a single, near-perfect quality beam of light.

This is called Spectrum Beam Combining, which sends beams from multiple fiber laser modules, which each have their own unique wavelength. Combining them all into one super-powerful, high-quality beam. Dr. Ray O. Johnson, Senior VP and CTO of Lockheed Martin says: "Lockheed Martin has opened the aperture for high power, electrically driven laser systems suitable for military applications. Advancements in available laser components, along with the maturity and quality of our innovative beam-combining technology, support our goal of providing lightweight and rugged laser weapon systems for use on military platforms such as aircraft, helicopters, ships and trucks".

The company is aiming for a portable laser solution, with this being a step in that direction. Lockheed Martin received funding from the US Army, which is also working on laser mounted weapons with Boeing.