Demonoid was taken down by a DDoS attack on July 24, with early reports suggesting that the site's downtime was temporary. But, it has gotten a lot worse: Ukranian authorities have announced they ordered ColoCall, the nation's largest datacenter and host of Demonoid, to disable to site and hand over data.

This would've been a coordinated, international effort, but it wasn't clear if Demonoid was being used as a "gift" from the Ukraine to the US. We've seen how the US wants to play dirty against MegaUpload, and founder Kim Dotcom, but this is crazy. London-based international record label consortium, IFPI, and INTERPOL have since revealed they were involved in organizing the strike, which wasn't limited to Ukraine.

It seems as though Mexican authorities are involved, too, as they have reportedly made more than one arrest as well as seizing assets. IFPI anti-piracy director, Jeremy Banks has said:

It looks like Microsoft is going all-in with their Surface-branded tablets, with the company looking for more people to work for company in the form of hardware and software engineers that will have the tak of working on the next generation Surface tablets.

The first Surface, due out in two or so months, should be Microsoft's biggest fight against Apple, ever. Since the Redmond-based company is looking for people for the next Surface, before the original has even been released, we know that the fight is going to be epic. One of the job listings seems to be on the request for a senior electrical engineer who would be working on "the electrical design and qualification of AC-DC power supplies and adapters", so it looks like we should expect battery-powered devices, too.

Something else worth pointing out is that the company is looking for engineers to work on "alternative power sources", meaning we could see fuel cell-based power (or similar tech) in future Surface devices.

uTorrent user? You'll soon be eye balling ads, as the creators of the torrent program have announced that the upcoming version of the popular torrent software will sport "in-client offers". In-client offers is just some fancy translation of ads.

uTorrent Plus users won't have to experience the ads, but you'll be coughing up USD $24.95 for the privilege. Considering that uTorrent features over 125 million active users each month, it shouldn't come as a surprise. uTorrent's parent company, BitTorrent Inc., has made some nice spare money from their optional tool bar, seeing between $15 to $20 million from the tool bar alone. The ad-supported client should make the wallets of uTorrent that little bit bigger.

What is changing with µTorrent offers?

TechPowerUp has updated GPU-Z to version 0.6.4 and with it brought some interesting changes. According to TechPowerUp, "version 0.6.4 adds/refines support for several upcoming NVIDIA GPUs, such as GeForce GTX 660 Ti, GeForce GTX 660, GeForce GTX/S 650, GeForce 610, and GeForce GTX 680M; Intel GMA 3600 (ROP count); AMD "Trinity" APUs (clock reading accuracy) and AMD FirePro 2270."

Usually software like this is updated shortly before the release of a new product, such as the NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti, rumored to be launching soon. Support for the NVIDIA 650 also shows that the September launch period is likely an accurate rumor. TechPowerUp also instituted several other changes in the newest version:

You can pick up the latest version of the software from TechPowerUp's website.

Continuing with a theme of science and space Friday, we would like to give you something to do over the weekend. It's time for the yearly Perseid meteor shower in the northern hemisphere and it promises to be a good one. NASA has called it the "best meteor shower of the year" so you really don't want to miss it.

The shower will run from August 11 to 13, with the night of August 12 expected to be the best. NASA is predicting that at its peak rate people could be making 100 wishes an hour. In other words, NASA expects it to peak at 100 shooting stars an hour. "We expect to see meteor rates as high as a hundred per hour," NASA's Bill Cooke says.

Heading to the countryside away from city lights is usually advisable. According to NASA, "a visit to the countryside will typically triple the number of meteors you see." The best viewing time will be in the early morning darkness just before dawn. The show should start sometime after 10PM. I'll be heading to a remote location in the Northern California Sierra Nevadas to escape the Sacramento city light pollution.

It would appear that Google has partially caved to the music and movie industry. An update to the way search results are ranked will see pirate sites and other illegitimate content sources showing up lower in the results. As you may or may not know, Google looks at around 200 different signals to rank pages and the newest one is directly tied to piracy.

The latest signal to be used in ranking pages will be directly related to "the number of valid copyright removal notices" received for a given site. This means that sites which receive a large number of valid removal notices may appear lower in Google's search results. Google explains why this is a good thing:

This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily-whether it's a song previewed on NPR's music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.

It's time to start getting excited for Crysis 3 and CryEngine 3. I already gave it an award from when I saw it at E3 and it continues to impress. The creators of Crysis and CryEngine, CryTek, have given us a new glimpse into the technical capabilities of the CryEngine 3 graphics engine, the engine that powers Crysis 3. Make sure to watch the video below in 720p and full screen--it makes it that much better!

Words aren't really necessary, but I'll attempt to get them back after watching that video. The video highlights the technical achievements managed by the CryTek team. Lens flares, dynamic cloud shadows, dynamic fog shadows, cloth and vegetation simulation, and tessellated vegetation all combine to make the game world incredibly beautiful.

And then there's the "top secret tessellated toad tech." Not sure why they have this, but it certainly looks good. I wonder if it will rain toads in Crysis 3 as a sign of the apocalypse. No? Well, I'm sure it's there for a reason. Tell us what you think about the video in the comments or on our Facebook page!

Are you the owner of a 7 series Gigabyte motherboard? Tired of all those hackers plugging flash drives into your computer and giving you viruses? If so, Gigabyte has the download for you! Today, Gigabyte has announced a new piece of software which will disable certain types of USB devices from connecting to the computer.

The software features an easy-to-use GUI that allows you to select what can and cannot be seen by the operating system when physically connected. The software will currently run on Intel Z77, H77, B75 and H61 based motherboards produced by Gigabyte. Gigabyte has provided some excellent use-case scenarios:

For example, in a small office were data theft could be a worry, you can block each PCs access to storage devices, making it much harder for anyone to walk out the door with your data. In schools, joysticks and game pads can be blocked, while public PCs in hotels, cafe's, dormitories, libraries and such, can avoid the risk of viruses and malware by blocking pen drives and other storage media, while still allowing USB connected keyboard and mice to be used.

The new line of hard drive docks from XIGMATEK are called the Secure III and are USB 3.0 compatible. The USB to SATA converter allows for transfer speeds up to 5Gbps, almost as much as the SATA3 spec calls for. This means its compatible with SATAII/III HDDs and SSDs of up to 3TB in size. It does all of this while looking great.

The features, as provided by XIGMATEK, are as follows:

The Xigmatek Secure line of external HDD docking products feature stylish design coupled with blazing fast performance. The SECURE III integrates a USB 3.0 to SATA interface capable of up to 5 Gbps transfer speeds and is compatible with SATAII/III HDDs up to 3TB in capacity. Both 2.5" and 3.5" HDDs are supported with hot-swap capability. Available in both White or Black piano finish, the SECURE III complements your digital lifestyle.

A good keyboard can make all the difference in the world for a typist. Every person likes something slightly different, whether it be red or blue Cherry switches or the newer keyboards without switches. That's why companies make so many different models--to give you the choice to see what works best for your hands and typing style.

Das Keyboard has announced the release of a new Professional Model S that comes with the added functionality that media keys bring to a keyboard. They say that "fans have asked for a Das Keyboard with media functionality for a while now" and that this is the reason they have crafted this keyboard.

With these new features, users can enjoy: