Intel's plans for their solid-state drives (SSD) for 2013 are beginning to form, where we should see the release of the mainstream SSD 335 series, and the performance SSD 525 series getting released. Intel could also unleash their latest 20nm NAND flash memory technology onto some of these bad boys.

Intel's 335 series will replace the 330 series in most aspects, and could sport a new NAND flash memory type, as mentioned above. Intel could tweak the performance of the drive, making it faster than the LSI-SandForce SF-2881-powered 330 series drive, if it had the right firmware and NAND flash combination. The 335 series looks to be receiving, at first, 80GB and 180GB sizes in Q1 2013. 2013 could mark the time when we see 180GB drives become "the new" 120GB size.

Intel's performance-minded SSD 525 series looks to arrive in 25nm NAND flash, why 25nm and not 20nm? We don't know. Intel most likely won't change from the SF-2281 controller that powers the current SSD 520 series, either. But, the herbs and spices that Intel could build into their firmware could change things up a bit. Intel's SSD 525 series will arrive in mSATA, as well as 2.5-inch form-factors, and will arrive in 30, 120, 180, and 240GB capacities.

Intel's Ultrabook Symposium starts tomorrow in Taipei, but Netbook News have sat down with Navin Shenoy, Vice President of Intel Architecture Group and General Manager of Mobile Client Platform before the event starts, to talk about various topics before the event itself.

Shenoy has confirmed that there are 140 Ultrabook designs, with only 35 of these being seen by the public. As of next month, we should expect sub-$700 Ultrabooks, across the Ultrabook board, with more than one model. One of the biggest nuggets of information here is that there are set to be 40 Windows 8-based Ultrabooks with Touch launching in Q4 of this year.

This means before the end of this year, and the end of Mayan long-count calender (and all the doom associated with it), Intel are Microsoft (and various partners) are set to unleash 40 Ultrabooks with touch screens, which is exciting news. Intel's fourth-generation Core processor, Haswell, is destined for the 22nm process, and will be the first System-on-Chip (SoC) for PC. Shenoy pointed out that the idle power consumption of Haswell will be 20 times less than Ivy Bridge, this in itself is an amazing achievement. Haswell is also said to not just be an incremental step forward, but a giant leap in performance.

Ah, Digg. The memories I have of spending countless hours searching for stories, or just having a read out of sheer boredom. Reddit has now replaced it, and its like going from a cheap scotch to something that is ten times smoother, as well as attracts the ladies.

Digg has just made their "Rethought" redesign live, all after their acquisition by Betaworks, and just 24 hours after the company showed off its v1 preview, which was part of a very, very quick 6-week redesign process. Old features from Digg like the Newsbar and Newsroom have been thrown away in favor of a simpler site that emphasizes top stories, popular stories, and "upcoming" stories.

One major change is that the main page of Digg will now be editorially driven, versus being based on a Digg score algorithm. Because it was an uber quick 6-week redesign, some of the main features have been left out for now, such as commenting. This means that, for now, Digg is more of a news portal, than a community. How would a commenting system work on the new redesigned Digg is another question in itself. Betaworks have said that it plans on conducting "a few experiments in commenting that will inform more permanent features".

Over the weekend, Broadcom unveiled its latest and greatest consolidated multi-wireless chips, which use a combination of Bluetooth 4.0 and the 802.11ac, which sports up to double the speed of existing 802.11n technology, and can be up to six times more power-efficient, even while handling the same amount of data.

Broadcom's new chips can handle FM and conventional 802.11 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, and are expected to arrive in early-2013 to be used in smartphones and tablets. Broadcom's new chip uses a 40nm CMOS process and integrates a full Wi-Fi system, including MAC, PHY and RF. Like Bluetooth 4,0, the system can go into a low-power mode, as well as come out of it, virtually instantly, which provides some serious power savings when the system isn't being stressed.

The range of chips is also said to be much better than current 802.11 tech, with throughout hitting 1Gb (gigabit) per second. While the tech would hit smart devices, it will be mostly used at high speeds for home routers, future portable systems, and 2013-onward devices. Broadcom isn't the only company to promise "5G Wi-FI" (which is the consumer name of 802.11ac) chips, which should provide users with more choice, and thus, should keep costs lower.

The Apple vs. Samsung trial is underway at the moment, and it looks like Samsung's legal team have made a pretty bad move, with the team in trouble with Southern District Court Judge Lucy Koh. Samsung have been going on about the 'Sony-style' design mockups this week, and this is what has landed them in trouble.

There were some mockups from Apple designer Shin Nishibori that were designed in order to show how Sony's design sensibilities could be melded with Apple's, in order to create a phone. The design was said by Samsung to exemplify that Apple were working from another company's designs when they were creating the iPhone, which is exactly what Apple are accusing Samsung of.

Apple then pulled out a prototype predating Nishibori's design that dated back to 2005, where they argued that Sony designs were just a riff on what it had done before. At this point, it had negated Samsung's point, in the eyes of Judge Koh. Koh then ruled that Samsung could not present evidence related to these 'Sony-style' designs, or another prototype design that Samsung says it was working on in 2006.

During Take-Two Interactive's Q1 FY13 earnings call, the company said that Rockstar were "making substantial progress" on Grand Theft Auto V, but weren't prepared to share a release date for the upcoming game. The company did acknowledge two screenshots for the game that were released earlier this month, which the company says shows off GTA V's "vast, detailed, open-world setting".

When pushed to reveal whether the game would see a release this financial year, Take-Two said that it hadn't "talked about a release date so can't talk about the credibility of a release date we haven't announced". According to a now-updated Take-Two release schedule, platforms for GTA V are still 'TBA'. This has now sparked the question of "will we see GTA V on next-gen consoles?"

Funnily enough, I mentioned that it would be great if Rockstar could release GTA V on next-gen consoles, over three months ago now. I think we'll see the beginning of console gaming split into two, which I've covered before in previous editorials. A high-end AAA title like this, with a multi-hundred-million-dollar budget, would be shooting themselves in the foot to release the game now with next-gen consoles most likely getting released next year.

GNU founder and PC-rights campaigner, Richard Stallman, has stepped forward and said that Valve's decision to sell DRM-based games on Linux is "unethical". Valve's digital distribution service, Steam, was announced it was making its way to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, with the first game out of the Linux-branded gate being Left 4 Dead 2.

The move has been seen much more positively from the Linux community, which is mostly ignored by major commercial software developers. Most people see the move as a turning point toward making Linux more popular, but Stallman disagrees and says that closed source games are "unethical because they deny freedom to its users". Stallman added:

Any GNU/Linux distro that comes with software to offer these games will teach users that the point is not freedom. Nonfree software in GNU/Linux distros already works against the goal of freedom. Adding these games to a distro would augment that effect.

It hasn't even been a year since the release of Star Wars: The Old Republic, yet the company is already moving the game to free-to-play status. Announced today, the game will become free-to-play up to level 50 using 8 different character classes this fall. Of course, this free-to-play will include some restrictions.

"Players want flexibility and choice," says Matthew Bromberg of BioWare Austin in a press release, "The subscription-only model presented a major barrier for a lot of people who wanted to become part of The Old Republic universe."

"Since launch, we've been listening to feedback from our fans and adding new content and refining The Old Republic at a breakneck pace. We believe we are in a position to help improve the service even more, not only by continuing to add new content, but also by expanding the game to many more Star Wars fans, increasing the populations on worlds and the vibrancy of the community," says executive producer Jeff Hickman.

NVIDIA is having lots of trouble with the launch of the Kepler series. It seems as though information about every single card leaked out before the actual card was released. We previously told you about the GTX 660 Ti specifications and launch date, and have now provided a review for your viewing pleasure.

This time we bring news of the GTX 650, a new card that will be aimed at the sub-$200 market and launched in time for back-to-school shopping. It's important for NVIDIA to get a Kepler card into this price range as AMD completely controls that segment of the market right now. This market segment is also where most of the money is made.

The GTX 650 is rumored to launch on September 17 and will be packing a chip based on the 28 nm GK107 ASIC, which is based upon Kepler. The chip will utilize 384 CUDA cores, a 128-bit memory bus, and 1GB of memory. A quick guess at performance based upon CUDA core count would put the card competing with the AMD 7770.

It's a sad reality that there's always someone trying to break into Windows. This is due to the wide use that Windows has over other operating systems. Even before the official release, people are doing their best to break into Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8, and sadly, they've found three exploits to do just that.

With three months left before the actual release of Windows 8, Microsoft has time to take care of these exploits that have been found. Sung-Ting Tsai of Trend Micro is the person who found the exploits, so he's helping Microsoft patch them rather than working on exploiting them for nefarious reasons.

The exploits are in the kernel level advanced local procedure call, the component object model (COM) application programming interface, and the Windows Runtime API. Tsai worked on several methods to attack the vulnerabilities, and while he wasn't completely successful, he says that someone with enough time could find a way to compromise the system.