The US has filed paperwork to extradite Kim Dotcom from New Zealand

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | Mar 6, 2012 5:28 AM CST

The US is hungry for blood over the MegaUpload debacle, and now US prosecutors have filed papers that seek the extradition of Kim Dotcom, founder of MegaUpload, along with three colleagues, who are charged in the US with allegedly running a criminal enterprise responsible for online piracy of copyrighted goods.

The extradition papers jumped over the pond on Friday and found themselves on the desk of the North Shore District Court in Auckland, New Zealand, confirmed by the country's Ministry of Justice's spokeswoman said on Monday, according to PCWorld. It was decided on Wednesday by the High Court of New Zealand, Auckland Registry that Dotcom could stay free on bail, after government prosecutors acting on behalf of US authorities appealed a February 22 decision of the District Court to grant Dotcom bail.

The judge has said that he understands the extradition hearing won't take place until August, and also observed that for Dotcom "to be incarcerated for another six months awaiting the extradition hearing, the risk of flight has to be a real one". Dotcom has an electronic monitoring device monitoring his every move, which was one of his bail conditions, which has reduced the risk of flight, he said. He added:

Continue reading: The US has filed paperwork to extradite Kim Dotcom from New Zealand (full post)

Android apps broken free of their 50MB limit, new app size limit is a whopping 4GB

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Mar 6, 2012 2:24 AM CST

Until now, Android applications have had to meet a strict 50MB size limit. Google have said that every megabyte you add to this limit, makes it harder for their users to download, and get started with their app, or games, or both.

Today, Google have increased this once puny 50MB limit to 4GB. Google also advise that the size of your APK file will still be limited to 50MB to ensure secure on-device storage, but you can now attach expansion files to your APK. Details on this are:

- Each app can have two expansion files, each one up to 2GB, in whatever format you choose.

Continue reading: Android apps broken free of their 50MB limit, new app size limit is a whopping 4GB (full post)

ASUS tease ROG Maximus V motherboard

Anthony Garreffa | Motherboards | Mar 5, 2012 11:32 PM CST

Intel's 7-series chipset is only a month away, but the PC motherboard industry is seeing some huge movement, with ASRock and GIGABYTE both teasing us with some new boards, and now we have ASUS joining the ranks.

ASUS are teasing with their Republic of Gamers-based board, the next-gen Maximus V board. It seems as though ASUS have the ROG Maximus V ready, and should sport the latest Intel Z77 chipset. The board will most likely come in three flavors: Extreme, Formula and the micro-ATX-based Gene.

Full pictures, and more details should be made available this week, so a little patience is needed. Personally I run a ROG-based board and love it. Never had a single hiccup on it, whatsoever. The new Maximus V board should be a delight to see, and I'm excited to see where ASUS can take their new ROG board.

Continue reading: ASUS tease ROG Maximus V motherboard (full post)

AMD sells GloFo shares to ATIC for a cool $425 million

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | Mar 5, 2012 9:31 PM CST

Just three years after spinning its semiconductor manufacturing arm into a separate entity called GlobalFoundries (or, GloFo), AMD is now giving up the remaining shares they hold of the company to Abu Dhabi-based Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC).

The deal was announced late-Sunday, which includes a $425 million payment by AMD to GloFo over two years, as well as a renegotiated wafer pricing deal. This year, both firms have agreed on a fixed water pricing under a "take or pay" arrangements. On top of this, they've also established a framework for wafter pricing in 2013, as well as agreeing that AMD's additional 2012 quarterly payment obligations specified in the 2011 amendment, totalling $430 million, will be waived.

Still, AMD continues to be one of GlobalFoundries' key customers, with the breakup giving AMD more flexibility in sourcing its chips. It also gives GloFo a better position to diversify its customer base. One of the first things to come from this newly-formed deal, is that AMD are now no longer bound by an exclusive arrangement to manufacture their 28nm-based APUs at GlobalFoundries, something that has been rumored since November due to a slow, low-yield production ramp.

Continue reading: AMD sells GloFo shares to ATIC for a cool $425 million (full post)

Halo 4 gets its first tease, 343 Industries talks it up

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Mar 5, 2012 8:33 PM CST

Ah, Halo. I have fond memories of the hours upon hours that I pumped into the original game when I grabbed the midnight-launched Xbox in my home town. It's hard to believe how much the Halo franchise has grown since then, and how now left the proud parents Bungie, and gone into the hands of 343 Industries.

343 Industries along with Microsoft Studios are proud to show off Halo 4. The first proper sequel to Halo 3, not taking into consideration ODST and Reach. Halo 4 will be released this fall, and the above video shows off some of the game, the new armor that Master Chief sports, as well as some new built-for-multiplayer maps that will be included.

Master Chief's armor has been redesigned for the new game, which looks nice and slick. The video continues with the Halo 4 team talking about how amazing the new game will be, and shows off that the multiplayer side of things has a story-based reason behind the reasoning of huge amounts of spartan's going at it all over the galaxy. Multiplayer maps will not just be lifted from the single-player campaign, and are designed specifically to allow for balaned gameplay.

Continue reading: Halo 4 gets its first tease, 343 Industries talks it up (full post)

Left 4 Dead 2, Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 now have support for full motion play with Razer's Hydra controller

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Mar 5, 2012 7:36 PM CST

GDC 2012: The first news off the startling line of this years Game Developers Conference (GDC) is news from Razer, which is very interesting indeed. Razer and Sixense Entertainment have just announced that they have full integrated motion gaming support now built for Valve's most popular titles: Half-Life 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Team Fortress 2.

Not only that, but future Valve-made games such as Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will support full motion play with Razer Hydra. The news does continue to get better, though. Sixense and Valve have also integrated Sixense MotionCreator 2.0 software into Valve's Steam gaming platform. This does something quite special indeed: it enables backwards compatibility for motion gaming with the Razer Hydra controller to over 250 of the most popular titles on Steam!

From now on, Steam users will receive automatic motion control updates for current, and future games, as well as a new in-game overlay which lets gamers view control maps for the Hydra controller, as they play. CEO and Co-Founder of Sixense, Amir Rubin, says:

Continue reading: Left 4 Dead 2, Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 now have support for full motion play with Razer's Hydra controller (full post)

More Sony hacking problems - Michael Jackson's back catalog reportedly stolen last year

Anthony Garreffa | Hacking, Security & Privacy | Mar 5, 2012 6:32 PM CST

Sony are having a bad time with this hacking news, it just feels like a bad smell that won't go away for them. The latest news is Michael Jackson's entire music catalog was stolen during the hack, which reportedly accounts for some 50,000 individual tracks and a wide variety of unreleased material.

This was known in May of last year, in the aftermath of the hack which left the PlayStation Network and Qriocity (which is now known as Sony Entertainment Network Music Unlimited) users without a server for nearly an entire month. There were two men based in the UK who were arrested with the theft, and have appeared in court where they denied the charges.

The two men were released on bail and are now due to stand trial in January 2013. Sony had originally paid $250 million to the Jackson estate back in 2010 for the rights to literally everything that Michael had recorded, and whilst Sony haven't told us how widespread the theft is, multiple 'sources' have reported that the entire collection was taken.

Continue reading: More Sony hacking problems - Michael Jackson's back catalog reportedly stolen last year (full post)

ASRock turn dial to 11 with X79 Extreme11 motherboard

Shawn Baker | Motherboards | Mar 5, 2012 8:08 AM CST

ASRock have literally just started to show off the upcoming X79 Extreme11 motherboard that hopefully isn't too far away and will get a showing at CeBIT this week. If the previous X79 Extreme9 is anything to go by we should be excited as we found ourselves impressed with what ASRock was doing with the board when we looked at it earlier in the year.

We don't have heaps of information on the board at the moment as the covers have literally just come off it, but you can see, we're dealing with a total of five PCIe x16 slots which offer support for 4-way video card setups (SLI and CrossFireX) along with two legacy PCI slots.

The board comes with two GEN3 PLX 8747 chips allowing for four way setups to run at x16 / x16 / x16 / x16 along with an LSI SAS2308 chip offering us eight SAS ports or eight SATA3 ports which are only part of the 14 total SATA ports on offer with 10 of them being SATA3.

Continue reading: ASRock turn dial to 11 with X79 Extreme11 motherboard (full post)

NVIDIA Kepler GK104 cards coming on March 23

Anthony Garreffa | Video Cards & GPUs | Mar 5, 2012 2:32 AM CST

EXPreview is teasing that NVIDIA could release their Kepler-based GK104 GPU as soon as March 23. You know, as in, less than three weeks from now. Maximum-Tech "confirmed" GK104 to debut in April, but AIC (add-in card) vendors in China have said that GK104 "won't be postponed to April".

Operation Director of ZOTAC in the Asia-Pacific area said at Weibo:

GK104 launch won't be delayed to April, and the relative products have been ready.

Continue reading: NVIDIA Kepler GK104 cards coming on March 23 (full post)

Gigabyte reload the G1.Sniper, now comes in mATX model with the M3

Anthony Garreffa | Motherboards | Mar 5, 2012 1:28 AM CST

Gigabyte's G1 series of gaming motherboards have shared their fair share of success in the ATX or XL-ATX form factor, but it seems Gigabyte want to continue this success and launched a much-requested mATX model with the G1.Sniper M3.

The Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 shares some of its features with the G1.Sniper 3, but is found in an mATX form factor, where some compromises had to be made. The G1.Sniper M3 sports two PCI-Express 3.0 slots, but both slots would run in x8 mode when populated. It also sports one x16 PCI-Express 2.0 slot, but only has four lanes connected via the chipset, on top of this, we also have a single x1 PCI-Express 2.0 slot.

The G1.Sniper M3 only includes two SATA 6Gbps ports, with three SATA 3Gbps ports to back it up. Considering this is an mATX board, one would only be using a small form factor-based case, which would have limited HDD capacity anyway. It does sport the G1. Sniper 3's same Creative Sound Core3D, too, but with a changed design. VR-Zone have spotted that there are empty spaces where the additional audio-grade capacitors seem to be missing. What will go there, or not go there, is not currently known.

Continue reading: Gigabyte reload the G1.Sniper, now comes in mATX model with the M3 (full post)