eBay, in the midst of a rather uncertain economy has done very well in the first quarter of 2012. With economies around the world on the brink of destruction, eBay has managed to increase sales and income, much to the delight of Wall Street investors. Stock in the company is up more than 3.5% in after-hours trading.

The first quarter ended March 31, 2012 and the numbers that have come in have pleased investors. Net income rose to $725 million, or 55 cents per share, against $619 million, or 47 cents per share in the same quarter one year ago. Sales have increased a massive 29% to $3.3 billion. A majority of this growth is due to the strength of the company's Marketplace and PayPal businesses.

"We believe that innovation in retail today is technology driven, and consumers are embracing smarter, easier, better ways to shop," CEO John Donahoe said. "We are enabling commerce in this new retail environment, supporting and partnering with sellers of all sizes and giving consumers worldwide the ability to shop anytime, anywhere, for whatever they want."

Dubbed 'The Promo Bay', The Pirate Bay would like to help promote your cool music, video, comedic skill, or other talent provided you allow free, easy access to the material that is being promoted. Submissions are thrown into a pool and occasionally one is picked to have their image replace the default Pirate Bay logo and be linked to the page of their choosing.

The Promo Bay has a few rules, however.

Asus apparently has a new Transformer tablet in the works and it has just been spotted available for pre-order on Amazon. The new device is called the Transformer TF300 and will, apparently, be available April 22 for an asking price of $489.99. I say asking price because it isn't being sold by Amazon. Rather, it is up for pre-order by Amazon Marketplace vendor "Spicy Bomb" and I have a feeling a bit of price inflation is occurring.

So what sets this apart from the Transformer Prime? Not much, actually. It features the same Tegra 3 processor, 10.1" 1280x800 display, 32GB of storage capacity, and 1GB of RAM. The TF300's CPU runs at a slightly diminished 1.2 Ghz versus the Prime's 1.3 Ghz. It's also slightly thicker and heavier than the Prime.

Since the tablet is a bit worse, I would expect it to be cheaper than the Prime. These concessions only yield you $10 in savings over the Prime's price on Newegg. This here is also why I think there is a bit of price inflation going on. We will see when the tablet releases which, according to the pre-order, should be April 22. A cheaper version of the Prime would be a welcome addition to Transformer family.

Scientists have discovered a molecule that could very well double the lifespan of humans if the rat trials are anything to go on. Obviously there is a lot more research to be done before this can even be considered for human trials, but the early results are definitely positive. Imagine living to 150, 200 years old!

Researchers at the Universite Paris Sud in France began experimenting with a special carbon molecule called Buckministerfullerene or, more commonly, "Buckyballs." These molecules are composed of 60 carbon atoms arranged in the shape of a sphere. The researchers then fed the molecule along with olive oil to several groups of rats.

One group of rats was the control group and was fed just a normal diet. A second group was fed the normal diet and olive oil. The third group was fed the normal diet along with olive oil and a 0.8mg/ml concentration of Buckminsterfullerene. The control group lived for an average of 22 months, the oil-fed group lasted an average of 26 months, and the final group, the ones fed the Buckminsterfullerene, lived for an unbelievable 42 months.

While the upcoming Ivy Bridge chips (think 3770K, etc) may suck on air, with a little bit of love and some extreme cooling solutions, it looks like these chips could prove to be pretty darn good overclockers. Chinese overclocker x-powerx800pro has managed, with the help of liquid nitrogen (LN2), to achieve a massive overclock of 6.616Ghz!!!! DAMN!

That blows the socks off of my previous record of 5.5Ghz on my old 655K (note: I used a chilled water setup). Using a 63x multiplier and a base clock of 105.03MHz, he was able to achieve the massive overclock of 6.616GHz. Thank you 22nm goodness. However, pay no attention to the reported 'Core Voltage' in the following CPU screenshot.

The core voltage reported is actually a bug. The real core voltage is much higher and comes in at a large, but not ridiculous, 1.85v. This chip is also showing up as an 'ES' which means engineering sample. This means that the retail version could clock much differently. And contrary to the rumor posted previously today, the screenshot does say 77W for the TDP.

Apparently selling Windows Phone is not as easy as some people seem to think it is. Maybe this explains why Gavin Kim has left Microsoft just 5 months after he joined in as General Manager of Windows Phone Product Marketing. Before Microsoft, he was a vice president with Samsung.

"We can confirm that Gavin Kim has made a personal decision to leave Microsoft," a Microsoft spokesperson said in an e-mail. "We feel very good about the work he has done to set the team, and its new lead Eugene Ho, up for success. We wish him all the best." No actual reasons for his departure have been given.

It will be interesting to watch and see if the marketing strategy of Windows Phone changes now that he is not with the company anymore. I'm sure he found the job difficult to stomach, what with the high expectations and poor results and all. "No one comes into the store and asks for a Windows phone," said a European telecom executive quoted in a Reuters report on Tuesday. The executive added, "If the Lumia with the same hardware came with Android in it and not Windows, it would be much easier to sell."

With the launch of Intel's Ivy Bridge getting extremely close, it's impossible to keep these retail chips out of the hands of people who haven't signed NDAs. More and more people are getting a hold of the chips and overclocking them. Someone has finally managed to snag a boxed retail version of the chip and found something interesting.

As you can see in the picture above, the rated TDP is 95W. Intel has been telling us along the way that the quad-core Ivy Bridge parts were to be rated at 77W TDP, so this is quite the discrepancy. The only possible reason for this, other than it being the true TDP, is if there was a misprint on a large batch of processors, because sources are saying all of the boxes are marked this way.

Additionally, people overclocking the new part have found it to be a worse overclocker than Sandy Bridge. The main issue with overclocking is that because of Intel's new Tri-gate transistors, they are packed so tightly together that the die size is tiny and doesn't allow adequate heat removal. As such, overclockers are reporting that Ivy Bridge looks to be 200 - 300 Mhz worse than Sandy Bridge.

The latest rumor to hit about Samsung's next GALAXY device is that they might drop the GALAXY S III name. This would be a move that would allow Samsung to not scare off customers with a new device, that might not be the huge leap some are expecting from the GALAXY S III.

Apple did a similar move with the iPhone 4S, which wasn't a big jump from the iPhone 4. Samsung hit a home run with the GALAXY S II, as it has become their most successful smartphone ever. Samsung will most likely not change the overall look of the phone, and just beef up some of the components and features instead.

We should still expect Samsung to bake in their quad-core Exynos processor, beef it up to a 1080p HD display, and integrated 4G LTE should make an appearance, too. Storage is said to be topped out at 32GB, with a 16GB model optioned. Storage has never been a problem on non-iPhone smartphones, as SD cards play a big part of upgradeable storage giving the customers much more room to move within the phone itself.

Microsoft Evangelist Nuno Silva was involved in a video interview that has been posted by Portugese site Zwame, where it's been suggested that ALL Windows Phone devices, even those from the first-generation will get an upgrade to the next-gen OS.

Outside of this interview, Microsoft have barely whispered about the future of Windows Phone, whether its even in development or not. It's believed that Windows Phone 8/Apollo could break the mould on how Windows Phone 7 behaves. There could be enough code compatibility with the desktop that its apps could run on Windows 8 with minimal porting. Wouldn't that be nice?

Of course, we should expect new features in the next-gen OS that would require next-gen hardware. But the underlying OS should work on lower-end devices, but would most likely include restrictions. Apple does this on their devices with iOS versions, same with Google's Android OS.

The debut trailer for Dishonored is out, and for those of you who haven't heard about it (like me until just now) it's a new first-person stealth action game from Arkane Studios and Bethesda Softworks. Dishonored casts you as a supernatural assassin driven by revenge. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Bethesda and Arkane Studios explain Dishonored as:

Dishonored casts you as a supernatural assassin driven by revenge. You are the once-trusted bodyguard of the beloved Empress. Framed for her murder, you become an infamous assassin, known only by the disturbing mask that has become your calling card. In a time of uncertainty, when the city is being besieged by plague and ruled by an oppressive government armed with strange technologies, dark forces conspire to bestow upon you abilities beyond those of any common man.