Entourage fan? If not, the title means nothing to you. YouTube it! Big news, SOPA has been stalled everyone, stalled! It was stalled due to a lack of 'consensus'. A lack of consensus with something so big going through Congress. Who would've thought!

The backlash from the Internet community with sites like Reddit against it, and the boycotting of companies that supported it like GoDaddy, have helped to force the pathetic bill to be stalled. On Saturday, the House Oversight Chariman, Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) was promised by Majority Leader, Eric Cantor (R-Va.) that the House won't vote on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) unless there is a consensus on the bill.

Issa said in a statement:

Ah, torrents. You used to be cool before everyone dived onto you, years ago, but as they have become mainstream, the target has been made. Torrents used to not be mainstream, and thus, the websites hosting them were pretty safe. Now I hear grandmas discussing how their son/daughter/friend/grandson "downloaded X or Y movie/TV show from 'the torrents'".

The Pirate Bay is one of the largest torrent-hosting sites on the Internet, and in a month from now, thepiratebay.org will remove all torrent files from its site, in favor for magnet links. This new move is what The Pirate Bay calls a "new future" in file sharing, consisting of true peer-to-peer sharing without the use of trackers.

TPB has already switched over to the underlying technology that runs alongside magnet links, with Distributed Hash Table (DHT) and Peer Exchange (PEX). TPB have been using magnet links with torrent files for a while now, without letting any of its users know.

Last week at CES, ASUS showed off a new monitor designed for professional artists and photographers, the ASUS VA278Q. The VA278Q is a 27-inch, sporting an LED backlight, IPS-based panel, a native resolution of 2560x1440 pixels, and 178/178-degree viewing angles.

ASUS' widescreen includes a "Smart Contrast Ratio" of 80,000,000:1, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connectivity, a stand enabling tilt, pivot, swivel, and height adjustments. This is something most monitors don't have, which is something professional users crave for.

Splendid Video Intelligence Technology also provides six pre-set modes which are Theater, Scenery, Gaming, Night View, sRGB, and Standard, these "optimize colors and image fidelity for onscreen content". No information on pricing or availability of the VA278Q.

I don't know how this can be found offensive, maybe it should be taken the other way: as a tribute. Steve Jobs was such a huge influence on society itself through the gadgets he saw released, that he makes it into one of the most iconic TV shows in history: The Simpsons.

In this weeks episode, titled "Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson", Homer is being interviewed on TV, where along the bottom, the news ticker reads "Steve Jobs unveils iGhost".

In this episode, Homer becomes a Glenn Beck type, after Bart uploads a video of him having an Alec Baldwin-ish aeroplane meltdown moment. During an interview on Fox News, the news ticker flows and shows up some funny, but fake headlines: "Europe puts Greece on eBay", "Congress postpones end of world to 2013", "Satan tweets support for Santorum", and the big one, "Steve Jobs unveils iGHOST".

Vodafone have started 2012 off with an app release of "My Vodafone" for iOS and Android-based devices. The app lets you monitor your monthly data usage, so you don't go over your data cap and get hit with excess usage charges.

Post-paid (12-, 24-month, or month-to-month) Vodafone customers with a My Vodafone username and password get access to the full suite of functionality in the application. Pre-paid customers can download the app, but to access your account services on pre-paid, the app will link you directly to the mobile version of My Vodafone, where you can log-in.

The app features are:

We still don't have pictures or video of Osama bin Laden, but hey, it's OK to dump pictures of another countries Nuclear facility, right? Well, its now known the length of North Korea's progress in building a [gasp] weapon of mass destruction. You know, the ones we still haven't found in the War on Terror after trillions of dollars spent and countless thousand killed and millions displaced.

North Korea has actually done quite a bit of work, but not as much as NK's official claims state. There are various photos dated between June of 2009 and November of last year, which show North Korea's enrichment facility and light water reactors. You can see in these photos that the two aforementioned bits of the puzzle have almost reached completion. Once that's done, it's time to have its internals placed inside. The speed at which North Korea's reached this point, has analysts concerned. Below is a quote from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

Was the seismic analysis of the reactor site sufficiently rigorous? Did the regulatory authorities have the skills and independence required to license this reactor in such a short time period? And do Yongbyon [the construction site] specialists have sufficient experience with the very demanding materials requirements for the internal reactor components, including the pressure vessel, steam generator, piping and fuel-cladding materials?

Last Friday, a group of purportedly Gazan hackers defaced Israel's Fire and Rescue Services website. They didn't just do any old hack, but added a "death to Israel" message on the website and a tweaked picture of Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, where they superimposed foot prints over his face.

Ayalon is the public official responsible for a strongly worded statement denouncing hacking, likening it to terrorism and threatening (bad move) that:

Israel has active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it, and no agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action.

Diablo 3 hitting the consoles has been a rumor for quite a while now, and unfortunately, that rumor is now fact. Blizzard admitted last year that they were experimenting with a console version of Diablo 3, but according to a tweet from a Blizzard community manager, Diablo 3 on consoles is all but confirmed.

A fan on Twitter asked "can you confirm or deny Diablo 3 coming to consoles?" with community manager "Bashiok" responding with "Yup. Josh Mosqueira is lead designer for the Diablo 3 console project". No more details or specifics were unveiled.

Now that news, I don't mind. As long as the game isn't like all other multi-platform releases where the PC controls suffer because of the slow movement of console controllers, and the slow response time of TVs, etc. But when Blizzard first revealed they were looking at bringing RPGs to consoles, director Jay Wilson actually said the game felt better in some ways with a controller, as opposed to a mouse and keyboard.

CES 2012 - With the CES attendees safe at home we can now tell you the full story behind the ioSafe Check Yo Self Before You Wreck Yo Self Event. By now you've certainly seen the 8 foot tall tesla coil that put on an amazing display. The tesla testing was actually part of an interactive magic show. The ioSafe Rugged Portable Thunderbolt drive did take several direct hits from the simulated lightening but the results were as expected, the drive survived and held the data we put on.

The drive was filled with several documents and other files, one you can see here. The drive was then blasted, we were there and smelled the ions in the air. The data survived.

What you haven't heard yet is what happened next. To protect all of our electronics equipment from the charged air our backpacks and cell phones were placed in a protective cage that was grounded. Being ioSafe, the company who delivered the first waterproof data backup system none of us thought anything about the giant tub of water sitting close by. Dunking drives in water is actually on the tame side with ioSafe.

CES 2012 - RunCore made the trip to CES this year and brought with them a glimpse of next generation SSD technology.

With Samsung and Apple soaking up supply of Samsung 20nm NAND flash, Toshiba 24nm in limited supply and SandForce staying quiet for the first half of the year, companies are turning to Marvell to bring something fresh to the SSD market. RunCore is no exception and they will have a new Marvell high performance SSD on the market soon. With speed of around 550MB/s read and 450MB/s write we are starting to get excited to see more of these drives.

RunCore is in several different markets and over the coming years the company will grow by a large margin. Here we see two new SSD-on-chip designs where the controller and the flash is built into the same package that reduces power and heat. These products will be built into military systems that need high speed in places where space is limited.