The world is becoming more and more connected and more and more devices are joining the internet. This fundamental idea is the driving force behind the need to change to IPv6. Now even smart meters are connected to some sort of network through which they transmit usage data back to the power company.

An EU watchdog is concerned about the privacy of the data that is being reported back. Due to the massive amounts of data being reported, it's easy to see when people are home or not by watching the power usage. Not only that, but the meter can even report back what medical devices are in use in the house.

It's of the utmost concern to Privacy International, a group claiming that proposed safeguards do not go far enough. The major fear appears to be regarding the ability to deduce if someone is home or not, but there are plenty more complaints about the sheer amount of data being collected.

Intel has decided that AES encryption feature of the 520 Series SSD (Cherryville) does not actually feature 256-bit encryption. It turns out that the SSD actually only supports 128-bit encryption, which should be plenty for most users. These details have come to light after Intel published an updated specification document for the series.

Intel is doing the right thing and offering a refund for users who feel 128-bit isn't enough:

A surprise from AMDs beta drivers has arrived today. No, not some incredible performance jump that causes it to smash the 680...or is it? The new beta drivers make reference to 16 previously unseen device IDs and their codenames. These new device IDs could (read: likely) belong to the upcoming HD 8000 series GPUs.

The codenames, 4x "Venus", 3x "Oland" and finally 9x "Mars", should flesh out the HD 8000 series nicely. The Venus will most likely be the top end card due to the LE, Pro, XT and XTX suffixes. Oland will probably end up being the 8800 series and Mars will most likely flesh out the lower end and mainstream market.

The cards will likely launch near the end of 2012 or very early 2013, if previous AMD launches are anything to go by. There have been zero rumors about performance, although with this new finding, I'm sure they will start flowing. In case you're curious, the device IDs are listed below:

iOS brings with it a new version of Siri. She has been studying for the past 8 months and can now do so much more like understand sports. There are also new features for finding restaurants and making reservations.

Siri also understands movies better as she has integrated with Rotten Tomatoes. Siri can search for movies featuring specific actors or directors.

Siri can also launch apps:

Sources around the web are indicating that Crytek, the studio behind the hit series Crysis, is moving towards producing free-to-play games with pay-to-play budgets. This means that Crysis 3 is likely the last retail title we will see from the Crytek team. Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli let the cat out of the bag to Videogamer.com.

These free-to-play games will be serious, online games that are near console quality. Budgets should be in the range of $10-30 million which will produce some great quality games. Crytek has already teamed up with Trion on one of these games to create a free, online FPS game called Warface. We reported on the game, which is live in Russia and in closed beta in China, from E3.

Intel recently released their Medfield Atom chip in smartphones and have had limited success. At first blush, it appears tests are proving the single core chip is the same as multicore ARM chips in both performance and power draw measurements. Usually, to increase performance, more cores are thrown at the problem.

However, this time Intel believes that won't help as they are saying that Android isn't properly prepared to utilize multiple cores efficiently. Moreover, Intel thinks that these optimizations for multiple cores could and should come from the System-on-a-chip providers such as Texas Instruments or Qualcomm.

Intel's Mobile and Communications Group General Manager, Mike Bell, had this to say:

Valve's Source engine arrived in 2004 and has powered some truly great games such as Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Counter Strike: Source, and more. Now the game engine is stepping over into movies where it will be used in the upcoming movie 'Deep'.

Deep is a small-budget animated movie, utilising the Source engine as its a low-cost solution for real-time rendering and editing. Thanks to the partnership between the developer and film producer, Deep could be the first movie released on Steam. Deep is an animated film set in the post-apocalyptic landscape of World War III, where the remaining few members of mankind huddle together in abandoned ship hulls, struggling to survive.

Deep has a budget of a shave under $19 million. This could be a step in a very interesting direction for Valve, and Steam.

Remember the free-to-play mech game Hawken? Well, after seeing the MEK-FU controller you won't... the USB-based controller was unveiled at E3 last week and is designed by new accessory company RIPLEIGH. CEO of RIPLEIGH, Chen Yisheng has told Destructoid that his team did a lot of research in order to get to the MEK-FU, going as far as having a guy on the team that used to drive tanks in the military.

MEK-FU sports two joysticks, lots of buttons, flip switches, and is fully programmable. There's even a full keyboard on the thing! The MEK-FU is also capable of taking a mobile or tablet device that acts as a secondary display, or the main screen, that works with Hawken thanks to the Gaiki streaming partnership.

Hawken drops in December and the MEK-FU should hopefully arrive soon after. How much would you want to pay for this controller? I'm loving the idea of using a smart device such as a tablet as a secondary display, I've been waiting for a game developer to do this since the iPad was released.

It looks like the lads that co-founded Google are in hot water once again, where they'll have to appear before US antitrust regulators for questioning. Larry Page and Sergey Brin have reportedly retained counsel, and are expected to give depositions before the Federal Trade Commission sometime over the coming months.

What is it all over? Well, the issue boils down to whether or not Google have been unfairly using its position as the world's dominant search engine in a manner biased in favor of its own products, as well as whether Google has increased advertising rates for its competitors.

Google of course maintains that users are free to visit Google's competition, which the search giant says is "only a click away" thanks to the nature of the web.

I've been taking my time and thinking these awards over carefully. You can't just run around tossing out Best of Show awards everywhere or they start to mean nothing. With that said, I've put much consideration into these and will only be giving them out in a few key categories.

Best upcoming game of E3 has to be given to Crysis 3. I know I have awarded them other awards this E3 and that is because it is such an amazing game. Period. Feel free to argue, but I was there and saw with my own eyes the beauty and quality that Crysis 3 is already sporting, and it doesn't even release until February 2013.

Most innovative game of E3 needs to be awarded to an IndieCade game called Tickleplane. It may not have the best graphics or the most in-depth story line, in fact it has none, but the controls of the game are so different that it wins the award. They take a while to get used to, but once you do, the game is a great time waster.