If you're still mining Ethereum, you will have notice that the difficulty has just increased by its largest amount ever... with difficulty now sitting at an insane 3TH.

Back in July, I reported that Ethereum difficulty reaching 1.75TH was squeezing out the small miners, as it had just increased from 1.25TH. But in the last 24 hours, the difficulty has risen from 2.3TH to 3TH, which is the largest jump, ever.

Looking at the numbers from June, we can see it was under 1TH... and each rise has been steady, and painful. But the last one was the worse, I mean just look at the leap it did overnight. If you're still mining Ethereum, this will hurt, a lot.

Intel can't say they aren't reacting to AMD's next-gen Ryzen CPUs when they've announced and released, what feels like, more processors and families of CPU architectures than ever before. Now... we're hearing about Ice Lake.

Ice Lake will be Intel's next-gen 10nm CPUs, compared to the current-gen Kaby Lake processors on the second-gen 14nm (14nm+) process. The new Coffee Lake architecture will be Intel's 8th generation Core processors, and will see the company plonk down the new Core processors onto their first-gen 10nm process.

The surprise knee jerk reaction to AMD's continued threat on the CPU market with Ryzen, Ryzen Threadripper and EPYC has Intel scurrying around to catch up. This is yet another move to confuse consumers, as Intel announced Ice Lake as a "successor to the 8th generation Intel Core processor family".

As The Verge points out, this would imply that Ice Lake is a semi-9th generation CPU architecture that will succeed, in some ways, the 8th generation CPUs. Intel will be tapping its 10nm+ process, the second generation of the tech at that small scale. As The Verge points out again, this is confusing as it seems there should be another first-gen 10nm release in between.

Ice Lake won't appear until sometime in 2019, but it will surely be an interesting ride between now and then to see how much AMD can make Intel squirm in that time.

The prices of iPhone devices vary from country to country. We recently reported that the iPhone 7 could cost anywhere from $815 to $1200, depending on where you try to buy it. Knowing this, it shouldn't be surprising that individuals try to make some money on black market selling iPhones.

One woman was caught while trying to sneak 102 iPhones from Hong Kong to China. Apparently, this isn't uncommon since the iPhone prices are lower in Hong Kong.

The woman strapped 102 iPhones on her body, adding around 40 pounds (around 18kg) extra weight. Photos show different models of the iPhone device, so it's hard to guess the total value of the haul, but rest assured that we are looking at tens of thousands of dollars worth of phones.

Alexandre Cazes, believed to be behind the dark web marketplace that mysteriously went offline couple of days ago, has been found dead in Thai jail.

The 26-year-old Canadian was found dead an hour before he was supposed to meet with public prosecutors regarding his extradition to the United States.

The US Embassy in Bangkok stated that Cazes was detained at the request of the US "with a view toward extradition to face federal criminal charges." The police arrested Cazes on July 5th on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering.

On a recent flight from Beijing to Melbourne, a passenger experienced a misfortunate incident with a pair of headphones.

According to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the passenger was listening to music using her own battery-powered headphones while sleeping. About two hours into the flight, the headphones exploded causing burns on the passenger's face.

The unfortunate passenger was awoken by a loud sound of an explosion. She explained that she turned and that's when she felt the burning on her face.

I just grabbed my face which caused the headphones to go around my neck. I continued to feel burning, so I grabbed them off and threw them on the floor. They were sparking and had small amounts of fire. As I went to stamp my foot on them the flight attendants were already there with a bucket of water to pour on them. They put them into the bucket at the rear of the plane.

In a bizarre chain of events, a Russian programmer "hacked" his friend with a knife after a disagreement about NVIDIA vs. AMD. The man murdered his friend with a kitchen knife by striking him twice on the head and then stabbed his friend another eleven times after he was already dead. He then burned the body in the attempt to cover the crime.

It appears that the argument was the result of drinking alcohol and there may have been something in the alcohol to result in such a violent reaction over graphics card makers.

The tragic event happened over a year ago, but the conviction was only recently handed down by the court to 31-year-old Aleksander Trofimov, responsible for murdering 37-year old Evgeny Lylin in Saransk, Russia.

Everyday people don't really understand how computer hacking works--even those that watch Mr. Robot probably aren't familiar with the process. So if you're a member of the mainstream media, how do you demonstrate this complicated virtual crime? Easy--just use some footage from Fallout 3.

CNN recently posted up a report on Obama's response to the apparent Russian hacking fiasco that uses a still from Fallout 3's computer hacking mini-game. In fact, I was able to track down the actual screenshot, which was taken from a Kotaku article from 2012.

You can see the brief glimpse of a Vault-Tec terminal at about 1:02 in CNN's video report that matches the Fallout 3 screenshot used by Kotaku in their old terminal hacking article. Check a side-by-side below.

We've been posting about Julian Assange for a week now (with two news posts in the bag, and this marking #3) - as the WikiLeaks founder hasn't been seen since October 17.

Well, it seems that the internet feels the same, as I've been personally contacted by the person behind the #WhereisAssange campaign who is attempting to raise $1 million, my Reddit account is now back to normal after the mods in /r/wikileaks shadowbanned me. But it's the latest tweet from the official Twitter account of WikiLeaks, which we have previously reported has been astroturfed, and is now in government control.

WikiLeaks tweeted a few hours ago: "Please stop asking us for 'proof of life'. We do not control Assange's physical environment or internet connection", adding that "@MashiRafael does".

Who is Rafael Correa? He is the Ecuadorian politician and economist who has served as President of the Republic of Ecuador since 2007, according to Wikipedia. I've tweeted him asking if he would answer some questions for me, so we'll wait for the inevitable silence as he doesn't answer, I guess.

The front page of the internet is being edited by the CEO of the company, stomping all over the free speech of Americans and other Reddit users around the world. Remember that this all ties into the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hasn't been seen for over a month, and there's now a $1 million GoFundMe for proof of life.

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has admitted that he edited Reddit user comments that were insulting him, using his power on Reddit to "anonymously change references to his own username, and replace them with moderators of the pro-Donald Trump subreddit, r/the_donald", reports The Verge.

Huffman who posts on Reddit as "spez" admitted the acts of heroism after being called out by /r/the_donald users, with Huffman saying he was "inspired to edit the comments after a spate of insults emanating from the pro-Trump subreddit. "I messed with the "fuck u/spez" comments, replacing "spez" with r/the_donald mods for about an hour," Huffman said, indicating that the only thing he secretly altered was the target of the insults", reports The Verge.

Huffman said: "It's been a long week here trying to unwind the r/pizzagate stuff", and if you didn't know about #pizzagate, it's a conspiracy that ties most of Washington, including Hillary Clinton and John Podesta to Comet Ping Pong - where a purported child pedophile ring has its HQ.

He continued that the decision to edit posts because he thought it was a wild and unproven conspiracy theory, but then the user backlash was too much. Huffman wrote on the /r/the_donald subreddit: "As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a pedophile constantly. As the CEO, I shouldn't play such games, and it's all fixed now. Our community team is pretty pissed at me, so I most assuredly won't do this again".

Huffman can say he "most assuredly won't do this again", but after editing something this serious on the "front page of the internet" - I'm sorry, I don't believe you, and I never will again, Huffman.

Update: I've been chatting with Bertram on Twitter, and he said that "this is not a fundraiser", adding that "money issues can be so... finnicky... we've decided to hold off for now. We're exploring a fundraising method that would use multisig bitcoin wallets in order to allow for complete transparency and consencus before funds are spent".

Last week I wrote a story about WikiLeaks being astroturfed and that it was under the control of the government, and there was barely a peep from the mainstream media. Well, it's something that we should all be looking at right now, as it affects freedom of speech on the internet in a big way.

I took to my personal Twitter to talk about it, and in the last few days my account has blown up with followers, DMs, and retweets. There is a very large support group who wants to see WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange safe and sound, and just as I was considering opening up a GoFundMe account for this very reason, Logan Bertram did.

Bertram is asking for $1 million for proof of life of Assange, and while we might not hit $1 million - the internet is a wonderful place where things like this go viral very quickly. The post on GoFundMe reads:

The recent clamp down on moderators on Reddit is only getting worse, with most of the mods on /r/wikileaks and /r/whereisassange being replaced or silenced. The /r/pizzagate community has been completely banned, but they've moved onto another part of the internet.