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Archos has announced two new Android 3.1 Honeycomb tablets this week, each using a 7mm "Thin HDD" to pack 250GB of internal storage.

The Archos 80 G9 and the 101 G9 have all the same specs but different display sizes, 8-inches and 10.1-inches.

Each tablet runs on a fast 1.5Ghz dual-core OMAP 4 CPU and feature a full USB port and HDMI-out.

Price is what should differentiate the devices from other tablets, $279 for the 80 G9 and $350 for the larger 101 G9.

Video of the tablets, which are set for release in September:

Baltimore man sentenced in city's first criminal hacking case.

Walter Powell, 52, of the 3800 block of Frankford Avenue pleaded guilty to charges of hacking into computer systems of his former employer, Baltimore Substance Abuse Systems Inc. He had been fired from his position there in 2009 and admitted to hacking into the computer network multiple times since.

One incident that landed him in hot water involved a powerpoint presentation made by the chief executive and intended to be displayed in front of the board of directors. Powell admitted to inserting pornography into the presentation.

The city's state's attorney's office said that this was the first computer hacking case to be prosecuted in the city.

Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock heard Powell's case, sentencing him to two years in prison with all time suspended, along with three years probation. He must now also carry out 100 hours of community service.

Search giant says it will cooperate with FTC investigation.

Google revealed on its official blog that it received formal notification from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it has begun a review of its core businesses. "We respect the FTC's process and will be working with them (as we have with other agencies) over the coming months to answer questions about Google and our services," the blog entry stated.

Google states that while it is unclear what the FTC's primary concerns are at this time, the company is confident about where it stands. It goes into detail about how Google has always believed that if it focuses on the user, then all else will follow.

With that principal in mind, Google says it aims to help its users find relevant information quickly, and for free, knowing that the competition is just a click away at all times. "In just 13 years we’ve built a model that has changed the way people find answers and helped businesses both large and small create jobs and connect with new customers," it states.

Google says that while it will cooperate with the FTC to alleviate any anti-trust concerns, it will follow the core principles that have guided it from the beginning, which it states are...

• Do what's best for the user. "We make hundreds of changes to our algorithms every year to improve your search experience. Not every website can come out at the top of the page, or even appear on the first page of our search results."
• Provide the most relevant answers as quickly as possible. "Today, when you type 'weather in Chicago' or 'how many feet in a mile' into our search box, you get the answers directly—often before you hit 'enter'. And we're always trying to figure out new ways to answer even more complicated questions just as clearly and quickly. Advertisements offer useful information, too, which is why we also work hard to ensure that our ads are relevant to you."
• Label advertisements clearly. "Google always distinguishes advertisements from our organic search results. As we experiment with new ad formats and new types of content, we will continue to be transparent about what is an ad and what isn't."
• Be transparent. "We share more information about how our rankings work than any other search engine, through our Webmaster Central site, blog, diagnostic tools, support forum, and YouTube. We also give advertisers detailed information about the ad auction and tips to improve their ad quality scores. We've recently introduced even more transparency tools, announcing a major change to our algorithm, providing more notice when a website is demoted due to spam violations, and giving advertisers new information about ads that break our rules."
• Loyalty, not lock-in. "We firmly believe you control your data, so we have a team of engineers whose only goal is to help you take your information with you. We want you to stay with us because we're innovating and making our products better—not because you're locked in."

Worldwide operation involved simultaneous raids, froze dozens of bank accounts.

Co-operating with law enforcement agencies from eleven other countries around the world, including France, the United Kingdom and the United States, Ukraine's state security service was able to identify and break up a group responsible for infiltrating banking networks.

It is estimated that the hackers stole up to $72 million from compromised networks. The group was organized and led by Ukrainians, using computer viruses to make it possible to get through network security of international banks. The Ukrainian state security service did not name the affected institutions.

"According to preliminary estimates, damage to bank customers' amounts to about $72 million," it said in a statement.

Forty bank accounts located in Latvia were frozen as part of the investigation. Sixteen people have been questioned.

Apple removes Arabic language anti-Israel application from App Store.

"We removed this app from the App Store because it violates the developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people," Apple said. The application was only made available on the App Store several days ago. Intifada refers to two violent uprisings against Israel in the past.

Earlier this year, Facebook removed a "Third Intifada" page for much the same reasons. In that case, the page was originally left online despite complaints, and then later removed. Facebook confirmed the decision to remove it came after the calls for peaceful protest turned to incitements of violence.

The application removed by Apple gave links to nationalistic Palestinian material, and listed forthcoming protests and other events. Israeli Minister of Public Affairs and the Diaspora Yuli Edelstein, wrote to Steve Jobs recently to express disappointment that the application was available.

"From browsing through the articles, stories and photographs that appear in the app, it is clear that this is an anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist application that in fact, as its name suggests, calls for an uprising against Israel," the letter stated.

No wonder they have to sue so many file sharers.

According to Bloomberg, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) spent $2.1 million lobbying the government in the last quarter, a big increase year-over-year (YoY).

The trade group, which is backed by record labels, has been pushing the government to impose stricter rules to protect IP rights in the U.S and other countries and has also been opposing a proposal that would force mobile phone makers to include FM radio chips in all handsets.

Two quarters ago, the RIAA spent $1.5 million lobbying and $1.4 million in the corresponding quarter last year.

In 2010, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) proposed the FM chip mandate but has been met with extreme resistance, especially from the Consumer Electronics Association (backed by device makers) who believes adding the chip will just add unneeded weight and cost to devices for a feature many users will not care about.

Electronic Arts (EA) has announced today that user accounts have been breached and data like passwords and mailing addresses have been compromised.

The attack hit a server for developer BioWare, which is owned by EA.

Hackers got in through a backdoor using the 10-year old "Neverwinter Nights" user forums.

Although the compromised data is from BioWare, EA warns that your personal data with EA Games may have been stolen, as well.

EA did make it very clear that no financial data was compromised, but encrypted passwords, names, CD keys, addresses and phone numbers were all stolen. If you have a BioWare or EA Games account, it is prudent to go and change your password as soon as possible.

BioWare apologized (via Rant):

We take the security of your information very seriously and regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If your username, email address and/or password on your EA account are similar to those you use on other sites, we recommend changing the password at those sites as well. We advise all of our fans to always be aware of any suspicious emails or account activity and report any suspicious emails and account activity to Customer Support at 1-877-357-6007.

Latest development in on-going dispute between both giants.

A court in South Korea revealed on Friday that Apple sued Samsung in the country, alleging that Samsung products infringe several of its patents. Samsung had previously sued Apple in South Korea, as well as Germany and Japan. Apple has accused Samsung of blatantly cloning its products.

An Apple lawyer revealed last week that top executives of both firms were in talks over the patent disputes, as they have a very strong business relationship. Apple was Samsung's biggest customer in the first quarter according to Samsung's reports, with Apple buying up enormous amounts of semiconductors.

Samsung is, however, one of Apple's biggest rivals. It's Android-packing smartphones compete directly with Apple in the mobile market, while Samsung has also emerged as the clear rival to Apple's iPad in the tablet PC market. Some of Samsung's products are strikingly similar to the iPhone, from the device dimensions, to the user interface, and even the packing.

That is no coincidence, says Apple, but Samsung has also accused Apple of patent infringement and said in a previous filing that it was seeking compensation for damages.

New boards designed to take advantage of new AMD Accelerated Processing Units (APU).

The new F1A75 Series motherboards are based on the latest AMD A75 chipset and FM1 socket, which supports AMD's new Llano APUs. This new series is also equipped with the latest ASUS-exclusive technologies and features, including the Dual Intelligent Processors 2 (DIP2) with DIGI+ VRM for precise power control.

The F1A75-V EVO is the world's first FM1 socket motherboard with dual x8/x8 PCI-Express for AMD CrossFireX support. The entire range of ASUS F1A75 Series motherboards are designed to support SATA 6Gbps and SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0).

AMD's new APUs include AMD Radeon HD 6000 series processor graphics. Dual Graphics support means an additional PCI-Express Radeon GPU can lead to a performance boost up to 128 percent, in Radeon Dual Graphics mode.

The new boards also feature an intuitive UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) BIOS, which features a graphical interface and support for a mouse to provide a more user-friendly experience. An EZ-Mode option built in allows for drag and drop boot priority settings, wwhile Advanced Mode allows experienced enthusiasts to tweak more intricate system settings.

If you have purchased an Android smartphone in the last year, chances are you have been stuck with a device that comes loaded with bloatware, pre-installed apps that are impossible to remove unless you root your device.

Sprint is looking to change that, however, and starting with the release of the HTC EVO 3D it appears that owners can now remove said bloatware without having to go through the hassle of rooting their device and adding a clean ROM.

The carrier says it listened to customer complaints and will continue the practice in the future.

There is no official policy on pre-installed apps from the FCC or other groups so it is at the carrier's discretion how many apps they want to add to phones being sold on their network.

One can only hope that major offenders Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile follow in Sprint's footsteps soon, giving users the freedom to remove apps that they will never use without having to resort to rooting their devices.

Put your backups in the cloud for peace of mind.

The LaCie CloudBox is a solution for backing up files that dramatically reduces the risk of catastrophic data loss. When you store data on the CloudBox, it is also transferred to the Cloud each day, ensuring that your data is always safe and accessible from anywhere.

If you want to recover everything, the CloudBox can restore your entire online backup. If you just want to restore certain files, the CloudBox's Online Restore application allows you to browse and restore selections of files and folders, up to 10 previous versions.

The CloudBox provides multiple levels of data security including two copies of your files and 128-bit AES data encryption. Your files are encrypted before they are sent to the cloud, meaning that nobody can gain access to your files, not even LaCie.

Two months after the PSN was hacked and personal data on 101 million customer was compromised, Sony is facing a class-action lawsuit which accuses the company of negligence and lax security.

The suit cites many "confidential" witnesses who claim that Sony's security was far from adequate and very open to attack.

Those attacks on PSN servers caused Sony to take down the service for 24 days, a time when gamers could not play online or access the PS Store.

The "smoking gun" of the lawsuit is the claim that Sony was actually firing people in their security division, prior to the attack (via Ars):

Just two weeks before the April breach, Sony laid off a substantial percentage of its Sony Online Entertainment workforce, including a number of employees in the Network Operations Center, which, according to Confidential Witness 2, is the group that is responsible for preparing for and responding to security breaches, and who ostensibly has the skills to bring the Network's security technology up-to-date.

PCI group doesn't see need to abandon copper interconnects just yet.

According to reports from the PCI SIG (PCI Special Interest Group) developers conference, PCI Express 4.0 is expected to deliver at least 16 GT/s when it debuts, double the 8 GT/s throughput achieved with PCIe Gen 3. The next advancement of PCI Express isn't expected to make a hardware debut for about four years.

"The initial report we got yesterday is a PCI Express 4.0 is feasible--we have to work out the details, but it is feasible," said Al Yanes, president of the PCI SIG. A group that includes AMD, HP, IBM and Intel have been carrying out experiments and have determined 16 GT/s is possible without having to jump to optical interconnects.

"We think we can eke out one more turn of the crank out of copper, so we are not looking at optics yet," chairman of the PCI SIG's serial communications working chair, Ramin Neshanti, said.

It has only been almost a year since their last major milestone but growth has accelerated and Facebook has now reached 750 million users, massive growth by any standard.

In July 2010, the company announced it had reached 500 million users.

Facebook would not confirm the number, as it is evidently waiting for the 1 billion milestone but most active watchers believe the number is accurate, or at least very close.

Despite the massive growth, some numbers suggest Facebook has reached saturation in the U.S., where active users fell by 6 million in the last month and where new members joined at a much slower pace than in the past.

In an effort to create new revenue streams, Facebook has begun experimenting with sponsored status updates, which can be commented on by users.

Facebook is set to IPO in the next year and has a current market value of $100 billion, making it one of the largest tech companies in the entire world.

VESA announces support for longer active cables for DisplayPort standard.

VESA - the Video Electronics Standards Association - announced an extension to the DisplayPort v1.2 standard to support active cables, which can be as much as five times longer than passive cables. To achieve the extra length, active cables boost and equalize the attenuated DisplayPort signal.

The change, VESA believes, will help enthusiasts building / upgrading home theater systems, which are often strained by the short length of High-definition video cables (particularly those that come free with consumer electronics products.)

With the addition of active cables to the DisplayPort standard, cables lengths of more than 100 feet (33 meters) are possible. Because active cables are directional and require each end to be connected to appropriate devices, VESA has developed a new DisplayPort active cable logo to assist cable users in identifying the source and sink ends of the cable.

"Active cables are an important connectivity option for DisplayPort users," said Gourgen Oganessyan, vice-chair of the VESA Marketing Task Group and staff product marketing engineer at Intersil Corporation.