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The much-anticipated Radeon R9 295X2 'Vesuvius' has been unveiled in leaked press images, along with its specs.

Built first by Asus, the 295X2 features two Hawaii XT cores with GCN 1.1 architecture, with the GPUs featuring 2816 x 2 stream processors, 176 x 2 texture mapping units and 64 x 2 Raster Operators.

The GPUs each have 4GB GDDR5 RAM, totaling an impressive 8GB of GDDR5 running a "512B X 2 memory bus that is clocked at 1250 MHz effective clock speed."

As far as display outlets go, there are four Display Ports and a DVI port. 4K and multiple monitors should certainly not be an issue with the card.

To cool the beast, AMD has begun using their Project Hydra hybrid cooling system. The card has a 120mm radiator that must be installed into your PC with two fans that lead to two 38cm coolant pipes.

Last year, we reported that a documentary crew had received preliminary approval to dig up a site in New Mexico where Atari allegedly buried millions of unsold Atari 2600 consoles and games.

The urban legend of the desert site has been around for at least two decades, and gamers (and former gamers) have been following the story, us included.

As of this week, the New Mexico Environmental Department has given final approval, pending some stipulations. Fuel Entertainment (the documentary crew), Xbox Entertainment Studios and LightBox Entertainment will be allowed to dig up the site, but must notify the NMED "five working days before any excavation begins and the companies who haul the waste must register as certified or commercial haulers of waste with the NMED before they can remove any waste from the site."

The alleged games and consoles, which supposedly include millions of copies of the awful E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, were buried in September 1983. That year, the video game industry saw a large downtrend due to greater market factors, leaving Atari with millions of unsold and sealed consoles and games, including over 3 million copies of E.T. The company then, according to the myth, dumped the unsold merchandise in the Alamogordo landfill which was later covered by concrete.

Turkey's telecoms authority has confirmed that a two week ban on Twitter has been lifted in the country following a court ruling found it breached freedom of expression.

Twitter had been blocked in Turkey for several weeks after leaked audio recordings of top officials were spread around using the microblogging site. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan dismissed the recordings as illegitimate and claimed they were part of a smear campaign against his government ahead of an election.

Access to Twitter was blocked in the country ahead of the election, and later on Google's YouTube service was also blocked when recordings were uploaded there.

Opponents of the government claimed the move was an authoritarian attempt to bury a corruption scandal that has plagued Erdogan's rule. It was condemned by the international community also.

Earlier this week, a constitutional court found that blocking Twitter violated freedom of expression, and today access was restored for most users in the country, reports Reuters. However, access to YouTube has not been fully restored as of yet.

Google is attempting to trademark the word 'Glass' but is encountering resistance from the U.S. trademark office and at least one other company.

The search giant has already trademarked 'Google Glass', its 'smart glasses' that have yet to hit retail. However, it would much prefer to have a trademark for the word 'Glass' for its product, and submitted an application for it last year.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office responded to Google by letter, in which a trademark examiner had two main concerns. The first concern is the possibility of consumer confusion, due to similarities with existing or pending trademarks.

The second concern is that 'Glass' is just a descriptive term, and descriptive terms are not entitled to trademark protection.

Google completely disagree, of course, and responded with a 1928 page letter consisting mostly of media coverage of Google Glass. It also argues that Glass is not a descriptive term for Google Glass at all, because the frame and display components don't consist of Glass, but instead are made from plastic and titanium.

The Wall Street Journal also reports that Border Stylo, LLC - which develops a browser extension called 'Write on Glass' - has filed a notice of opposition to Google's application.

Microsoft has thanked a five year old boy for discovering a flaw in its Xbox One system that allowed him to log into his Dad's account without a password.

Kristoffer Von Hassel, from San Diego, discovered a way to get into his father's account and play games he wasn't supposed to. When his Dad noticed, his career in computer security took precedent over any displeasure over his account being hacked, and he asked his son to explain to him how he was doing it.

Microsoft has revealed that Office for iPad apps have been downloaded over 12 million times in just a week.

The Redmond-giant made its Office for iPad suite of applications available for Apple's flagship tablet last week, giving iPad users the ability to view Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote material. In order to create and edited documents, users need to pay a monthly subscription fee.

Microsoft announced the impressive download figures through its Office Twitter account.

More than 12 million downloads of Word, Excel, PPT & OneNote for #iPad from the @AppStore <3 #OfficeforiPad pic.twitter.com/iT2egNPDkj

-- Office (@Office) April 3, 2014

What Microsoft did not divulge however is how many new Office 365 subscriptions that the 12 million downloads translated to. The company is making a bet that users of its previous Office applications for Windows will choose to continue with its Office products on Apple's platform, rather than take advantage of free office apps already available.

Google's Nest has halted sales of its Nest Protect smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector after discovering a flaw that could delay an alarm going off during a fire.

The Nest Protect: Smoke + Carbon Monoxide alarm is a smart connected device that aims to replace old fashioned smoke alarms. Among its features is 'Nest Wave', which is the ability to disable an alarm by waving at the device.

During routine rigorous testing, Nest discovered a potential flaw that called into question whether Nest Wave could be unintentionally activated. In the worst case scenario, a flaw of this nature could delay an alarm sounding if smoke was detected.

It is important to remember that no reports of such a scenario have been made by any Nest customer, and that this potential flaw was discovered in-house.

Brendan Eich has stepped down from the role of chief executive at Mozilla following a considerable backlash to donations he made to the California Proposition 8 campaign in 2008.

After only being in the position of CEO at Mozilla for a number of weeks, internal unrest saw employees publicly call for Eich to resign. The point of contention was Eich's views on marriage equality with his history of opposition to gay marriage.

Former CEOs Gary Kovacs and John Lilly, along with Shmoop CEO Ellen Siminoff, stepped down from the Mozilla board not long after Eich was promoted. They had hoped for an outsider to take over the role, and believed Eich was a liability for Mozilla, its products, services and customers.

Earlier this week, online dating site OkCupid took a strong stance against Mozilla with Eich at the helm, with a letter to users urging them to drop Firefox while he remains chief executive.

The White House is not very pleased after Samsung used a selfie taken of Red Sox' David Ortiz and President Barack Obama in a promo tweet.

Ortiz took the rare chance to grab a selfie with the President when the Red Sox recently visited the White House. He then went on to tweet the selfie with the words "What an honor! Thanks for the #selfie, @BarackObama," and so far so good. However, Samsung then tweeted the image to its 5.2 million followers, upsetting the White House.

As a general rule, the President's image should not be used for commercial purposes and the White House clearly feels that Samsung did exactly that. The South Korean firm was able to use the content through a pre-existing deal.

"Without getting into counsel's discussions, I can tell you that as a rule, the White House objects to attempts to use the president's likeness for commercial purposes, and we certainly object in this case," said White House spokesman Jay Carney, reports Reuters.

After Samsung tweeted the image, it pointed out through its @SamsungMobileUS account that the photo had been taken with a Galaxy Note 3, which explains why the White House feels Samsung used the President's image to promote its products.

Newly appointed head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, has said that Virtual Reality (VR) is not a fad after Xbox co-creator Ed Fries cast doubt on its potential to help Xbox One beat PS4.

Ed Fries had commented that Microsoft needs to stick to core gaming and services for its users in order to beat PlayStation 4 (PS4) in the current console generation. He stressed that making great gaming content with blockbuster IP and delivering the best services through Xbox could help Microsoft to overcome Sony.

Fries said: "They need better exclusive games than PS4. They need to be more open to indie developers. They need to adopt free to play gaming more aggressively. They need to continue to move Xbox Live forward as the leading online service. They need to show people why they included the new Kinect on every machine by demonstrating a compelling use for it."

In the area of VR however, Fries warned that Microsoft should look at the collapse of 3D demand before taking the VR route to compete with the PS4. Facebook's recent $2 billion acquisition of Oculus Rift and Sony's own Project Morpheus show that VR is in the pipeline in any event, and Microsoft is known to be developing a VR system of its own, and also has reportedly spent around $150 million on wearable technology assets.

Record labels are targeting the so called 'Facebook of Russia' with a legal case over alleged large-scale copyright infringement by the service.

The legal complaint has been made under the guidance of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) trade group, with Universal Music Group, Warner and Sony Music all filing a case.

VKontakte has been described as the 'Facebook of Russia', and it has been accused by the record companies of amassing a huge library of music that it does not have to rights to offer as part of its service. The goal is to get a Russian court to force MK to remove infringing files from its service.

"We have repeatedly highlighted this problem over a long period of time," said IFPI chief exec Frances Moore.

"We have encouraged VK to cease its infringements and negotiate with record companies to become a licensed service. To date the company has taken no meaningful steps to tackle the problem, so today legal proceedings are being commenced."

VK has been noted as a problematic service in the US Trade Representative's annual report for four consecutive years now.

Ouya chief executive Julie Uhrman has stressed that Amazon's new Fire TV box is not solely dedicated to games like Ouya is, dismissing claims that Fire TV will damage the Android console.

Amazon launched its Fire TV set-top box yesterday. The device sells for $99 with optional gaming controllers at $39.99 each. It plays Android games and has plenty of support from big name studios in its corner.

Gaming is definitely not Fire TV's main purpose; even Amazon admits to that. Still, the availability of Fire TV had some commentators writing off Ouya's survival chances, as Amazon is such a giant to grapple with and games developers will be very interested in Fire TV going forward.

"Just as Amazon blazed a trail for a new way of selling online, Ouya invented a new way to think about console games. But for us, games are not simply an 'added bonus', they are the whole point," Uhrman said to CVG.

"Ouya is solely dedicated to the devs creating games, and the players who play them, their ideal experience is all we think about."

That said, Amazon has made a few splashes that suggest gaming will be more important to it going forward. It recently acquired Double Helix, and hired designers Kim Swift and Clint Hocking, who worked on Portal and Far Cry 2, respectively.

Several charities are warning about increasing reports from victims of 'revenge porn', and feel the example set in some U.S. states must be followed to curb the growing problem.

In a nutshell, 'revenge porn' is sexually explicit material uploaded by ex-partners after relationships have gone sour. In some cases, victims even had their personal details posted publicly along with the explicit material.

In the UK, several charitable organizations have voiced concerns over rising levels of such incidents, including the National Stalking Helpline, Women's Aid and the UK Safer Internet Centre, reports the BBC News website.

Several states in the U.S. have already introduced laws that tackle revenge porn, and have been tested. In New Jersey, a man was jailed for six months for posting explicit photos of an ex-partner whom he has been in a relationship with for over ten years.

She said she made a stupid mistake by giving him the pictures in the first place, but that she never thought he would do something like this. The pictures spread quickly from being on three sites, to over 200, causing the woman considerable distress.

Microsoft has confirmed that Ridley Scott is part of a new Halo project in development, but has not been liberal with details as of yet.

According to Microsoft, Scott will serve as executive producer on the project, but it is completely unclear what is under production. Halo has had trouble making it to the big screen, and sadly this project isn't likely to put it there either.

Microsoft maintains that it won't clash with the Halo show under development at Xbox Entertainment Studios, which boasts Steven Spielberg's contribution.

Nevertheless, Scott has been involved in projects like Blade Runner, and more recently Prometheus, so associating his name does arouse curiosity. The new project will be directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, who worked on Battlestar Galactica.

Looks like we will have to wait to here more on this one.

Source: Joystiq

While Amazon's new Fire TV set-top box supports an optional controller and has a games library already available, the web giant insists that it is not intended to be a games console.

Instead, the primary competitors for the $99 set-top box are intended to be Apple TV and Roku, as the primary function of the device is to stream video and audio content from web services like Netflix.

"This isn't trying to be a console, but we do think there's a great opportunity there in between a console and a smartphone for fun, quality games," said Amazon's Kindle VP Pete Larsen, in an interview with Engadget.

The gaming features are intended to attract people who play games on smartphones and tablets, but who would not buy a PS4, Xbox One or Wii U for their own reasons.

That said, Amazon has made a few splashes that suggest gaming will be more important to it going forward. It recently acquired Double Helix, and hired designers Kim Swift and Clint Hocking, who worked on Portal and Far Cry 2, respectively.