General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Liberty Reserve Indicted for Laundering $6 Billion

Posted: 29 May 2013 04:50 PM PDT

Liberty Reserve Shut Down

Largest international anti-money laundering action in history

Last Thursday, the official website of the Costa Rica-based digital currency Liberty Reserve went offline, stirring panic among its million-odd users. It soon became clear that it was no ordinary outage, but a case of the proverbially long arm of the law finally catching up with the notorious website and delivering a death blow.

Thursday's action, according to a statement issued by Costa Rican authorities, was the result of a money laundering investigation that began in 2011 after the local authorities received a "request from a prosecutor's office in New York." The next day, the Costa Rican authorities raided Liberty Reserve founder Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk's residence and offices in Escazá, Santa Ana, just southwest of the national capital San José.

The 39-year-old Budovsky, who lived in the U.S. until he fled the country following an indictment on money laundering-related charges in 2006, was arrested in Spain the very same day. He is one of seven Liberty Reserve principals indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for what U.S. authorities allege was a money laundering scheme worth $6 billion. In all, five people named in the indictment have already been arrested, including Liberty Reserve co-founder Vladmir Kats, who was arrested in Brooklyn, New York, while two are still believed to be at large somewhere in Costa Rica.

"As charged, Liberty Reserve operated, on an enormous scale, a digital currency system designed to provide cyber and other criminals with a way to launder their profits without leaving a trace," Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman said in a Department of Justice press release which described the crackdown on Liberty Reserve as the "largest international money laundering prosecution in history"

"The company's very purpose was to launder its users' criminal proceeds through the U.S. and global financial system.  By indicting Liberty Reserve and its principals, restraining over $25 million in criminal proceeds, forfeiting domain names, and seizing servers in countries around the globe, our message is clear:  money launderers can run, but they can't hide from the U.S. justice system."

As massive as this action against Liberty Reserve may be, many people seem more interested in its possible implications for Bitcoin, a decentralized, cyrptocurrency that has drawn plenty of interest from the media and seen its value rise spectacularly over the past couple of years. While there can be no disputing its decentralized nature, the anonymity popularly associated with it seems to be an entirely different matter.

Some experts believe a large part of the anonymity usually associated with Bitcoin transactions is entirely notional, and that the system is actually more transparent than even some of the more conventional online payment systems out there.

This means that unlike their Liberty Reserve-using counterparts, people who only use Bitcoins for legitimate purposes have nothing to worry about. However, make sure that you steer clear of Bitcoin-related services that either lack proper authorization or are widely suspected of abetting illegal activities.

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FanimeCon 2013: Cosplay Gallery

Posted: 29 May 2013 02:46 PM PDT

Chell Portal60 cosplay pictures from FanimeCon 2013

We had the chance to check out FanimeCon 2013 in San Jose, California this past weekend. While the annual event is widely known as an anime convention, gaming played a huge part of the show. In addition to having an entire expo hall dedicated to video games, there were a ton of game-inspired costumes. Popular outfits this year included the large roster of League of Legends champions to the ever popular Team Fortress 2 classes, and much, much more!

Presented below are some of our favorite FanimeCon 2013 cosplay costumes. Let us know which ones are your favorite in the comments section!

Google Hopes You'll Go Gaga Over Gmail Tabs

Posted: 29 May 2013 12:13 PM PDT

Gmail TabsTabs work for browsing, can they for email as well?

Can you remember surfing the web before tabs? Power surfing has never been the same, and even casual web users can benefit from tabbed browsing. Google didn't invent the concept, nor did the company even popularize tabbed browsing, but it is incorporating tabs of a slightly different kind into its Gmail service on the desktop and mobile. It's almost like a pre-sorting system.

"On the desktop, the new inbox groups your mail into categories which appear as different tabs," Google explains in a blog post. "You simply choose which categories you want and voilà! Your inbox is organized in a way that lets you see what's new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when."

In Android and iOS, you'll see your Primary mail when you open the app, and from there you can easily navigate to the other tabs, Google says. Alternately, if you'd rather not use them, you can switch off all the optional tabs to go back to the classic view or any other inbox types you might be using.

Look for tabs to roll out "gradually" within the next few weeks.

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Asus Teases Upgraded Supreme FX Audio on Z87 Maximus VI Formula Motherboard

Posted: 29 May 2013 11:29 AM PDT

Asus SupremeFXThe next evolution of SupremeFX is coming.

I found nestled in my inbox this morning a note from Asus saying it's getting ready to introduce an "even more advanced version of SupremeFX on the upcoming Formula" board built for Haswell. Along with the note, Asus attached a teaser photo marking the recent evolution of SupremeFX (versions III and IV), leaving the world to wonder what it has in store for the next release. Care to venture a guess?

SupremeFX, once a discrete audio solution, is now incorporated into select Asus motherboards. Version III introduced a backlit "redline" on the PCB (Printed Circuit Board), which highlights the physical separation of the audio processing from the rest of the motherboard. Drawing power from the motherboard, some line conditioning is required for a clean signal, which is handled by a large 1500uF capacitor. The codec itself is actually housed underneath an aluminum cap where it's isolated from surrounding EMI.

Version IV, introduced with the Asus Maximus V Formula, added a headphone amp and premium ELNA capacitors specifically designed for audio applications due to features like ultra-low ESR.

Asus SupremeFX Teaser

So, what will SupremeFX V bring to the table? Asus hasn't provided any clues, though we wonder if a higher signal-to-ratio might be in cards.

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7 Indie Games Featured in This Week's Humble Bundle

Posted: 29 May 2013 09:58 AM PDT

Humble Bundle

$1 contribution grabs you some great indie titles

The Humble Bundle has struck again giving bargain hunters another cheap assortment of games. This week's bundle features seven games, five of which you can get all for as little as a single dollar! Among those titles are indie games Little Inferno, Capsized, Thomas was Alone, Dear Esther, and Awesomenauts. 

If you donate more than $5.68 (the current average) you will also receive the critically-acclaimed titles Hotline Miami and Proteus too. 

The Humble Bundle supports the developers who put their games on the service and charity too. You can of course choose to donate as much money as you would like and choose where that money goes to, be it to the developers or charity organizations (Child's Play Charity and/or the American Red Cross).

Powercolor Launches a Low Profile Radeon HD 7750 Video Card

Posted: 29 May 2013 09:00 AM PDT

Powercolor HD7750 Eyefinity 4 LP EditionSmall but capable of driving up to four displays.

TUL Corporation's Powercolor division today announced what it claims is the first low profile Radeon HD 7750 graphics card capable of driving up to four displays via AMD's Eyefinity technology. Dubbed HD7750 Eyefinity 4 LP Edition, this low profile part can fit into slim cases and features four mini DisplayPort outputs to run 4x1 Landscape Display Group, 2x2 Landscape Display Group, and 3x1 Display Group Plus 1 Extended configurations.

The card is equipped with 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1,125MHz on a 128-bit bus. It has a core clockspeed of 800MHz and supports CrossFireX setups, PowerColor says. Outside of gaming applications, PowerColor envisions customers using this card for financial services, on wall-mounted television displays, transportation, monitoring, professional design, digital signage, and other professional use scenarios.

If you're interested in this particular model, note that the four DisplayPort outputs are the only ones it has. You won't find any DVI or HDMI ports.

Powercolor didn't say how much the card will cost or when it will be available to purchase.

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AMD Rumored to Launch Radeon HD 8000 Series in Third Quarter

Posted: 29 May 2013 07:55 AM PDT

AMD Radeon GHz EditionNext generation video cards from AMD might be just around the corner.

The neat thing about the never ending GPU wars is that there's always something newer and faster on the horizon. AMD and Nvidia never have time to rest on their laurels, instead playing a constant game of leapfrog where the biggest winners are gamers. In keeping with that theme, a Chinese language website is reporting that AMD is gearing up to launch its Radeon HD 8000 Series of graphics cards sometime in the third quarter of this year.

In addition to a launch time frame, Chiphell posted some updated specifications for AMD's new crop of cards. The fastest of the bunch is the Radeon HD 8970, which features 36 compute units, 2,304 stream processors, 144 TMUs, 48 ROPs, and an 1,100MHz core clockspeed. It also has 6GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 7,000MHz (effective) on a 384-bit bus, all of which results in 5.07TFLOPS of floating point performance. Versus the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, the new part will run 35 percent faster and cost $599.

Next up is the Radeon HD 8950 ($399) with 28 compute units, 1,792 stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 4GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 7,000MHz on a 256-bit bus, 1,200MHz core clockspeed, and 4,30TFLOPS of floating point performance. It's said to run 10 percent faster than a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition card.

Below that sits the Radeon HD 8870 with 24 compute units, 1,536 stream processors, 96 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6,000MHz on a 256-bit bus, 1,100MHz core clockspeed, and 3.38TFLOPS of floating point performance. This $299 card is supposed to be 40 percent faster than a Radeon HD 7870.

Finally there's the Radeon HD 8850 ($229) with 20 compute units, 1,280 stream processors, 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, 2GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 6,000MHz on a 256-bit bus, 1,000MHz core clockspeed, and 2.56TFLOPS of floating point performance. It's said to run 15 percent faster than a Radeon HD 7870 graphics card.

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