T-Mobile US CEO John Legere. T-Mobile

Now that Sprint and T-Mobile US are no longer planning to merge and may also be prevented from teaming up to purchase spectrum, the companies are focusing on a new tactic: competing against each other.

Sprint announced new 20GB family plans last Monday and then on Thursday unveiled a $60-per-month unlimited data plan, calling it "a $20 savings compared to T-Mobile's $80 per month unlimited plan." While that's true, the Sprint plans do not include personal hotspot service and thus could end up costing more than T-Mobile for customers who intend to share their phones' Internet connections with other devices.

The $60 unlimited plan is for new or existing Sprint customers who bring their own device, buy one at full retail price, or pay on Sprint's Easy Pay two-year installment plan.

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NeoGAF

The next entries in the Super Smash Bros. fighting franchise, a 3DS/Wii U duo with separate (and partly unknown) release dates, has seen its roster of fan-favorite characters expand in drips of one or two character announcements at a time for years now. That promotional slow-drip may have finally run out, however, thanks to a mix of questionable screenshots and convincing video footage that surfaced on enthusiast forum NeoGAF in recent days.

The videos, which were uploaded [and promptly deleted by way of Nintendo copyright claim] on Monday and focused on the 3DS edition of the next Smash Bros., contained appearances from previously unannounced characters Bowser Jr.—piloting the flying clown-face pod that first appeared in Super Mario World—and Shulk, the spiky-haired, JRPG-cliche protagonist from the Nintendo-published Xenoblade Chronicles. These videos appeared to confirm leaked information that surfaced as early as last Wednesday, including a full roster screenshot that contained, among other characters, the dog from NES classic Duck Hunt. If true, this would be the first time the annoying, laughing pooch would be directly controllable in a Nintendo game, though you could actually shoot the mongrel in his grinning face if you tracked down a Vs. Duck Hunt arcade machine.

That supposed full-character roster screenshot also included returning Smash faves like Earthbound protagonist Ness, classic Nintendo mascot R.O.B., and Star Fox sidekick Falco. While we're hesitant to confirm that screenshot as fully authentic without more information, the gameplay videos compare very closely to the gameplay we tried out at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo. If they're fakes, they're good ones.

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Mike Mozart / JeepersMedia

More than 1,000 US businesses have been infected with a malicious program that targets point-of-sale systems and steals credit- and debit-card data, the US government warned over the weekend.

The malware, dubbed "Backoff" after a term used in its code, began spreading as early as October 2013 and has typically escaped notice by antivirus defenses. The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), the Secret Service, and the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) initially published an analysis of the malware in late July, but the groups updated their advisory on Friday with the estimated business impacted.

"Over the past year, the Secret Service has responded to network intrusions at numerous businesses throughout the United States that have been impacted by the 'Backoff' malware," the advisory stated. "Seven PoS system providers/vendors have confirmed that they have had multiple clients affected. Reporting continues on additional compromised locations, involving private sector entities of all sizes."

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This flashed on the screen for a split second during the teaser. LG

Less than two months after the launch of the LG G Watch, the company is already talking up its successor. Over the weekend, LG posted a video to its YouTube account teasing a new watch from the company, and this time, it's round! Like Motorola with the upcoming Moto 360, LG is making a smartwatch that actually looks like a watch.

The video doesn't contain much in the way of information about the product. The above render is flashed for a split second, and LG PR has since confirmed the device's name to be the "LG G Watch R." The video says we'll see more of the device at IFA, a trade show that runs from September 5 to 10.

The video brags of a "perfect circle" screen, a dig at the "flat tire" shape of the Moto 360's screen. The 360 is missing the bottom chunk of the screen, which it uses for the auto brightness sensor and an internal screen cable. Motorola also trades the perfect circle shape for smaller bezels and compactness, two important areas of smartwatch design.

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A Comcast subscriber who wanted to know why his Internet service disconnected when trying to use Steam was offered a bizarre explanation by a customer service representative who had apparently never heard of the popular video game distribution software.

"It’s probably a virus or it could be that it’s too heavy and it’s interrupting the Internet. Those are the only two things I can think about," the rep told a customer who made a recording of the call.

The customer was apparently trying to download a game through Steam when his Internet connection stopped working. He also described the problem on reddit, saying that his 50Mbps Comcast service would initially provide 6Mbps downloads on Steam before quickly "zeroing out." Re-starting the download led to the same result.

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Oracle, which has already sued Oregon for failure to pay up on its failed work, now faces charges of breach of contract and fraud from the state's Attorney General in a civil claim. Peter Kaminski / flickr

In the aftermath of what was likely the most spectacular failure among state-run Affordable Care Act health exchange site launches, the state of Oregon has filed a lawsuit against Oracle America Inc. over the total failure of the Cover Oregon exchange. “Oracle’s conduct amounts to a pattern of racketeering activity that has cost the State and Cover Oregon hundreds of millions of dollars,” Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum wrote in a civil complaint filed August 22. The lawsuit seeks over $5.5 billion in damages from Oracle, plus legal fees.

The complaint comes after Oracle filed its own lawsuit against the state’s health exchange for failure to pay for services rendered in early August. Oracle’s attorneys claimed that Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber had defamed the company in a “smear campaign” while failing to take responsibility for the failure of state management of the project and not paying Oracle for additional work done.

The 126-page complaint, filed by Rosenblum in Oregon’s Marion County Circuit Court on August 22, claims that Oracle pushed the state to not hire a systems integrator for the project, giving the company total control over the development of the site and allowing company executives to conceal problems with the software. “According to a former Oracle employee, Oracle advanced a ‘planned’ behind-the-scenes effort' to convince the State 'that a Systems Integrator would just cause delay,'” Rosenblum wrote in the complaint. “The former employee explained that ‘the message was 'we’ve got to make sure that [the State] doesn’t bring [a Systems Integrator] in because it’s just going to cause us trouble.’”

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According to the slides, there will be three new NUC boards spread across give different boxes, all launching in the first half of 2015. FanlessTech

We're generally fans of Intel's NUC ("Next Unit of Computing") mini-PCs, which use Ultrabook parts to create reasonably capable desktop PCs that can fit just about anywhere. When last we heard about new Broadwell-based versions of the boxes, they were due to launch in late 2014, but delays of higher-performance Broadwell parts have apparently pushed them back. New Intel slides from FanlessTech now show seven new NUC boxes launching in the first half of 2015.

The slides also tell us what kind of boxes we can expect, though there are no big surprises. The Broadwell NUC lineup is broadly similar to that of Haswell. There appear to be three boards: one high-end Core i5 model, one middle-end Core i3 model, and one Core i5 model with Intel's vPro technology integrated to make it more appealing to enterprises. All seem to come in two types of enclosures, one with extra room for a 2.5-inch SATA III hard drive and one without. This makes for a total of six Broadwell NUC boxes.

The revised NUC roadmap. FanlessTech

All six boxes will share most of the same ports and features: two display outputs, Ethernet, four USB 3.0 ports, NFC, M.2 slots for SSDs, support for up to 16GB of RAM, and changeable lids (these may just be for customization purposes, though past rumors have suggested that some could be used as wireless charging pads). The vPro models will use two mini DisplayPorts while the standard i5 and i3 boxes will use one mini DisplayPort and one micro HDMI port, and all models appear to come with Intel's 7265 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0 adapter soldered on—with current models, you must supply your own mini-PCI Express Wi-Fi card.

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The diverted flight path of American Airlines flight #362, which was redirected from San Diego to Phoenix yesterday. FlightAware

Another series of depressingly common DDoS attacks on a number of gaming servers became much more serious this weekend when a bomb threat tweeted by a hacking collective resulted in a commercial jet carrying Sony Online Entertainment CEO John Smedley to be diverted from San Diego to Phoenix.

It all started Saturday, when a group going by the handle "Lizard Squad" tweeted links to a number of prominent Twitch streamers, directing followers to target DDoS attacks at servers for Blizzard and League of Legends maker Riot Games. The group's sophomoric MO: demand that the streamers write "LIZARD SQUAD" on their forehead in marker to get their games back online.

Lizard Squad set its sights on Sony's PlayStation Network servers early Sunday morning, causing what Sony acknowledged as "issues" with PSN connectivity across North America. "Sony, yet another large company, but they aren't spending the waves of cash they obtain on their customers' PSN service," the group tweeted derisively. "End the greed." (PSN was back online as of early Monday morning, and planned maintenance on Sony's servers has been delayed indefinitely).

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Intel's Crystal Well parts (-R series) with integrated eDRAM have arguably been the most interesting products in the Haswell line-up. In the early stages, only Apple had access to these parts. However, since the beginning of 2014, we have seen other vendors roll out products based on the -R series processors. We have already covered the BRIX Pro (BXi7-4770R) in great detail. Today, we will take a look at what Zotac has conjured up with Crystal Well in the ZBOX EI750 Plus.

To add another element to the current whirlwind of X99 motherboard shots being released, ASRock has now lifted the lid on its high end overclocking motherboard, the X99 OC Formula. Similar to other OC Formula motherboards, this model is designed by ASRock’s in-house overclocker former world #1 Nick Shih. With the yellow and black livery, ASRock is keen to promote its use of 12 power phases capable of supporting up to 1300W. While regular users will come nowhere near to 1300W, extreme overclockers have (with previous platforms) hit 500W-700W while using liquid nitrogen to push the processors. Given ASRock’s recent push for overclocking records, it makes sense to design a product that can compete. Alongside this feature, ASRock still wants to have a motherboard that regular end-users can use 24/7 with high-end overclocks.

Alongside the new socket, the motherboard will offer 8 DIMM slots and 10 SATA 6 Gbps ports. Instead of SATA Express it looks like there is two M.2 slots, one PCIe 2.0 x4 (sharing lanes with the black slot) and one PCIe 3.0 x4, both supporting up to 110mm drives. Next to the Purity Sound 2 is a half-height mini-PCIe slot, suggesting that there may be a WiFi edition or users can add their own WiFi module. The PCIe slots should allow 4-way Crossfire and SLI, with a central PCIe slot (PCIe 2.0 x4?) that will allow an additional PCIe card for two-way setups.

For overclockers, the X99 OC Formula will have the superhydrophobic Conformal Coating similar to previous models that protects the components on the motherboard from moisture. On the top right of the motherboard are quick frequency change buttons along with voltage check points, a PCIe disable switch, an LN2 mode switch and a slow mode switch. On the rear panel is a ClearCMOS switch, and additional PCIe power is provided by a molex connector.

For regular home users, there are six fan headers, a Thunderbolt header (requires a Thunderbolt PCIe card), a COM header, two USB 2.0 headers, a TPM header and two USB 3.0 headers. There are 10 USB 3.0 ports total including the two headers, and the rear IO shows dual network ports. The connector on the right hand side under the SATA ports is for ASRock's relatively new SATA power feature that makes use of hot-plug functionality to hide drives not in use. I would imagine that the ASRock BIOS and Software are also receiving iterative updates, and the in-the-box contents for OC Formula models in the past have always been interesting. With X99 being an expensive platform by comparison to Z97, I hope that there can be something in there to tantalize everyone.

With all the X99 press shots floating around the media, along with DDR4 pricing going live for pre-orders, things are getting more and more exciting. No word if the ASRock X99 OC Formula will be available at launch, or the release pricing, but I am sure we will know in due course.

In its ongoing tug-of-war with the New York Attorney General, Airbnb announced it will hand over data—including names and addresses—on 124 of its hosts within New York City.

Airbnb elaborated within a blog post about the compliance on Friday. The company said it reviewed its New York hosts and removed a number of them for failing to live up to the site's standards. And as they were working to reach an agreement with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, they became increasingly confident that he "was truly concerned about a relatively small number of hosts he considered to be 'bad actors,' and that the vast majority of our community was never a target of his inquiries. As a result, we came to expect that we would start receiving requests for individual data at a relatively modest level."

Airbnb said the vast majority of the 124 targeted hosts were no longer listed on the site, and those still with the site are hosts with multiple listings. "Without knowing more about why the Attorney General is interested in those hosts specifically, it is hard to know why they have been targeted," the company said. Airbnb did, however, point out that the final number is small (less than one percent) when compared to Schneiderman's original request for data on 15,000+ users.

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Ron Amadeo Specs at a glance: Xiaomi Mi4 Screen 1920×1080 5.0"(441 ppi) IPS LCD OS Android KitKat 4.4.2 with MIUI 5 CPU 2.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon 801 RAM 3GB GPU Adreno 330 Storage 16GB or 64GB, not expandable Networking Dual Band 802.11b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS Network GSM 850/900/1800/1900
HSDPA 850/900/1900/2100
LTE version TBA Ports Micro USB 2.0, headphones Camera 13MP rear camera, 8MP front camera, Size 139.2mm x 68.5mm x 8.9mm Weight 149g Battery 3080 mAh, not removable Starting price $320 unlocked in China, $480 through importer Other perks RBG notification LED, IrLED, NFC, removable back plate

Xiaomi (pronounced SHAO-mee) is a complete mystery in the West. We often hear stories about the "Apple of China" and how existing OEMs should be worried, but it's rare to get a look at any actual devices from the company. China is the world's largest smartphone market, and the #1 OEM in China isn't Samsung or Apple—it's Xiaomi. The company was only founded in 2010, but it sold 18.7 million smartphones in 2013. It expects to triple that number this year.

Why—and how—is this startup beating the biggest companies in the world? To discover Xiaomi's secrets and to investigate the state of Android in China, we imported the company's brand new flagship: say hello to the Xiaomi Mi4.

Xiaomi's greatest strength is its execution. A lot of things the company does are not unique, but Xiaomi does a fantastic job of whatever it puts its mind to. So yes, the front of the Mi4 (pronounced mee-four) is basically a big iPhone, but it's also built like an iPhone. A steel frame with chamfered edges, thin bezels, and impeccable construction make this the best Android hardware we've seen all year.

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Flickr user: stefanvds

The vast expanse between stars is not quite empty—it’s home to a diffuse spread of dust, aptly called the interstellar medium (ISM). Studies of the ISM have largely relied on inferences since direct observations of the dim, diffuse material are difficult. But now it seems we have a chance for an up-close look. According to a recent study, seven dust particles caught by the Stardust spacecraft likely came from the ISM. If true, the particles may be the first material captured from outside the Solar System, allowing scientists to study the ISM more directly.

Assuming that they did originate outside the Solar System, the particles can be used to address unanswered questions about the ISM. For one thing, scientists are still unsure whether most of the gas in the ISM is atomic, molecular, or ionic, or whether any of these phases is dominant at all. Scientists would also hope to address whether most particles there are crystalline or amorphous in structure and how much iron is present.

(There are materials called GEMS—glass with embedded metal and sulfides—that may also originate from outside the Solar System, but this is a contentious subject within the scientific community.)

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A malicious application could enable the theft of login credentials, sensitive images, and other data from Android smartphones by making use of a newly discovered information-leakage weakness in the operating system, according to a team of researchers from the University of Michigan and the University of California at Riverside.

The attack, known as a user interface (UI) inference attack, makes use of the design of programming frameworks that share memory, allowing one application to gather information about the state of other applications. The information can be gathered without any special Android permissions or by grabbing screen pixels, according to a paper presented at the USENIX Security Conference on Friday.

The technique gives attackers the ability to infer the state of a targeted application, enabling more convincing attacks. If malware knows that the targeted user has just clicked on a "login" button, then it can throw up a dialog box asking for a username and password. If the malware can infer that a user is about to take a picture of a check or sensitive document, it can quickly take a second picture.

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Beauty, it is said, is in the eye of the beholder. And yet, there are many faces that a majority would find beautiful, say, George Clooney’s or Audrey Hepburn’s.

Psychologists interested in mate selection and the visual processing of faces have long sought to understand why some faces are widely regarded as attractive. Researchers have identified several cues associated with facial beauty, including “averageness”—faces close to the population mean are judged attractive—and “sexual dimorphism”—faces that accentuate characteristics that distinguish males and females are desirable.

There has also been long-standing interest in facial symmetry. Most faces appear broadly symmetric. Close inspection, however, almost always reveals subtle deviations from perfect symmetry. It is common for one eye to be positioned slightly above the other, or further away from the mid-line, and features are rarely perfectly symmetric in shape. Having examined the relationship between degree of facial symmetry and perceived attractiveness, many studies have found that beautiful faces exhibit greater symmetry.

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The US government claims these are Ross Ulbricht's fraudulent identification cards. United States Attorney's Office, Southern District of NY

Federal prosecutors added three new charges to the criminal case against Ross Ulbricht, the alleged mastermind behind the Silk Road online drug marketplace.

According to a 17-page amended indictment filed late Thursday night, the government introduced one count of “narcotics trafficking,” of “distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet,” and of "conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identification documents."

Previously, Ulbricht was indicted in February 2014 on four formal criminal offenses: narcotics trafficking conspiracy, continuing criminal enterprise, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy.

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I must confess that the last time I used an iPhone was three or four years ago. While I’ve followed the hardware changes from generation to generation, I’ve never really been able to write about the iPhone or iOS in detail. While objective data is great to work with, a great deal of evaluation relies on subjective experience. To fix this gap in knowledge, I received an iPhone 5s. After a month, I’ve really come to have a much more nuanced view of how Android and iOS compare, along with how Apple’s iPhone compares to the rest of the smartphone market. To find out how it compares, read on for the full article.

The National Zoo in Washington DC has been celebrating panda cub Bao Bao's first birthday.

During their 30 years of graphics celebration, today AMD announced a forthcoming addition to the Radeon R9 200 graphics card lineup. Launching on September 2nd will be the company’s new midrange enthusiast card, the Radeon R9 285.

The R9 285 will take up an interesting position in AMD’s lineup, being something of a refresh of a refresh that spans all the way back to Tahiti (Radeon 7970). Spec wise it ends up being extremely close on paper to the R9 280 (née 7950B) and it’s telling that the R9 280 is no longer being advertised by AMD as a current member of their R9 lineup. However with a newer GPU under the hood the R9 285 stands to eclipse the 280 in features, and with sufficient efficiency gains we hope to see it eclipse 280 in performance too.

AMD GPU Specification Comparison   AMD Radeon R9 290 AMD Radeon R9 280X AMD Radeon R9 285 AMD Radeon R9 280 Stream Processors 2560 2048 1792 1792 Texture Units 160 128 112 112 ROPs 64 32 32 32 Core Clock 662MHz 850MHz ? 827MHz Boost Clock 947MHz 1000MHz 918MHz 933MHz Memory Clock 5GHz GDDR5 6GHz GDDR5 5.5GHz GDDR5 5GHz GDDR5 Memory Bus Width 512-bit 384-bit 256-bit 384-bit VRAM 4GB 3GB 2GB 3GB FP64 1/8 1/4 ? 1/4 TrueAudio Y N Y N Typical Board Power 250W 250W 190W 250W Manufacturing Process TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm TSMC 28nm? TSMC 28nm Architecture GCN 1.1 GCN 1.0 GCN 1.1? GCN 1.0 GPU Hawaii Tahiti Tonga? Tahiti Launch Date 11/05/13 10/11/13 09/02/14 03/04/14 Launch Price $399 $299 $249 $279

Looking at the raw specifications, the R9 285 is a 1792 stream processor Graphics Core Next product. Paired with these SPs are 112 texture units (in the standard 16:1 ratio), and on the backend of the rendering pipeline is 32 ROPs. As is unfortunately consistent for AMD, they are not disclosing the product’s base clockspeed, but they have published the boost clockspeed of 918MHz.

Meanwhile feeding R9 285’s GPU falls to the card’s 2GB of GDDR5. This is on a 256-bit bus, and is clocked at 5.5GHz for a total memory bandwidth of 176GB/sec.

The R9 285 will have a rated typical board power (AMD’s analogue for TDP) of 190W. Notably this is only 10W higher than the Pitcairn based R9 270X despite the 40% larger SP count, or alternatively is 60W lower than the Tahiti based R9 280. While we don’t have a ton of details on the GPU at this time, taking into consideration the R9 270X comparison in particular, it’s clear that AMD has done some work on efficiency to squeeze out more compared to the GCN 1.0 based Pitcairn and Tahiti parts that R9 285 is going to be placed between.

The GPU itself is based on a newer version of AMD’s architecture, at least GCN 1.1 based on the presence of TrueAudio support. AMD has not formally announced the underlying GPU at this time, but given the timing and the specifications we believe it’s based on the new Tonga GPU, which was first announced for the FirePro W7100 earlier this month. In any case we don’t have much in the way of details on Tonga at this time, though we expect AMD to flesh out those details ahead of R9 285’s September 2nd launch. The biggest question right now – besides whether this is a “full” Tonga configuration – is whether Tonga is based on GCN 1.1 or something newer.

Based on some prior AMD statements and information gleaned from AMD’s CodeXL tool, there is reason to suspect (but not confirm) that this is a newer generation design. AMD for their part has done something very similar in the past, launching GCN 1.1 back on the Radeon HD 7790, but essentially hiding access to and details of GCN 1.1’s feature set until the launch of the Hawaii based R9 290X later in the year. Whether AMD is doing this again remains to be seen, but it is something we have seen them do before and don’t doubt they could do again. Though whether they will confirm it is another matter, as the company does not like to publicly differentiate between GCN revisions, which is why even the GCN 1.1 name is unofficial.

Sapphire's Radeon R9 285 Dual-X

Working for the moment off of the assumption that R9 285 is Tonga based and that it’s a GCN 1.1 part, we expect that performance should be a wash with the R9 280 while the R9 285 has an advantage on features. GCN 1.1 does have some mild performance optimizations to it that will give the R9 285 an edge, though it remains to be seen what the impact will be of the narrower memory bus. The fact that the Tahiti based R9 280X remains in AMD’s lineup indicates that if nothing else, it won’t match the performance of a full Tahiti configuration. Otherwise when it comes to features, being GCN 1.1 based means that the R9 285 will bring with it support for True Audio, support for bridgeless CrossFire thanks to the XDMA engine, GCN 1.1’s superior boost mechanism, and full support for AMD’s upcoming FreeSync implementation of DisplayPort Adaptive Sync (GCN 1.0 GPUs are not fully adaptive).

As for AMD, this offers the chance to refresh some of their oldest GCN 1.0 products with a more capable GPU while also cutting costs. While we don’t have die size numbers for Tonga, it is reasonable to expect that it is smaller due to the narrower memory bus along with the die size optimizations that we saw go into Hawaii last year, which means it will be cheaper to manufacture than Tahiti. This also brings down board costs, again due to the narrower memory bus and the lower TDP allows for simpler power delivery circuitry.

AMD will be positioning the R9 285 to compete with NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 760, the company’s second-tier GK104 part. The GTX 760 performs roughly the same as the R9 280, so AMD need only not regress to maintain their competitiveness, though any performance lead they can squeeze out will be all for the better. The GTX 760 is frequently found at $239 – a hair under the R9 285’s launch price – so NVIDIA will hold a very slight edge on price assuming they don’t adjust prices further (the GTX 760 launched at $249 almost 14 months ago).

The R9 285 for its part will be launching at $249 on September 2nd. This will be a hard launch, and with AMD’s partners already posting product pages for their designs we suspect this will be a pure virtual (no reference card) launch. AMD also tells us that there will be both 2GB and 4GB cards; we’re going to have to see what the price premium is, as the suitability of 2GB enthusiast cards has been challenged by the presence of so much RAM on the current-generation consoles, which will have a knock-on effect on console-to-PC ports.

Though with the launch of the R9 285 and impending discontinuation of the R9 280, buyers looking at picking up an R9 285 in the near term will have to be on the looking for R9 280 on clearance sale. It’s already regularly found for $220 and lower, making it $30 cheaper than the R9 285 and possessing 3GB of VRAM to the R9 285’s 2GB. This will make the R9 280 a strong contender, at least until supplies run out.

Fall 2014 GPU Pricing Comparison AMD Price NVIDIA Radeon R9 290 $400     $310 GeForce GTX 770 Radeon R9 280X $280   Radeon R9 285 $250     $240 GeForce GTX 760 Radeon R9 280 $220   Radeon R9 270X $180     $160 GeForce GTX 660

Finally, coinciding with the launch of the R9 285 will be a refresh of AMD’s Never Settle bundles. The details on this are still murky at this time, but AMD is launching what they call the Never Settle Space Edition bundle, which will see Alien Isolation and Star Citizen as part of a bundle for all R9 series cards. The lack of clarity is whether this replaces the existing Never Settle Forever bundle in this case, or if these games are being added to the Never Settle Forever lineup in some fashion. AMD has said that current Silver and Gold voucher holders will be able to get the Space Edition bundle with their vouchers, which lends credit to the idea that these are new games in the NSF program rather than a different program entirely.

Both Alien Isolation and Star Citizen are still-in-development games. Alien Isolation is a first person shooter and is expected in October of this year. Meanwhile the space sim Star Citizen does not yet have a release date, and as best as we can tell won’t actually be finished until late 2015 at the earliest. In which case the inclusion here is more about access to the ongoing beta, which is the first time we’ve seen beta access used as part of a bundle in this fashion.

Iceland issues a red alert to the aviation industry for the Bardarbunga volcano, meaning significant ash emissions are likely.