French PM Manuel Valls presents the resignation of his government amid a cabinet row over economic policies, and is asked to form a new administration.

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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Hundreds of people attend the funeral of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, many of whom did not know him personally.

An alliance of militias takes control of Tripoli's main airport, after weeks of battles between rival groups in the Libyan capital.

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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I started writing for Linux Journal as a contributing editor in 1996 (here's one piece), and went full-time 1998, not long before I began co-writing The Cluetrain Manifesto with Chris Locke, David Weinberger and more>>

As Ukraine celebrated Independence day over the weekend, Sergiy Burnus from 'Euromaidan in London' explained how they were helping the Ukrainian Army fight the Pro-Russian separatists.

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.

Afghanistan's finance minister says the country's political crisis is having a serious impact on an already fragile economy.

Version:next-20140825 (linux-next) Released:2014-08-25

The father of an unarmed black teenager shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri calls for peace ahead of his son's funeral.

Traditional views of South Korean women are challenged by a growing trend for bodybuilding.

Memorial services are held for the kidnapped American journalist killed by Islamic State militants last week.

Pro-Russian separatists have paraded captured Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk, while the government marked Independence Day in Kiev.

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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