Google's plans to bring a face-meltingly fast 1Gbps Internet connection to Kansas Cities (in both Missouri and Kansas) took a big step towards becoming reality today. After haggling with city officials about wire placement on telephone poles, a deal was finally struck, and the company is ready to get down to brass tacks and start actually laying fiber.

"As we build out Google Fiber, we’ll be taking thousands of miles of cables and stretching them across Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri," general manager Kevin Lo announced on the Google Fiber blog. "At first, we’ll focus on building this solid fiber backbone. Then, as soon as we have an infrastructure that is up and running, we’ll be able to connect Google Fiber into homes across Kansas City!"

There's no word on which neighborhoods or areas will be getting first dibs at the fiber, though. Google hopes to start delivering actual 1Gbps service to KC customers by the end of the first quarter, according to the project's FAQ page. Since they're only starting to lay fiber now, don't be surprised if the roll out slips back a bit.

Anticipation for Nvidia's upcoming Kepler launch is running high these days. Rumors and early reports suggest Kepler's going to be king of the GPU castle when it's released, promptly stealing back the performance crown that sits atop AMD's Radeon HD 7970, but details have mostly been sparse. That is, until now. A full lineup of Kepler graphics cards has been leaked to the Web, complete with specs, release dates, prices, and more.

Here's part of the full monty, according to EXPreview:

• GTX 690: 2x1.75GB, 2x6.4 billion transistors, $999, Q3 2012
• GTX 680: 2GB, 6.4 billion transistors, $649, April
• GTX 670: 1.75GB, 6.4 billion transistors, $499, April
• GTX 660 Ti: 1.5GB, 6.4 billion transistors, $399, Q2/Q3 2012
• GTX 660: 2GB, 3.4 billion transistors, $319, April
• GTX 650 Ti: 1.75GB, 3.4 billion transistors, $249, Q2/Q3 2012
• GTX 650: 1.5GB, 1.8 billion transistors, $179, May
• GTX 640: 2GB, 1.8 billion transistors, $139, May

EXPreview posted plenty of other details about each GPU, but what's really interesting is how Kepler's performance supposedly scales. According to EXPreview's charts, the GTX 680 and 670 will outpace AMD Radeon's HD 7970 by around 45 percent and 20 percent, respectively, and GTX 670 will run around 20 percent faster than the 7950.

Based on the leaked info, you can expect the GTX 660 to offer roughly the same performance as a current generation GTX 580, and the GTX 650 Ti as a GTX 570, GTX 650 as a GTX 560, and the GTX 640 as a GTX 550 Ti.

Are you having troubles getting Steam to boot up today? If so, the problem might not be with Valve's blockbuster gaming service; the issue could be your antivirus, instead. This weekend, the freebie Avast! antivirus misidentified a Steam component as a nasty little Trojan and sent the executable to the time-out box known as Quarantine as a result. The problem: SteamService.exe was a totally clean file, and Steam won't run without it.

Fortunately, the muck-up only lasted about an hour and a half, according to The Register. Avast! yanked the bonked definition around 90 minutes after it went live. While the goof shouldn't have happened in the first place, kudos to Avast! for fixing so quickly, and on the weekend to boot.

If you were affected, restoring the file from Quarantine might get Steam up and running again. However, several Steam users needed to reinstall the service, resubmit their verification code and reboot their PC to get Steam working normally again, and many warn that installing SteamService.exe again can be a lengthy process.

Where you affected by Avast's false positive? How easy was it for you to get Steam up and running again?

Depending on how you look at things, the power supply is arguably the most important component in a build, and is at least one of the most underrated. Thermaltake over the years has worked hard to be known as one of a handful of reliable PSU brands, and its Toughpower and Smart Series are generally well received around the Web. Today both of those lines are expanding with new wattage options.

Thermaltake is fleshing out its Toughpower series with 550W, 650W, and 750W models, each of which is 80 Plus Gold certified with 87-92 percent efficiency at 20-100 percent load under real world load conditions. In addition to 80 Plus Gold certification, these Toughpower units live up to their name with massive single +12V rails delivering 50A on the 550W and 750W models, and 60W on the 850W model, and by using 100 percent Japanese capacitors.

Rounding out the Smart Series are 750W and 850W models. These are 80 Plus Bronze certified to deliver 82-88 percent efficiency at 20-100 percent load under real world load conditions. Single +12V rails are also a staple of Thermaltake's Smart units, with 62A available on the 750W and 70W on the 850W. They use flat modular cables and are similar to previous Smart models, except the 750W and 850W adopt 100 percent Japanese capacitors like the Toughpower line.

No word on price or availability.

Hangover Monday has turned out to be a pretty momentous day for fans of digital television watching. But while pirates bemoan the death of BTJunkie.org and Redbox gears up for a new streaming service venture with Verizon, Netflix is entering a new phase of its own: content creator. Today, the company launched Lilyhammer, a mob drama starring Steven Van Zandt of Sopranos and Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band fame. It looks like Netflix knows where its binge-watching strengths lie, too; all 8 episodes are available for immediate viewing.

As if Van Zandt didn't sound multitalented enough, he also wrote and produced the show, given him one hell of a rounded-out resume. The show is named after the city of Lilyhammer in Norway; after Van Zandt's character testifies against a New York mob boss, he is moved to the title town as part of the witness protection program.

If the show's reception in Norway is any indication, Lilyhammer might be worth checking out.

"Lilyhammer" is also showing on Norwegian television and (is in its) third week on the air," Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos wrote on the company's blog. "The show is a national sensation, with 1.2 million of the nation's 5 million people watching every week. It is the most watched TV show in Norwegian history."

Lilyhammer is just the first of many new original shows slated to hit the streaming giant. Netflix plans on running new episodes of the long-canceled cult hit Arrested Development as well as House of Cards, a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and directed/produced by David Fincher, the mind behind Fight Club, Se7en and The Social Network.

So, does Netflix's original content intrigue you? If you're not a subscriber, does the addition of new programming make you more likely to start dropping $8/mo. for a streaming subscription?

Mozilla's rapid release schedule for its Firefox browser means there's always a new version just around the corner. To wit, almost immediately after rolling out Firefox 10 to the masses, Mozilla has made available the first build of Firefox 11 on its Beta channel. Firefox 11 makes it easier than ever to switch from Chrome, and if that's what you want to do, Mozilla's latest build will happily migrate your bookmarks, history, and cookies over from Google's browser.

The other comparatively major feature addition to Firefox 11 is a new Sync option that will synchronize your add-ons across computers. Most of the other changes have to do with cleaning up the underlying code to offer better HTML5 support, CSS text-size adjustments, and a bunch of tweaks of interest to developers.

There are a handful of known issues in Firefox 11. Scrolling in the main GMail window will be slower than usual for some users, and a handful of Synaptic touchpads will be unable to vertically scroll, Mozilla says.

You can read more of what's new/unresolved in the release notes. Firefox 11 beta is available to download here.

Robert De Niro's character in the movie Heat offered up some words of wisdom for those who operate in the criminal world. He said, "Don't let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner." BTJunkie, one of the largest torrent search engines in the world, might not have been doing anything illegal, but with all that's been happening lately, the site's founder thought it best to take De Niro's words to heart and voluntarily shut down for good.

"This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we've decided to voluntarily shut down," a goodbye note on BTJunkie's website reads. "We've been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it's time to move on. It's been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!"

TorrentFreak said it spoke to BTJunkie's founder, who pointed towards the legal actions against sites such as MegaUpload and The Pirate Bay as motivating factors in his decision to shut down. The U.S. Department of Justice seized MegaUpload last month for allegedly breaking copyright law, while The Pirate Bay's founders recently were denied a request to appeal their prison sentences and multi-million dollar fines.

BTJunkie has not been targeted by federal authorities.

Having Intel knock on your door to request a chipset would be like having Muhammad Ali ask to use your boxing gloves in a title fight when he was at the top of his game. If you look at it that way, LSI should be thrilled that the Santa Clara chip maker abandoned its own solid state drive (SSD) chipset in favor of SandForce's SF-2200 chipset family in its just-launched SSD 520 Series.

"We worked closely with Intel to leverage their deep understanding of the NAND flash, ultimately providing a unique and optimized solution for client computing applications with the LSI SandForce Flash Storage Processor," said Michael Raam, vice president and general manager of LSI's Flash Components Division, formed by LSI's acquisition of SandForce. "Working through Intel's extensive validation process ensures the Intel 520 SSD will raise the bar in delivering top-tier performance and superior quality and reliability over the life of the drive."

Intel's new SSD 520 Series is a high-performance SATA 6Gbps SSD line using 25nm NAND flash memory chips. Combined with SandForce's SF-2200 controller, the SSD 520 Series is capable of up to 550MB/s sequential read and 520MB/s sequential write speeds. It delivers up to 80,000 maximum 4K random write Input-Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) and up to 50,000 4K random read IOPS, Intel says.

The SSD 520 Series marks the high-end of Intel's client SSD offerings and in addition to raw speed, the drives sport AES 256-bit encryption capabilities and stronger password protection, Intel says.

Pricing based on 1,000-unit quantities has been set at $149 (60GB), $229 (120GB), $369 (180GB), $509 (240GB), and $999 (480GB). Expect retail pricing to be a little bit higher.

Telecommunications giant Verizon is partnering up with Coinstar's popular Redbox subsidiary to roll out an online streaming video service in the second half of 2012. It will be an "affordable" subscription-based service "that will allow all consumers across the U.S. to enjoy the new and popular entertainment they want, whenever they choose, using the media and devices they prefer," the two companies stated in a joint announcement.

This is something Coinstar has wanted to do for a couple of years now, and it didn't take much coaxing to get Verizon on board, which as been increasingly interested in streaming media as of late. Verizon will leverage its industry-wide relationships with content providers, its cloud computing technologies, and its IP network infrastructure to distribute video-on-demand content to its customers, the two companies said.

"When you consider the core elements the parties bring to this venture – our powerful brands; our national rental kiosk footprint; our anytime, anywhere network presence; and our mutual commitment to customer-focused innovation – it's clear that Verizon and Redbox are a powerful entertainment team," said Bob Mudge, president of Verizon consumer and mass business markets.

The announcement confirms earlier rumors of Redbox and Verizon teaming up, while at the same time raising several questions, such as how much the service will cost and if it be tied to Verizon's wireless service.

Boutique system builder AVADirect is breaking new ground today by being the first to offer Clevo's P270WM gaming notebook, the long anticipated successor to the popular Clevo X7200. What makes the Clevo P270WM so special is that it's rocking an Intel X79 foundation with Sandy Bridge-E processor options, a potent combination for the next generation of desktop replacements.

For precisely $3,069.11, AVADirect's baseline Clevo P270WM comes ready to rumble with the following parts:

• 17.3-inch HD LED screen with 3D support
• Intel Core i7 3930K processor
• 4GB DDR3-1333MHz RAM
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 580M graphics card
• 750GB Seagate Momentus SATA 3Gbps hard drive (7200 RPM, 16MB cache)
• 8X DVD burner
• Three USB 3.0 ports
• HDMI 1.4a output
• 9-in-1 memory card reader
• 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi; GbE LAN port
• Backlit keyboard
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

There are plenty of upgrade options available. The 17.3-inch desktop replacement supports Intel's Core i7 3960X processor and can be configured with up to 32GB of quad-channel memory, up to three HDDs or SSDs with optional RAID, and a second graphics card in SLI or a single Quadro 5010M with 4GB of onboard memory.

You can pre-order a Clevo P270WM notebook now by going here.

Image Credit: AVADirect

The Start button and accompanying menu are iconic parts of Windows first introduced in Windows 95 over a decade and a half ago, and it looks as though the run will end with Windows 7. Leaked photos of Microsoft's Windows 8 "Consumer Preview" build show a Super Bar without a Start button, whereas in previous versions it showed up with a flat Metro-style makeover.

Chinese website PCBeta posted images of the Consumer Preview, which were picked up by The Verge and confirmed with its sources that the Start button is out of sight, but not out of mind.

"Fear not though, the Start button functionality isn't as dead as it seems. We have confirmed with sources close to Microsoft's Windows 8 development that a hot corner has replaced the Start button orb," The Verge reports. "A thumbnail-like user interface will appear in Metro or desktop mode, providing a consistent way to access the Windows desktop and Start Screen in Windows 8 regardless of touch or mouse input."

Users will be able to activate the new interface by hovering over the lower-left corner of Windows 8, which will also be available in touch mode, likely through a swiping action.

Image Credit: PCBeta

You don't have to be a spendthrift to shop a system from a boutique builder. That's not to say you can't still configure a professionally built system that costs as much as a Kia, it's just no longer required. Even liquid cooling setups are fair game for frugal enthusiasts. Enter Origin PC's new Frostbyte 360 liquid cooling system (LCS). Origin PC claims it's reaching speeds up to 5.2GHz using the Frostbyte 360, and starting at $1,599 you can grab a Genesis system configured with the new cooler.

"Until now, extreme overclocking required hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of components including pumps, radiators, coolant hoses, fittings, and expensive water blocks." said Kevin Wasielewski Origin PC CEO and co-founder. "With the Frostbyte 360, a maintenance free liquid cooling solution, Origin PC customers can enjoy top-end CPU performance at a fraction of the cost."

The Frostbyte 360 is a zero maintenance cooling solution featuring silent pumps, a high efficiency 360mm copper radiator with three 120mm fans, a micro-channel copper CPU block, and an embedded temperature sensor Origin PC claims will deliver the copper surface temperature with an accuracy of +/- 1C.

The Frostbyte 360 is available now.

Image Credit: Origin PC

Super Talent over the weekend unveiled its new Quadra series of overclocked quad-channel DDR3 memory kits aimed at the "extreme enthusiast market." The new kits are validated using Intel's X79 chipset and come in sets of four at 1600MHz or 1866MHz, or you can buy individual sticks to plop in whatever DDR3 platform you happen to be running.

"Gamers and enthusiasts already know about Intel’s i7 3960X 6-core processors and now they are scrambling to find DRAM worthy of their new rig. The Quadra, DDR3 Quad-kits, come in 1600 MHz and 1866 MHz and pairs perfectly with the i7 processors, which now handles 4 channels of memory," Super Talent said. "By fully populating all 8 slots of memory with Super Talent’s 4GB DIMMs, users will experience reduced loading times with all their high-system-requirement programs. Now more time can be spent using a computer than waiting on it."

The kits include:

• WQ160UB4G9: 1600MHz single module
• WQ160UX16G9: 1600MHz kit of 4 modules
• WQ186UB4G9: 1866MHz single module
• WQ186UX16G9: 1866MHz kit of 4 modules

Super Talent left out a few specifics, such as latencies, voltage, and price. The sticks are supposed to be available now, though they aren't showing up in retail just yet.

Image Credit: Super Talent (Speed Series shown)

Micron on Friday appointed President and COO Mark Durcan as interim CEO of the company until a successor is named by the Board of the Directors, and it didn't take them long to find their leader. On Saturday, Micron made the promotion permanent. Mr. Durcan, 51, held his previous roles with the company since 2007, and was the logical choice to succeed Steve Appleton, also 51, who perished in a plane crash last week.

Mr. Durcan will also serve as a Director on Micron's Board, a position formerly held by Robert E. Switz since 2006, who was appointed Chairman of the Board. Mark W. Adams was named President.

"We are fortunate to be able to appoint someone with Mark's operations and technical leadership experience to serve as the company's CEO," said Mr. Switz. "Mark has been instrumental in Micron's success in his role as President and COO and has garnered the respect of the company, his team members, and the industry at large."

Mr. Durcan joined Micron in 1984 and had planned on retiring at the end of August, a decision he announced less than two weeks ago. But on Friday, tragedy struck Micron when Appleton's Lancair single-engine experimental propeller plane he was piloting crashed in a Boise, Idaho airport and killed the former CEO. Appleton wasn't afraid to take risks and was also a professional stunt plane pilot and former motocross racer.

"The older you get, the more risk you should take," Appleton told USA Today during an interview in 2006. "When George Bush Sr. went skydiving at 80, they made a big deal. What if his parachute didn't open? So what? It's not like the guy hasn't done anything with his life. Kids who are 18 think they will live forever and take huge risk. They have their entire lives ahead of them. If I were to die tomorrow, I have no complaints. I've experienced more than anybody should expect in a lifetime."

Image Credit: Micron

Windows Phone has struggled to differentiate itself in the market against established rivals such as Android and iOS, but through it all Brandon Watson was the developer evangelist making sure a lack of apps was never the reason people opted for the competition. His commitment to platform has helped to inspire app development beyond Redmond’s wildest expectations, however ZDnet blogger Mary Jo Foley has just confirmed that Brandon is moving on, and being tasked with leading Amazon’s cross-platform Kindle efforts. 

So far Microsoft hasn’t named any successor for Watson, and did little more than confirm his departure. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, “We can confirm February 6th is Brandon Watson’s last day at Microsoft. Brandon did a great job helping us build a vibrant developer community and we wish him well with his next adventure.”

Watson’s departure isn’t the first, and likely won’t be the last important loss to the Windows Phone team, but its still a mighty blow to a platform that is in desperate need of passionate community leaders.

The Facebook IPO is not just long awaited, but one of the most interesting public offerings of our generation. Unlike the countless tech companies that came before it, Facebook doesn’t offer anything tangible; rather it’s simply a platform to help share our private information. This week however we’ve learned ultimately what the market valued this type of service at, and it’s a staggering $75 billion right out of the gate. 

The fillings revealed that Facebook is still far behind advertising market leaders such as Google when it comes to monetizing the value of it’s users, but Wall Street as we know doesn’t only reward immediate financial performance, rather they consider what’s possible given the platform. Facebook made about $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year, which while accounting for 85 percent of it’s total, is still only a small fraction of the $36.5 billion Google took in during the same period. 

The big take away this week is that our personal information is worth a fortune in the right hands, and now that Facebook has finally gone public, you should expect them to start exploiting that value much more aggressively going forward. From the looks of it, they’ve only just scratched the surface.

Google Docs and Office Web apps have gone a long way towards offering a compelling solution for storing our documents online, but for those in need of offline access, Open Office used to be the best free alterative to Microsoft around. Fast forward to 2012 however, and Open Office hasn’t just fallen off the map, it has been lapped several times by a new community fork called LibreOffice. 

According to new statistics offered up by the community, LibreOffice monthly commits is now in the 1500-3000 range, with the vast majority of new code coming from TDF volunteers, as opposed to large corporations such has Red Hat, Oracle, or Canonical. 

The LibreOffice community is also celebrating over 10 million users, a significant milestone for a project that only launched in late 2010. With version 3.5 just around the corner promising tons of improvements sometime next week, the future of LibreOffice is looking very bright indeed. 

This isn’t the best time to be in charge of a file-sharing site, with authorities around the world  — everywhere from the United States to Middle-earth (or New Zealand as it’s known more popularly) to Sweden — currently on a rampage against online file repositories brimming with unauthorized content. Ukrainian authorities are the latest to crackdown on online file sharing, having taken down popular file-sharing site Ex.ua a couple of days back. But that’s not where the story ends. You know the drill: hit the jump for more.

Usually, such takedowns quickly become a cause célèbre among hacktivists, who flock to avenge their demise. This particular case is no different. Following Ex.ua’s takedown by the Ukrainian authorities, enraged Internet users attacked government sites in retaliation. These people targeted the official sites of the country’s president and interior minister using the tried-and-tested distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) technique.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Ukrainian authorities said Ex.ua had been under investigation since July last year, apparently after a number of companies complained against the site. But Microsoft Ukraine, one of the companies named as a complainant in the matter by the Ukrainian interior ministry, is said to have denied being the “immediate initiator of the EX.UA inspection” as is being claimed.

The ministry claims to have seized 200 servers containing as much as 6,000 TB worth of files in a raid on the site’s office.

While the uproar over Google’s updated privacy policy has lessened in the U.S., European officials are taking things a step further today. The European Commission has asked Google to delay implementing its new privacy policy so the matter can be fully investigated. The search giant has apparently been taken aback by the proposal.

The Commission is in the process of updating its rules on data protection, and that might account for the new-found interest in Google’s policy. According to Google’s Brussels spokesperson, Google briefed the Commission on the proposed change before it was even announced to the public. He went on toe say Google would be happy to talk things over with regulators if there are any new concerns, but he did not say Google would delay implementation of the new policy.

Google’s new privacy policy is essentially ‘one policy to rule them all.’ Over 60 individual privacy policies from various services are being rolled into one document that spells out what information Google can share internally between services. Do you think the European Commission is justified in asking for a delay?

Well, that didn’t take long. One of the largest streaming sites taken down by U.S. authorities yesterday is already back up and running on a new domain, and boy are they upset. While the Department of Homeland Security ICE division was happy to accept a pat on the back for a job well done, one of the owners of Firstrow, a sports streaming site, says he will not give up until a court shuts the site down.

“The US has prided itself on their ‘innocent before proven guilty’ mantra, yet is clearly hypocritical when it comes to this,” said the unnamed co-owner of Firstrow. The site is back up on firstrowsports.eu after losing top level domains at .com and .tv. The anonymous owner went on to say he does not believe what Firstrow does is illegal as the site is not US-based. 

The European Union has been critical of U.S. domain seizures in the past, but that doesn’t seem to worry law enforcement very much. Yesterday’s domain raid was the largest yet, and mostly targeted sites selling counterfeit NFL merchandise. Do you think non-US sites should have to adhere to US copyright laws?