Once again proving that users of the Internet are capable of influencing politicians, the European Parliament has done their job by listening to the people and voting against ACTA. ACTA, for those who don't remember, was a treaty that would have been extremely dangerous for users of the Internet. It was deceptive and pushed by special interest groups.

The vote ended up having 478 against, 39 in favor and 165 abstentions. Thanks to SOPA showing the world that Internet users wouldn't allow special interest groups to pressure the government into making laws, the unknown ACTA was brought to the forefront of the Internet users' attention and they rallied again, this time against ACTA.

It truly was the activists that made this happen. Members of the European Parliament have been thanking and praising activists across the EU for bring their attention to just how bad of a treaty this was. However, technically the treaty could still come into force between the United States and several other countries.

Google have just filed a very interesting new patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) where it would see the company using the filed patent to use video frames to generate clusters of face representations that are attached to a given person.

The system would then record what a person looks like from various angles, and the company could then attach a name and face whenever that person is shown in a clip, even with bad lighting conditions or angles. This would give YouTube viewers the same abilities as Flickr, where they could tag people in videos, but could also spot people in augmented reality apps and get their details.

Considering Google have Project Glass, this seems like such a natural evolution of the project. Imagine being able to wear the Glasses, and see someone in front of you - the system could eventually be smart enough to pull details of that person from the cloud. You'd never forget their birthday, or important conversation starters - like stats on the person, married, kids, new job, etc. Google are really going to make this work with Glass in my opinion.

Hazzan, an Indonesian overclocker has broken the world record for overclocking graphics cards, using 3DMark 11. Hazzan used a 4-way GEFORCE GTX 680 setup, pushing a score of P33190, 39 points ahead of the previous record.

In order to get the record-breaking score, Hazzah had to go to some pretty serious lengths, as you can see from the pictures. He stood over his PC with an open bottle of liquid nitrogen (as you do), and kept pouring some in every few minutes or so, just to keep those pesky temps down. His entire rig consists of:

The platform included Core i7-3930K processor (oc'ed to 5784MHz), 8GB quad-channel GSkill DDR3 memory (oc'ed to 2480MHz), Antec High Current Pro 1200W power supply, ASUS Rampage IV Extreme mobo and ASUS GTX 680 DirectCU II graphics card. The CPU and graphics adopted liquid nitrogen cooling.

The Next Web is reporting from an e-mail they received explaining that Google says that extensions developers can now start monetizing via Google Adsense, where Google state:

We are updating our ad policies to allow extensions to monetize through ads. Please ensure your extensions are in compliance by reviewing our extension ads policy guidelines.

Google seem to be giving developers the ability to put ads in extensions that feature more persistant visual elements, TNW have used an example by adding them to the TNW extension for Chrome:

With the way the industry is going, a totally-digital approach just doesn't seem as crazy as it did 5, or 10 years ago. EA have been one of the first companies to come out and say it's "inevitable" that they will soon become a 100-percent digital company.

EA already make bundles of cash from the sale of digital content, with the company expecting to make nearly $2 billion from digital content this financial year. EA are already imagining a future where all of their money is made from digital content, and that future is sooner, rather than later. EA Labels boss, Frank Dibeau has told GamesIndustry International:

It's in the near future. It's coming. We have a clear line of sight on it and we're excited about it. Retail is a great channel for us. We have great relationships with our partners there. At the same time, the ultimate relationship is the connection that we have with the gamer. If the gamer wants to get the game through a digital download and that's the best way for them to get it, that's what we're going to do.

Google's Nexus smartphone may have been banned from selling in the U.S., but don't think that Google are going to sit around just googling a solution to this problem. Samsung and Google look to have a software patch that they believe avoids infringing on Apple's patent that led them to the injunction in the first place. This update is said to be pushed out 'immediately', according to Google.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ruled late last week that the GALAXY Nexus had infringed on four Apple patents, but the injunction was issued based specifically on a patent related to universal search. Google and Samsung will most likely challenge the validity of the patent, where they will seek a re-examination by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

If you have a GALAXY Nexus and see the patch - do let us know by commenting on this story, e-mailing us, or posting on our Facebook wall.

As most of you would know, we post tonnes of rumors about the next-gen consoles, as they will most likely shape the future of gaming, and therefore, the future of PC hardware. As we get closer to the release of the next-gen consoles, more and more information surfaces. Whether this information is true or not, or just the company's way of throwing out so much information, you can't find the truth from the ocean of rumors.

The latest news on the next-gen Xbox is that Microsoft Corporation won two disputes they filed in May with the National Arbitration Forum in regards to numerous Xbox-related domains owned by a resident of China who goes by the name "Cheng Juan". These domains are XboxPhone.com, XboxTablet.com, XboxLiveTV.com, XboxCompanion.com, Xbox8.us and Xbox8.org. As you can imagine, this opens our eyes to the next-gen console, and the future of Microsoft.

At the moment, no one knows what the next-gen Xbox will be called, so anyone trying to say it will be a certain name (Xbox Next, Xbox 720) is just guessing, or reporting the news as they see it. The name isn't in concrete, and we're seeing Microsoft change things up lately with Windows, making hardware for tablets, and just their general way of doing things is morphing into something completely different.

Google's $199 Nexus 7 tablet is barely even available and the team at iFixit have torn one apart and looked around inside the tablet. Nexus 7 is just a millimeter thicker than Apple's iPad, but that 1mm can make a huge difference when it comes to repairability according to iFixit, who gave the Nexus 7 a score of 7 out of 10.

To compare this against other popular tablets, Apple's iPad scores a repairability score of two out of 10, Amazon's Kindle Fire scores an eight, and Barnes & Noble's Nook Tablet takes home a six out of ten. iFixit said in their report:

That's the difference between being able to open a device and service all of its internals, and not. That's the negligible difference between extending the life of your device through repair, as opposed to tossing it in a landfill. And most of all, nobody will complain about that one millimeter difference in day-to-day use, but the user-serviceability it brings will make all the difference when the device breaks.

NVIDIA have been pumping out some regular drivers, which is a nice change of pace for the company and today we have the release of the GeForce 304.79 beta drivers. These new drivers have a special inclusion in the form of the March-announced TXAA. TXAA is said to smooth more aliased edges than MSAA, all while significantly reducing temporal aliasing.

But, what titles support TXAA? Funcom MMORPG, The Secret World, does, which launched today in North American and Europe. NVIDIA has promised a future in-depth look at TXAA in The Secret World, but for now, they've offered a launch-day interview with Funcom's CTO and lead designer instead. TXAA is only supported by the GEFORCE GTX 600-series of GPUs, if you didn't know.

As with all the other driver releases, the new GeForce 304.79 beta brings with it new, or updated SLI profiles for The Secret World, End of Nations, Nexuiz, Ghost Recon Future Soldier, Tornado Force and Tribes: Ascend. There are various bug fixes, such as fixing the compatibility issues that plagued the GTX 400 and GTX 500 series of GPUs in Civilization V, flickering or missing mouse cursor with hardware cursor enabled, PCs to reboot instead of shutting down, and a black screen after driver installation.

In a ruling sure to have far-reaching consequences for how online speech is treated under the law, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Sciarrino said that public Tweets do not have the same protection as private speech. In other words, what you say online publicly, i.e. Facebook update, Tweet, or otherwise, can be accessed and used against you in court sans a search warrant.

"The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned, there are still consequences for your public posts," wrote Sciarrino in his ruling. "What you give to the public belongs to the public. What you keep to yourself belongs only to you."

A little back story: Harris, the person directly affected by this ruling, was arrested during the Occupy Wall Street protests when he, along with many others, walked down the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge as opposed to the sidewalk. Before this march, he had deleted several Tweets that prosecutors believe contain evidence that directly contradicts one of his defenses.