Panasonic has announced a decision to cut 17,000 of its employees.

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Marvel finally released a few details of its upcoming MMOG, including info on the roster and the use of a free-to-play model.

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Although ARM thinks it can talk AMD out of using x86, the nation's second largest CPU giant says there are no plans to license ARM's technology.

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If there has ever been a company that should be acquired, it is British chip designer ARM. AMD would be an amazing fit.

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Amazon has announced the launch of an online digital music store that will sell songs for 69 cents.

The move, hopes the company, will bring more consumers to the site, where they will purchase the music and store it on the free CloudDrive, which also streams music. Users can pay for more than the free 5GB of space Amazon offers if they run out of space.

For now, only 200 of Amazon MP3s available 15 million songs are selling for 69 cents.

However, 26 of the top 40 most popular songs are selling at the discounted rate, down from their regular $.99-1.29.

"All of that ties into this experience of getting them to discover and buy and listen to more music, so it's all interrelated," says Amazon of the move.

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Earlier this week we reported that Sony had admitted that hackers had stolen PSN account info, forcing the company to shut down PSN and Qriocity as it rebuilds its services.

The company noted that 77 million users had their "Name, address (city, state, postal code), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID, profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, postal code), and the subscriber's PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers" had been compromised. Even worse, the company said your credit card info and expiration date are likely to have been compromised, as well.

Today, on the 8th day of the outage, Sony has hinted that it may give users some sort of compensation for the downtime.

Says the company:

We are currently evaluating ways to show appreciation for your extraordinary patience as we work to get these services back online.

Because PSN is free, the compensation will almost certainly not be monetary, but PlayStation Plus and the MMO games "DC Universe Online" and "Free Realms" will likely get some prorated refund.

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Qualcomm has leaked a presentation showing off the next generation of the Snapdragon mobile processors.

Each of the chips will be based on the smaller 28nm Krait architecture, moving down from 54nm of most current chips.

By moving to the 28nm, the new processors promise to use 47 percent less power than a current A-15 chip, with same clock speed.

The MSM8270, MSM8930, MSM8960 and the APQ8064 will all be multiple times faster than current CPUs and support "console quality gaming" graphics.

Each of the processors will be clockable to 2.5Ghz, have 3G and LTE, 3D support, 1080p video, Dolby Surround Sound 7.1 and can support camera sensors up to 20MP.

The first chip will be available later this year, with the rest available into 2012. It is unclear when the first smartphones and tablets using the chips will be released, however.

Check the rest of the slides at the source here.

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Although the CEO of the company has denied it, Crunch is reporting that as Spotify continues its efforts to launch in the U.S., it will also offer a movie streaming service.

Industry sources say Spotify has already negotiated deals with the major movie studios.

The deals are also likely to be worldwide, meaning European users (at least) would have access to the movies.

CEO Daniel Ek did call the story inaccurate, going as far as to say:

No it ain't true. Media these days are funny. Soon I'll be reading that Spotify is launching a space rocket.

Crunch makes sure to note, however, that Ek has denied may stories in the past in similar fashion, all of which were true.

Making Spotify different from the competition is that the company will get the movies early, around the same time hotels for PPV

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Discovered this morning, a code.google.com page has shown off Samsung's upcoming "Alex" Chrome OS netbook.

The netbook is expected to be revealed at the upcoming I/O conference next month.

If accurate, the page says the device will have a 1280x800 resolution, a dual -core 1.5 GHz Atom N550 processor, 2GB RAM, a SanDisk P4 SSD and a Qualcomm Gobi 3G modem, Ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, a built-in webcam, a card reader, USB ports, and a D-Sub outputs.

Other Chrome OS hardware, from Acer and other partners, could also be unveiled at the conference.

As stands, the "Alex" has similar specs to the Cr-48 Google Chrome Book, which was sent out to over 50,000 beta testers starting in December, including AfterDawn.

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