 Good morning. I'm Kristen Filetti and welcome to Newsdesk on SiliconANGLE.tv for Monday, March 18, 2013. Here's your SiliconANGLE Daily Roundup. Google may not be content in just killing Google Reader. Could the RSS technology itself be in Google's crosshairs? The decision by Google to shutter Reader, its RSS management platform, angered many die-hard reader fans, but many were able to excuse the business decision as it was a costly service to maintain. We're now learning that Google has killed the Chrome RSS extension. The extension automatically detected website RSS feeds and allowed users to subscribe to those feeds with a variety of RSS Reader services. After July 1, the date Google Reader is scheduled for termination, the RSS extension would have still worked, allowing users to choose from alternative services. Google, however, made the decision to kill the extension altogether. It would appear that Google doesn't want to make it easy for individuals who want to continue using RSS. Fortunately, there are several free third-party extensions that can be used as a replacement, as long as Google doesn't ban RSS-related extensions from the Chrome Web Store. Hopefully Google's animosity towards RSS doesn't go that far. Lenovo recently unveiled the ThinkPad T431 Ultrabook, a sleek update to the ThinkPad line of laptops. It retains the company's standard for durability, so road warriors need not fear. The 14-inch laptop does, however, come with a new understated design and a much thinner profile. The ThinkPad T431 boasts 4GB of RAM, upgradable to as high as 12GB, and a 320GB 5400RPM hard drive, upgradable to a variety of SSD options with the choice of Windows 7 or Windows 8. Once one upgrade that is bound to excite many ThinkPad fans is two years in the making. After working with Synaptics, the new TrackPad is finally here. In place of the physical click buttons, the new TrackPad supports up to 20 gestures. While not yet available, Lenovo is said to have touchscreen versions of the T431 on the horizon. Look for the new ThinkPad Ultrabook to go on sale in April, starting at $949. There's going to be one less player in the plasma television market. Panasonic is leaning toward withdrawing from plasma TV operations as it continues to downsize its television business. The electronics makers' TV efforts peaked in 2009 with $10.5 billion in TV sales, but since then it has seen a continued and drastic decline. Panasonic has already halted new development of plasma TVs, so the move to end all plasma TV operations is all but certain. There's been no announcement regarding any plans to cease operation of its LCD television business. Verizon is looking into saving money on its cable channels and is asking viewers for help. Currently, cable companies pay for channels based on how many viewers have subscribed to packages containing the channel, even if the subscriber never tunes into that particular channel. Verizon looks to change this by proposing a per-viewer charge for certain channels instead. We're paying for a customer who never goes to the channel, said Terry Denson, chief programming negotiator. A channel would be paid solely according to how many subscribers tuned in each month for a unique view or a minimum of five minutes. Denson said the conversations are inching forward as many companies are unwilling to accept such a disruptive model, but believes this disruption is exactly what the industry needs in order to help smaller channels grow. He said it feels like certain content players who have a suite of channels attempt to lever the strong ones to prop up the weak ones without any empirical data to show these channels are actually viewed or wanted. While this doesn't mean any changes for cable viewers, it will be interesting to see what these changes mean for cable companies who could potentially receive less money for their programming. Facebook is going back to its hacker roots with its beta release program. The social media company has always boasted about their corporate hacker culture. In the past, the use of HTML5 allowed them to tinker with functionality, and users would experience the changes automatically. HTML5 does have limitations, however, and last year Facebook reversed course switching over to native app development for iOS and Android apps. We're now learning that the update to the Facebook app that we reported last week, which allows the app to automatically download updates, is part of an effort to go back to the tweaking and tinkering the company was known for. By selectively sending out updates to some users, they can test new features and layouts and see how they work for that small subset of users. This can be rolled out to all users and failures can be abandoned altogether or modified and resubmitted to the beta release group. Due to the nature of the operating systems, the program wouldn't work for the iOS app, but the 192 million monthly users Facebook for Android, its most popular app, so there should be no shortage of potential guinea pigs to beta test those updates. There's no word yet on how Facebook chooses which users get the beta updates, but since it can't be sent to individuals who don't have the allow installation of apps from sources other than the Play Store option checked in the Android settings, that's a good place to start for users who hope to be included. As Team Micro and Ericsson can't find a buyer for their wireless chip business. As a result, according to internal sources, the four-year-old partnership is considering closing down operations. ST Micro Electronics and Ericsson want to complete an exit from the 50-50 venture sometime in the third quarter. ST Ericsson competes with San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc., but as Nokia, its major customer, loses mobile market share, it's facing declining revenues to the point that it might make more sense to wind down business operations completely. Representatives from both companies say they're continuing to explore all options. Hashtags continue to gain momentum with Flickr's iOS update enabling hashtag support. Last week, we reported Facebook's plans to incorporate hashtags, Flickr beat them to the punch by making hashtag support official. Users of the photo sharing website have used hashtags for quite some time, but the categorization tool popularized by its usage in Twitter gains additional credibility by Yahoo embracing it. Upon updating the app, users can add hashtags to photo titles and descriptions, and they can perform hashtag queries to find all the photos using the specified term. Technically, the technology overlaps the services built in photo tags. There's been no announcement about merging the two technologies or converting existing photo tags to hashtags and phasing out photo tags altogether. Defense Distributed, one of the best known 3D printer gunsmiths, now has a federal license to manufacture guns. The company has been creating and printing gun prototypes for months, and now as a licensed manufacturer, they can begin selling their creations. Until now, Defense Distributed has relied on donations from individuals, many of whom have been buoyed by what they feel is a presidential administration that doesn't respect Second Amendment rights. The discussions in Congress about gun control have had a tremendous effect on the 3D firearm printing industry. Defense Distributed is one of the first, if not the very first, 3D printer startup companies to complement their technology business with a firearms manufacturing and dealer service. A luxurious casino, a high-stakes game of cards, hack security cameras, and a $33 million score. No, this isn't the plot to the next Ocean's 11 sequel. This actually happened. The Crown Casino in Australia was the latest victim of high-tech thievery. With assistance from a talented hacker who gained access to the casino's video surveillance system and with it, the cards held by competing gamblers, a high-roller walked away with $33 million. The plot was discovered but not before the money disappeared. The individual now has a lifetime ban at the casino. The Crown has been in communication with police and the Victorian Commission for gambling and liquor regulation regarding the matter, but there's no word yet about possible criminal charges. If the casino is able to recover the money, the thief may at least be able to get Stephen Soderberg the option for his next Hollywood blockbuster. And that's your SiliconANGLE Daily Roundup for Monday, March 18, 2013, for in-depth breaking analysis and daily information on tech innovation. Join us mornings at news desk here on SiliconANGLE TV.