[via techpowerup.com]
AMD has started shipping its 8-core and 12-core “Magny Cours” Opteron processors for sockets G34 (2P-4P+), and C32 (1P-2P). The processors mark entry of several new technologies for AMD, such as a multi-chip module (MCM) approach towards increasing the processor’s resources without having to complicate chip design any further than improving on those of the Shanghai and Istanbul.
[via semiaccurate.com, originally written by Charlie Demerjian]
WITH ANOTHER LAUNCH of the Nvidia GT300 Fermi GF100 GTX480 upon us, it is time for an update on the status of that wayward part. Production parts have been coming back from TSMC for several weeks now, and the outlook for them is grim.
[via cracked.com]
For decades, credit cards have been a means by which large banks have loaned money to poor people at interest rates approaching infinity.
Click on image for full-size (600x1936)
A Brief History of Credit Cards
Incredibly, the above isn’t an exaggeration. There are people in this situation right now where each payment to their credit card company leaves them owing more. Only in the last few years has the government moved to stop banks from putting people in this cycle of infinite repayment (where the interest and fees are more than the monthly payments).
[via gizmodo.com]
A Cornell University professor analyzed 150 of the highest grossing movies of the last 70 years. The more recent the movie, he found, the closer it adhered to the mathematical formula that describes the human attention span.
In the 1990s, researchers at University of Texas in Austin determined that our attention spans could be described by the 1/f fluctuation, a pattern representing the ebb and flow of our concentration over a period of time. In a new study, professor James Cutting found that the more recent the blockbuster, the more closely the length of its shots followed that same fluctuation
[via gizmodo.com]
I’ve played with my fair share of LEGOs, but I never actually envied the little guys until I saw Dave DeGobbi’s Crawler Town, a work as impressively conceived as it is constructed. I’d forfeit bendable elbows to live in it.
It sort of reminds me of those old books on a single building—Castles or Pyramids or what have you—where you could look at the huge, detailed illustrations and imagine dozens of little stories unfolding in every corner.
Attention is even given to the world in which the Crawler Town dwells. As DeGobbi describes it:
[via futilitycloset.com]
Trinity College provost John Pentland Mahaffy was arguing with a women’s rights advocate when she asked him, “What is the difference between man and woman?”
He considered and said, “Madam, I can’t conceive.”
[via futilitycloset.com]
kerdomeletia
n. an excessive desire for material wealth
lucrifaction
n. the process of becoming wealthy
Put a satellite in a circular orbit about 42,000 kilometres from the center of the Earth (36,000 kilometres or so above the surface) and it will orbit once in 24 hours. Because that matches Earth’s rotation period, it is known as a geosynchronous orbit. If that orbit is also in the plane of the equator, the satellite will hang in the sky over a fixed location in a geostationary orbit.
As predicted in the 1940s by futurist Arthur C. Clarke, geostationary orbits are in common use for communication and weather satellites, a scenario now well-known to astroimagers.
[via bbc.co.uk]
The robbers escaped after a struggle with passers-by in the shop doorway
A shopkeeper has been killed in a robbery by a gang of teenagers at his store in Huddersfield.
Gurmail Singh, 63, suffered a head injury during the attack at Cowcliffe Convenience Store in Cowcliffe Hill Road, Cowcliffe, on Saturday night.
He died at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary in the early hours of the morning.
Detectives say the robbers, who were aged in their late teens, fled after a struggle with passers-by who had tried to stop them leaving the shop.