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AMD

Samsung's First Exynos 9 Chip is Faster, Uses Less Power, and Supports Gigabit LTE 39

Posted by msmash from the leap-forward dept.
Samsung is taking a big step forward on both processing and LTE speeds with its next mobile system on a chip. From a report on The Verge: The chip, called the Exynos 9 Series 8895, is supposed to perform 27 percent faster than its predecessor and consume 40 percent less power. It's also Samsung's first to support gigabit LTE, offering much faster speeds on networks that support it. The big gains come from Samsung shifting over to a 10nm process for this chip series, allowing it to make a more efficient processor. That means Samsung is following right behind Qualcomm on the move from a 14nm process to a 10nm process. Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon SoC, the 835, also uses a 10nm process and supposed includes speed improvements and a 25 percent power reduction. The Exynos 8895 has an octa-core processor, and its GPU is supposed to include graphics improvements for 4K VR and gaming. Samsung says the processor supports video recording at 120FPS 4K and cameras with a resolution up to 28MP.
Earth

Lava Flow In Hawaii Gains Speed, Triggers Methane Explosions 64

Posted by samzenpus from the it's-getting-hot-in-here dept.
An anonymous reader writes Officials say molten lava from a Hawaii volcano has been flowing steadily in an area where residents have been warned they might have to evacuate their homes. Dozens of residents in the flow path have been told to complete all necessary preparations by Tuesday for a possible evacuation. From the article: "Janet Babb, a geologist and spokeswoman for the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, said methane explosions also have been going off. She said decomposing vegetation produces methane gas that can travel subsurface beyond the lava front in different directions, accumulating in pockets that can ignite. She said it was a bit unnerving to hear all the blasts on Saturday."
Power

How Facebook Is Saving Power By 10-15% Through Better Load Balancing 54

Posted by timothy from the 10-percent-at-web-scale dept.
An anonymous reader writes Facebook today revealed details about Autoscale, a system for power-efficient load balancing that has been rolled out to production clusters in its data centers. The company says it has "demonstrated significant energy savings." For those who don't know, load balancing refers to distributing workloads across multiple computing resources, in this case servers. The goal is to optimize resource use, which can mean different things depending on the task at hand.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Linux Distribution Popularity Trends Plotted (linuxtrends.com)

Submitted by __aajbyc7391
__aajbyc7391 writes: In order to get a sense of the popularity of various Linux distributions over the past several years, LinuxTrends entered their names into Google’s search insights tool and grabbed images of the resulting graphs. The graphs display some fascinating trends and bode well for the future of Linux, particularly its ability to adapt to changing requirements and opportunities. What’s especially noteworthy is that Android is the first Linux spin to take on a life of its own within consumer devices. It’s certainly not the first use of Linux as an OS for devices; what’s unique, however, is that it’s the first branded Linux-based OS to be widely marketed to consumers.
AMD

Submission + - Open-Source 2D, 3D For ATI Radeon HD 5000 Series (phoronix.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AMD has now rolled out open-source 2D and 3D drivers for their ATI Radeon HD 5000 series graphics processors. As described at Phoronix in length, it's taken nearly a year to complete but there is now public code released that enables 2D, 3D, and video hardware-acceleration for this latest generation of ATI GPUs. For now this code is intended for developers and enthusiasts but with time it will make its way into stable Linux distribution updates. AMD's open-source developers are also beginning to work on ATI Radeon HD 6000 series support, which is hardware not to be released until late in the year.
Games

Submission + - The Brainy Gamer: Portal on the booklist (brainygamer.com)

Submitted by
jamie
jamie writes: "This year, for the first time, a video game will appear on the syllabus of a course required for all students at Wabash College, where I teach. For me — and for a traditional liberal arts college founded in 1832 — this is a big deal. Alongside Gilgamesh, Aristotle's Politics, John Donne's poetry, Shakespeare's Hamlet, and the Tao Te Ching, freshmen at Wabash will also encounter a video game called Portal. If you're curious to know how it happened, read on. Last spring Wabash faculty approved a new all-college course and charged a small committee to design it over the..."
Security

Submission + - Gaming foursquare with 9 lines of Perl (uic.edu)

Submitted by caffeinemessiah
caffeinemessiah writes: With the recent launch of Facebook Places, the rise to prominence of Foursquare and GoWalla, and articles in the New York Times about the increasing popularity of "checking in" to locations using GPS-enabled mobile phones, a number of businesses are wondering how to reward frequent patrons. But exactly how susceptible are these "location based services" to being abused? A researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago shows how easily Foursquare can be gamed in 9 Perl statements, and invites readers to submit more succinct versions of the code to game the system.
Patents

Submission + - Patent Office Ramps Up Patent Approvals (techdirt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: With the somewhat disappointing Bilski ruling behind us, people concerned about overly broad patents should be looking at what's going on at the US Patent Office. Due to various other Supreme Court decisions and lots of bad publicity, the USPTO had gone on a "quality binge" for a few years, rejected a lot more patents than usual. However, with new leadership, it appears that the USPTO is back to its old tricks and approving a ton of patents (at an unheard of rate) in a misguided attempt to get through the "backlog." Get ready for another round of patent lawsuits on patents that never should have been granted.

Comment Re:Build-in function library (Score 1) 831

by jipn4 (#30062204) Attached to: Go, Google's New Open Source Programming Language

Um, no. The whole point of a GC is that you don't have to explicitely deallocate something.

GC has several functions. One of the most important ones is to make a language safe. A secondary one is to save some work in non-performance critical code. However, in performance critical code, you have to worry about memory management as much with a GC as without.

There is a reason many people want an opt-in GC in C++0x.

The primary problem with C++ is not its lack of GC, it's its lack of safety. That's not fixed by adding a GC.

Comment Re:Maybe (Score 1) 173

by grapeape (#30062194) Attached to: Project Natal Release Details Emerge

Your right, nothing is confirmed but the number of 3rd party prominent players hyping things up on their own kind of assures me that there is at least some substance there. Wii Fit and Motion Plus are great examples and I think your on to something...MS probably does need to bundle in some sort of game likely a mini-game collection similar to wii sports, even the kickball demo and that Milo thing would do...just something that gives you a "natal" experience out of the box. Im expecting game bundles from MS first party studios, perhaps Lionhead or Rare offering up a Perfect Dark or Fable bundle? Of course if Halo Reach ends up with Natal support and ships as a bundle they are guaranteed millions of installs off the bat.

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