Andrew "bunnie" Huang, whom we've discussed before for his book on Xbox hacking and development of the Chumby, has made an interesting blog post about problems he's found with Kingston microSD cards. He first encountered a batch of bad cards during production of the ChumbyOne, and found Kingston initially unhelpful when trying to get them replaced. After noticing some unusual markings on the chips, he decided to investigate for himself, comparing the ID data and dissolving the cards' casings with nitric acid to take a look inside. He found that each of his Kingston-branded samples actually had a Toshiba/SanDisk memory chip inside, and that the batch of low-quality cards he received may not be as uncommon as he thought. "Significantly, Kingston is revealed as simply a vendor that re-marks other people's chips in its own packaging. Every Kingston card surprisingly had a SanDisk/Toshiba memory chip inside, and the only variance or 'value add' that could be found is in the selection of the controller chip. ... This tells me that Kingston must be crushed when it comes to margin, which may explain why irregular cards are finding their way into their supply chain. Kingston is also probably more willing to talk to smaller accounts like me because as a channel brand they can't compete against OEMs like Sandisk or Samsung for the biggest contracts from the likes of Nokia or RIMM. Effectively, Kingston is just a channel trader and is probably seen by SanDisk/Toshiba as a demand buffer for their production output. I also wouldn't be surprised if SanDisk/Toshiba was selling Kingston 'A-' grade parts, i.e., parts with slightly more defective sectors, but otherwise perfectly serviceable. As a result, Kingston plays a significant and important role in stabilizing microSD card prices and improving fab margins, but at some risk to their own brand image."

Lord Straxus writes "In this presentation (video) from the JVM Languages Summit 2009, Cliff Click talks about why it's almost impossible to tell what an x86 chip is really doing to your code due to all of the crazy kung-fu and ninjitsu it does to your code while it's running. This talk is an excellent drill-down into the internals of the x86 chip, and it's a great way to get an understanding of what really goes on down at the hardware and why certain types of applications run so much faster than other types of applications. Dr. Cliff really knows his stuff!"

Bruce Perens writes "I'm the creator of the Busybox program. I have released a statement on the past and current Busybox lawsuits, which do not represent my interest."

An anonymous reader writes "Only four days after the first attempt to send a particle beam around the LHC, we have arrived at the point when all four experiments got their first real collisions from the machine. This was met by celebrations and champagne, as people have been waiting years and years for this moment. It is a testament to the engineering of the machine that collisions were reached already, so few days after restarting. The LHC had already demonstrated ca 10h stable beams, and now also stable beams in both directions at the same time. In the coming weeks, we need only wait for increased intensity and the first attempts at acceleration."