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Intel

Submission + - Intel Demos Next Gen Haswell GT-3 Graphics and Clover Trail Power Consumption (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Representatives from Intel at CES were touting the low power characteristics of their current Clover Trail Atom processors that are featured in a number of Windows 8 tablets. Intel apparently is on a mission to rebut the notion that ARM-based processors are more power efficient. In one demo, Intel wired up a number of sensors to the batteries on a quartet of tablets to monitor power consumption in real-time. Two of the tablets (a Samsung ATIV and Dell XPS 10) were built around Qualcomm Krait-based SoCs, one (a Microsoft Surface RT) featured NVIDIA’s Tegra 3, and there was an Acer W510 built on Intel’s Clover Trail Atom. The demo showed the Tegra 3 Surface RT tablet clearly consuming the most the power, with the Clover Trail and Krait-based systems much more tightly grouped. The Clover Trail-based tablet was consuming the least power within the particular Youtube HD video workload shown. In another demo, Intel had a blind taste test of sorts, with two systems set up side by side, running Dirt 3 in DX11 mode at the same image quality settings. One system featured an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650, while the other was powered by an Intel Haswell-based Core processor with integrated GT-3 graphics. Haswell’s GT-3 graphics engine reportedly offers 2X the performance of Ivy Bridge HD 4000 graphics, along with additional features. In the demo, both machines easily produced smooth frame rates and shared nearly indistinguishable image quality."
AMD

Submission + - AMD Demos Next Gen Richland and Kabini APUs, Partners with Vizio (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "At a press event at CES 2013, AMD demonstrated new product wins and continued execution of their APU roadmap. AMD and Vizio announced an expansive partnership, with multiple Vizio systems on display including a new AIO (all-in-one) and ultra-thin notebook design. AMD also showcased their Kabini APU performance against Intel's Core i3, with the former winning handily, as well as its current Brazos-based tablet winning out over Intel's Clover Trail Atom chip, and talked a bit about what we can expect from Richland. Richland is the follow-up to AMD's Trinity APU and is built around the Piledriver CPU core, but it updates the graphics core with what AMD calls a "2nd Generation DirectX GPU." The company is claiming that Richland will deliver a 20-40% performance uplift compared to Trinity. Kabini and Temash also look solid and AMD is committed to a first half 2013 release for Kabini. AMD is claiming a 50% performance boost over their previous gen Brazos platform, specifically in PCMark Vantage testing. In that test, the Kabini-based A6-5200 scored 5271 while the Brazos testbed only managed a 2807. That's a major jump for AMD at the low end of the market. Kabini doesn't just improve on Brazos' GPU and CPU efficiency, it doubles the number of CPU cores as well."
Intel

Submission + - Info on Intel Bay Trail 22nm Atom Platform Shows Out-of-Order Design (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "New leaked info from Intel sheds light on how the company's 2014 platforms will challenge ARM products in the ultra light, low power market. At present, the company's efforts in the segment are anchored by Cedar Trail, the 32nm dual-core platform that launched a year ago. To date, all of Intel's platform updates for Atom have focused on lowering power consumption and ramping SoC integration rather than focusing on performance — but Bay Trail will change that. Bay Trail moves Atom to a quad-core, 22nm, out-of-order design. It significantly accelerates the CPU core with burst modes of up to 2.7GHz, and it'll be the first Atom to feature Intel's own graphics processor instead of a licensed core from Imagination Technologies."
Apple

Submission + - Apple Files Patent for "Active Stylus" For Use with iPods, iPhones and iPads (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Apple may be looking to improve upon the stylus as we know it today. The Cupertino company filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for what it calls an "Active Stylus," which can be used on capacitive touch sensor panels like those found on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices. "Unlike conventional styluses which work passively by blocking electric field lines between the drive and sense electrodes of a capacitive touch sensor panel, the styluses disclosed in the various embodiments of this disclosure can either act as a drive electrode to create an electric field between the drive electrode and the sense lines of a mutual capacitive touch sensor panel, or as a sense electrode for sensing capacitively coupled signals from one or more stimulated drive rows and columns of the touch sensor panel or both." According to Apple, active styluses allow for more accurate input without driving up cost."
Technology

Submission + - 3D Printer Round-up: Cube 3D, Up! and Solidoodle (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "3D printing is a fascinating new technology and an exploding new market. The process involved is pretty basic actually. Heat up some plastic, and sort of like that Play-Doh Fun Factory you were so fond of as a kid, you extrude the melted plastic out to create objects. It all started back in 2007 when the first RepRap machine was built. The idea behind RepRap was to design a machine that could build complex parts in three dimensions using extruded molten plastic and that machine could also "self-replicate" or build a copy of itself. Since then, 3D printers of all types have emerged from the community and this round-up of machines covers a few of the more prominent names in 3D printing systems. The Cube 3D, the Up! Mini and the Solidoodle 2 can all get you into 3D printing at retail consumer price points with precision down to 100 microns. The technology has very much come of age and it's going to be interesting to see where these machines can take us."
Games

Submission + - Startup Company GreenThrottle Turns Your Android Smartphone Into a Game Console (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "The time we spend making calls on smartphones pales in comparison to the other activities we use it for, like surfing the web, logging into Facebook, streaming music and video, and of course playing games. It's that latter functionality that a startup called Green Throttle wants to tap into. Given the horsepower of today's smartphones is makes a lot of sense. The company envisions harnessing the power of today's well-equipped Android smartphones and tablets in order to play console-like games on your HDTV. Right now the concept is limited to select devices — Google Nexus, Samsung Galaxy S II and S III, HTC One X, Kindle Fire HD, and Asus Transformer — though the company says it's adding to the list quickly. The system is fairly simple. You load Green Throttle's Arena app on your compatible device and start gaming using the company's Bluetooth-enabled Atlas controller, which looks a lot like an Xbox 360 controller, then push your phones HDMI output to an HDTV."
Nintendo

Submission + - Hackers Discover Wii U's Processor Design and Clock Speed (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Early, off-the-record comments from game developers indicated that the Nintendo's Wii U console horsepower was on par with, or a bit behind the Xbox 360 and PS3, which raised questions about just how "next-generation" the Wii U would be. Now, Wii and PS3 hacker Hector Martin (aka Marcan) has answered some of these questions and raised a few others. According to his findings, the Wii U's CPU is a triple-core design clocked at 1.24GHz. Marcan identifies the base design as a PowerPC 750, which makes sense. Nintendo used PowerPC 750-derived processors in both the GameCube and the Wii. Retaining that architecture for the Wii U would simplify backwards compatibility and game development. Now factor in the GPU, which is reportedly clocked at 550MHz. Some have favored the Radeon HD 4000 series as a basis for the part; I still think a low-end Radeon 5000, like Redwood Pro, makes more sense. That GPU was built on 40nm, measured 104mm sq, clocked in at 649MHz, and had a 39W TDP. The die size discrepancy between the Wii U and Redwood Pro would account for the 32MB of EDRAM cache we know the Wii U offers. Nintendo may have propped up a relatively weak CPU with considerably more GPU horsepower."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Self-Deprecating Commercial Pokes Fun At Previous Versions Of IE (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Years ago, Internet Explorer became the Nickelback of web browsers, the one everyone loved to hate (and for good reason). There was a time when stellar alternatives to IE sprung up in the form of Firefox and Google's Chome browser, and anyone still using Microsoft's crummy old browser was considered a luddite or worse. Wisecracking haters took every opportunity to take a shot at IE in forums, comments sections, and so on. To Microsoft's credit, the company hasn't been afraid to admit past mistakes while working hard to rebuild trust in its products, and this video is a perfect illustration that at least they understand there's a bit of catching up to do."
Government

Submission + - Red light cameras raise crash risk, cost (courierpostonline.com) 1

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "A pilot program for red-light cameras in New Jersey appears to be changing drivers’ behavior, state officials said Monday, noting an overall decline in traffic citations and right-angle crashes.

The Department of Transportation also said, however, that rear-end crashes have risen by 20 percent and total crashes are up by 0.9 percent at intersections where cameras have operated for at least a year."
Data Storage

Submission + - OCZ Launches Vector Indilinx Barefoot 3 SSD, First All In-House Design (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Not many SSD controller manufacturers have been able to compete with the likes of SandForce and the myriad of SATA drives from various OEMs on the market that are based on their technology. However, OCZ took a different approach recently when they acquired SSD controller manufacturer Indilinx and PCI Express Switch maker PLX. Today the company took the wraps of their new Vector line of SSDs. The Vector is the first drive from OCZ to utilize only technologies developed by the unified Indilinx, PLX, and OCZ teams (except for the actual NAND flash), since the acquisitions. The Vector is based on the new INDILINK Barefoot 3 controller, which in terms of its features and specifications, looks competitive with some of the fastest drives on the market currently. In the benchmarks, the drive's IOMeter and CrystalDiskMark scores line up well and OCZ is offering a 5 year warranty on the product."
Science

Submission + - Brain's 'reading centres' are culturally universal (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "Learning to read Chinese might seem daunting to Westerners used to an alphabetic script, but brain scans of French and Chinese native speakers show that people harness the same brain centres for reading across cultures.
Reading involves two neural systems: one that recognizes the shape of the word and a second that asseses the physical movements used to make the marks on a page. But it has been unclear whether the brain networks responsible for reading are universal or culturally distinct. Previous studies have suggested that alphabetic writing systems (such as French) and logographic ones (such as Chinese, in which single characters represent entire words) writing systems might engage different networks in the brain.
The researchers found that both Chinese and French people use the visual and gestural systems while reading their native language, but with different emphases that reflect the different demands of each language (paper).
Understanding how the brain decodes symbols during reading — using both visual and motor centres — might also inform learning strategies for general literacy. Harnessing the gestural system more in education might, for example, help young children with reading."
Blackberry

Submission + - The new BlackBerry debacle (bgr.com)

Submitted by redkemper
redkemper writes: We all know BlackBerry is collapsing in America, so the new Kantar Worldpanel data showing its market share slipping below 2% in the United States is no shocker. Research In Motion’s performance in its second major market — the United Kingdom — is also pretty much as expected. Its UK market share slipped from 19% to 8% between the three months ending in October 2011 and the autumn of 2012. But what really pops out in the new Kantar data is BlackBerry’s performance in Brazil and the Mediterranean region, two crucially important markets for RIM...
Lord of the Rings

Submission + - Medium Rare And Back Again: A cookbook featuring food from the world of Tolkien (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by
AssFace
AssFace writes: ""Have you ever dreamed of what Bilbo's pork pies actually taste like? Does Sam's coney stew sound wonderful? Do you share Gollum's affection for sushi-grade fish? If Balrogs had wings, what would they taste like?"

A Kickstarter where someone wants to create a cookbook (and more — see the link) based on Tolkien's Hobbit/LoTR series.

Also a write-up/interview over on Wired."
Television

Submission + - Sony DVR useless after Rovi stops TV Guide OnScreen (sony.com)

Submitted by
speedlaw
speedlaw writes: "Rovi has just announced that they are stopping the TV Guide OnScreen service as of April 13th, 2013-this was announced via the service itself. This is an on air listing service that provides listings over the air, as part of an OTA TV signal. Many devices, notably the Sony HDD 250 and 500 Digital Video Recorders, will no longer function without the clock-set data this stream provides. When Microsoft decided to stop supporting Windows 95, they didn't "brick" everyone's system. Worse, Sony never came out with another DVR in the US market. Why do we have to rent them ? How do we get Sony or Rovi to provide at least a software patch to set the clock so the DVR can at least retain 1980's VCR functionality ?

https://forum.sel.sony.com/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=15646&p=42468#p42468
Sony admits no fix.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/537711/sony-dhg-hdd250-500-official-thread too much information on TV Guide OnScreen.

The TV stations who broadcast the data have been ordered by Rovi to disconnect the data inserters and ship them back. I have a TiVo, and yes, I know all about HTPC, but this data stream was "lifetime listings" like TiVo has "lifetime listings"....now that Rovi is looking to cut, my two DVR units are about to brick....Slashdotters, help !"

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