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Submission + - Using naval logbooks to reconstruct past weather—and predict future climat (thebulletin.org) 1

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: What a great idea. The Old Weather Project uses old logbooks to study the weather patterns of long ago, providing a trove of archival data to scientists who are trying to fill in the details of our knowledge about the atmosphere and the changing climate. 'Pity the poor navigator who fell asleep on watch and failed to update his ship’s logbook every four hours with details about its geographic position, time, date, wind direction, barometric readings, temperatures, ocean currents, and weather conditions.' As Clive Wilkinson of the UK's National Maritime Museum adds, 'Anything you read in a logbook, you can be sure that it is a true and faithful account.'

The Old Weather Project uses citizen scientists to transcribe and digitize observations that were scrupulously recorded on a clockwork-like basis, and it is one of several that climate scientists are using to create 'a three-dimensional computer simulation that will provide a continuous, century-and-a-half-long profile of the entire planet’s climate over time'--the 20th Century Reanalysis Project. Data is checked and rechecked by 3 different people before entry into the database, and the logbook measurements are especially valuable because it was compiled at sea. Great story.

Submission + - Interviews: Ask Warren Ellis a Question

Submitted by samzenpus
samzenpus writes: Warren Ellis is an acclaimed British author of comics, novels, and television who is well known for his sociocultural commentary. The movies Red, and Iron Man 3 are based on his graphic novels. In addition to numerous other comic titles he started a personal favorite, Transmetropolitan. Ellis has written for Vice, Wired UK and Reuters on technological and cultural matters, and is co-writing a video project called Wastelanders with Joss Whedon. Warren has agreed to give us some of his time to answer any questions you may have. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one per post.

Submission + - Battlefield 4 DRM Locking Part Of North America Out Of Its Release Date.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On the whole, Battlefield 4 had a reasonable launch. The have clearly learned from their past experiences with Battlefield 3 and, more notably, SimCity. Still, some customers are unable to access the game (until presumably October 30th at 7PM EDT, 39 hours after launch) because they are incorrectly flagged by region-locking. Do regional release dates help diminish all the work EA has been putting into Origin with their refund policy and live technical support? Should they just take our money and deliver the service before we change our minds?

Submission + - Next Gen Graphics and Process Migration: 20 nm and Beyond (pcper.com)

Submitted by JoshMST
JoshMST writes: So why are we in the middle of GPU-renaming hell? AMD may be releasing a new 28 nm Hawaii chip in the next few days, it is still based on the same 28 nm process that the original HD 7970 debuted on nearly two years ago. Quick and easy (relative terms) process node transitions look to be a thing of the past with 20 nm lines applicable to large ASICs not being opened until mid-2014. This covers the issues that we have seen, that are present, and that which will be showing up in the years to come. It is amazing how far that industry has come in the past 18 years, but the challenges ahead are greater than ever.

Submission + - ASUS PQ321Q Monitor Brings Multi-Stream Tiled Displays Forward (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: While 4K displays have been popping up all over the place recently with noticeably lower prices, one thing that kind of limits them all is a 30 Hz refresh rate panel. Sony is selling 4K consumer HDTVs for $5000 and new-comer SEIKI has a 50-in model going for under $1000 but they all share that trait — HDMI 1.4 supporting 3840x2160 at 30 Hz. The new ASUS PQ321Q monitor is a 31.5-in 4K display built on the same platform as the Sharp PN-K321 and utilizes a DisplayPort 1.2 connection capable of MST (multi-stream transport). This allows the screen to include two display heads internally, showing up as two independent monitors to some PCs that can then be merged into a single panel via AMD Eyefinity or NVIDIA Surround. Thus, with dual 1920x2160 60 Hz signals, the PQ321Q can offer 3840x2160 at 60 Hz for a much better viewing experience. PC Perspective got one of the monitors in for testing and review and found that the while there were some hurdles during initial setup (especially with NVIDIA hardware), the advantage of a higher refresh rate made the 4K resolution that much better.
AMD

Submission + - HSA Foundation founded by AMD, ARM, Ti, Imagination, and MediaTek (pcper.com)

Submitted by
Phopojijo
Phopojijo writes: "To wrap up his “The Programmers Guide to a Universe of Possibility” keynote during the 2012 AMD Fusion Developer’s Summit, Phil Rogers of AMD announced the establishment of the HSA Foundation. The foundation has been instituted to create and maintain open standards to ease programming for a wide variety of processing resources including discrete and integrated GPUs. Founding members include ARM, Texas Instruments, Imagination, MediaTek, Texas Instruments, as well as AMD. Parallels can be drawn between this and AMD’s “virtual gorilla” initiative back from the late 1990’s."
Graphics

Submission + - Carmack on infinite detail, integrated GPUs, more (pcper.com)

Submitted by Vigile
Vigile writes: Co-founder of id Software and one of the better interviews in the industry, John Carmack sat down with PC Perspective during Quakecon 2011 to talk about technology for gaming going forward. Collected in this ~30 minute video interview are thoughts on the GPU hardware race (hardware doesn't matter but drivers are REALLY important), integrated graphics solutions on Sandy Bridge and Llano (with a future of shared address spaces they may outperform discrete GPUs) and of course some thoughts on infinite detail engines (uninspired content viewed at the molecular level is still uninspired content). Carmack does mention a new found interest in ray tracing and how it will "eventually win" the battle for rendering in the long run. As usual, there is a lot of information collected in a short time span so pay attention!

Submission + - Terry Pratchett Considers Assisted Suicide Process (boingboing.net)

Submitted by
cHALiTO
cHALiTO writes: "Beloved science fiction and fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has terminal early-onset Alzheimer's. He's determined to have the option of choosing the time and place of his death, rather than enduring the potentially horrific drawn-out death that Alzheimer's sometimes brings. But Britain bans assisted suicide, and Pratchett is campaigning to have the law changed. As part of this, he has visited Switzerland's Dignitas clinic, an assisted suicide facility, with a BBC camera crew, as part of a documentary will include Britain's first televised suicide. Pratchett took home Dignitas's assisted suicide consent forms."

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