gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."

thejakebrain writes "Intel has built its 80-core processor as part of a research project, but don't expect it on your desktop any time soon. The company's CTO, Justin Rattner, held a demonstration of the chip for a group of reports last week. Intel will be presenting a paper on the project at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco this week. 'The chip is capable of producing 1 trillion floating-point operations per second, known as a teraflop. That's a level of performance that required 2,500 square feet of large computers a decade ago. Intel first disclosed it had built a prototype 80-core processor during last fall's Intel Developer Forum, when CEO Paul Otellini promised to deliver the chip within five years.'" Update: 06/01 14:37 GMT by Z : This article is about four months old. We discussed this briefly last year, but search didn't show that we discussed in February.

VincenzoRomano writes "ArsTechnica has just published an update to the neverending story about copy protection used in HD DVD and Blu-ray discs and hacker efforts against it. From the article: 'The ongoing war between content producers and hackers over the AACS copy protection used in HD DVD and Blu-ray discs produced yet another skirmish last week, and as has been the case as of late, the hackers came out on top. The hacker BtCB posted the new decryption key for AACS on the Freedom to Tinker web site, just one day after the AACS Licensing Authority (AACS LA) issued the key.' The article proposes a simple description of the protection schema and a brief look back at how the cracks have slowly chipped away at its effectiveness. It seems it'll be a long way to an effective solution ... if any. One could also argue whether all that money spent by the industry in this race will be worth the results and how long it would take for a return on investment."

Via Joystiq , a press release that reveals a new feature for the upcoming Pokemon Diamond/Pearl titles. In addition to new graphics, the title offers a new twist for the gotta-catch-em-all set: voice communication via wireless networking. You'll only be able to talk to people you've exchanged friend codes with, so there's no chance for an anonymous player to traumatize younger players. The PR release they link to mentions that the game will also have a world-wide trader board: "For kids, it's like having a cell phone that can only connect with their friends. The Nintendo DS Headset, sold separately, makes these conversations a breeze ... Players can trade Pokemon or battle with players anywhere in the world, even without voice communication. The Global Trade Station allows players to post Pokemon they want to trade on a board and browse through Pokemon other players have posted."

Gamasutra has the NPD numbers for last month, which shows a continuation of Nintendo's sales dominance. Overall the new consoles have again meant that industry sales were up, some 28% over last year's same-month figures. Hardware sales were up some 98%, with much of that performance attributable to the DS and Wii. Here's the breakdown: "Turning to hardware, the DS headed overall hardware sell-through with an impressive 485,000 units, followed by Nintendo's Wii, which sold 335,000 units despite continued issues with shortages. The Xbox 360 sold through a reasonable, if not spectacular 228,000 copies, and the PlayStation 3 slumped to a disappointing 127,000 units, despite no apparent shortages. Elsewhere, the PlayStation 2 moved a still impressive 295,000 at its relatively cheap current price, and the PlayStation Portable sold 176,000, markedly behind the DS. Finally, the various varieties of the Game Boy Advance sold a not unreasonable 136,000 units."