AMD CTO reveals first Steamroller details Ever since the relatively disappointing debut of AMD's Bulldozer microarchitecture, we've been curious to find out what happens next. New architectures sometimes have their share of troubles, but they often bring with them quite a bit of headroom for improvement, especially once there's operating silicon to be examined and optimized. Bulldozer seemed to have more than the usual share of problems, so the question became: does it have a correspondingly large amount of headroom for improvements in successive revisions? The Tech Report (also, AnandTech's coverage)
Intel reveals architecture details of Xeon Phi co-processor During HotChips symposium, George Chrysos, the leading architect of Intel Xeon Phi co-processor shared the new architecture details of upcoming Intel's HPC powerhouse. Designed for highly-parallel applications, Intel Xeon Phi co-processor based on Intel Mani Integrated Core architecture will deliver the combination of industry leading performance per watt with the ability to re-use the existing code and applications without necessity of re-writing them. Intel
Open webOS August Edition Eight months ago we announced our ambitious plan to make webOS available under an open source license and bring the innovation of the webOS platform to the open source community. We are proud to have hit another milestone with today's Beta release. We delivered on our promise It has taken a lot of hard work, long hours and weekend sacrifices by our engineering team to deliver on our promise and we have accomplished this goal. Open webOS
Valve's Abrash on virtual reality, wearable computing Valve enjoys keeping secrets. And while I'm beginning to suspect that Half-Life 3 will ultimately turn out to be a giant ray gun that erases all memories of the Half-Life franchise from our brains forever, there's one thing Valve's been uncharacteristically upfront about: its fascination with the future. Wearable computing, augmented reality, and – perhaps most pertinently, given recent extremely promising developments – virtual reality. RPS
What every CEO can learn from Best Buy's (continued) branding mistakes Recently, I came across an article in Ad Age covering Best Buy's most recent branding efforts. Here's what stopped me in my tracks: "For the past 18 months, the U.S. marketing team, led by Drew Panayiotou, senior-VP marketing, has been working to reframe the retailer's brand proposition. Now it's ready to unveil its efforts. Best Buy's new tagline, rolling out this summer, is 'Making technology work for you.'" Fast Company
A special investigation into the dark world of trolling Ben spends up to 70 hours a week on the internet getting high on other people's anger and despair. The unemployed 19-year-old from Victoria – who spoke to news.com.au on the condition of anonymity – doesn't go out much and doesn't have many real friends, but he doesn't feel alone. He believes he's part of a community of similar-minded people who scour the web looking for pages to vandalise and lives to upset. News.com.au
Razer Blade refresh When I reviewed the Razer Blade – PC gaming hardware manufacturer Razer's first laptop – this spring, I found two ideas at cross-purposes: the Blade was undoubtedly the thinnest, perhaps the most stylish-looking gaming laptop I'd seen, and boasted an excellent screen, but the performance, processor, graphics, and overall specs didn't match its high price, and its experimental touch-screen Switchblade interface had barely any app support. CNET
Lucid Logix VirtuMVP first look: Integrated and discrete join forces In my recent review of the Origin EON11-S portable gaming laptop I noted that the performance of the laptop was far behind that of a larger 15.6" or 17.3" model. The laptop won a gold award despite this, as all laptops of this size are bound to physics, but it was an issue worth nothing. Origin surprised me by responding that they had something in the works that might buff up performance. PC Perspective
Revealed: the grubby world of comment spam From time to time you may see a comment on a blog or a news article that looks something like this: [uncanny valley-like comment]. At first glance, it could be an earnest attempt by a non-English speaking reader to give the author some kind of compliment. Detracting slightly from this impression is the fact that the name of the commenter shows up as "buy cheap loui vuitton bags" with a link to an online store. The Kernel
Google patents software that identifies real world objects within videos Google has recently been granted a patent that could not only improve online search but, also will possibly give the search engine giant an awful lot of information about the world. Google, using the software, wants to scan and analyze the content within videos, YouTube videos we assume, and look for real world objects, identify them, and make a catalogue out of those objects. Parity News
OnLive founder Steve Perlman explains why he decided to leave, in heartfelt letter to fans Just yesterday we learned that OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman would be departing the company, and that Charlie Jablonski would be taking over as OnLive's acting CEO. Late last night, Steve Perlman sent OnLiveFans.com a heartfelt message exclusively to OnLiveFans.com, explaining why he made this decision. Below is the letter, in its entirety... OnLive Fans
A countdown to Black Mesa Source begins Those of you who bet that Half-Life 2: Episode 3 (or Half-Life 3) would come out before the Black Mesa Source mod team finally completed their Source-engine update of the original 1998 Half-Life, get ready to pay up. The Black Mesa Source homepage is now counting down to September 14th (that's four days before Borderlands 2 and six days before Torchlight 2). GameSpy
Working with tables in the new Word It's all about the little things. For this release of Word, we wanted to make your lives a little bit easier by simplifying the tasks you do every day. Since tables play an important role in many documents, they seemed like a good place to start. In our improvements to tables for the new Word, we focused on making it easier for you to create and format basic tables. Microsoft
Windows 8 may get Aero Glass back via modder In May, Microsoft revealed the new look of the desktop for Windows 8. The company said that it wanted the desktop to have more of a "Metro" (now Modern) look. Part of the changes included getting rid of the Aero Glass desktop look that was first introduced in Windows Vista. Microsoft said simply that, "We have moved beyond Aero Glass." Neowin
Intel immerses its servers in oil – and they like it! The idea of immersing servers in oil to keep them cool isn't entirely new – passionate gamers have been housing their systems in vegetable oil for years. But it's time to take notice of this trend when Intel starts singing its praises as a potentially revolutionary method for slashing the price of running a data center. GigaOM
Big ideas: video games according to David Cage David Cage has reached a creative juncture, he says, which allows him to do exactly what he wants – and what he wants to do is expand the palette of the game industry, bringing in more emotion, and luring in the gamers who weren't hooked by Heavy Rain with his latest project, Beyond: Two Souls. Gamasutra
Microsoft will allow downgrades from Windows 8 to Windows 7, Vista Microsoft will allow users of Windows 8 Pro to downgrade their new PCs to Windows 7 or even Vista, according to the operating system's licensing agreement. Not surprisingly, users may not downgrade to the still-used-but-slated-for-retirement Windows XP. Computerworld