Frame rating: Eyefinity vs Surround in single and multi-gpu configurations In January of 2013 I revealed a new testing methodology for graphics cards that I dubbed Frame Rating. At the time I was only able to talk about the process, using capture hardware to record the output directly from the DVI connections on graphics cards, but over the course of a few months started to release data and information using this technology. I followed up the story in January with a collection of videos that displayed some of the capture video and what kind of performance issues and anomalies we were able to easily find. PC Perspective (and Tech Report's commentary)
LinkedIn customers allege company hacked e-mail addresses LinkedIn owner of the world's most popular professional-networking website, was sued by customers who claim the company appropriated their identities for marketing purposes by hacking into their external e-mail accounts and downloading contacts' addresses. The customers, who aim to lead a group suit against LinkedIn, asked a federal judge in San Jose, California, to bar the company from repeating the alleged violations and to force it to return any revenue stemming from its use of their identities to promote the site to non-members, according to a court filing. Bloomberg
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with backup tapes If you've been in IT long enough, you're bound to hear the phrase "never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with backup tapes." This was especially true back in the days of dialup connections and leased lines. How does it scale today? First, we have to decide what kind of media we're going to use. Tape drives are not nearly as common as they once were and their storage density really isn't impressive. Instead, lets use the most storage dense media that mere mortals can purchase retail... TechTidbits
Post-post-PC: The new materials, tech, and CPU designs that will revive overclocking and enthusiast computing Over the past few years, we've spent a significant amount of time discussing the increasing difficulty of semiconductor manufacturing and how these problems have impacted the design of modern products. Intel's two major launches this year – Ivy Bridge-E and Haswell – both failed to budge compute performance more than 5-8% at the top of the market, but that doesn't mean PC performance is on stuck on autopilot. Is the PC enthusiast market dead, a casualty of the push into mobile? Not necessarily. ExtremeTech
Homeless, unemployed, and surviving on Bitcoins Jesse Angle is homeless, living on the streets of Pensacola, Florida. Sometimes he spends the night at a local church. Other nights, he sleeps behind a building in the heart of the city, underneath a carport that protects him from the rain. Each morning, he wakes up, grabs some food, and makes his way to Martin Luther King Plaza, a downtown park built where the trolley tracks used to run. He likes this park because his friends hang out there too, and it's a good place to pick up some spending money. But he doesn't panhandle. He uses the internet. Wired
Chipworks provides first Apple A7 die shot Hot on the heels of their Samsung 28nm confirmation, Chipworks just sent over the first die shot of a delayered Apple A7. An annotated version is following early next week, but I've highlighted two sections of interest: In yellow we have what appears to be the two Cyclone CPU cores. If those are indeed the two CPU cores, the layout does seem different than what we saw last year with Swift in the A6. Also note that the percentage of die area dedicated to the CPU appears to have grown a small amount (now roughly 17% of the total SoC area). AnandTech
Grand Theft Auto hates America Gamers collectively paid $800 million and waited in hours-long queues this Tuesday, all to buy a video game that calls them assholes. Not directly, of course. The Grand Theft Auto series is the video game equivalent of a smartass in the back of the room making wisecracks at everyone's expense. Just like we might scowl at the smartass without trying to understand what vulnerability he might be covering up with his hostility, we focus on the crimes depicted in GTA without looking carefully enough at what lies just underneath the surface. Salon
Manifesto: The 21st century will be defined by games In 2008, at the Games, Learning and Society Conference in Wisconsin, Eric and I held a public conversation about what he called The Ludic Century – or as I came to think of it, because most people don't know what "ludic" means, the Age of Play. As a journalist covering videogames, I'd watched as they flipped into the mainstream and spread throughout digital culture, in the form of 'gamification' and beyond. Kotaku
Testing: Gaming on the Nvidia Shield I've been testing the Nvidia Shield for the past three weeks, using it as my sole third-screen device (along with my desktop computer and smartphone). Shield is a high-concept gadget that is billed as part Android device, part game console. And at $300, it's priced accordingly. That's not pocket change – it's money that most people would otherwise spend on a tablet or a dedicated game console, but the promise of Shield is that it can fill the shoes of both without making compromises. Tested