AMD's next big gamble: ARM and x86 cores working side by side on the same chip Last month, AMD made a number of critical announcements concerning the future of its products. We now know that the company is: building its own custom implementation of the ARM architecture (codenamed K12); that it intends to deploy HSA on its low-power ARM and x86 cores next year; that these parts will be socket-compatible; and that the company is also working on a new x86 architecture. Today, we're going to talk about the final piece of the puzzle that AMD didn't mention – an SoC architecture that we ultimately believe could combine ARM and x86 hardware on the same die. ExtremeTech
The secret history of hypertext When Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" first appeared in The Atlantic's pages in July 1945, it set off an intellectual chain reaction that resulted, more than four decades later, in the creation of the World Wide Web. In that landmark essay, Bush described a hypothetical machine called the Memex: a hypertext-like device capable of allowing its users to comb through a large set of documents stored on microfilm, connected via a network of "links" and "associative trails" that anticipated the hyperlinked structure of today's Web. The Atlantic
The new internet gods have no mercy The internet is vast and wild and unknowable and full of potential, unless you are a website. If you are a website, you depend on traffic. And if you depend on traffic, you know that it comes from just a few different places. Facebook is a big one, and for many sites the biggest. Pinterest is enormous, staggeringly so, for sites that overlap with Pinterest's audience. LinkedIn sends a lot of people if you write about business or self-help; Twitter sends a very modest and modestly valuable stream of people to stories about the news. The Awl
The hidden world of Steam trading In February 2014, Roberto Ranieri lost a small fortune in hats. Ranieri was trading hats in the popular game Team Fortress 2. It was his second time trading in-game items for real-world money. He connected with a buyer, set the terms and thought he was going to get rich. Five rare hats, accumulated over years of playing the online shooter – easy money, or so he thought. It was not meant to be. Instead of cashing in, Ranieri got hoodwinked. He lost over $1,000 in the blink of an eye. Polygon
Amazon's tactics confirm its critics' worst suspicions Amazon is confirming its critics' worst fears and it is an ugly spectacle to behold. For years, authors and publishers have warned that Amazon, Jeff Bezos' book-selling giant, would one day use its power for ill. Sure, so far, Amazon has marketed itself as a book buyer's best friend. It sells books at terrifically low prices, it delivers them amazingly quickly, and it constantly invents new technologies to improve the way we read. The NY Times
Cold Storage teaser trailer Out at the Harvard Depository in Southborough, Massachusetts there are many stories to tell. How do the books come to and from campus nearly an hour away? What is the best way to store a library collection whose offsite holdings alone are mounting to ten million? What does it take to keep books at cold preserving temperatures and film reels at even colder ones? Our upcoming documentary, Cold Storage, uncovers an ecosystem of laser scanners, UV fly zappers, cherry pickers and a mezzanine of machinery. Vimeo
Internet 'Do Not Track' system is in shatters Chalk up another victory for corporate surveillance: Five years after advocates came up with an easy way to let you browse the Web with just a little privacy, the Do Not Track system is in tatters and that pair of boots you looked at online last month is still stalking you from website to website. In 2009, a few Internet privacy advocates developed an idea that was supposed to give people a way to tell websites they don't want to be monitored as they move from website to website. Computerworld
The inside story of Oculus Rift and how virtual reality became reality As he flew from Orange County to Seattle in September 2013, Brendan Iribe, the CEO of Oculus, couldn't envision what the next six months would bring. The rhapsodic crowds at the Consumer Electronics Show. The around-the-block lines at South by Southwest. Most of all, the $2 billion purchase by Facebook. That fall Oculus was still just an ambitious startup chasing virtual reality, a dream that had foiled countless entrepreneurs and technologists for two decades. Wired
Omni throwback: The future of gaming as according to the January 1991 issue of Omni magazine Flailing about with a Wii remote playing virtual tennis or yelling profanities through the small mic attached to your headphones while attempting the perfect kill shot in Halo, do not compare to the suave style of these gaming products featured in this 1990s OMNI article. These excerpts and images come straight from the original article. Omni
Google engineers open gates to Quantum Computing Playground Does the idea of playing about with a quantum computer please you? If so, you can check out one fresh alternative route, thanks to a group of Google engineers. How about a GPU-accelerated quantum computer? You can take advantage of something called the Quantum Computing Playground which has launched as a browser-based WebGL Chrome Experiment. Phys.org
The RAM Disk Guide Rev. 2.0 A RAM disk (also known as RAM drive or virtual RAM drive) turns RAM into a logical disk drive for temporary storage purposes. It can come in the form of a software that converts a portion of regular computer memory into a drive, or an actual physical device that uses RAM as a storage medium. Both offer a tremendous boost in storage speeds of several magnitudes over the hard disk drive. Tech ARP
Wi-Fi networks are wasting a gigabit – but multi-user beamforming will save the day Wi-Fi equipment based on the new 802.11ac standard – often called Gigabit Wi-Fi – has been on the market for nearly two years. These products offer greater bandwidth and other improvements over gear based on the older 802.11n specification, but they don't implement one of the most impressive features of 11ac. Ars Technica