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  Wow: Intel unveils 1 teraflop chip with 50-plus cores

I thought the prospect of quad-core tablet computers was exciting.Then I saw Intel's latest -- a 1 teraflop chip, with more than 50 cores, that Intel unveiled today, running it on a test machine at the SC11 supercomputing conference in Seattle.That means my kids may take a teraflop laptop to college -- if their grades don't suffer too much having access to 50-core video game consoles.It wasn't that long ago that Intel was boasting about the first supercomputer with sustained 1 teraflop performan...

   Intel,Chip,Multi-core,teraflop     2011-11-16 08:15:39

  The Greatest Hacks of All Time

Reader's advisory: Wired News has been unable to confirm some sources for a number of stories written by this author. If you have any information about sources cited in this article, please send an e-mail to sourceinfo[AT]wired.com. In 1972, John T. Draper discovered he could make free long-distance phone calls using a whistle from a Cap'n Crunch cereal box. The whistle emitted a 2,600-hertz tone that got him into the internal authorization system at the phone company. With another noi...

   Hack,Greatest,All time     2012-02-29 05:05:42

  Please Steal These webOS Features

When Apple introduced the first iPad in 2010, I bought one immediately. I didn’t know what I’d use it for, but I was sure that I would find some use for it. I never did. I played around with it, wrote some code for it, but eventually stopped using it. I would pick it up from time to time to read something or watch a YouTube movie, but even that was a rare occurrence. I have since picked up an iPad 2, and I’m using it a lot more than the first iPad, but again, I’...

   WebOS,Feature,HP,borrow     2012-02-22 05:45:49

  I hate cut-and-paste

Me, I blame the IDE's.Coding used to be hard. Not because programming itself was overly hard, but mostly because editors absolutely sucked. How much the typical development environment in the 70's and 80's sucked is hard to convey (except for a very lucky few, and those would have likely been using DEC and WANG gear). I got in on the tail end of the punch card era. Punching your own program is lots of fun. Once. And if you drop a deck you get to play with the sorter, which is also lots of fun (o...

   IDE,Editor,Cut and paste,Shortcut,Blame     2011-10-24 11:33:46

  Why We Moved Off The Cloud

Cloud computing is often positioned as a solution to scalability problems. In fact, it seems like almost every day I read a blog post about a company moving infrastructure to the cloud. At Mixpanel, we did the opposite. I’m writing this post to explain why and maybe even encourage some other startups to consider the alternative.First though, I wanted to write a short bit about the advantages of cloud servers since they are ideal for some use cases.Low initial costs. Specifically, you...

   Cloud,Cloud computing,Mixpanel,Get off,Disadvantage,Drawback     2011-10-28 10:22:32

  Android hardware fails more than iPhone, BlackBerry; repairs cost carriers $2 billion

Repairs to Android smartphones cost wireless carriers $2 billion per year according to a new year-long WDS study that tracked 600,000 support calls around the globe. Android’s popularity and the introduction of a number of low-cost smartphones has put a strain on the wireless business model, WDS noted in its report. “Deployment by more than 25 OEMs and lower-cost product coming to market is leading to higher than average rates of hardware failures and, in turn, return and repair cos...

   Android,iPhone,Blackberry,Hardware,Cost     2011-11-03 13:26:42

  Fun With Numbers

Yesterday the NPD Group issued a report on U.S. tablet sales in the U.S., from January through October of 2011. Worth noting up front is that the numbers in this report are about sales — actual tablets sold to actual customers — not “shipments” from the factory to stores and warehouses.Much-reported on is that second-place went to HP, after its fire sale on the discontinued TouchPad. What hasn’t gotten much commentary is the extraordinarily contort...

   Tablet,iPad,TouchPad,HP,Market share,2011     2011-11-24 09:12:58

  Lessons Learned while Introducing a New Programming Language

I've used a lot of languages (professionally) over the years: (off the top of my head) Cold Fusion, HTML, Javascript, php, SQL, CSS, ASP(classic & .net), C#, Ruby, Flex, Java, & Clojure. Each language has pros and cons. Being a programmer, it's easiest to discuss the cons - and in general I believe it was best said:I hate all programming languages - Matt FoemmelI think it's important to start with this in mind. At some point you're going to hate what you're advocating, so imagine h...

   Experience,New language,Tips,Risk     2012-03-05 05:13:59

  List of freely available programming books

Meta-ListsHow to Design Programs: An Introduction to Computing and Programming25 Free Computer Science EbooksFree Tech BooksMindView IncWikibooks: ProgrammingCheat Sheets (Free)CodePlex List of Free E-BooksBook Training - On Video!Sofware Program Managers Network - Free EBooksEBook Share @ linbai.infoFreeBooksClub.NetTheassayer.orgO'Reilly's Open Books ProjectTechBooksForFree.comGalileo Computing (German)Microsoft Press: Free E-BooksGraphics ProgrammingGPU GemsGPU Gems 2 - ch 8,14...

   Free,eBook,Links,Programming,List     2011-11-14 08:03:34

  How To Optimize Your Site With HTTP Caching

I’ve been on a web tweaking kick lately: how to speed up your javascript, gzip files with your server, and now how to set up caching. But the reason is simple: site performance is a feature. For web sites, speed may be feature #1. Users hate waiting, we get frustrated by buffering videos and pages that pop together as images slowly load. It’s a jarring (aka bad) user experience. Time invested in site optimization is well worth it, so let’s dive in. What is Caching? ...

   Website performance,Speed,HTTP Cache,Hash code     2011-12-10 06:11:33