Technology Thread

YCobb · **Posted:** Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:50 pm

Mete wrote:

IBM cracks open a new era of computing with brain-like chip: 4096 cores, 1 million neurons, 5.4 billion transistors

Those are some crazy numbers. 176000 times more power efficient than a general purpose CPU for brain simulations.

I think I remember seeing the 2011 prototype of this that they mention - it was tasked with playing Tennis or something at some point, right?
Thrilled to see that the tech is approaching practical usefulness.

Mete · **Joined:** Thu Sep 17, 2009 2:54 pm **Posts:** 12656

Windows 10 was announced and so far it seems like they're working to unify all their platforms and pay special attention to regular desktop users, who they neglected with 8. Which is good.

And yes, it's called Windows 10, not 9.

Cori · **Posted:** Tue Sep 30, 2014 1:18 pm

Windows Nein

mister popo · **Posted:** Tue Sep 30, 2014 1:23 pm

Mete wrote:

Windows 10 was announced and so far it seems like they're working to unify all their platforms and pay special attention to regular desktop users, who they neglected with 8. Which is good.

And yes, it's called Windows 10, not 9.

It looks okay, but I don't see much reason to switch over from 7 yet, even following the Windows Cycle.

Syobon · **Joined:** Mon Jan 24, 2011 10:34 am **Posts:** 15027

.gif is finally dying.

Mete · **Joined:** Thu Sep 17, 2009 2:54 pm **Posts:** 12656

That helps with bandwidth, but I'd like for them to focus on improving quality as well. What this basically means is that we'll be getting gif quality at lower sizes, as opposed to better quality at the same size as with webm. Although it seems the decision to adopt mp4 was largely due to better support on mobile devices, including hardware acceleration which improves battery life.

AquaBat · **Joined:** Tue Jul 15, 2014 9:26 pm **Posts:** 2373

Webms are better anyway

Mete · **Joined:** Thu Sep 17, 2009 2:54 pm **Posts:** 12656

Mp4 has the benefit of h.264 which is the de facto video compression standard and has much more widespread support than VP8, which is used for webms. Including, like I mentioned, hardware acceleration on mobile devices.

Actually, now that I'm reading up on it, apparently Android has support for VP8 hardware acceleration on fairly new chips, but I can't find any solid info on whether it's standard. No idea about iOS.

MisterMusashi · **Posted:** Thu Oct 09, 2014 3:00 pm

Mete wrote:

Mp4 has the benefit of h.264 which is the de facto video compression standard and has much more widespread support than VP8, which is used for webms. Including, like I mentioned, hardware acceleration on mobile devices.

Actually, now that I'm reading up on it, apparently Android has support for VP8 hardware acceleration on fairly new chips, but I can't find any solid info on whether it's standard. No idea about iOS.

I have an ancient, farty Droid X that can't do anything fun (such as the mobile companion apps for recent games; they don't support this thing). Is there something I could do to test it?

Also, it appears we can't put .gifv in the [img] embedding whatsits.
There's always URLs, tho, I guess, eh?

Also, looks like I can right click the .gifv to see the controls... like pause.
I can now pause a gif on a single frame, move the slider to any frame, and hide the controls from obstructing the image.
........this has....... potential applications.
(you know exactly what I'm talking about)

What a time to be alive...

Mete · **Joined:** Thu Sep 17, 2009 2:54 pm **Posts:** 12656

Not sure what you mean by testing. Webms work on Android 2.3+ regardless, it's just that if the chip is older and lacks hardware acceleration support, all the work is dumped on the CPU which is considerably slower and uses more battery.

Try opening this webm with your phone.

Syobon · **Joined:** Mon Jan 24, 2011 10:34 am **Posts:** 15027

Pretty rad rig.

Mete · **Joined:** Thu Sep 17, 2009 2:54 pm **Posts:** 12656

Now that is nice.

Brekkjern · **Joined:** Tue Mar 29, 2011 9:22 am **Posts:** 1435

The watercooling there is beautiful! I envy the lucky owner of that build. He should be proud!

On an unrelated note, I just managed to set up VMware vCenter on my ESXi host. Just need a few more hosts and I can get a proper high availability network going. If I also could get my booty in gear and configure my switch, that would be great.

Syobon · **Joined:** Mon Jan 24, 2011 10:34 am **Posts:** 15027

Remember Shadows of Mordor and it's recommended i7? Turns out it runs just fine on an OCd Pentium G3258.

One really begins to wonder who exactly writes these system requirements.

Sarducar · **Joined:** Fri Nov 14, 2014 10:08 pm **Posts:** 911

Syobon wrote:

Remember Shadows of Mordor and it's recommended i7? Turns out it runs just fine on an OCd Pentium G3258.

One really begins to wonder who exactly writes these system requirements.

Intel, duh.

AWKWARD ZOMBIE

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