Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Thursday, August 02, 2012

HOUSE OF THE DAY: Now You Can Own A Beautiful Bronx Mansion That Was Originally Designed For Jesus

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-home-designed-for-jesus-in-the-bronx-hits-the-market-2012-8

riverdale house jesus christ

The Chapel Hill Mansion in Riverdale, N.Y. has hit the market for $13.588 million.

The home, built in 1928, has seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms.

The head of the New York Theological Society commissioned the house for the preparation of the "second coming of Jesus Christ," according to The Real Deal.

The home would house "the Christian savior once he returned to earth to judge the living and the dead," listing broker Sean McPeak of Prudential Douglas Elliman, told The Real Deal.

The 15,000-square-foot house sits on 2.3 acres of land.

Manhattan College previously owned the property, and had planned to use it as dormitories or a seminary, but is now in the hands of a private owner who is an attorney, The Real Deal reported.

Welcome to West 253rd Street.

The home features marble floors imported from the Vatican and chandeliers from the Plaza Hotel.

In the foyer and bar area, gold and silver leaf adorn the ceilings.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Please follow The Life on Twitter and Facebook.

Dying a Single Shirt With CO2 Saves 25 Liters of Water [Video]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5931326/dying-a-single-shirt-with-co2-saves-25-liters-of-water

The simple act of turning a shirt from white to blue—or any color—requires 25 liters of water and enough harmful chemicals that every clothing manufacturer should be looking for safer methods. Like this fantastic CO2-based DryDye technology that Adidas has started using which doesn't require a single drop of H2O.

But it's not like the color dyes are blasted at the shirts with a pressurized CO2 canister—although that would be pretty awesome. In reality, the fabrics and chemical dyes are placed in a large sealed chamber, and CO2 is pumped in to a pressure of about 74 bar. The tank is also heated to 88 degrees fahrenheit at which point the CO2 behaves like a gas and a liquid, allowing the colored dyes to thoroughly permeate the fabrics without the use of excessive chemicals.

The DryDye process actually uses about half the chemicals as traditional water-based dying methods, and requires about half the energy too, so it seems like an all-around better way to go about tinting clothing. Which is probably why Adidas has already made 50,000 shirts using this safer process this summer, and is banging the drum so everyone knows how awesome they are for doing so. [Adidas via Gizmag]

Software Glitch Costs Trading Firm $440 Million In 45 Minutes [Wtf]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5931284/software-glitch-costs-trading-firm-440-million-in-45-minutes

Knight Capital lost $440 million in a flash on Wednesday when newly installed trading software went haywire. That's nearly double the company's second quarter revenue, and could be enough to sink Knight for good.

You know all the concerns about automated high-speed trading on the stock market? This.

So how does a screw up this colossally epic happen? According to The New York Times, the company "accidentally sold all of the stocks it bought Wednesday morning." Seriously:

The problem on Wednesday led the firm's computers to rapidly buy and sell millions of shares in over a hundred stocks for about 45 minutes after the markets opened. Those trades pushed the value of many stocks up, and the company's losses appear to have occurred when it had to sell the overvalued shares back into the market at a lower price.

Oopsies! What? How the hell does that happen by accident? This isn't the first time a computer error has caused massive losses on the stock market—in fact Knight took it on the chin during the NASDAQ Facebook IPO fiasco as well—and it's just going to keep happening if the industry isn't better regulated. Financial institutions hate regulation, but as this case plainly proves rules aren't just there to protect us plebs. They can save billionaire asses as well. [New York Times]

Image via Mark Lennihan / AP

ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/arm-mali-opencl/

It's been a while since ARM announced its next generation of Mali GPUs, the T604 and T658, but in the semiconductor business silence should never be confused with inactivity. Behind the scenes, the chip designers have been working with Khronos -- that great keeper of open standards -- to ensure the new graphics processors are fully compliant with OpenCL and are therefore able to use their silicon for general compute tasks (AR, photo manipulation, video rendering etc.) as well as for producing pretty visuals.

Importantly, ARM isn't settling for the Embedded Profile version of OpenCL that has been "relaxed" for mobile devices, but is instead aiming for the same Full Profile OpenCL 1.1 found in compliant laptop and desktop GPUs. A tall order for a low-power processor, perhaps, but we have a strong feeling that Khronos's certification is just a formality at this point, and that today's news is a harbinger of real, commercial T6xx-powered devices coming before the end of the year. Even the souped-up Mali 400 in the European Galaxy S III can only reign for so long.

Continue reading ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it!

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs

ARM claims new GPU has desktop-class brains, requests OpenCL certificate to prove it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | | Email this | Comments

Samsung's New Superfast Chips Could Fuel Your Future iPhone [Guts]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5931281/samsungs-new-superfast-chips-could-fuel-your-future-iphone

Samsung has just announced some superfast new chips and they might one day power an iPhone.

The company claims the Pro Class 1500 line is the Usain Bolt of flash memory cards—four times speedier than predecessors, and possibly the fastest chips around. They can read data at 140 MB per second and write it at 50 MB per second and process at 1,500 IOPS (inputs/outputs per second) for writing and 3,500 for reading. They come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB configurations. Despite their very public squabbling, Samsung still provides Apple with some very important components, including flash memory.

And the latest chips could be the innards that supercharge not your next iPhone, but your next next iPhone. [Samsung Tomorrow via Engadget]

Image credit: Samsung Tomorrow

Compact Hydroponics Cube Turns an Extra Parking Spot Into a Vegetable Farm [Video]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5931253/compact-hydroponics-cube-turns-an-extra-parking-spot-into-a-vegetable-farm

Tired of paying the exorbitant markup for fresh produce at your grocery store? For a mere $70,000—and the cost of finding someplace else to park your car—this compact hydroponics container lets you grow a farm's worth of vegetables on a minimal chunk of land.

In fact, the creators of the aqua-cube claim it can successfully grow up to 23 different varieties of leafy vegetables, or smaller root plants like radishes and turnips, at the same time. And while $70,000 is certainly a steep investment, its yield is promised to be upwards of 10,000 heads of lettuce per year. More than the average family can consume, but perfect for a restaurant with a free parking spot near the kitchen. Just make sure you spring for the rooftop solar panel option to help cut down on the aqua-cube's $4,500 yearly power bill.

Sharp: we're making displays for new iPhone and shipping them this month

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/sharp-new-iphone/

In an effort to end today's dismal earnings report on a high, Sharp's president Takashi Okuda has purposefully let slip that his company is among those contracted to manufacture displays for a new iPhone. We already have numerous reasons to suspect the iPhone 5 will be announced around September 12th, and Okuda has now corroborated that by saying that "shipments will start in August." If earlier rumors and component leaks are to be trusted, the screen will be significantly larger (likely around 4-inches) and slightly less rotund than that on the iPhone 4S.

Filed under: Cellphones

Sharp: we're making displays for new iPhone and shipping them this month originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 06:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Pe! rmalink< /a> | source

source

Reuters | Email this | Comments

Nixeus shows off 27-inch IPS Vue monitor with 2560 x 1440 resolution, $430 price

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/nixeus-27-inch-IPS-Vue-2560-1440/

Greenhorn Nixeus, perhaps better known for media streamers, has jumped headfirst into the display market with the 27-inch IPS Vue model boasting a 2,560 x 1,440 pixel WQHD resolution and priced at $430 -- around half what you'll pay for similar panels. The new model, which the company says will be released on August 21st, seems to be nicely specced with an LG S-IPS panel, true 8-bit color, 6ms refresh, DVI / DisplayPort / HDMI 1.4 connection options and full-portrait tilting. If you've been coveting more screen space and pixels, but don't want to be reduced to bread and water, it'll go up for pre-order soon.

Filed under: Displays

Nixeus shows off 27-inch IPS Vue monitor with 2560 x 1440 resolution, $430 price originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 10:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source

source

Ana ndTech | Email this | Comments

This Guy Stomps Out 3G Hotspots at the Olympics [Olympics]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5931156/this-guy-stomps-out-3g-hotspots-at-the-olympics

Portable Wi-Fi hotspots, powered by 3G, are banned at all the Olympic venues in London. But while that might sound like a hollow threat, this man makes sure it isn't, by sniffing out rogue Wi-Fi networks and shutting them down.

There is, of course, good reason to want to keep portable Wi-Fi hotspots out of the games. At events that increasingly rely on wireless communication —for everything from referee mics through timing devices to wireless cameras—interference could easily get in the way of the smooth running of things. As the saying goes, better to be safe than sorry.

There is, however, something rather amusing about seeing a man wander around with an antenna to stop people sharing their internet. [Reddit]

Image by Aschebescher

Aperion Audio Intimus 4T Summit touts uncompressed surround sound without the cords

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/01/aperion-audio-intimus-4t-summit-touts-uncompressed-surround-sound/

See that little box next to those huge speakers? That's Aperion Audio's ticket to what's reportedly a no-compromise approach to wireless home theater. The Intimus 4T Summit Wireless is billed as the only system of its kind to transmit uncompressed 24-bit, 96KHz audio to its 5.1- or 7.1-channel speaker array without having to string wires across the living room. There's no interference and no more than 5ms of lag, even when that wunderkind box is processing Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio. Aperion is still touting an easy setup that can create a sweet spot in awkward spaces. If you like the idea, the only real catches are the $2,999 and $3,499 prices for the respective 5.1- and 7.1-channel systems -- although the outlay may be worthwhile to cut the clutter without sacrificing the finer details of Blu-ray movie soundtracks.

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Aperion Audio Intimus 4T Summit touts uncompressed surround sound without the cords originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source

source

Aperion Audio | Email this | Comments

Facebook releases its 2011 energy usage report, details your carbon footprint

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/01/facebook-2011-energy-statistics/

More Facebook news, but this time we're back to the numbers instead of reporting on a new feature, improvement or integration. As part of its mission to swap the familiar blue for something of a greener tinge, Facebook released today its carbon footprint and overall energy usage figures for 2011. Turning bio-babble into easy visualizations, the company points out that for the whole year, an active user occupied roughly the same carbon footprint as one medium latte. Or, if you're a fan of the tipple, a couple of glasses of wine. Impressively, 23 percent of the social giant's energy usage came from clean and renewable sources, which puts it well on the way to its 2015 target of 25 percent or more. If you'd like more info and a complete breakdown of the stats, the full report is available at the source link below.

Filed under: Internet

Facebook releases its 2011 energy usage report, details your carbon footprint originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source

source

Facebook | Email this | Comments

Ice Cream Sandwich takes a bite out of Gingerbread, represents 15.9 percent of Android devices

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/01/ice-cream-sandwich-now-on16-percent-of-android-devices/

Two major updates later (three if you count the tablet-exclusive Honeycomb), and Gingerbread is finally starting to falter. According to Google's latest two week survey of devices accessing the Play store, Ice Cream Sandwich is on the rise, filling out 15.9-percent of the Android user base. That's a full five points ahead of Android 4.0's July score, and it's eating into the OS' other flavors: Gingerbread (Android 2.3) dropped by 3.4-percent, Froyo (Android 2.2) by 1.8 and Eclair (Android 2.1) by a meager half a percent. Google's latest confectionery update, Jelly Bean (Android 4.1), made an appearance as well, eking out a shy 0.8-percent of the market. Check out Google's collection of charts for yourself at the source link below or let us know where your devices falls in the comments.

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Software

Ice Cream Sandwich takes a bite out of Gingerbread, represents 15.9 percent of Android devices originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 22:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Android Police | source

source

Android Developer | Email this | Comments

Samsung starts mass-producing 4x faster mobile flash memory, kickstarts our phones and tablets

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/samsung-starts-mass-producing-4x-faster-mobile-flash-memory/

Samsung isn't content to leave fast NAND flash memory to traditional solid-state drives. Its Pro Class 1500 promises a big jolt to the performance of frequently pokey smartphone and tablet storage. By how much? That name is a clue -- it reaches 1,500 IOPS (inputs/outputs per second) when writing data, which along with 3,500 IOPS data reads is about four times faster than any previous embedded flash chip Samsung has tested. In the real world, that leads to as much as 140MB/s when reading data and 50MB/s for writes. The speed comes after Samsung has thrown virtually every trick in the book at its new chips, including a dense 20-nanometer manufacturing process, quick toggle DDR 2.0 memory with its own controller and a new JEDEC memory standard with 200MB/s of bandwidth to spare. Samsung hasn't named customers for the 16GB, 32GB and 64GB parts that are rolling out of the factories, although we'd do well to remember that a flourishing phone business doesn't guarantee that the only major customer is Samsung itself: even in the face of legal challenges, Samsung still has at least one noteworthy client that tends to snap up much of its flash supply.

Continue reading Samsung starts mass-producing 4x faster mobile flash memory, kickstarts our phones and tablets

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablet PCs, Storage

Samsung starts mass-producing 4x faster mobile flash memory, kickstarts our phones and tablets originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 01:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source

source

Samsung Tomorrow | Email this | Comments

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon pricing spotted in Hong Kong

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-pricing-spotted-in-hong-kong/

Lenovo floated the ThinkPad X1 Carbon past us in May without so much as a whisper of what the lightweight Ultrabook's price would be. The company doesn't mind shouting it out in what looks to be a Hong Kong back-to-school promo flyer, though. As long as the Newsmth.net post represents the final pricing, local residents can normally expect to pay about HK$12,880 ($1,660 US) for an X1 Carbon with a 1.7GHz Core i5, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. That's quite the premium if you compare it directly to what we see in the US for a PC like the Samsung Series 9, although it's tricky to tell if prices will be comparable on the other side of the Pacific: there's no sales tax in Hong Kong, among other factors. Even if the price varies by the time of the US launch later this summer, students in the city are already getting a discount to HK$9,180 ($1,184) that suggests at least some wiggle room if competition among Ultrabooks grows especially fierce.

[Thanks, Sam]

Filed under: Laptops

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon pricing spotted in Hong Kong originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 02:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | source

source

Newsmth.net | Email this | Comments

Archos teases G10 xs with first press shot, vows launch in three weeks

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/02/archos-teases-g10-xs-with-first-press-shot/

Previously, Archos has only ever given us a fleeting glimpse of the G10 xs tablets it's planning to launch this year -- FCC filings don't count. Cogs in the company's media machine are turning once again, as the company has posted a teaser press image on Facebook with confirmation that a launch is just three weeks away. It's difficult to read the tea leaves from the oblique shot we're given, although we already know that the Android 4.0 slate will support microSD, mini-HDMI and a connector for that Eee Pad Transformer-style keyboard dock. Our main questions now center on when the G10 xs pops up in the US as well as the degree of bang we'll get for our buck.

Filed under: Tablet PCs

Archos teases G10 xs with first press shot, vows launch in three weeks originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Aug 2012 03:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Traceable.de (translated), Notebook Italia (translated) | source

source

Archos (Facebook) | Email this | Comments

Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)