Tiger Woods: I Posted Those Facebook Photos With Lindsey Vonn To Crush The Paparazzi

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-tiger-woods-posted-facebook-photos-with-lindsey-vonn-2013-3

When Tiger Woods decided to post glamour shot photos of him and his new ladyfriend, Lindsey Vonn, it was unexpected. 

Woods is normally very private. This very public declaration of his personal life didn't make sense. And, frankly, the whole thing just seemed weird.

Today, during a press conference at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, he explained why he did it.

Basically, he wanted to take money out of the pocket of paparazzi who were stalking him.

"It's very simple. We're very happy where we're at, but also we wanted to limit the stalkarazzi and all those sleazy websites that are out there following us,'' Woods said, according to ESPN.

Last night, Fox Sports' Robert Lusetich reported Woods has been surreptitiously seeing Vonn since November. During that time, photographers have been trying desperately to get photos of the pair together.

Lusetich estimates the first photos of Vonn and Woods could have fetched $500,000 from tabloids.

By preempting the paparazzi from getting the first photos of the couple, Woods and Vonn popped the market. The hope is that they'll be left alone now.

"I've had situations where it's been very dangerous for my kids and the extent they'll go to. We basically devalued the first photos," he said, a! ccording to ESPN, "Unfortunately, that's just the way it is in our society right now, and we felt like it was the best thing to do. I'm very happy about it.''

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NVIDIA's GRID VCA now available to graphic crunching pros at a cool $24,900

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/20/nvidias-grid-vca-now-available/

While it won't supercharge Crysis or other games like its upcoming Cloud Gaming device may, NVIDIA's GRID Visual Computing Appliance is now up for grabs to designers, animators and visual production types for $24,900 plus a $2,400 yearly software license fee. That sum will merely get you the starter model consisting of 8 GPUs, 16 threads of CPU and 192GB of RAM to service up to 8 users, while the 16 GPU model -- which doubles all that up -- is hitting the dreaded "contact us" price point. For reasonable-sized studios with multiple designers or artists, though, it'd allow humdrum machines to link up via a network and still crunch complex models -- making the price rather beside the point for us individual users. For more info, hit the PR after the jump.

Filed under: Desktops, Networking, NVIDIA

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Samsung announces pricing for S9 UHD TV: $39,999, shipping in late March

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/20/samsung-s9-uhd-tv-pricing/

At its home entertainment event in New York City today, Samsung filled in the details about the HDTV lineup we first glimpsed at CES 2013 in January. If you recall, several high-profile sets were first unveiled at the show, and pricing is unsurprisingly steep to match. The 85-inch S9 UHD TV, with a slick, easel-style frame and "Precision Black Pro" display tech, will go for $39,999 when it launches at the end of March.

Samsung also announced pricing for its Smart Evolution Kit, a hardware set of products -- including a quad-core processor, GPU and memory -- that plugs into the back of a Sammy-designed TV to keep hardware and software up to date as new models are released. The kit will go for $300 when it debuts in May, and it wil come bundled with the latest Smart Touch Remote. And finally -- because what ultra-luxe home entertainment system is complete without high-end audio? -- there's the HW-F750 soundbar, which incorporates the company's vacuum tube technology and boasts a wireless subwoofer. The HW-F750 will connect with select Samsung Smart TVs via Bluetooth, and it will set you back $799 when it goes on sale in March. Hit up the press release past the break for more info.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD< /a>, Samsung

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Half Of What Advertisers Think They Know About You Is Wrong

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/advertisers-hilariously-wrong-2013-3

Considering that they’ve never explicitly asked us about our preferences, it’s a minor miracle of big data that web advertising companies know anything about us at all.

But at least half of the things they think they know about you—from your political preferences to your affinity for ladies’ fashion—could be wrong, and sometimes hilariously so.

Or at least, that’s what data from a survey put out by a firm called Enliken would suggest.

Because Enliken’s business is getting people to give up more-accurate data about themselves in exchange for access to content, and because the survey wasn’t very big—covering just 116 people and about 9,000 data points—I took the survey myself in order to see whether ad targeting firms’ notions about my preferences were as inaccurate as Enliken suggested.

The survey included more than 50 different data points gathered by a variety of tracking companies, from my interest in travel to my preference (or not) for Skyy Vodka. My own results weren’t as damning as Enliken’s overall numbers—only 26% of the data about me was obviously wrong—but many individual data points were laughably wrong.

I am anything but, for example, an auto fanatic and a hard core sports fan—whereas some ad targeting firms (Enliken doesn’t say which) pegged me as such.

 

Data from the overall survey of 116 people also suggests that not all tracking firms are created equal.

If these numbers are accurate, last-place finisher Yahoo was almost twice as likely to be wrong about a pe! rson&rsq uo;s preferences as first-place Google. (We’ve reached out to Yahoo for comment, and will update this once we hear back from them.)

 

Enliken is part of a larger trend, including “data locker” companies like Personal.com, that think people will give advertisers what they crave—accurate information about who they are and what they might like to buy—if people trust the intermediaries who gather that data.

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EPFL mixes graphene and molybdenite to make very efficient, flexible flash memory

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/20/epfl-combines-graphene-and-molybdenite-for-super-efficient-memory/

We've seen graphene chips, and we've seen molybdenite chips. What would happen if we combined the two? If EPFL's experimental flash memory is any clue, we might get one of the better blends since chocolate met peanut butter. The chip uses graphene's high conductivity for the memory itself, as well as for electrodes, but stuffs molybdenite in between to rapidly switch electrical states (such as what you'd see in write commands) while using little power. The hybrid is theoretically both faster and more power-efficient than conventional silicon designs, but that's just the start: the extra-thin nature of either material is better-suited to flexible electronics on top of shrinking the chip footprint. If there's anything at this stage that would sour EPFL's dreams of a storage utopia, it's time. There's no immediate mention of commercialization plans for the mutant memory, which could leave us stuck on silicon for awhile.

Filed under: Storage, Science

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Source: ACS Nano

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