Why some tech workers are sharing desks and computers; Is the future of computing… analog?
Apple stock opens at record high of $680 at at $637 billion market cap after Samsung patent win [TECHCRUNCH]
Following Apple’s landmark victory against Samsung late Friday night, the company’s stock price opened today at a record high of $680 per share, the first day of trading since the court ruling. This record surpasses the company’s all-time high of $674.88, which was achieved on last Tuesday, August 21. This record also pushed Apple’s market capitalization to a new high of $637 billion.
Last Friday, the jury in the Samsung v. Apple case awarded Apple $1.049 billion in damages. After just three days of deliberating, the jury found that Samsung purposely infringed on key Apple patents.
Computer programmers learn tough lesson in sharing [THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]
Their method is “pair programming”—where two people share one desk and one computer. One person is the “driver,” controlling the keyboard and typing in code. The other “navigates,” monitoring design and scanning for bugs.
Pairing is finding fans at technology companies including Facebook Inc. and mobile payments start-up Square. Its advocates speak in glowing terms of the power of coupling, saying paired coders can catch costly software errors and are less likely to waste time surfing the Web.
Amazon’s $79-per-year Prime shipping expands to offer 15 million items, now more popular than Super Saver delivery [THE NEXT WEB]
However, it’s the free two-day shipping option that has seen incredible growth and now outpaces Amazon’s free Super Saver delivery in terms of volume, with the Kindle Fire and the $79 Kindle topping the charts. The Kindle Touch ranked number three and the first book of the Fifty Shades of Gray trilogy the fourth most popular item.
Inventor challenges a sweeping revision in patent law [THE NEW YORK TIMES]
Mr. Stadnyk and his lawyer — along with some academics, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists — assert that the legislation is a triumph of corporate lobbying power over the founders’ wishes, and that it threatens America’s stature as the world’s leading innovator.
The present system, one of the nation’s oldest patent principles and called “first to invent,” relies on lab notebooks, e-mails and early prototypes to establish the date of invention. The impending law would overturn that by awarding patents to the inventors who are “first to file” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Darpa has seen the future of computing… and it’s analog [WIRED]
Through its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the DoD is funding a new program called UPSIDE, short for Unconventional Processing of Signals for Intelligent Data Exploitation. Basically, the program will investigate a brand-new way of doing computing without the digital processors that have come to define computing as we know it. The aim is to build computer chips that are a whole lot more power-efficient than today’s processors — even if they make mistakes every now and then.
