Daily News Brief: AMD Employees Seeing Pink(slips)

AMD Handing Out Pink Slips

Unlike the A64 glory days, which by now seem a distant memory, it's tough to remain an AMD hopeful in today's Core 2 landscape. But as bleak as it may seem for the AMD loyal, the outlook's even less rosy for employees of the once mighty chip maker. The company announced plans to cut up to 10 percent of its workforce by the end of Q3 2008, and went on to warn investors that Q1 revenue looks to be $1.5 billion, about $100 million shy of what Wall Street analysts were expecting. The layoffs fall in line with AMD CEO Hector Ruiz's promise to bring the company back to profitability in the second half of the year.

Bloggers Lead On-Call Lifestyle

The New York Times takes an interesting look at the lifestyle of professional bloggers and the pressure to stay on top of their game in the pay- per-click economy. For many, staying wired to constant news streams and events comes with the territory, and for some, health risks may also be part of the job. The New York Times reports two premature deaths of prominent bloggers in the past several months, and notes some interesting symptoms by those still living. Get the full scoop here.

Heatpipes Hone in on Memory

From CPU heatsinks to crazy loops of copper on motherboards, heatpipes now dominate the enthusiast cooling scene, and you can add memory to the list. OCZ was the first to introduce heatpipe assisted heatspreaders on their Reaper line, and Kingston appears to be following suit. At IDF the memory giant showed off FB-DIMMs sporting blue heatspreaders with dual-heatpipes. Take a peek here

Geekiest Tattoos Ever

Remember the Apple tattoo William H. Macy proudly displayed in the movie Wild Hogs? Aside from the poor choice of product pimpage, such a permanent etching easily qualifies for geek points, but it has nothing on Dr. Ray LaPierre of McMaster University. LaPierre, who serves as Assistant Professor of the Department of Engineering Physics, managed to carve atoms off the surface of a hair using a focus ion beam microscope, and inscribed the school's name and logo on the follicle. Of course, the microscope was designed to fabricate nanoscale devices, but tattooing hair earns more geek cred. Well done, LaPierrie.

TVs with Frickin' Lasers

Mitsubishi unveiled no less than 14 new HDTV models, including brighter DLPs with thinner frames, and ultra-thin LCD TVs with improved sound capabilities. But of most interest to technology addicts is the emergence of a brand new television category: Laser TV. Branded as LaserVue, Mitsubishi can boast the first-ever laser-powered television, expected to become available in Q3 2008. According to Mitsubishi, LaserVue TVs will produce twice the color spectrum of today's HDTVs while consuming half the power of LCD TV, or one-third the power of plasma sets. No word yet on screen sizes and pricing.

Fanboy Fight

Forget the WWE, today's cage fight pits four fanboy, er, experts, one each representing Linux, Mac OS X, Windows Vista, and Windows XP, in a free-for-all geek fight over who's chosen OS reigns supreme. After you've read the rants, cast your vote on the last page on which you think is the best operating system. Linux currently holds the top spot, with Mac OS X a close second.

Did the President Pirate Music?

Avast, me hearties, ye be the judge...