September 2, 2010

The Day Trader’s Paradise [Featured Workspace]

What do you get when you have space for a custom office setup, a good amount of cash, and the vision to make it all happen? Dozens of monitors and the need for your own personal power plant.

We’ve been watching Steve’s office since he first posted the construction pictures into the Lifehacker Workspace pool. Slowly we’ve watched his office take shape from a spackled room with naked monitor mounts into the jaw dropping display of computing power you see above.

Steve just finished the project and posted some pictures to update us, writing:

Originally there was to be 60 monitors, a mix of 19s and 24s however it changed a bit and there is now 40 24″ monitors and another 20 monitors offsite for development.

There is six computers running all the monitors, eac computer has a core i7 975, 24 gb of DDR 3 memory, two SLC SSDs in raid 0 and a large amount of nvidia NVS 420s as well as Nvidia 9800 GTs.

This office is used for intraday trading and development.

And by “intraday trading and development” he means displaying the world’s largest line chart screensaver when he isn’t using it to build a better bomb and issue demands of monetary compesation to world governments—or something like that we’d imagine. Check out more pictures of his awesome setup below:






You can check out more pictures of Steve’s office by visiting the various photo sets he shared during construction: Office construction, Office, and New Office Done.

If you have a workspace of your own to show off, throw the pictures on your Flickr account and add it to the Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool. Include some details about your setup and why it works for you, and you just might see it featured on the front page of Lifehacker.

The Day Trader’s Paradise [Lifehacker Workspace Show and Tell Pool]



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Ask the Commenters Roundup [Hive Mind]



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Sony Vaio P Clone Can’t Compete with the Original [Clones]

So, the Sony Vaio P has a clone. Congrats, Sony! Too bad the mimicry ends with the aesthetics:

The appearance is spot on, but the insides are decidedly sub-par. The Atom processor is a less powerful than the processor offered in the Vaio P, and the memory maxes out at 1GB. If you’re comparing, that’s a full GB short of the original.

Since this is a clone however, the price is really the only area where one could say it “competes” with Sony’s premium-priced Vaio P.

The clone offers a 160GB for about $300, as well as a $380 model with 350GB storage, 2Gb ram and 3G.

Aaand scene. [Gizchina - Thanks, Andi]



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Nokia Teases, Heavily, That C-Series Phones Are Launching at CeBIT [Nokia]

Remember Nokia? They make cellphones (still!), and at CeBIT they’re hinting hard that two more, possibly the C5 and C6, are about to join their ranks.

The hint was packaged in the Nokia Conversations newsletter. C if you can figure out what it is:

“Of course, we don’t comment on rumours or leaks, but we are looking forward to C BIT for the next series of Nokia announcements. Right we’re off to pack our rucksacks and lederhosen, C you there.”

Do you C? Because they’re laying it on pretty thick (and so am I!). So coy, that Nokia. Too bad they’re doomed. Maybe these phones will help. Otherwise, C ya later. [Engadget]



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Construct an Ultra-Slow Pinhole Camera to Create Surreal Photos [Camera Hacks]

If you were impressed by the interesting results and novelty of a plain old pinhole camera, you’ll want to check out these crazy pinhole cameras and their month long exposures.

You read that correctly. Ultra slow pinhole photographers use special paper that takes months of light streaming through the pinhole to develop. From Ollipekka Kangas, a slow pinhole photographer:

Basically solarigraphic camera is a pinhole camera, very slow one. These pinhole photographs taken with a lensless pinhole camera with a extra long exposure. I use black&white paper which is 5-10 ASA. Exposure time can be very long, in some photos up to six months. Usually average camera is hidden in city for one to two months. The picture will appear without developing photographic paper with any kind of chemicals. Exposured paper is scanned in darkness and developed in Photoshop. All the cameras are very low tech, cheap boxes, canisters or film cans. This method in is antidope for digital photographic madness. I can take only like 5 pictures in month.

Sun draws many interesting traces in photos, you can really see the time passing by. Some times camera is tilted by passerby or tape just goes loose. Double exposures or traces of humidity can be seen in photos.

The video below showcases photos by Ollipekka:

Slow pinhole photography is definitely the extreme opposite of the instant gratificaiton of snapping a picture on a DSLR and immediately checking it on the LCD screen. The results are also far removed from those you could capture with a digital camera, providing you with a distinctly analog way of recording the life of a location over days, weeks, and months. Check out the link below for additional samples and examples of slow pinhole camera construction—some of the entries aren’t in English and some are, but the design of the camera is apparent from the photos.



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