shrinkage
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ARM and Globalfoundries hammer out deal to promote 20nm mobile chips
Sure it's British, but ARM's mobile empire is being built through careful alliances rather than conquest. The chip designer's latest deal with Globalfoundries, which mirrors a very similar agreement signed with rival foundry TSMC last month, is a case in point. It's designed to promote the adoption of fast, energy-efficient 20nm processors by making it easy for chip makers (like Samsung, perhaps) to knock on Globalfoundries' door for the grunt work of actually fabricating the silicon -- since the foundry will now be prepped to produce precisely that type of chip. As far as the regular gadget buyer is concerned, all this politicking amounts to one thing: further reassurance that mobile processor shrinkage isn't going to peter out after the new 32nm Exynos chips or the 28nm Snapdragon S4 -- it's going to push on past the 22nm benchmark that Ivy Bridge already established in the desktop sphere and hopefully deliver phones and tablets that do more with less juice.
Boost Mobile announces 'Shrinkage' plans, cost goes down over time
Loyalty has its benefits, and that's certainly true in the wireless industry; though carriers don't always advertise it, it's not uncommon for longtime customers to get lower upgrade prices and early availability on hardware -- not to mention sweet, succulent grandfathered plans. To that end, Boost Mobile is introducing its questionably-named line of "Shrinkage" plans that will reduce your plan pricing by $5 a month for every six months of on-time payments. Two plan types are eligible: the standard monthly unlimited plan starts at $50 and can go as low as $35 over time, while the BlackBerry unlimited plan starts at $60 and can fall to $45. They're available starting today, but existing customers need to get in touch with Boost to sign up. Follow the break for the full release.
Tauren weapons unshrunk
Before I start this post, I should warn you that every single post we do about the size of something ingame must, by contractual obligations, contain a risqué double entendre somewhere within. Be warned.Reader Veras was nice enough to point out to us that as of the 2.4.2 release, Tauren two-hand weapons have returned to normal size as planned. It seems to me that this got fixed fairly quicker than other size issues that Blizzard has had. We still have no idea how their code works (and what they're changing that causes all of these weird issues), but at least they're getting better at fixing things.Of course, as any Tauren Fury Warrior will tell you, it's not the size of your two-hand weapon -- it's how you use it. Contract fulfilled.
