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Yahoo! researcher breaks Pi record in finding the two-quadrillionth digit
A new record has been broken in the field of mathematics by a team of researchers and a super computer working on creating a very long version of Pi. The team, led by Nicholas Sze of Yahoo!, used the company's Hadoop cloud computing tech to break the previous record by more than double, creating the longest Pi yet. Back in January, the record was set at 2.7 trillion digits using a standard, full mathematical calculation of the problem, but the Hadoop route was different. It set different parts of the computer to work on different sections of the problem, cutting up the problem into manageable-sized pieces (as shown in the formula in the image above). We're sure this record won't survive long enough for anyone to write a song about it, but it's quite an achievement all the same.
Best Buy breaks opening weekend sales volume record with UK debut
As it turns out, last weekend wasn't just momentous for the fact it put Thurrock on the map (any map!). Best Buy got in touch with us today to tell us its first UK store has racked up the highest number of opening weekend sales in the company's history. During our own visit to the store, we saw thousands flooding in and out, no doubt attracted by the novelty and deep discounts on offer from Best Buy. Notably, while this is a record in terms of volume, no such claims are mentioned relative to revenue or profit, suggesting the company was shooting to attract as many customers as possible, in hopes of recouping any opening day losses in repeat custom down the line. Given the feedback from one shopper, who came in for an Avatar Blu-ray disc and left with a pair of Wii consoles and a hard drive, that might not be such a bad strategy. Full PR after the break.
Twenty-eight-year-old Asteroids high score beaten
America gets a bum wrap sometimes, but you should keep something in mind. You should remember that America's the sort of country where a 41-year-old locksmith from Seattle can spend 58 hours of that most precious gift of life scoring 41,336,440 points in Asteroids to break a 28-year-old world record. We're not sure what that implies about this great land, but it implies it very, very hard. It's a staggering accomplishment Koku Gamer brings word of, and one that leaves us with just one question for John McAllister: We've waited two and a half days, would you please come help us get our keys out of our car now? Our dog looks very sleepy.
LHC breaks its own energy record, still less powerful than Lady Gaga
The Large Hadron Collider is no stranger to setting energy records: back at the end of November it broke the 0.98 TeV record by hitting the 1.18 TeV mark. Well, the problem beleaguered collider's just handily surpassed itself -- this time with a truly stunning 3.5 TeV -- with beams of protons on record as having circulated at 3.5 trillion electron volt. Now, we're not scientists or anything, but that sure is a lot of volts! CERN's moving on later this week and will begin colliding the beams so they can check out the tiniest particles within atoms in the hopes of finding out more about how matter's made up. We look forward to hearing all about that, too -- but until then, we made do by reading the source over and over.
There is a new King of Kong
Sorry, it's not a sequel to King of Kong, the documentary that showed the battle between ruthless Billy Mitchell and nice guy Steve Wiebe to become the world's best Donkey Kong player. This is a new guy on the scene, 35-year-old plastic surgeon Hank Chien, who's just taken the world record in the game according to Twin Galaxies with 1,061,700 points after a two-and-a-half-hour session. Chien says he expects that the honor will keep him "pelvis-deep in cocaine and highly-desirable sexual partners for all of my days." Or at least we bet he was thinking that.
Man leaps past George Costanza's fictional Frogger score
Seinfeld isn't just the greatest sitcom ever (don't try to argue with us, you're wrong), it's actually relevant in the games landscape. See, the classic coin-op Frogger was featured prominently in one of the last episodes of the show. In said episode, George Costanza scored a whopping 860,630 points -- a score many believed to be laughably high. Sure, it's a comedy show, so why not make the high score ridiculous? Well, through a perfect combination of Mountain Dew and mozzarella -- and just the right amount of grease on the stick -- young Pat Laffaye bested that high score on January 1, 2010, getting his name on the Twin Galaxies high score board with an impressive 896,980 points using an original Frogger arcade cabinet. We take our hat off to Laffaye ... and offer our condolences to the weeping ghost of George Costanza. [Via Eurogamer and Examiner]
Estimates emerge of Apple's Q1 iPhone, Mac sales
Apple typically reports their 1st quarter financial results in late January, so we'll have to wait a few more weeks for the official word. However, the analysts have begun to share their estimates and the numbers are very impressive. Brian Marshall at Broadpoint.AmTech has estimated that Apple sold 3.3 million Macs during the last quarter, according to MacNN. Here's a little perspective: Apple's all-time sales record for Macs, set during the previous quarter, is 3.05 million. That record was a 17 percent jump from the 2.6 million it sold in the same quarter a year ago. Marshall also suggests that laptop sales could be up as much as 19 percent year-over-year at 865,000 units. Meanwhile, Philip Elmer-DeWitt has begun gathering estimates of iPhone sales and posting them at Brainstorm Tech. They range from 11.30 units sold (Brian Marshall at Broadpoint AmTech) to 8.17 units (Mark Moskowitz, J.P. Morgan). The interesting thing is that the low estimate, 8.17 million iPhones sold, would represent a 10.8% increase from the last September's record of 7.37 million if true. Despite would could have been a rocky year for Apple -- Steve Jobs was out for serious health reasons and a lousy US economy -- they did very well. Are you optimistic for 2010 or waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Conundrum: Xbox Live tops 2 million simultaneous users
In a positively baffling announcement, Microsoft's Major Nelson has tweeted that Xbox Live has reached a new record: Two million simultaneous users. That means two million people were logged into Xbox Live at the same time earlier today. The puzzling question is this: What in the world could have possibly driven so many people to sign synchronously onto Xbox Live? We can only assume that people are taking part in some seriously heated matches of Dragon Ball: Raging Blast. Barring that, it could be that the Final Fantasy XI Ultimate Collection has brought thousands back into the fold. We just don't know what else it could be.
Windows 7 breaks Amazon UK pre-order volume record, ousts Harry Potter
Take it from us, your London-based sleuths, when anything sells faster than Harry Potter books or DVDs in the UK, it's scorching hot. Case in point is Microsoft's Vista successor, which has sold so well that it has beaten the Amazon UK pre-order record previously held by J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In fact, Windows 7 was able to tally up more sales in the first 8 hours of pre-order availability than Vista was able to collect altogether. Now that's what we call an upgrade.
Battlefield 1943 downloads break servers, and records
Put your rivalry to the side for a moment and join hands. Acknowledge that together, we, as XBLA and PSN users, have reached a tremendous milestone: 600,000. That number represents the to-date total of $15 transactions between us and our respective online services to purchase Battlefield 1943; and we did so, overwhelmingly -- and in record-setting fashion -- on the first day and week of the game's download-only release. In just fifteen short days, we have sent a message to Microsoft, Sony and third-party publishers. We're willing to pay a bit more and spend it on a slice of good old-fashioned stuff we still get on our retail discs (even if it's a little rough during takeoff). Sorry, indies -- go put it on the App Store.
EVE Online sets new record with over 45,000 players logged in
The new year has already brought with it a new milestone for EVE Online, which has now broken all previous records for players active at a given time in its setting of New Eden -- over 45,000. This is a substantial achievement for a game where the setting is one single server, representing a vast galaxy of over 5000 solar systems to explore or control. CCP Manifest writes: "What a great way to start out 2009 -- a new PCU (Peak Concurrent User) record of 45,186! While we've made tremendous serverside changes in the EVE Online infrastructure with the EVE64 and StacklessIO initiatives, it is truly a testament to our loyal fans that 5 years into EVE's existence we are still breaking records and more people are flying in New Eden than ever before. We know we'll be trying to find leftover champagne from New Year's EVE to celebrate. When we do, we'll toast to you!"
WotLK breaks internal records at EB Games
One of our secret correspondents inside an EB Games store forwarded us this picture of an internal email sent out to the videogame retail company, saying that not only was the week of WotLK's launch the biggest sales week of the year, but it was the biggest week ever outside of last year's Christmas sales, and the biggest launch the chain has ever had. Additionally, at EB Games, Wrath was the highest presale ever, the highest single-format (which means PC/Mac only) week one sales (in just two days), and the highest day one sales of any game ever, multiformat or otherwise.Pretty incredible. EB Games isn't a small company by any means, and while we knew Wrath was big, it looks like Blizzard's second WoW expansion smashed pretty much every sequel it could in the chain, even toppling some of the console gaming records. Anyone that claimed World of Warcraft had peaked with Burning Crusade should be looking pretty foolish at this point.We'll have to see where Blizzard goes from here -- there's no doubt that one reason Wrath was so popular out of the gate was that it returned to the "core" of Warcraft III: the story of Arthas and the Scourge. Can Blizzard replicate that with another expansion, no matter what the setting?
Dark Knight Blu-ray set to break shipping records, sales records next?
Hopefully Iron Man isn't getting too cozy in the #1 Blu-ray spot, with over a million copies of The Dark Knight headed to store shelves on December 9. Iron Man set a first week mark of over 500,000 sold on an unknown quantity shipped, but it's probably a bigger question whether Warner can keep it's BD-Live servers working than whether it can take the top spot. VideoBusiness points out the old days of March '07 when Casino Royale shipped 100,000 units, or 300's 250k combined high definition disc launch last year. Number watchers will also be keeping an eye out for Blu-ray's share of first week sales; last year Transformers set records with 190,000 HD DVDs compared to 8.3 million DVDs, with Iron Man averaging around 10% how many will chose Batman the way it was meant to be seen?
A pint of Guinness World Records information
Underachievers can now take to the Wii in an effort to impress their friends with virtual accomplishments. TT Games has announced Guinness World Records: The Videogame (really? a game?) for the Wii and DS, so there's no reason for you not to be included in the book that features a new holographic cover every year. It's full of mini-games, of course, and features some of the most popular records -- like growing the longest fingernails, and eating a jumbo jet. Sounds ... gross. World Records enables players to compete in such prestigious events via "accessible game mechanics." No clue what these actually are, but if it involves sitting around for 50 years growing long fingernails, then at least it'll score highly for longevity. It's released in Q3 2008, if you can wait that long to participate in the "most remarkable activities in the world."[Via press release]
Latest MMO pop report shows a WoW growth spurt
This is old news really: we all know that there are 10 million of us playing Blizzard's MMORPG juggernaut. In MMOGChart's latest report however, there appears to be a little growth spurt in the early part of this year. This is surprising when we consider the fact that WoW is three years old. In the video and computer game business, three years is considered "old", even for a game that is constantly updated. Other games would usually see a tapering off in terms of population growth at this stage. Not only is market-dominating WoW bucking the trend, it's actually enjoying a surge in its population! Is this growth spike the result of anticipation for Wrath of the Lich King? Probably so, according to MMOGChart: "There appears to be a slight acceleration of growth a month or two before the release of an expansion, which then continues for approximately 3-6 months afterwards." With the unprecedented size of WoW's playerbase, we can probably expect the hype to be built up a lot sooner than "a month or two". The report has gone on to break down WoW's existing 10 million subscribers by territory:
