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IntenseDebate, the enhanced commenting system that was recently acquired by WordPress’s parent company Automattic, has relaunched to the public (the service originally opened its doors in late 2007, but reentered private beta as soon as it was acquired). IntenseDebate has also released the public beta of its WordPress plugin, which includes a number of features that make it much more appealing to blog owners.

The most important feature is two-way comment syncing, which copies all comments left on your blog through IntenseDebate’s system to your WordPress install. One common complaint about early versions of some comment systems, including InstenseDebate and close competitor Disqus, was that comments resided on their servers, leaving blog owners in a bind if they ever chose to discontinue the system. Disqus remedied this issue with their 2.0 release in August and IntenseDebate has done the same with this plugin.

Other new features in the plugin include integration with the WordPress admin panel, search engine-optimized comments, setting and profile sync, and trackback support. WordPress will also start integrating some IntenseDebate features into its standard install beginning with version 2.7, though details on the integration have been scant. And while the service is now owned by Automattic, it continues to offer support other blogging platforms, which actually comprise the majority of the service’s installbase.

Besides Disqus, other competitors in this space include SezWho and JS-Kit.

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Slatterz writes “Closely integrating GPU and CPU systems was one of the motivations for AMD’s $5.4bn acquisition of ATI in 2006. Now AMD is looking to expand its Stream project, which uses graphics chip processing cores to perform computing tasks normally sent to the CPU, a process known as General Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU). By leveraging thousands of processing cores on a graphics card for general computing calculations, tasks such as scientific simulations or geographic modelling, which are traditionally the realm of supercomputers, can be performed on smaller, more affordable systems. AMD will release a new driver for its Radeon series on 10 December which will extend Stream capabilities to consumer cards.” Reader Vigile adds: “While third-party consumer applications from CyberLink and ArcSoft are due in Q1 2009, in early December AMD will release a new Catalyst driver that opens up stream computing on all 4000-series parts and a new Avivo Video Converter application that promises to drastically increase transcoding speeds. AMD also has partnered with Aprius to build 8-GPU stream computing servers to compete with NVIDIA’s Tesla brand.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Doesn’t this photo sculpture by Canadian artist Susy Olivera look a lot like the papercrafts you can make yourself? It’s all polygonal as if it’s straight out of the Playstation One. Susy fashions these 3-D models together using photos and foam.

The one shown above is called “Time is Never Wasted.” To me, it bears a resemblance to Alec Trevelyan of Goldeneye after the confrontation with Ourumov. If only he had three more minutes.

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US President Bush admits the financial system needs reform but insists the credit crisis was not a failure of the free-market.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President-elect Joe Biden was all smiles Thursday when he paid a courtesy call the man he will succeed, Dick Cheney. But he has insisted he wants to be nothing like him. Biden has called Cheney “the most dangerous vice president we’ve had probably in American history” and said he couldn’t name a single good thing Cheney had done….

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s financial picture grew darker Thursday, a day marked by breathtaking numbers: a quarter-trillion-dollar budget deficit for a single month, a half-million new applications for unemployment benefits and a 900-point swing that led Wall Street to its third-biggest point gain ever….

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration is expected to draw 1 million-plus to the capital, and already some lawmakers have stopped taking ticket requests and hotels have booked up….

Contract talks between Boeing and its white-collar union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), will continue Friday.

eldavojohn writes “You might remember the tiny news that Half Life 2 source code was leaked in 2003 … it is the 6th most visited Slashdot story with over one kilocomment. Well, did anything happen to source of the leak, the German hacker Axel ‘Ago’ Gembe? Wired is reporting he was offered a job interview so that Valve could get him into the U.S. and bag him for charges. It’s not the first time the FBI tried this trick: ‘The same Seattle FBI office had successfully used an identical gambit in 2001, when they created a fake startup company called Invita, and lured two known Russian hackers to the U.S. for a job interview, where they were arrested.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Todd Pacific Shipyard was the only bidder this morning on a contract to build a new 64-car ferry for the state ferry system’s Port Townsend-Keystone run.