An anonymous reader writes “The Last of Us was one of the last major projects for the PlayStation 3. The code optimization done by development studio Naughty Dog was a real technical achievement — making graphics look modern and impressive on a 7-year-old piece of hardware. Now, they’re in the process of porting it to the much more capable PS4, which will end up being a technical accomplishment in its own right. Creative director Neil Druckmann said, ‘Just getting an image onscreen, even an inferior one with the shadows broken, lighting broken and with it crashing every 30 seconds that took a long time. These engineers are some of the best in the industry and they optimized the game so much for the PS3’s SPUs specifically. It was optimized on a binary level, but after shifting those things over [to PS4] you have to go back to the high level, make sure the [game] systems are intact, and optimize it again. I can’t describe how difficult a task that is. And once it’s running well, you’re running the [versions] side by side to make sure you didn’t screw something up in the process, like physics being slightly off, which throws the game off, or lighting being shifted and all of a sudden it’s a drastically different look. That’s not ‘improved’ any more; that’s different. We want to stay faithful while being better.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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The Technical Difficulty In Porting a PS3 Game To the PS4
Sometimes, you need the tool that’s best suited to the job in hand. And for George R. R. Martin, that means using an archaic word processor—WordStar 4.0, running on DOS, no less—to write Game of Thrones . He explained why to Conan last night. Read more… 
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An upcoming study in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research says that some tank-style e-cigarettes emit cancer-causing formaldehyde in their vapor at levels similar to traditional tobacco cigarettes. The New York Times , which revealed the findings ahead of publication, says a second study confirms the results. Read more… 
1sockchuck (826398) writes “Microsoft will invest $1.1 billion to build a massive new server farm in Iowa, not far from an existing data center in West Des Moines. The 1.2 million square foot campus will be one of the biggest in the history of the data center industry. It further enhances Iowa’s status as the data center capital of the Midwest, with Google and Facebook also operating huge server farms in the state.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.