picture!"Jon is waiting for his hair implants to grow out before posting a pic. (Not really)."

Jon Stokes

Deputy Editor

Jon has a B.S. in computer engineering from LSU, with a minor in mathematics. He holds two master's degrees in early Christian history from Harvard Divinity School, and he is currently a Ph.D. student in the New Testament department at the University of Chicago. Jon's recent academic research interests include the Apocalypse of John, Plutarch's Isis and Osiris, and the history and current uses of technology in the humanities. His first book, Inside the Machine: An Illustrated Introduction to Microprocessors and Computer Architecture, was published by No Starch Press in 2007. In his spare time, Jon trains Kendo at U of C's Kendo club and occasionally at Choyokan dojo on Chicago's northside. He also periodically guest-blogs on the topic of religion and politics at The Big Con, a publication of the Campaign for America's Future. As a co-founder and co-owner of Ars Technica, Jon can be as humorless as he likes in his bio, deviating from the bio guidelines in his omission of the requiste note of whimsy that signals to the reader that he doesn't take himself too seriously. Jon lives in Elmhurst, IL with his lovely wife, Christina, and their two dogs, Bently and Emet.

Game on: NVIDIA, PS3 hardware in Top 500 Supercomputers list

I looked at the latest Top 500 Supercomputers list and what did I see? An NVIDIA (GP)GPU and the brains of the PS3.

November 18, 2008 - 06:56AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Intel's 3.2GHz monster Nehalem roars onto the scene

Intel has officially launched Core i7, a.k.a. "Nehalem." Details inside.

November 18, 2008 - 05:05AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Hands on: Telenav Shotgun Internet-connected GPS has promise

A new device from GPS software and services company Telenav rushes in where Dash has ceased to tread: the Internet-connected GPS market. I took the new Telenav Shotgun for quick spin, to see if it can deliver on the promise of the erstwhile Dash Express.

November 10, 2008 - 06:45PM CT - by Jon Stokes

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AMD puts 500 more employees out to pasture

AMD adds another 500 to the ranks of the unemployed, following up May's layoffs with another round. Also, one AMD employee is fired and under federal indictment for allegedly stealing Intel secrets.

November 06, 2008 - 02:27PM CT - by Jon Stokes

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SanDisk claims hundredfold flash speed boost for writes

Flash memory maker SanDisk has announced a technology that it claims will increase write speeds by up to 100 times. The company is also pushing new performance and reliability metrics, which we take a look at.

November 05, 2008 - 06:45PM CT - by Jon Stokes

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IBM looks to beat identity thieves with a USB ZTIC

IBM has announced a new USB device that's aimed at making online banking transactions more secure. The new ZTIC ("stick") device allows a user to detect man-in-the-middle attacks by doing a little man-in-the-middle work of its own.

November 05, 2008 - 07:00AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Dash Express woes highlight Silicon Valley challenges

Dash Express made huge waves with its innovative, Internet-connected GPS unit. But now the VC-backed company has fallen victim to the downturn-induced belt tightening that will affect more such startups in the coming months.

November 03, 2008 - 09:35PM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Analysis: on eve of election, problems... Again

Here's a brief look at the state of the nation's voting apparatus on the eve of tomorrow's election. To make a long story short, not enough has changed since 2006, or 2004, or 2002.

November 03, 2008 - 08:30PM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Analysis: 2009 will be a rough year for flash storage makers

The NAND flash market has turned ugly for memory makers, and the carnage looks set to continue. Here's a brief primer on the forces at work.

October 27, 2008 - 08:56AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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ACLU: 2/3 of US population lives in "Constitution-free" zone

Nine out of the top ten US cities and two thirds of the country's population lives in a "Constitution-free zone," according to a new campaign by the ACLU.

October 23, 2008 - 09:45PM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Intel makes case for Moorestown, x86 Mobile Internet Devices

At IDF Taipei today Intel talked up its Moorestown mobile platform. The company also announced that it will bring 3G HSPA support to mobile internet devices.

October 21, 2008 - 07:10AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Scared profitable: Valley VCs preach return of the Old Ones

From the "good luck with that" dept., Sequoia Capital tries to scare its portfolio CEOs straight with a look at how bad things might get. And they might accidentally be right.

October 12, 2008 - 09:35PM CT - by Jon Stokes

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NSA eavesdropped on Americans, journalists in Baghdad

Two whistleblowers tell ABC that the NSA had them recording the regular conversations of ordinary Americans stationed in the Middle East, conversations that they were ordered to archive despite their apparent lack of a connection to anything terror-related.

October 09, 2008 - 03:10PM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Analysis: data mining doesn't work for spotting terrorists

A comprehensive report from the National Research Council makes an iron-clad case against attempts to use automated data mining to spot terrorists and terrorist cells.

October 09, 2008 - 09:17AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Analysis: BYOC and the democratization of knowledge work

Last week, Citrix announced it would give its workers a stipend to buy their own laptops for both work and personal use. As a chapter in the story of IT consumerization, the news was significant. But as a step toward empowering the most productive users, it was tiny.

October 06, 2008 - 08:30AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Classic.Ars: Understanding Moore's Law

In this installment of Classic.Ars, we take you back to April of 1965, when Electronics magazine published an article by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. The article and the predictions that it made have since become the stuff of legend, and like most legends it has gone through a number of changes in the telling and retelling.

September 27, 2008 - 08:00AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Classic.Ars: An Introduction to 64-bit Computing and x86-64

Ars explains the theory and praxis of 64 bit computing.

September 20, 2008 - 08:00AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Rochester Cube's chips are stacked—in a prototype fashion

3D chip stacking is in the news again, and it's definitely exciting stuff. But, unfortunately, the story of the new "Rochester Cube" prototype seems to have spun a bit out of control.

September 17, 2008 - 08:42AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Intel launches six-core Xeon monster chip

Intel's new six-core Xeon is the first x86 processor to come within a hair's breadth of the 2 billion transistor mark. It's big, it's bad, and if you need a Xeon upgrade but aren't looking forward to Nehalem (and QuickPath) then this one's for you.

September 16, 2008 - 07:20AM CT - by Jon Stokes

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Twilight of the GPU: an epic interview with Tim Sweeney

I recently sat down with Epic Games co-founder and graphics guru Tim Sweeney to talk about GPUs, and we wound up talking about what comes after the GPU. In short, he wants to throw out DirectX, OpenGL, and legacy baggage of a decade of hardware acceleration, and rethink 3D gaming from the ground up.

September 14, 2008 - 06:30PM CT - by Jon Stokes

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