John At The Center

An anonymous reader writes “In a foot-meet-bullet type move, NVidia is going to disable PhysX engine if you are using a display adapter other than one that came from their company. This despite the fact that you may have an NVidia card on your system specifically to do this type of processing. ‘For a variety of reasons some development expense, some quality assurance and some business reasons Nvidia will not support GPU accelerated PhysX with Nvidia GPUs while GPU rendering is happening on non-Nvidia GPUs.’ Time to say hello to Microsoft dx physics or Intel’s Havok engine.”

via Slashdot Hardware Story | NVidia Cripples PhysX “Open” API.

“The Tech Report has published the first details describing the architecture behind Nvidia’s upcoming Fermi GPU. More than just a graphics processor, Fermi incorporates many enhancements targeted specifically at general-purpose computing, such as better support for double-precision math, improved internal scheduling and switching, and more robust tools for developers. Plus, you know, more cores. Some questions about the chip remain unanswered, but it’s not expected to arrive until later this year or early next.”

via Slashdot Hardware Story | Nvidia Discloses Details On Next-gen Fermi GPU.

Nvidia Fermi Next-Gen Graphics Architecture Has 512 Cores for Radioactively Melting Faces

via Nvidia Fermi Next-Gen Graphics Architecture Has 512 Cores for Radioactively Melting Faces – Nvidia fermi – Gizmodo.

On Deck Capital www.ondeckcapital.com, a leading provider of small business financing solutions, unveiled today their Instant Decision lending technology that could help thousands of small businesses nationwide gain immediate loan pre-qualification. In an industry first, On Deck Capital can now connect real-time performance data into an electronic credit decision. Through Instant Decision, the company can examine the financial health of the business borrower by tapping into their cash flow performance, as well as business credit and personal credit data. The company then immediately makes a decision for pre-qualification of a loan, thus transforming the business loan process.The Instant Decision technology leverages On Deck’s capabilities to capture and analyze data to evaluate populations underserved by traditional bank loans.

via On Deck Capital Launches First-Ever Cash-Flow Driven Online Small Business Loan Application –’Instant Decision’ Technology Reduces Lengthy Loan Approval Process and Pre-Qualifies Businesses for up to $50,000 in Under Five Minutes – Press Releases – CNBC.com.

On Deck Capital is financed by some of the nation’s leading venture capital firms, including Contour Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Khosla Ventures, RRE Ventures and Village Ventures. For more information, please visit: www.ondeckcapital.com.

SPACs are back again.

It is one of the strongest signs yet that deal activity has picked up and investors have regained an appetite for riskier bets.

In recent days, a unit of New York investment bank Greenhill & Co. bought Iridium Satellite LLC, the satellite phone operator, for $680 million. And a fund sponsored by Texas investor Thomas Hicks purchased Resolute Natural Resources Co., a Denver-based oil and gas company, in a transaction valued at $582 million.

via Yes, Risk Is Back Now, With SPACs – WSJ.com.

About the Only Thing Going on in Secondaries Right Now: Stanford Management Co., which oversees billions of dollars in assets for Stanford University, has tapped Cogent Partners to gauge investor interest for a possible secondary sale of portions of its alternative investment portfolio. (Private Equity Beat)

via peHUB » peHUB Second Opinion 9.28.

As you tick down the list of ways trust might be restored, you find one failure after another in terms of providing reliable information on the risks of particular financial products or strategies, and no matter what regulators or anyone else tries to do to rebuild the trust in financial institutions and products that has been lost, recent track records make it likely that this will be a long, drawn out process. Given that forgetting about such risks over time seems to be an ingredient in the development of bubbles, I’ll let you decide whether that’s good or bad.

via Economist’s View: When You Believe in Things That You Don’t Understand….

Mr. Buffett says his Trands suits transformed his image. “They’re comfortable and people tell me they look good,” says Mr. Buffett, reached this week at his office. “I went 78 years before I got a compliment on my appearance.”

Mr. Buffett, who says he has no ownership stake in Dayang, especially likes that his new suits are wrinkle-resistant. “If I am on a trip and wearing them day after day, they don’t wrinkle,” he says. He says he gave his old suits to charities.

via Omaha’s Oracle of Style Sings the Praises of a Chinese Suit – WSJ.com.

Simple. You can short calls and buy puts on the same strike and class. Let’s say you short 1 October 45 call and buy 1 October 45 put. It’s effectively identical to the risk/reward of shorting 100 shares of stock.

But here’s the catch. When a stock is difficult to borrow, you will have to short the stock at a discount to the price you see on the board. In the case of AIG, the October synthetics trade for a roughly 50 cent discount to AIG stock. Sounds like a ripoff, no?

Well, it’s really not. If a stock is difficult to borrow, your clearing firm may still let you short it, but you will get hit with interest charges. Those rates may vary, but the discount of the synthetic to the stock itself will reflect that “cost” between now and when the options expire. At least the current cost.

So in other words, even though the option synthetic seems cheaper than the stock, it’s really not. It reflects the market rate of the carrying cost, in addition to a premium reflecting the risk of getting bought in on the short stock.

via Shorty Fire In AIG | Blog – Daily Options Report.

Some economists at the University of Chicago reeeeaaaally didn’t like Paul Krugman’s article about the state of macroeconomics. Big surprise, I know. Still, it was interesting to hear first-hand how aggrieved people felt (not any of the U of C economists mentioned in this post, I should add).

via My day in Chicago with Steven Levitt, Richard Thaler, Eugene Fama, etc. – The Curious Capitalist – TIME.com.