Correction: the US was kicked out of Iraq. Well, except for that giant base in Baghdad thinly disguised as embassy.

MOSCOW) — Russia's customs agency says it has seized radioactive metal from the luggage of a passenger bound for Tehran.

The Federal Customs Service said in a statement that its agents found 18 pieces of metal Friday at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport after a radiation alert went on. It says the gauges showed that normal radiation levels were exceeded by 20 times. (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory Day.)

The customs agency said prosecutors have launched a probe into the incident.

The Interfax news agency says the pieces contained Sodium-22, a radioactive isotope of sodium that could only be produced at a nuclear reactor.

Sodium-22 is a positron-emitting isotope with a remarkably long half-life.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2102660,00.html#ixzz1gk5h5ZGP

Wow, scary stuff huh? Radio active, Iran, investigation, prosecutors, seized, remarkable properties, high radiation levels, alerts,.  Cant be good! Someone smuggling a nuclear bomb to Iran?

In reality a (medical) student was "caught" carrying samples of sodium-22, which is used all the time for medical imaging and calibrating instruments. It has no military use whatsoever, you can find it in any large hospital (and Iran is perfectly capable and allowed under the NPT to produce it. Its produced in cyclotrons btw, not in nuclear reactors.)

This is even less news worthy than a student being caught trying to board a plane with a box of cereals. But boxes of cereal do not help beat the drums of war I suppose.

And you also finally re-enabled the block finding cheat

For a carton of 10 packs.

The left figure (458.0) fluctuates a bit, I think its a 5s average; the right one that I highlighted (456.6), doesnt change at all (after running for a while). I think that is the average since starting the app?

You sure? Highlighted numbers are average per card AFAIK:

BTW, slightly related, a long time ago I uploaded a video that shows throttling on a Pentium 4 prescott. Interesting is that it appears the thermal sensor on that system was rigged, and deliberately provided a much too low temperature when the CPU is not throtteling. It could be a bios bug, but it looks deliberate to me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-Nx_gZ5VPU

Prescotts had a reputation for being notoriously hot, but anyone reviewing that system would think otherwise.

You are right the same mistake is repeated everywhere, and I was confused by it initially myself; thing is, intel usually doesnt specify absolute maximum safe temperatures, because no one has to know. Throttling and termtip (with even margin on that) ensure you never get there anyway, as the chips are designed so they cant overheat. For "casual" overheating, say very high ambient temp + power virus,  throttling takes care of it. In the case of catastrophic failure, like mis-mounted heatsink, termtrip will still save your chip.

What they do publish in great detail is what the cooling solution has to be capable off to avoid throttling from ever happening in real world circumstances.


Im nothing of the sort; but common sense should tell you 62C cant be dangerous for a CPU.
I appreciate the response though.


try this one, has some good info on the mechanisms (as well as Tj target specs):
http://lenry.atw.hu/tjmax.pdf

Excellent video on the topic:
Inside Story Americas - US anti-terrorism bill: Liberty vs security

Lower is better, no one is arguing that. I just strongly disagree that the maximum operating temperature would be 60 or 62C as the above poster claimed. Intel puts the number somewhere between 95C and 105C.

Now it is true that higher temps will inevitably reduce lifespan. But so will running a CPU 24/7. Of course there is no  telling if that lifespan of your cpu is 10 years or 1000 years.

BTW, I dont like to rely on anecdotal proof, because it is no proof, but I do want to point out Ive had an Athlon 64 in my HTPC running near and often at its shutdown temperature for 2+ years. It was almost constantly above 90C and Ive recorded peaks of 135C (!) before it shut down and I had to reboot it.  

WHy would I do something insanely stupid like that? Because I was convinced the sensor was faulty;  this was a low power A64 with no reason to overheat and the heatsink never even got luke warm, fan speed didnt change a thing, nor did swapping coolers. I could even run the CPU with no heatsink and although it would shut down after just a few minutes, with the heat sensor registering 135C in the bios, the heatspreader was warm, but still not quite burning my fingers. So I decided the measurement sensor was faulty (and causing unnecessary shutdowns under load).

Little did I know I had a badly packaged chip and the CPU die did not make proper contact with the heatspreader, rendering the heatsink useless. The sensor was accurate, and the chip had no way to dissipate its heat. After more than 2 years, I removed the aluminum heatspreader, mounted a heatsink with a shim directly on the naked die and found the chip to be a stellar overclocker that has worked for years after.

Recommended? Most definitely not. But CPUs can stand a bit of heat.

You will not begin to throttle because of temps until you are approximately 20C above Thermal Specification. For example, the Thermal Specification (Tcase) of the Q6600 G0 is 71C. At approximately 91C, it will begin to thermally throttle. This then makes sense why the TJ Max target is 90C; Intel is trying to make the sensor the most sensitive when it is at the point of damaging the CPU. TJ Max Target is not the point of damage, but it is close to the THERMTRIP# point (the point when the CPU automatically throttles and shuts down until proper temperatures are restored). Since as discussed earlier thermal specification (Tcase) is actually the temperature of the center of the IHS and it's temperatures are ussually 10C below core temps, there is actually a 10C buffer between Distance to TJ Max=0 and Permanent Silicone Damage. What Intel has done is said that they are not allowing for any difference between the temperature of the cores and the temperature of the IHS and thus we are aligning Tcase (without buffer) with TJ Max. Remember however that depending upon the solder the difference between Tcase and Core temps is ussually 10C, Intel is simply being safe and not allowing for any difference even if it exists.

If you look at most CPUs Tcase values, their TJ Max Targets are almost always 20C above their Thermal Specifications (Tcase) which perfectly matches with this concept.

http://www.overclock.net/t/476469/the-truth-about-temperatures-and-voltages

My Q6600 has a target TJ of 90C. Its not gonna melt at 70C.


http://intel.wingateweb.com/taiwan08/published/sessions/TPWS002/FA08%20IDF-Taipei_TPWS002_Nov_1006.pdf

So why doesnt it shut down at 82C? Because it doesnt, I have tested it. At 95C it starts throttling. I suspect it shuts down at 100C or more (which you can only achieve if you can disable throttling or put the damn thing in an oven). So indeed to get anywhere near those temps would have to involve a CATASTROPHIC COOLING FAILURE  as in a heatsink that fell off, there is no way to get that high otherwise.

You may be right those temps are not delta's, but the temps are tcase which are vastly different from the internal sensor and more importantly, they are specifications for the heatsink.



No. Im actually quite anal about temps, my 5870 runs at 35C my other cards below 60C. But that doesnt mean I believe for one second that running any cpu at 60C is dangerous.

If you mean trade litecoins for bitcoins, just go here:
https://btc-e.com/

Just deposit your litecoins and sell them for bitcoins. Not gonna make you rich either, but at least it makes at least an order of magnitude more sense than mining bitcoins with your cpu.

No, but your interpretation of it is wrong. First of all, Tcase is not what the internal thermal sensor measures, its the outside of the heatspreader (you have no sensors there).

Moreover, what you are looking at is specifications for the heatsink, its not the maximum safe cpu temperatures.  Look at those charts, do you think a 10W CPU will get damaged at 44C? Ambient could be that high! Those temperatures are delta's, nothing else makes sense when speccing a heatsink. The heatsink has to be able to keep the temperature difference at those temps.

Again, do you think intel would not design its own heatsinks to conform to their own specs?

Not really, it works fine. But dont be fooled by the numbers. btc-e, like most smaller exchanges has a large spread and little market depth. When looking now the buy price at btc-e is 3.1 compared to 3.18 at MtGox. But that 3.1 is only for 0.2 BTC. Feel to play arbitrage if you like.

I saw your links, but that has to be a misinterpretation. There is no way any CPU is going to suffer from 62C. More likely its that the heatsink has be to designed to keep the temperature delta below 62C, which will correspond to 80+C temperature depending on ambient.I have a Q6600 myself, with the stock cooler you can not keep it below 62C even at stock speed (Im getting substantially lower temps @3Ghz with a huge aftermarket cooler, but that is besides the point). The fact thermal throtteling doesnt kick in until 90+C is another clear indication that 60 or 70C is fine.

Agreed it makes no sense to mine bitcoins with it though. Try litecoin.


Edit: googled around a bit. See this:
On the temperature side, we noted via Intel TAT software after 15 minutes of 4x Prime95 and the indiscrete Intel CPU cooler delivered with our model of the QX6700, the following results: 69°C with the QX6700 and 66°C with the Q6600.
http://www.behardware.com/articles/651-2/intel-core-2-quad-q6600.html

Its unthinkable intel would ship their once flag ship cpu with a cooler thats utterly unable to keep the cpu below its design specs in an open rig case with low ambient temperatures.

Oh, thats where you draw the line? Its okay if it happens to you or anyone else, as long as its abroad and the targets die, rather than rot in a prison. Let me reverse your question; what makes you think your president thinks he does NOT have the authority to do this inside the US?


Its quite the opposite. Your (vice) presidents have gotten away with crimes that no ordinary civilian or low ranking military officer would ever have gotten away with. from Nixon all the way to Rumsfeld/Cheney/Bush and arguably Obama. Impeachment hearings is only for really serious things like consensual sex amongst adults  . For abuse of power or war crimes they get a free pass, its usually not even investigated, let alone prosecuted. If ever needed, a blanket pardon is just handed out.


You are delusional if you still think torture provides intelligence, it doesnt work, even if you get the right guy. Of course more often than not, you get the wrong guy who you can torture all you want, he doesnt know a thing because he is just a Canadian software engineer, an Afghan cab driver, a farmer or whatever whom someone completely randomly accused of being terrorist because they got paid for "delivering terrorists". You do realize that by your own governments admission, the majority of detainees in Gitmo have committed absolutely no crime whatsoever. How many US lives do you think it saved to keep them there? How many terrorists do you think are recruited based on US detaining and torturing of completely innocent people?

BTW, torture is a war crime. There are no ifs and buts about providing useful intelligence.


Show me where it says president can NOT do that with an executive order? Clearly he thinks he can kill US citizens abroad. Now they can detain US citizens indefinitely without probable cause let alone trial, even inside the US. But to you, thats nothing to worry about? Piss off the wrong guy and you can vanish forever in to a cell in Mogadishu.  Legally.

I think it makes even more sense for Somali sea pirates to start doing "business" in bitcoin. Someone should actually give them a hint .  But yeah, it wouldnt be the best publicity for bitcoin, but rest assured our governments will seize the opportunity.

BTW, when it comes to detention and torture, its not just your president that has its say; not even only members of congress. Military commanders and military intelligence people (you know, the very same ones that told you about saddams WMDs) now get those privileges now too:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/senate-military-detention/

Now before you say "thats only for terrorists", do read.

(2) A person who was a part of or substantially 9
supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces 10
that are engaged in hostilities against the United 11
States or its coalition partners, including any person 12
who has committed a belligerent act or has directly 13
supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy 14
forces.

Just about anyone could fall under that. Including the current chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee who used to support the IRA. Anyone supporting palestenians.  And lets not mention just about everyone in the CIA over age 50 once involved in arming and training Al Qaeda when you still thought they were your friends (blow-back, remember that word?). Oh and quite a few US military Im sure, arming enemies of your enemies in Iraq, Iran and God knows where else.

If you still feel it doesnt apply to you; just wait until Taliban starts using bitcoin.

Are you saying the president is not a politician?  And its not just killing, its also detaining without charges, and torture by proxy. I bet you the president doesnt sign off on all of those.


Great questions! You feel okay that you dont know the answer?


Are you kidding me? They have a fancy word for it: blow-back.
It doesnt take genius to see what it is happening all around the world, but you have to be really blind to not see particularly in Pakistan what its causing, as a direct result of those drone attacks. You kill (maybe) a few foot soldiers of the Taliban (and a handful of innocent children and women as "collateral" damage),  and you will end up creating a sworn enemy thats closely aligned with that very same Taliban, but armed with an arsenal of 200 nuclear bombs.

Only you will feel safer for it.

BTW, look up the definition of terrorist; its someone exploiting fear. Precisely what your government has been doing.