It’s Monday! That means you’re once again chained to your desk, blearily contemplating the most creative ways to dodge the work that should be done at said desk. It also means you’re ready to reconnect to the internet for a dose of what you missed while you were being a responsible-get-projects-and-chores-done-on-the-weekend person (RIGHT?)! And, hey, if you need a dose, we have just what the doctor ordered.

NVIDIA to finally offer retail 40nm?

Coming in at numero uno is NVIDIA, with word that the firm might eventually push select 40nm parts into the retail channel. The firm’s shift to 40nm has been a painful affair plagued with poor yields and epic delays, but a few GPUs on the 40nm node have been available to OEMs for a while. According to the Chinese Digitimes publication, that OEM exclusivity may soon end.

The Digitimes report says that the DirectX 10.1-capable GeForce 210 and 220 products could hit retail as early as October. Even though GeForce 210 and 220 parts are far from benchmark-busters, the move indicates that NVIDIA’s 40nm process is (finally) maturing to support retail sales. If this is indeed the case, we are at last moving closer to the GT300.

Dell boards the Windows 7 train

If you’re saddled with a box from the boys at Dell and have been itching to try Windows 7, fortunes just may have turned in your favor. The big ol’ OEM took the weekend to announce a full roster of Windows 7-ready drivers for a wide variety of systems past and present. If you’ve been cautious about taking the leap to 7 to avoid driver issues, maybe it’s time to jump.

The Pirate Bay sails in new waters

In the wake of a crushing defeat at the hands of Swedish court, The Pirate Bay began talks to sell the site’s assets and brand to Global Games Factory for £4.72 million. GGF proposed a new subscription model that would reimburse users for their bandwidth and copyright holders for their IP if they opted to approve and monetize the download.

You might imagine how well this was received by The Pirate Bay’s community. Indeed, in response to the impending sale to GGF, an enterprising user collected the site’s body of torrents into a 21GB archive available for download.

The backup includes a mockup of the site’s design, some 874 thousand torrents, and a working search feature. Admins looking to launch a TPB clone need only supply the hardware and a database to make ‘er go, and the good ship will sail again.

And sail she has. Long-time tracker BTARENA has risen from the shadows of larger torrent sites and has branded itself as “BTARENA, by ThePirateBay.” The new site contains all of TPB’s assets, much of its art, and all the mojo to get the job done.

We can only wonder how furious the IFPI will be once it realizes that stomping on The Pirate Bay has triggered half a dozen clones, each containing more copyrighted material than the last.

Paparazzi pics of AMD DirectX 11?

Chinese tech website Chiphell claims to have spy shots of an upcoming Evergreen GPU from the lads at AMD. For those who don’t recall, Evergreen is AMD’s next generation of 40nm/DirectX 11-ready parts. Word on the street is that the cards are being prepared for an introduction that coincides with the October 22 release of Windows 7.

From what AMD has revealed thus far, Evergreen will launch as a family of five GPUs that target a complete range of performance profiles:

Hemlock: Highest-end desktop part, probably dual Cypress GPUs a la the rumored Radeon 5870 X2.

Cypress: High-end single-GPU part. Similar to the Radeon HD 4870 when it launched.

Juniper: Mid-range desktop part. Similar to the Radeon HD 4850 when it launched.

Cedar & Redwood: Low-end desktop parts. Similar to the Radeon HD 4650 and 4670.

Breadcrumbs

And now, a quick list of the remaining tidbits that fell off the interesting plate:

• The US Department of Justice has approved Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The EU, meanwhile, has set a September 3 deadline.
• Unix is 40! Everyone grow a heinous beard, get a sinus infection and say “kernel” at least once this month.
• The FCC is evaluating the future of American broadband, and it is asking the public to define its interpretation of the word. This may not be a bad idea, given that the FCC spent a decade defining broadband as a 200k connection.

That’s all, folks!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled Monday. Keep that dial tuned to Icrontic, and we promise to pipe a hot feed of today’s hottest tech news straight to your browser. Happy slacking!