We celebrate the return of the What’s the Buzz section with a really awesome video – and a case of premature publication that is painful, worrying, and slightly funny all at the same time!

Mythbusters Recreate the Mona Lisa with 1,100 Paintballs!

Before we say anything else: watch this video! It is the single coolest video we’ve uploaded to the site so far, we promise!

Okay, you can pick your jaws up off the floor now. Here’s what really happened. This week, video card manufacturer NVIDIA hosted its NVISION08 trade show at the Center for Performing Arts in San Diego, California. Apparently, one of the big trends they hope to cash in on soon is the Graphical Processing Unit, or GPU.

And what’s that, you say? A GPU is “a dedicated graphics rendering device” for use with PCs, workstations, and game consoles, which are far more efficient at manipulating and displaying computer graphics. Their main difference from the usual CPU or video card is their highly parallel structure, meaning they can display computer graphics far more efficiently than the serial CPUs.

To vividly illustrate that main difference, the Mythbusters first showed off the “Smiley” robot, which is their analogue of the serial CPU: one process at a time, over time. The robot fired several balls of blue paint at a canvas to form a simple picture, that of a smiley face.

Then, they unveiled “Mona Lisa”: a very, very large paint gun made up of 1,100 barrels, each of which would fire a specifically colored and directed paintball. You can see the result: it took “Smiley” several seconds to create its picture – and it took “Mona Lisa” just about 275 milliseconds to produce a very recognizable facsimile of da Vinci’s masterpiece!

The point is, of course, that NVIDIA would like to promote its newest hardware as being precisely that powerful and cool – hence the Mythbusters getting into the act. As far as promotional gimmicks go – that one rocked!

Bloomberg mistakenly publishes Steve Jobs’s Obituary

Steve Jobs before his surgery

Steve Jobs after his surgery. Note the weight loss and the gauntness in his face.