172547979
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
Intel's new generation of "Meteor Lake" mobile CPUs herald a new age of "AI PCs," computers that can handle inference workloads such as generating images or transcribing audio without an Internet connection. Officially named "Intel Core Ultra" processors, the chips are the first to feature an NPU (neural processing unit) that's purpose-built to handle AI tasks. But there are few ways to actually test this feature at present: Software will need to be rewritten to specifically direct operations at the NPU.
So Intel has steered testers toward its Open Visual Inference and Neural Network Optimization (OpenVINO) AI toolkit. With those benchmarks, Tom's Hardware tested the new Intel chips against AMD — and surprisingly, AMD chips often came out on top, even on these handselected benchmarks. Clearly, optimization will take some time!
172197375
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
Overclocking master Splave surfaced on Tom's Hardware to detail his work with liquid nitrogen to set a slew of new world records with Intel’s Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs — including 15 world records with the Core i7-14700K and eight records with the Core i5-14600K, along with four records with the Core i9-14900K, spanning benchmarks from Cinebench to wPrime and H265.
"My top speeds were 7,730.11 MHz on all cores on the 14900K, 7,859.05 MHz on the 14600K and 7,600 MHz on the 14700K. All of these achieved in Cinebench R23 while using Liquid Nitrogen cooling."
76168827
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
"Our government is in a dysfunctional state. It is also illiterate when it comes to technology. Technology is not a tool that should be used for a government to invade our privacy. Technology should not be the scapegoat when we fail to protect our digital assets and tools of commerce. These are matters of priorities." So says John McAfee, offering up a brief explanation into why he's running for president. As noted earlier on slashdot, McAfee has filed paperwork already to found a new party (PDF).
72209211
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
At a sky-high press conference atop the new World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, Acer unveiled a sky-high lineup of goods – and placed a flag in the sand for the sagging PC industry. “There are only four or five players in the PC industry, and all of us are survivors,” Jason Chen, CEO of Acer Corp, told an international group of reporters. “We will be the last man standing for the PC industry.” To that end, the company showed off a slew of new laptops and 2-in-1s, the new Liquid X2 smartphone, and introduces a new line of gaming PCs, called Predator.
64780455
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
Bigger is better. No, wait, bigger is worse. Well, which is it? Apple’s newly supersized 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the jumbo, 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus are a marked departure for the company, which has clung to the same, small screen size for years. It has gone so far as to publicly deride larger phones from competitors, notably Samsung, even as their sales grew to record highs. Tech reviewers over the years have tended to side with Apple, in general saddling reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note – a 5.3-inch device that kicked off the phablet push in 2012 – with asides about how big the darn thing was. Are tech reviewers being fair when they review the iPhone 6 Plus? Here’s what some of them said today, compared with how they reviewed earlier phablets and big phones from the competition.
63246023
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
Michael Ramsay and Jim Barton created a revolution with TiVo, a device that challenged the notion that we had to watch TV shows when they aired. And they hoped to do it again with Qplay, a device that challenged the notion that short-form videos had to be consumed one at a time, like snacks instead of meals. Qplay streamed curated queues of short-form Internet video to your TV using a small, simple box controlled by an iPad app. So what went wrong? Unlike TiVo, the Qplay box was difficult to justify owning, and thevalue of the service itself is questionable. And as of last week, Qplay is closed.
59999487
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
In the olden times before high-speed Internet, the game you purchased on day one was what you were still playing months later. Now we live in an era of day-one patches, hotfixes, balance updates, and more. Diablo III, for example, is unrecognizable today compared to the state it was in when it launched back in 2012. Nowadays, savvy gamers go in expecting their experience to change over time — to improve over time. Today, Early Access is both an acknowledgment of the dangers of early adoption (no one likes to be a guinea pig, after all) and an opportunity for enthusiastic consumers to have a say in how the product they’ve purchased will take shape. In a special report, Digital Trends' Adam Rosenberg talks with Michael McMain, CEO and founder of Xaviant, and creative director on the indie studio’s first project — Lichdom: Battlemage, which embraces the concept like never before.
59752979
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
Microsoft Research finally earned some long-overdue headlines last week, when ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley reported on a “Special Projects” group that would tackle disruptive technology and ultimately Google X. Peter Lee, head of the division and its 1,100 researchers, told Digital Trends he’s not frustrated by all of that glowing press for Google’s researchers and the lack of attention for MSR. “Frustrating is not quite the right word,” Lee said, in an interview ahead of the ribbon-cutting ceremony for MSR’s New York City office. “I like Google X. The people there are good friends of mine. Astro [Teller, “Captain of Moonshots” with Google X] took classes from me at Carnegie Mellon, he’s a great guy doing great stuff. But the missions are different. We want to make things better and ship them. That will always be primary for us. It will be secondary for them.”
58913647
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
Car stereo salesmen and installers around the country are giddy with excitement because Apple’s CarPlay in-car infotainment system will have a big presence in the aftermarket car stereo industry. The Nikkei Asian Review reports that Alpine is making car stereo head units for between $500 – $700 that will run the iOS-like system Apple unveiled last month, and Macrumors added Clarion to the list of CarPlay supporters. Even Pioneer is getting into the game with support said to be coming to existing car stereo models in its NEX line ($700 – $1400) via firmware update, according to Twice. Given Apple’s wildly supportive fan base, its likely that a lot of aftermarket CarPlay units are about to fly off stereo shop shelves. Indeed, CarPlay coming to aftermarket stereo units could bring back what Apple indirectly stole from the industry going back as far as 2006.
55934425
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
I’ve seen the future. It’s called gigabit Internet by Google Fiber, and it just launched in my hometown of Provo, Utah, the second of three scheduled cities to get speeds that are 100 times faster than the rest of America. “What good is really fast Internet if the content stays the same?” you may ask yourself. I certainly did, before testing the service. Besides, my “high speed” Internet from Comcast seemed fast enough, enabling my household to stream HD videos, load web pages quickly, and connect multiple devices as needed, largely without hiccup. I was wrong. Using gigabit Internet, even in its infancy, opened my eyes to speed and reminded me of why I love the Internet.
54750763
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
Fearing rapidly plummeting sales of traditional laptops and desktop computers — which fell by another 10 percent or so in 2013 — manufacturers are planning a revolt against Microsoft and the Windows operating system, analysts say. At the 2014 CES in Las Vegas, multiple computer makers will unveil systems that simultaneously run two different operating systems, both Windows and the Android OS that powers many of the world’s tablets and smartphones, two different analysts said recently. The new devices will be called “PC Plus” machines, explained analyst Tim Bajarin. "A PC Plus machine will run Windows 8.1 but will also run Android apps as well," Bajarin wrote. Another analyst put the threat to Windows bluntly: "This should scare the heck out of Microsoft."
54160697
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
Banking giant JPMorgan Chase has filed a patent application for an electronic commerce system that sounds remarkably like Bitcoin — but never mentions the controversial, Internet-only currency. The patent application was filed in early August but made publicly available only at the end of November; it describes a “method and system for processing Internet payments using the electronic funds transfer network.” The system would allow people to pay bills anonymously over the Internet through an electronic transfer of funds — just like Bitcoin. It would allow for micropayments without processing fees — just like bitcoin. And it could kill off wire transfers through companies like Western Union — just like Bitcoin. There are 18,126 words in the patent application. “Bitcoin” is not one of them.
53958893
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
A U.S. spacecraft hasn’t made a controlled landing on the moon since Apollo 17 left the lunar surface on Dec. 14, 1972. That’s about to change. Moon Express will unveil the MX-1 spacecraft at the Autodesk University show in Las Vegas Thursday evening — a micro-spacecraft that will in 2015 mark the first U.S. "soft" landing since the days of the Apollo program, FoxNews.com has learned. The craft looks for all the world like a pair of donuts wearing an ice cream cone, and the tiny vehicle clearly isn’t big enough for a human being. But it is big enough to scoop up some rocks and dirt, store them in an internal compartment, and return it to Earth. After all, the moondirt Gene Cernan, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin once trod holds a king’s ransom of titanium, platinum, and other rare elements. Moon Express plans to mine it.
53072263
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
The tomb of brutal Mongolian emperor Genghis Khan — the one who created the world’s most powerful empire by raiding and invading across Eurasia, not Kirk's nemesis — is a lost treasure archaeologists have sought for years. And one man thinks he knows where it is. Last fall Alan Nichols, the president of The Explorers Club, mapped out possible locations for the tomb of Khan (also known as Chinnggis Qa'an). His hypothesis: Khan’s tomb is located in the Liupan Mountains in Northern China, where the emperor who was born in 1162 is said to have perished from an arrow wound in August 1227. Next fall, Nichols plans the next phase of his research: pinpointing Khan’s exact resting place. “Ghengis Khan’s tomb is my obsession,” Nichols, a noted authority on the emperor, said recently. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. But I’m not happy just reading about it, or knowing about it. I need to have my feet on it.”
52850937
submission
Velcroman1 writes:
It has been a year since fallen software magnate John McAfee fled his adopted home and country — wanted by police for questioning in connection to the murder of his neighbor. In that year, the often eccentric programming pioneer led the media and the public on a wild ride with his outlandish behavior and off-the-wall statements during a catch-me-if you-can escape from the small Central American country. McAfee is a person of interest in the investigation surrounding the murder of his neighbor, American ex-pat Gregory Faull, near his compound in San Pedro Town on the island of Ambergris Caye. No headway has been made in the investigation — and authorities in Belize are still looking to speak with McAfee. “Nothing has really changed. It’s not a closed case,” police spokesman Raphael Martinez said. “He is still a person of interest.”
