You know when your friend shows you something they've been working really hard on and it's like
pretty bad, so rather than sparing their feelings, you're just honest with them?
I wish Intel had a friend like that. Because reviews of the company's core Ultra 200 series,
aka Aero Lake, are excoriating Team Blue's latest desktop processors, and not even me showing up
in a turtleneck in the LTT review could do anything about it. As Digital Foundry delicately puts it,
there are serious problems with, particularly, the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K's gaming performance,
that problem being that it's bad. The new chip is routinely beaten by its own predecessor,
the Core i9-14900K, but also by its competitors, the Ryzen 99950X and Ryzen 77800X3D. In their
written review, Eurogamer even found the 285K losing to a Core i5-12600K from three generations ago.
Now there is a bit of light on Intel's horizon here. Computerbase saw some
disproportionate performance boosts by overclocking their system's RAM, and Durbauer increased
FPS by 7% in Counter-Strike 2 by specifically boosting the 285K's ring clock. So just spend
a bunch of time tweaking your components' voltages without frying anything, and you'll be fine.
Despite the overclocking potential, it's not a great launch week for Intel, especially when leaks
are making the Ryzen 7 9800X3D look pretty good, and the 9000 series in general is performing
7-10% better in games than they did at launch thanks to updates. Not all of the criticism is fair,
though. PCWorld points out that AeroLake performs extra horribly under Windows Default
Balanced Power Mode, but PC users are going to be using the High Performance Mode anyway.
It's not like this whole CPU lineup was specifically engineered to prioritize energy
efficiency or anything. Wait, it was? No! Citing insider sources, the Verge confidently reported
yesterday that OpenAI plans to release Orion, its next big AI model and a proper follow-up to
GPT-4 by December. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly replied on Twitter, writing,
Fake news out of control. Send. Yeah. Yeah, cancel the launch. Cancel the- I will eat you!
Now, the Verge's sources could have been wrong, but whatever the truth is, sifting the real news
from the fake is about to get harder, not just because of AI, but because of people trying to
outwit AI. Members of the r slash London subreddit have taken to heaping praise upon less popular
restaurants to taint Google's often Reddit-fueled AI overview search results and keep influencers
and tourists away from the really good sandwich shop. But I'm worried about the precedent this
sets. OpenAI and Google have deals to train their AI on Reddit posts. Does the dead internet theory
factor in redditors doing a 2024 version of back off, get your own sandwich? I wasn't sure about
that reference. I don't get it. We really? No. Oh wow. Is it from a commercial? This is a mistake.
Guys, I don't think we're ready. And neither does OpenAI's senior advisor for AGI readiness,
who just resigned, writing that no one, not even OpenAI or their peers, is ready for artificial
general intelligence, the word we made up for something that doesn't exist yet. But ready or not,
here it comes. The latest iOS 18.2 developer beta adds chat GPT integration and image generation
to Apple intelligence, bringing AI features to the iPhone people. But maybe wait for the full
release before you let your mom install it on her iPhone though. You got her one, right?
You were told to get her one. We've been working hard on these quick bits, so
tell us what you think and be honest. The US copyright office has granted a partial exemption
allowing individual franchise owners and independent restaurateurs to diagnose and repair
their own equipment at their own restaurants. This includes those notoriously always broken
soft serve machines at McDonald's, which are purposefully finicky to work with and have
digital locks that couldn't legally be interfered with under the terms of the DMCA.
That's right, they copyrighted the ice cream machine so they could get more money from fixing it.
Now however, the copyright office has sided with non-profit public knowledge and I fix it,
meaning that all the little children and the large adult men will be able to get their flurry fix.
I'm loving that. Intel has finally won a near 15 year legal battle against a 1.06 billion euro
Back in 2009, the EU Commission, the bloc's antitrust watchdog, alleged Intel had engaged in
two illegal practices, giving rebates to computer manufacturers for buying their chips and paying
manufacturers to halt or delay the launch of products containing AMD's chips. Two years ago,
a court annulled the charges related to the rebates, which was then appealed by the commission.
That appeal has now failed, stay with me, so Intel doesn't have to pay the billion euro fine.
Intel does still have to pay a nearly 400 million euro fine for the sales restrictions, but that's
just peanuts. I mean, it's not to them right now. 400 million euros? That's fine. An investigation
into the company Babble Street has revealed how mobile advertising data can be used to spy
on almost anyone. The company sales a platform called LocateX that allows you to see a time-lapse
of the movement of mobile devices in and out of almost any area on a world map. Customers can
also track individuals using their mobile advertising ID, a unique identifier built into
all Android and iOS mobile devices. While the tech is supposedly limited to government use,
when an investigator asked for a two-week free trial mentioning they were considering government
contract work, the Babble Street salesperson said, that's good enough, and they don't actually check.
Oh, cool. Thanks. I'm microwaving my phone and living in the forest. This is the last episode
of TechLink, FYI. Elon Musk has admitted that most existing Teslas may not actually be able
to ever drive themselves. Tragic. Specifically, he said Hardware 3, the self-driving computer and
sensors equipped in Teslas from 2019 to 2023, may not be capable of unsupervised full self-driving.
But Elon says if that's the case, Tesla will upgrade full self-driving customers to Hardware 4
for free. However, according to Electric, that might be difficult, if not impossible.
Not only is the Hardware 4 computer a different form factor, Hardware 4 Teslas also have different
cameras and different power and camera harnesses. But if anyone can figure out the upgrade,
it's the guy that said Tesla will solve autonomous driving by the end of the year for the past five
years. I think he's got it. This time, he's serious.
And researchers want to create paleo-inspired robots as a way of studying extinct animals.
These moving physical models could be used to better understand extinct animals anatomy and
how they might have moved back when they were alive and had all their flesh on.
While these off-brand dinobots probably don't transform like the ones you had as a kid,
they could be used to test competing hypotheses about ancient life.
On the other hand, this also feels exactly like how you get Horizon Zero Dawn robot dinosaurs.
And do you really want our future clone descendants to have to fight raptor lawnmowers
on their way to school every day? We're just trying to think ahead.
But we won't blame you if you skip out on school on Monday to watch another episode of TechLinked.
You probably shouldn't, though, for your own sake. But we shouldn't be encouraging this.