Somewhere in the multiverse, there is an alternate dimension where I know nothing of tech news
and only report on recent developments in nearby clouds.
Look, that one shaped like a graphics card.
Intel's hot new Meteor Lake CPUs might actually perform worse on single core tasks,
with lower instructions per clock, or IPC, than their predecessors from the 14th and 13th gen lineups.
And that's... That's just not right.
These benchmarks come from hardware tester David Huang,
who compared the Core Ultra 7 155H to Apple's M2 Pro and M3 Pro,
AMD's Ryzen 7 7840U and 7840HS,
and Intel's own Core i7-13700H by testing a single core using the spec CPU benchmark,
and after some quick maths. He concluded that the 155H was at the bottom,
though it was at least within striking distance of the two Ryzen chips.
Huang notes that the comparison between the 155H and the 13700H might be somewhat distorted,
because the 155H uses LP DDR5 memory instead of regular DDR5 memory.
But that increased margin of error wouldn't account for the gap in performance between the two chips.
It's a bit like if I lost a race and blamed it on the fact that the winner was clean shaven,
and thus more aerodynamic. This brings the memories back.
Yet not clean shaven. To be clear, IPC isn't the only metric to measure a chip's performance,
and it doesn't mean that these chips haven't improved at all,
especially given recent BIOS updates. But it might indicate that Intel made significant compromises when optimizing its chips for AI acceleration
and beefing up its integrated GPU. Turns out there just wasn't enough beef to go around.
Where's the beef? A hacking group believed to have ties to the Iranian government
has targeted local American water utilities in a series of brazen cyber attacks.
One target was the Alequipa Water and Sewer Authority,
which is responsible for the needs of around 22,000 Pennsylvania residents.
Hackers shut off a remote monitoring device that regulates water pressure at one pumping station.
Luckily, an alarm alerted the station's crew, and they switched over to manual operation.
Also, luckily, the systems hackers accessed
wouldn't have allowed them to control the chemicals used in drinking water
and, you know, poison the water supply.
So that's good. The problem is that small public utilities are typically underfunded
and understandably ill-prepared to deal with sophisticated international cyber criminals.
Even worse, these attacks weren't actually all that sophisticated.
Experts believe the hackers probably broke into these systems
through remote devices that were still using the default password.
Many of these utilities are also struggling to deal with the far more pervasive problem
of preventing leaching from decades-old lead-service lines.
Yeah, remember that? Keep forgetting about that story.
They're putting something in the water. So, when you think about it, who are the real terrorists?
International cyber criminals or elderly plumbers?
That's what I thought. On Tuesday, SpaceX launched the first Starlink satellites
with the ability to communicate directly with cell phones.
These satellites will be used to provide text messaging and, eventually, voice and data services to T-Mobile US customers.
SpaceX will also be working with providers in Australia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand.
A primary goal is to reduce dead zones and provide consistent service
even in rural and remote areas, which is yet another nail in the coffin
for Cabin in the Woods horror movies. Somebody please call the police. My suspension of disbelief is evaporating.
It's been a good year for SpaceX. They seriously expanded their total number of successful launches in 2023
with a record 96 missions compared to just 61 in 2022.
The company likewise closed out the year with two back-to-back launches in one night on December 28.
Get your tickets now. It's in the past. Sadly, they also lost their oldest reusable rocket, booster 1058,
which tipped and fell during transport through rough seas
after completing its 19th successful mission.
You can finally vote, and now this happens.
It's just getting on the dating scene. In a tweet mourning the loss, SpaceX VP of launch, Kiko Donchev noted that
the design flaw that led to 1058's demise was fixed in later models with self-leveling legs,
but 1058 was never retrofitted due to age.
It's an end we should all aspire to. A long life of service and adventure only to trip and die by brutal belly flop.
Is this how I'm gonna go? I wish I could survive on QuickBits alone.
Sadly, QuickBits are devoid of nutrition and mildly poisonous.
Please enjoy. An entire legal industry has been spawned to help independent Amazon sellers
get their accounts reinstated on the platform.
Amazon generally withholds any money when a seller's account is suspended
and, according to many sellers, the company will often also withhold the reason for suspending the account.
Get your money, you don't get to know why. We're banning you, why?
Shut up, get out of here. And if that weren't enough for sellers to deal with,
Amazon's new AI review summaries will helpfully highlight complaints made by a very small number of buyers.
For example, according to the AI, customers say this particular shelf is a great addition to their bathroom
and also a complete waste of money.
Frankly, that sounds a bit too much like my parents discussing renovations.
Because they have a rebranding problem, Microsoft is rebranding Edge on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store as Microsoft Edge AI Browser.
It needs a theme song.
Let's browse. That sounds like the title of a gritty action movie, at least grammatically.
The Edge mobile app's description now heavily focuses on its GPT-4 and Dolly 3-powered features
and mentions AI a total of seven times.
Notably, if you look up Edge on the Microsoft desktop store, you won't find any of this new branding.
Probably because most people who use Edge on desktop do so because either it came pre-installed on their computer
or they're not on speaking terms with Chrome right now.
It's a little awkward. Has blocked another two states, Montana and North Carolina,
in response to the passage of age verification laws that the website's parent company, ILO,
says endanger privacy by requiring citizens to hand over their government-issued IDs to random internet smut peddlers.
This is clearly going to affect a lot of people in North Carolina,
but it's unclear as of yet how it will affect Montana,
which I am given to understand is primarily populated by flags and cattle.
A woman in Delaware is crediting her Apple Watch with saving her life and that of her cat
after a broken heater started leaking carbon monoxide in her apartment.
Natalie Nesatka had a sudden dizzy spell and found herself unable to stand,
so she activated her watch's SOS feature, summoning emergency services in the nick of time.
While we're glad Natalie's okay and this is obviously great PR for Apple,
if you don't have an extra few hundred dollars just lying around to buy a new watch,
you could also just shell out for a carbon monoxide detector.
Seriously, they're only like thirty dollars and your cats will thank you.
At least they should thank you, but what can you expect from a carnivorous squirrel that poops in a box?
They will eat you when you die. And we've got new hyper detailed photos of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io
after NASA's Juno spacecraft passed within 930 miles of the moon
during its 57th flyby of the gas giant.
This is the closest any mission has flown to Io's surface in 23 years
since NASA's Galileo craft passed within 112 miles of Io's southern pole.
The images have been called beautiful and magnificent by astronomers
and like a macro shot of a dramatically lit chocolate truffle by me just now.
Now, not to be dramatic, but it would also be lit
if you came back on Friday for more tech news.
I promise I won't make jokes like that.