It's time for tech news!
If what Qualcomm just said about their new Snapdragon X Elite SOCs is true,
Apple finally has a competitor in the ARM-based desktop processor market.
Thankfully, the leg-based desktop processor...
What? What? After teasing the announcement a couple weeks ago,
Qualcomm unveiled some specs and performance for the Snapdragon X Elite,
a flagship laptop chip composed of 12 new Orion cores designed by the company's subsidiary Nuvia,
three times the cores of Qualcomm's previous laptop SOC, the 8CX Gen 3.
Qualcomm says this outperforms Apple's also 12-core M2 Max in single-threaded applications,
the application in question being, according to the fine print on that slide,
geekbench on Linux. Because as elite as the new chip may be,
there are other reasons that ARM-based desktop processors haven't taken off on Windows.
Namely, Windows. Thankfully, if Microsoft doesn't manage to make Windows 11 on ARM not suck farts,
those fancy Orion cores will be coming to Android devices in 2024,
which may or may not have something to do with Qualcomm's Snapdragon seamless feature,
which will let manufacturers smooth out multi-device experiences between phones, PCs,
earbuds, mice, and keyboards. Sounds maybe like something a la Apple.
Orion-powered Windows laptops are also set to debut mid-2024,
just in time for Qualcomm and Microsoft's exclusivity deal for Windows-compatible ARM chips
to expire, which probably has something to do with this week's Reuters report claiming that
both NVIDIA and AMD are designing ARM-based desktop CPUs.
But with all of these ARM chips years away and Apple probably releasing
higher-powered M3 Macs on Monday, there's probably nothing to get excited about.
You know what? Forget I said anything. Just...
But you should consider getting excited about upcoming NVIDIA RTX 40 Super graphics cards.
If you dislike money, multiple sources claim NVIDIA is prepping an RTX 4070 and an RTX 4080 Super
with 20 gigabytes of RAM. NVIDIA hasn't used the Super title since the release of the RTX 2080 Super back in April 2020,
possibly because NVIDIA has been in more of a villain phase, didn't deserve it.
Back in the day, there were also rumors about an RTX 30 Super series that failed to materialize,
but these new rumors are coming from leakers that have been reliable in the past.
That's how they get you. Now they have your bank info.
Unless NVIDIA is planning on gaslighting us by arbitrarily altering its card naming scheme,
we should expect a card that sits between the standard RTX 4080 and the RTX 4080 Ti,
a card that currently does not exist. So really, your guess is as good as mine.
Both of the potential RTX 40 Super series cards are expected to include a higher memory bus,
the RTX 40 Super with a 320-bit bus, and the RTX 4070 Super with a 256-bit bus.
Personally, though, I'm waiting for the RTX 40 Super Duper series that slots very nicely
in between the RTX 4080 Splendid and the 4090, wow, very cool.
41 US states are suing Meta for using features on Instagram and Facebook to encourage social
media addiction in children. According to the primary complaint, Meta designed psychologically manipulative product features
to induce young users compulsive and extended use of its platform, including infinite scrolling
and persistent alerts. The lawsuits accuse Meta of knowing complicity in the ongoing youth mental health crisis for
the sake of profit. But it's an accusation that could be leveled at pretty much any popular social media app
currently available. I'm not even a teenage girl, and TikTok makes me feel bad about myself all the time.
I don't know why I open the app. For some reason, every post in my feed is just insulting me personally.
Meanwhile, the FTC is bringing in child psychologists to inform future regulations
of social media companies. And PMIs, a reverse image search engine that specializes in facial recognition,
is now blocking searches for photos containing minors for fear of misuse.
Notably, Mark Zuckerberg covers his children's faces in photos he posts on Instagram.
And while that probably has a lot to do with him being an unlikable famous person,
with valid concerns about harassment, if he doesn't think of Instagram as a safe place
for his kids, maybe we shouldn't either.
Quick! The bits! They're getting away! After them!
Yeah, I was waiting for the dogs. According to the Washington Post, Reddit is threatening to block webcrawlers from search
engines like Google and Bing if it cannot reach a deal with generative AI companies to
pay for data from the site. This would prevent Reddit from appearing in search results and reduce the number of visitors to
the site. But the company's leadership apparently believe that Reddit can survive without search.
They're not alone either. Over 500 news organizations have installed blockers to prevent their content from being
collected for AI training databases since last year.
Still, this is potentially a devastating blow to the many users who for years have been bypassing
the inshidification of search results by typing site colon reddit.com at the end of every single
Google search. Fooly and logic, how have you betrayed me?
Apple has officially backed the White House's push for a national right to repair bill.
That's a weird sentence to say, but... Apple also says that it will be making parts, tools, and documentation necessary to fix its
devices available to users and independent repair shops nationwide.
This follows the recent passing of a California right to repair law, also supported by Apple.
If the federal bill is in any way similar, it would be a huge step in the right direction,
but might shy away from restricting software locks, Apple's favorite anti-repair tactic.
There's still plenty of room for optimism though, so may I be the first to say,
thank you Tim Cook, you bastard.
Okta, the massive provider of cloud infrastructure, has been hacked for the second time in two
years, which is ironic, but not in a fun hip way.
It's not in an indie band. This could have had serious implications for the customers of its customers,
which include cloudflare and password managers, one password and beyond trust.
However, it appears that all three independently detected that Okta's support system had been
breached and informed Okta, who is busy watching Love is Blind Season 5.
Okta says that its support case system was accessed by a hacker with stolen credentials,
who was then able to view files uploaded by customers.
According to security expert Matt Johansson, Okta support often requests
HR files for troubleshooting purposes, which can contain sensitive info like session tokens.
That honestly sounds like a great way to get your YouTube channel hacked, and all your videos replaced with a scam crypto livestream featuring Elon Musk,
wouldn't that be embarrassing? California has suspended crews from operating driverless taxis in San Francisco,
following a harrowing incident where a human piloted car hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk,
throwing them into the path of a robot taxi, which braked, but still struck the pedestrian.
Detecting the collision, it then attempted to pull over to the side of the road,
but wound up dragging the downed woman 20 feet.
I don't know the moral of this story, maybe we're just not ready for a two-ton free-range robot
that can be disabled by placing a traffic cone on the hood, but it doesn't seem like human drives are doing all that great either, so I dunno,
just stay inside. And researchers have created an open-source tool called Nightshade that artists can use
to invisibly modify their works to break AIs trained on them without permission
by corrupting their tagging system, causing them to, say,
generate a picture of a cake when prompted for a dog.
But maybe it's just a very realistic dog cake.
Or, more likely, an unholy abomination somewhere between cake and dog.
Why did you bake me? Nightshade works by attacking AI where it's most vulnerable.
The inside. The squishy part. It's kind of like that fan theory pre-end game that the Avengers would defeat Thanos
by having Ant-Man crawl up his poop chute and then expand.
Except, it isn't at all like that, I just wanted to remind everyone about that
and put that image in your head, so you're welcome. I'll also remind you to come back on Friday for more tech news,
because here at TechLinked, we only crawl into your hearts.
And even then, it's strictly metaphorical.
It's not your- Speak for yourself. You're not in danger.