Month: January 2024

Enlarge / Intel's Core chips are here, and they have dropped the i and the 14th-generation branding. But unlike the Core Ultra, they are fundamentally "14th-generation" processors. (credit: Intel)

Intel usually uses CES to fill out the processor lineups that it launched late the year before, and that hasn't changed this year. The company has announced a full range of 14th-generation Core desktop CPUs, some new 14th-generation Core CPUs for high-end gaming and workstation laptops, and the first non-Ultra chips to bear the new "Core 3/5/7" branding that sheds the generational branding entirely. We'll go over the updates shortly.

But my main takeaway, as a long-time observer of processor branding, is that Intel had made its new naming system even more confusing for people who actually want to know what kind of processor they're getting.

Intel said in October that it was sticking with the 14th-generation branding for its new desktop CPUs because they were so similar to the 13th-generation chips (they all use the same underlying Raptor Lake architecture, itself a minor revision of the 12th-gen Alder Lake). It makes some degree of sense that it's being extended to the HX-series laptop chips, because these have always been desktop silicon repackaged for laptop use. So far so good.

Enlarge (credit: Canonical/Ubuntu)

Snaps, the self-contained application packages that Ubuntu has long seen as a simpler app store and a potential solution to dependency hell, could be getting better support outside Ubuntu itself, based on one recent hire and potentially more.

As spotted by the Phoronix blog, developer Zygmunt Krynicki, who worked at Ubuntu distributor Canonical from 2012 through 2020, posted Friday on Mastodon that he was "returning as a snap developer later this month." His main focus would be "cross-distribution support," Krynicki wrote, and "unlike in the past this will be my full time job. I'm very excited for what is ahead for snaps." He also noted, in a later reply, that he was "not coming back alone."

Krynicki, reached Monday on Mastodon, noted that he was at a very early stage in his work. But he intended to look at the state of support across distributions, determine which long-term and short-term work to focus on, and "work on the internals and get things progressively better, even if that is not flashy."

Enlarge / LG's OLED T TV with its contrast film rolled down partially, enabling you to see what's behind the TV's upper area. (credit: LG전자 뉴스룸 LiVE LG/YouTube)

LG today announced plans to sell a TV with transparent-display technology that has almost exclusively been relegated to commercial applications and demonstrations at tech shows.

LG is showing off the Signature OLED T at CES 2024 (which officially starts tomorrow). LG says the see-through TV will be available this year but hasn't shared pricing. Still, it's remarkable to see transparent tech make its way into a consumer TV, even if it is expected to be extremely expensive. Other groundbreaking, Signauture-branded OLED designs from LG have cost six figures.

During a press event today, LG executives discussed the OLED T as a way to satisfy customer demand for bigger TVs without those mammoth displays always dominating the living room.

Enlarge (credit: Justin Sullivan / Staff | Getty Images North America)

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to review an appeal from X (formerly Twitter), alleging that the US government's censorship of X transparency reports served as a prior restraint on the platform's speech and was unconstitutional.

This free speech battle predates Elon Musk's ownership of the platform. Since 2014, the social media company has "sought to accurately inform the public about the extent to which the US government is surveilling its users," X's petition said, while the government has spent years effectively blocking precise information from becoming public knowledge.

Current law requires that platforms instead only share generalized statistics regarding government information requests—using government-approved reporting bands such as "between 0 and 99 times"—so that people posing as national security threats can never gauge exactly how active the feds are on any given platform.

Enlarge / Astrobotic's Peregrine lander carries 20 payloads, including five NASA-funded science instruments. (credit: Astrobotic)

A few hours after a successful liftoff on United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, Astrobotic's first commercial lunar lander ran into serious trouble. The robotic Peregrine lander, still in orbit around Earth, appears to have a propellant leak that will prevent it from reaching the Moon.

There are 20 payloads aboard the Peregrine lunar lander, including five from NASA, which is paying Astrobotic about $108 million for delivery of its science instruments to the Moon's surface. Peregrine was the first US-owned lunar lander to launch to the Moon in more than 50 years, and Astrobotic is one of 14 companies selected by NASA to deliver the agency's scientific instruments to the lunar surface.

This program, called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), is aimed at flying robotic precursor missions to the Moon before NASA astronauts land on the lunar surface in the agency's Artemis program. Astrobotic's CLPS mission was first to the launch pad.

Enlarge / An iPhone 6. (credit: Getty Images | Chesnot )

US-based iPhone users are finally getting long-awaited payments to compensate them for Apple's decision to throttle the performance of iPhones with degraded batteries.

Apple agreed to settle with iPhone users in March 2020, but class-action lawsuits and settlements often take years to be resolved and paid out. This case took a few years because the settlement's court approval was temporarily vacated on appeal but later reinstated.

The settlement was for a minimum of $310 million and a maximum of $500 million, including attorney's fees of $80.6 million and the costs of distributing the settlement fund. Apple agreed to provide $25 payments to affected users for each eligible iPhone, though that amount could have increased or decreased based on the number of approved claims.

The promo image in question, seen in its original context. (credit: WotC)

Magic: the Gathering (MtG) maker Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has apologized after admitting it made a "mistake" in publishing a promotional image that included artwork at least partially generated using artificial intelligence tools. The admission comes despite a WotC policy barring the use of AI in its art, and the controversy has already caused at least one MtG artist to publicly announce that he is "done" with the company.

The promo image in question was posted in a now-deleted (but still archived) social media post last Thursday, showing five new "retro frame" versions of lands from the upcoming Ravnica Remastered set in a nondescript steampunk-style laboratory. While the image looks unobjectionable at first glance, careful viewers soon zoomed in on specific and incongruous background details in the lab that showed telltale errors common to some AI image generators. (The human authorship of the art on the cards themselves, it should be noted, has not yet come under question.)

"created by humans" Right... pic.twitter.com/gf9TUXWSPA

— TaylorGreen (@GreenSkyDragon) January 5, 2024

The suggestion that AI art tools were used in a promo image is particularly sensitive for Wizards of the Coast, which has relied on hundreds of human artists to generate tens of thousands of iconic images for its Magic cards and its Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) products over the years. Last August, when a longtime D&D artist was found to be using AI tools for commissioned pieces, WotC said that it was "updating our artist guidelines to make clear that artists must refrain from using AI art generation as part of their art creation process for developing D&D art."

Enlarge / The tilt of the numerical right-most block may not accurately reflect the degree to which we, collectively, are upgraded to Wi-Fi 7 at this stage. (credit: Getty Images)

Wi-Fi 7 devices can now be certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance. The new standard can provide higher throughput, linked wireless bands for better stability, and reduced latency. It also can make people who skipped over Wi-Fi 6E feel like they made the smart move.

Wi-Fi 7 has already existed as a thing that expensive, new routers claimed to offer, but now it's a certification they can claim. Wi-Fi 7 devices can use 320 MHz of channel bandwidth, compared to the typical 160 MHz used by Wi-Fi 5, 6, and 6E gear. The new standard is the first to offer Multi-Link Operation, which can bond a connection across 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz connections, offering greater speed and more reliable connections when moving in and out of range of various bands.

Intel's explainer for what Wi-Fi 7 means, compared to prior generations. (credit: Intel)

As Intel puts it in its explainer, earlier Wi-Fi channels were like moving vans that could "only take one highway at a time and choose alternate routes if they run into traffic. However, Wi-Fi 7 semi-trucks will simultaneously operate across two highways to get more boxes to the destination more quickly."

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  The Oppo Find X7 Ultra features some faux leather and a really big camera bump. [credit: Oppo ]

Oppo's newest flagship is the Find X7 Ultra. This phone's claim to fame is having two periscope camera lenses on the back. Like most Oppo phones, this will land in China first, probably Europe later, and won't come to the US.

The X7 Ultra is all about photography, with four 50 MP sensors on the back. Periscope camera No. 1 is a 50 MP 3x telephoto that uses a 1/1.56-inch Sony IMX890 sensor. Oppo says "this sensor is roughly three times larger than the equivalent cameras in key competitor systems, and is the biggest telephoto sensor in any smartphone." Periscope No. 2 is a 6x telephoto with a 50 MP, 1/2.51-inch Sony IMX858 sensor—so more zoom, but less image quality. The main camera is Sony's top-of-the-line LYT-900 1-inch sensor, and the wide-angle is a 50 MP Sony LYT-600 sensor.

Packing all these large cameras onto the back results in a big camera bump. Despite the phone being a normal-sized 6.8-inch device, the camera takes up about a third of the back, and it almost looks like you'll be touching it when you're naturally holding the phone.