Month: January 2024

Enlarge / This image features an H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud. (credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, O. Nayak, M. Meixner)

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light, a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We'll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we're going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It's January 25, and today's image is nothing short of amazing and inspirational.

Courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope, this image features a nebula, N79, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby small galaxy. (Can we call galaxies small?) This is a massive, super-active star-forming region that spans more than 1,600 light-years. So what's with that bright spot in the middle of the image? It's a bright young star.

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  Our specific RTX 4070 Ti Super is a PNY model, the RTX 4070 Ti Super 16GB Verto. [credit: Andrew Cunningham ]

Of all of Nvidia's current-generation GPU launches, there hasn't been one that's been quite as weird as the case of the "GeForce RTX 4080 12GB."

It was the third and slowest of the graphics cards Nvidia announced at the onset of the RTX 40-series, and at first blush it just sounded like a version of the second-fastest RTX 4080 but with less RAM. But spec sheets and Nvidia's own performance estimates showed that there was a deceptively huge performance gap between the two 4080 cards, enough that calling them both "4080" could have lead to confusion and upset among buyers.

Taking the hint, Nvidia reversed course, "unlaunching" the 4080 12GB because it was "not named right." This decision came late enough in the launch process that a whole bunch of existing packaging had to be trashed and that new BIOSes with new GPU named needed to be flashed to the cards before they could be sold.

Enlarge / On the left, the 2024 Porsche Macan 4, on the right, the 2024 Porsche Macan Turbo. Both are electric. (credit: Porsche)

This morning, Porsche unveiled its next Macan SUV. It has dropped internal combustion engines in the process—the new Macan is entirely battery electric, built on a dedicated EV platform. We've been following the car's development for some time, but today's news fills in a lot of the gaps, and it's the first time we've seen the Macan not covered in camouflage. Porsche is launching with two specifications. There's a Macan 4 that starts at $78,800, and a Macan Turbo starting at $105,300.

Last year Ars took a dive into the engineering that has gone into the new Macan and its underlying architecture, a new platform called PPE or Premium Platform Electric. Developed together with Audi, it uses an 800 V powertrain that's an incremental improvement upon the one you'd find in a Porsche Taycan.

We also already know it's fun to drive, especially the Macan Turbo. Rear-wheel steering makes it very nimble, and the two-valve dampers do a good job of making you think the car weighs less than it does. The Macan 4 isn't a slouch and can send up to 402 hp (300 kW) and 479 lb-ft (650 Nm) to its wheels, so launching up a highway on-ramp to 60 mph should take 4.9 seconds.