Month: February 2024

Enlarge / Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger speaks during the "AI Everywhere" event on December 14, 2023, in New York, NY. (credit: Intel Corporation)

US chip company Intel will make high-end semiconductors for Microsoft, the companies announced, as it seeks to compete with TSMC and Samsung to supply the next generation of silicon used in artificial intelligence for customers around the world.

Chief executive Pat Gelsinger said at a company event on Wednesday that Intel is set to “rebuild Western manufacturing at scale,” buoyed by geopolitical concerns in Washington about the need to bring leading-edge manufacturing back to the US.

Since Gelsinger took the helm three years ago, Intel has been attempting to reinvent itself as a foundry business, building chips designed by other companies, regaining an edge in making the most advanced semiconductors. Demand for them is soaring, driven by the rise of generative AI.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

More than 70,000 AT&T cellular customers reported being unable to connect to service early Thursday morning. While early reports suggested multiple carriers, including Verizon and T-Mobile, seemed to be affected, that appears to be a knock-on effect of a major network going down.

Service monitoring site Downdetector was showing multiple post-paid and pre-paid carriers as having increased outage reports starting at around 4 am Eastern time. An Ars editor in Texas has seen "SOS" on their iPhone since 4:30 am Eastern time and has been unable to make Wi-Fi calls.

AT&T acknowledged the outage to CNBC, telling the network that it was "working urgently to restore service" to customers and that it recommended Wi-Fi calling until service could be restored. Verizon and T-Mobile told CNBC that they suspected their customers were reporting outages when they could not reach customers on AT&T or resellers that use AT&T networks.

Enlarge (credit: Square)

It is said that you can’t go home again, and now I am reminded of how true that is. I recently spent more than $500 on a PlayStation 5, largely spurred by an opportunity to play and review Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, a title that activated youthful memories (releasing February 29). This was a big mistake. Perhaps you can learn from it.

None of this is particularly the fault of Rebirth. Even as I could only bring myself to put about 12 hours into it over the space of 11 days’ early access, I understood that those who truly cherish the original game, and still enjoy Japanese role-playing games (“JRPGs”) in general, will find a lot to love here. It’s a beautiful-looking game that runs smoothly on its quality-minded setting. The soundtrack is largely lovely, and I found myself humming the world map tunes while walking my dog or making coffee. Lots of things from the original that would be hard to wade through now, like random encounters and monotonous turn-based combat, have been transmuted into more tolerable forms here. The number of things you can do in this game, just from looking at screenshots of what’s ahead, looks like a true embarrassment of riches.

I am sure that if I harbored stronger memories of the original game, had kept up a JRPG habit over the last 25 years or so, or perhaps had started with the earlier Remake chapter, I might have found more to grab onto in Rebirth. Most people aren’t going to gamble $70, let alone $500, on the chance they’ll be magically transported to being 16 again, with the requisite free time and adolescent brain chemistry that helps one relate to a ragtag set of friends striving against cartoonishly oppressive villains.

Enlarge / Honda definitely doesn't want you to think of the Prologue as a rebadged Chevy Blazer EV, and it has worked quite hard to make it feel like a Honda. (credit: Robin Warner)

HEALDSBURG, Calif. — The beginning of Honda’s transition story away from internal combustion starts, fittingly enough, with the Prologue. The Japanese brand’s first mainstream battery-electric vehicle for the United States market plops right in the center of the red-hot midsize crossover SUV segment.

At first glance, the Prologue looks awfully similar to the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV, and for good reason. The two share the Ultium platform structure as a foundation, not to mention the same 121.8-inch (3,094-mm) wheelbase and very similar dimensions. However, the Prologue measures a smidge shorter, wider, and lower at 192 inches (4,877 mm) long, 78.3 inches (1,989 mm) wide, and 64.7 inches (1,643 mm) tall.

A nod to '80s design

Indeed, Honda engineers moved to southeast Michigan to join GM in creating this platform, and much of the Prologue’s development happened in Michigan, not Ohio. "We didn’t want to change the Ultium platform," John Hwang, project lead of the Honda Prologue, said. "We want to take the best part of that: great suspension, great performance, great range."