Month: July 2024

Enlarge / Intel's Core i9-13900K. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

For several months, Intel has been investigating reports that high-end 13th- and 14th-generation desktop CPUs (mainly, but not exclusively, the Core i9-13900K and 14900K) were crashing during gameplay. Intel partially addressed the issue by insisting that third-party motherboard makers adhere to Intel's recommended default power settings in their motherboards, but the company said it was still working to identify the root cause of the problem.

The company announced yesterday that it has wrapped up its investigation and that a microcode update to fix the problem should be shipping out to motherboard makers in mid-August "following full validation." Microcode updates like this generally require a BIOS update, so exactly when the patch hits your specific motherboard will be up to the company that made it.

Intel says that an analysis of defective processors "confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor." In other words, the CPU is receiving too much power, which is degrading stability over time.

Enlarge / Google, like most of us, has a hard time letting go of cookies. Most of us just haven't created a complex set of APIs and brokered deals across regulation and industry to hold onto the essential essence of cookies. (credit: Getty Images)

Google has an announcement today: It's not going to do something it has thought about, and tinkered with, for quite some time.

Most people who just use the Chrome browser, rather than develop for it or try to serve ads to it, are not going to know what "A new path for Privacy Sandbox on the web" could possibly mean. The very short version is that Google had a "path," first announced in January 2020, to turn off third-party (i.e., tracking) cookies in the most-used browser on Earth, bringing it in line with Safari, Firefox, and many other browsers. Google has proposed several alternatives to the cookies that follow you from page to page, constantly pitching you on that space heater you looked at three days ago. Each of these alternatives has met varying amounts of resistance from privacy and open web advocates, trade regulators, and the advertising industry.

So rather than turn off third-party cookies by default and implement new solutions inside the Privacy Sandbox, Chrome will "introduce a new experience" that lets users choose their tracking preferences when they update or first use Chrome. Google will also keep working on its Privacy Sandbox APIs but in a way that recognizes the "impact on publishers, advertisers, and everyone involved in online advertising." Google also did not fail to mention it was "discussing this new path with regulators."

This weekend will be all about San Diego Comic-Con and the hotly anticipated theatrical release of the summer blockbuster Deadpool and Wolverine, but Warner Bros. is already looking ahead to the fall. The studio dropped the official trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux, the sequel to 2019's smash hit Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix. This time, he's joined by fellow asylum inmate Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga) to bring a comic book criminal partnership for the ages to gritty life.

(Spoilers for 2019's Joker below.)

Joker was intended to be a standalone film—part of DC Films' decision to move away from the shared-universe approach of its prior franchise DCEU films. (DC Studios CEO James Gunn is now calling it the "DC Elseworld" project.) It had no relation to the Justice League films that came before, so that freed Phillips to create his own darker, grittier version of this iconic character. He cited Martin Scorsese films like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The King of Comedy among his influences. There's no real origin story for the Joker in the comics—not a definitive one, anyway—so Phillips and screenwriter Scott Silver were able to cherry-pick the canonical elements they needed and make up the rest. (In Batman: The Killing Joke, for instance, the Joker is a failed comedian.)

Enlarge / With Dragon and Falcon, SpaceX has become an essential contractor for NASA. (credit: SpaceX)

There is an emerging truth about NASA's push toward commercial contracts that is increasingly difficult to escape: Companies not named SpaceX are struggling with NASA's approach of awarding firm, fixed-price contracts for space services.

This belief is underscored by the recent award of an $843 million contract to SpaceX for a heavily modified Dragon spacecraft that will be used to deorbit the International Space Station by 2030.

The recently released source selection statement for the "US Deorbit Vehicle" contract, a process led by NASA head of space operations Ken Bowersox, reveals that the competition was a total stomp. SpaceX faced just a single serious competitor in this process, Northrop Grumman. And in all three categories—price, mission suitability, and past performance—SpaceX significantly outclassed Northrop.

Enlarge / Travelers navigate customer service and ticketing lines at Ronald Regan Washington National Airport on July 19, 2024 in Washington, DC. A global computer outage started from an update from the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike that impacted flights worldwide along with disrupting broadcasters and banking services. (credit: Nathan Howard / Stringer | Getty Images News)

In a letter Monday, the House Committee on Homeland Security demanded more transparency from CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz after major global outages were triggered by a "defect" in a recent update to CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor software.

Considered by some to be "the largest IT outage in history," the issue delayed or canceled thousands of flights, disabled emergency calls, postponed surgeries, and impacted banks, committee chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection chairman Andrew Garbarino (R-NY) wrote in the letter.

"In less than one day, we have seen major impacts to key functions of the global economy, including aviation, healthcare, banking, media, and emergency services," their letter said. "Recognizing that Americans will undoubtedly feel the lasting, real-world consequences of this incident, they deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking."