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Enlarge / "Thermal solution must be purchased separately" for both the Ryzen 9 3900XT, and Ryzen 7 3800XT. (Ryzen 5 customers still get the freebie.) (credit: AMD)

On Tuesday, AMD announced three new additions to its desktop Ryzen CPU line: Ryzen 9 3900XT, Ryzen 7 3800XT, and Ryzen 5 3600XT. The new processor designs are expected to become generally available on July 7, the anniversary of the original launch date of 7nm Zen 2.

The new CPU designs take advantage of newly optimized 7nm process technology to offer higher performance at the same TDPs as Ryzen 3000 designs. The new 3000XT CPUs are drop-in replacements on AM4 motherboards that supported Ryzen 3000 CPUs and offer small (up to 4 percent) single-threaded performance improvements over their Ryzen 3000 counterparts.

Although the single-threaded performance improvements are small, the margins between CPUs in that stat tend to be razor-thin, and AMD says they're enough to take the coveted single-thread performance crown away from Intel. A 4 percent improvement to the Ryzen 9 3900X score shown on the CGDirector leaderboard would come out to 531—a few points higher than CGDirector's posted score for the i9-10900K, although a few points lower than our own Cinebench R20 result for that processor, using an NZXT Kraken fluid-cooler and Primochill Praxis open-air bench.

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  Meet Spot, the robodog. [credit: Boston Dynamics ]

Boston Dynamics, easily the world's leading robotics company, is selling a robot to the public for the first time in its 28-year history. The company's robotic quadruped, "Spot," is now for sale on shop.bostondynamics.com, where you can take home your very own robotic dog for a cool $74,500.

If you can't tell from the price, Spot is an industrial robot for industrial applications. Boston Dynamics' site calls Spot "a stable, dynamically balanced quadruped robot that can navigate through unstructured, unknown, or antagonistic terrain with ease." Spot is a platform, Boston Dynamics handles the locomotion, and it's your job to develop programs and attach extra equipment to make Spot useful. Out of the box, the robot is basically a highly mobile camera that can go up steps, tromp through the mud, and generally handle terrain better than nearly any other robot on Earth.

We covered Spot's development back when it was first unveiled in 2015. Back then, Spot—which has since been renamed to "Spot Classic"—was a 160-pound robodog with a pipe chassis and exposed internals. The big advancement at the time over previous Boston Dynamics quadrupeds was a design around an electric engine to drive the hydraulics system, which made it amenable to indoor use. Previous four-legged BD bots like the 330-pound Wildcat ran on a two-stroke gas engine that sounded like a chainsaw and constantly belched CO2. The Spot bots got a lot smaller with the "SpotMini" in 2016, a 55-pound robot that dumped the hydraulics system of the original Spot and went with an all-electric locomotion system. The SpotMini has since been renamed to plain old "Spot" and looks the closest to today's commercial bot—it even has an option for plastic cladding. This latest version, with a yellow shell, has been hanging around on the YouTube channel since 2017.

Enlarge / This image shows the Zefiro-23 second stage being installed onto the P80 first stage at the Vega Launch Site in February, in Kourou, French Guiana. (credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace)

Nearly a year has gone by since an Italian-made Vega rocket launched a 1.2-ton satellite from French Guiana only to subsequently fail at reaching orbit. Now, the Vega rocket is set for its return-to-flight mission on Thursday night at 9:51pm ET (01:51 UTC Friday). It will be broadcast on ESA Web TV.

This is an important mission for more than just getting the Vega rocket back on track. It also is the first launch of a rocket from the European spaceport in French Guiana since February, after which the facility closed down due to COVID-19 precautions.

Additionally, with this mission, the small Vega booster seeks to prove its bona fides as a booster capable of flying rideshare missions. On this launch, the rocket will debut the "Small Spacecraft Mission Service" dispenser to deploy payloads of varying sizes into multiple orbits.

Enlarge (credit: Yuri Samoilov Follow / Flickr)

Under pressure from privacy and human rights advocates, Zoom said on Wednesday that it will make end-to-end encryption available to both paying and non-paying users of its video conferencing service.

Previously, Zoom said it would provide end-to-end encryption to paying customers and a less-robust form of encryption, known as transit encryption, to non-paying customers. Zoom said the two-tier offering would allow law enforcement to regulate illicit content coming from users who don’t have accounts and, hence, are harder to track. Paying users, by contrast, had more traceability and, hence, were less likely to use the platform for illegal purposes.

Critics in privacy and human rights circles said the Zoom plans threatened to make privacy a premium feature rather than something that’s available by default. The critics called on Zoom to provide the same protections for all users.

Enlarge / AT&T service van driving in June 2019 in Oakdale, California. (credit: Getty Images | Andrei Stanescu)

AT&T is cutting 3,400 union jobs from its wireline broadband and phone network operations as well as closing 250 wireless retail stores, according to a union that represents AT&T employees. Wireline job cuts are initially "voluntary" through buyouts, but AT&T will proceed to layoffs if not enough workers volunteer.

The total number of planned job cuts is apparently more than double that, because AT&T told Ars that it is cutting even more non-union jobs than union jobs. The cuts are a continuation of what AT&T has called a multi-year "headcount-rationalization" project.

"AT&T has informed the Communications Workers of America (CWA) of its plans to cut over 3,400 technician and clerical jobs across the country over the next few weeks," the union said in a press release yesterday. "In addition, the company plans to permanently shutter over 250 AT&T Mobility and Cricket Wireless stores, impacting 1,300 retail jobs."