It used to be that if you dreamed of reaching 6GHz speeds with your hot rod desktop CPU, you'd have to try your luck with overclocking and all of the potential instability and cooling demands that required. Earlier this year, Intel released the Core i9-13900KS, which hit 6GHz right out of the box. Now, the company is doing it again with its fastest 14th-gen desktop CPU, the i9-14900K. That frequency is just a short-lived "Thermal Velocity Boost" speed, which isn't sustained for very long, but it's still something Intel can lord over AMD.
These 14th-gen chips, to be clear, are different from Intel's recently announced 14th-gen Core Ultra processors for notebooks. Understandably, Intel is focusing on efficiency for its mobile lineup, whereas its desktop chips are all about raw power (and 6GHz bragging rights). You can look at the 14th-gen desktop hardware as a last gasp for Intel's existing architecture, where the company doesn't mind pushing power demands to out-bench AMD. (The i9-14900K consumes as much as 253 watts, just like its predecessor.)
Intel's highest-end 14th-gen chip may get most of the attention, but discerning gamers may be more interested in the i7-14700K, which now features 20 cores (8 performance and 12 efficiency) and reaches up to 5.6GHz "Turbo Boost Max 3.0" speeds. Perhaps most importantly, its $409 price tag is well below the 14900K's $589.
When it comes to benchmarks, Intel claims the 14900K is up to 23 percent faster than AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X3D while playing Starfield in 1080p. The company also says that chip is up to 54 percent faster than the same AMD hardware while multi-tasking between After Effects and Premiere Pro. (That comparison may be a bit unfair, since Intel tested an Auto Reframe task in Premiere Pro that works together with its UHD graphics, something that AMD's graphics don't help with.)
Intel
Perhaps more useful than raw benchmark comparisons, Intel also says the i9-14900K was able to reach over 100fps in Total War: Warhammer III while playing, streaming and recording in 1080p with ultra graphics settings. That game is also optimized specifically for its 14th-gen hardware, so you can't expect the same results with every title.
If you're still eager to overclock, Intel is also making that easier with its new XTU AI Assist feature, which will only be available on the i9-4900K. In a demo for media, an Intel representative showed off how the XTU app can quickly determine the ideal processor core voltages, motherboard power settings and "other tuning knobs" to determine safe performance speeds. They noted that Intel had trained its AI overclocking model on hundreds of CPUs, as well as a variety of motherboard and cooler options (including a bit of liquid cooling). Once the AI tuning process is complete, you can roll with its suggested settings or use them as a baseline for further overclocking.
One feature you won't see in these new 14th-gen chips? An NPU (neural processing unit) for AI acceleration. Oddly enough, the company's upcoming Core Ultra mobile chips will feature an NPU, which enables things like Windows Studios Effects for AI-powered background blurs in video chats. It makes sense for Intel's first NPU to appear in its new architecture, whereas the 14th-gen desktop chips are beefed-up versions of last year's hardware. Still, it's a bit odd for its priciest desktop hardware to miss out on something mere laptops will see next year.
Intel's 14th-gen desktop chips will be available from retailers and system manufacturers on October 17th.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/intel-hits-6ghz-again-with-its-14th-gen-desktop-cpus-130007286.html?src=rss
TikTok is the latest social media company to announce its plan for mitigating misleading and violent content in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war. A point-by-point blog post details recent steps, such as the creation of a command center "that brings together key members of our 40,000-strong global team of safety professionals, representing a range of expertise and regional perspectives, so that we remain agile in how we take action to respond to this fast-evolving crisis." The company's statement follows similar ones from Meta and X — both companies had received letters from the European Union's regulatory commissioner detailing misinformation concerns.
Additional steps outlined by TikTok include hiring "more" moderators who speak Arabic or Hebrew and regularly updating its automatic detection systems to identify graphic or violent content so as not to expose users or moderators. To that end, TikTok has expanded the well-being care available for frontline moderators. Notably, a moderator sued TikTok in 2021 for mental trauma, alleging that she would view between three and ten videos at once that featured horrific events like school shootings and cannibalism.
Users should also now see opt-in screens over graphic imagery that is being kept on the platform for "public interest" reasons and further restricted Live eligibility in an attempt to limit misinformation. Speaking of falsehoods circulating on the internet, TikTok reiterated that it removes spliced content that users have edited to be misleading.
TikTok reportedly took down about 500,000 videos and ended 8,000 livestreams occurring in Israel and Gaza between the initial attacks on October 7 and the statement's October 15 release. Moving forward, the company plans to roll out misinformation warnings in English, Hebrew and Arabic when certain terms are searched.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/tiktok-details-how-its-taking-action-against-israel-hamas-misinformation-115753575.html?src=rss
Are you waiting for an even more powerful Apple laptop? Well, you might have to hold on a little longer. Apple’s M3 MacBook Pro may arrive at the beginning of 2024, with the M3 MacBook Air likely to follow a few months later. That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who had predicted that a MacBook Air with the new chip could appear as early as October.
Gurman reports the 13-inch and 15-inch M3 MacBook Airs are now in the engineering verification test (EVT) stage. M3 MacBook Pros, on the other hand, are further along in the process and “nearing mass production.” If you want even more power, MBPs with M3 Pro and M3 Max are also progressing, so expect to see them in the first half of 2024.
The 2024 Chevrolet Corvette E-Ray’s hybrid drive isn’t here to raise the efficiency of this iconic sports car. It’s only here to make it faster: 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds and a quarter-mile in 10.5 faster. The electric motor up front adds 160 horsepower to the 495 from the LT2 V8 engine in the back. It even helps the handling.
The National Labor Relations Board has accused X (formerly Twitter) of retaliating against software engineer Yao Yue for attempting to organize workers in the wake of the new policy. After Musk gave then-Twitter employees an ultimatum in November 2022 to return to the office, Yue urged others not to resign in response but instead “let him fire you.” Yue was fired five days after tweeting about it and writing a similar post on Slack. In terminating her, the complaint filed by a San Francisco branch of the NLRB alleges the company violated federal labor laws by “interfering with, restraining and coercing employees” exercising protected rights.
Netflix’s Squid Game reality show will premiere on November 22, just in time for Thanksgiving, so you can celebrate the holiday by watching a reality show adaptation of a dystopian drama with a pretty on-the-nose message about late-stage capitalism. One that’s utterly ignored here.
The Meta Quest 3 is here, and it’s the best standalone VR headset we’ve ever seen. But is that enough to make people care about virtual reality? In this episode, Devindra and Senior Writer Sam Rutherford chat with Tested’s Norm Chan about the Quest 3 and Meta’s mixed reality future.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-you-might-have-to-wait-for-an-m3-powered-macbook-pro-and-macbook-air-111504463.html?src=rss
Mojang Studios announced the achievement during a Minecraft Live event that shared new features coming to the game, like a trial chamber that has traps and mobs coming at you along a series of rooms and corridors. A new Star Wars: Path of the Jedi DLC and Planet Earth DLC are also in development and will be available on November 7 and early next year, respectively.
"As we approach the 15th anniversary, Minecraft remains one of the best-selling games of all time with over 300 million copies sold," said Helen Chiang, head of Mojang Studios. "[Its] a milestone no one could have dreamed of when we were all placing our first blocks."
The exact launch date of Minecraft is a bit confusing. Game developer Markus Persson, commonly known as Notch, first made Minecraft available to the public in 2009 (the anniversary being celebrated), but the game wasn't officially released until late 2011. Persson used the initial launch as an opportunity to better the game, keeping track of feedback and releasing alpha and beta updates in 2010 under his new company, Mojang. Jens Bergesten took over as lead designer at the end of that year, and in November 2011, the official Minecraft game launched on iOS.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/minecraft-has-now-sold-over-300-million-copies-094225081.html?src=rss
If Apple does release a cheaper Vision Pro headset, it’s likely to be a stripped-down version with fewer external cameras, no EyeSight feature and an iPhone chip in place of the current Mac chip. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported in his Power On newsletter that the company is looking at these options as ways to bring the cost down to between $1,500 and $2,500 for a lower-end model. Apple Vision Pro, which is set to begin shipping in early 2024, currently starts at an eye-watering $3,500.
In an earlier report, Gurman said the cheaper Vision Pro would also use lower resolution displays inside the headset. The big indication now is that it may drop the external display that enables its signature EyeSight feature, according to Gurman. EyeSight projects the wearer’s eyes onto an outward-facing OLED display so anyone who approaches can see where their attention is focused. It was one of major selling points in Apple's Vision Pro announcement, though it isn’t exactly mission critical.
According to Gurman, a follow-up to the premium Vision Pro is in the works already, too. That will have EyeSight, and potentially a more lightweight design that opts for built-in prescription lenses for those who need it rather than the Zeiss inserts it’s working with now.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-may-cut-eyesight-display-and-mac-chip-for-its-cheaper-vision-pro-204548008.html?src=rss
Apple’s M3 MacBook Pro may arrive in the beginning of 2024, with the M3 MacBook Air to follow a few months later, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Gurman had previously predicted that a MacBook Air featuring the new chip might see an October launch, but he now says it seems to be shaping up for a release between next spring and summer “at the earliest.”
In the latest installment of his Power On newsletter, Gurman reports that the 13-inch and 15-inch M3 MacBook Airs are now in the engineering verification test (EVT) stage. M3 MacBook Pros, on the other hand, are further along in the process and “nearing mass production.” According to Gurman, “The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with M3 Pro and M3 Max chips have reached the DVT stage — short for design validation test.” This puts them on track for release “between early and spring 2024,” he notes. Apple released its 2023 MacBook Pros with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips in January.
Gurman’s report also contradicts rumors from this weekend that Apple will introduce new iPads this week. Superchargedand 9to5Mac reported that the iPad Air and iPad Mini are getting chip upgrades, with the former adopting the M2 chip and the Mini upgrading to A16 Bionic. In his report, Gurman says upgrades along these lines are in development, but writes, “I don’t believe updates of any significance are imminent.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apples-m3-macbook-pro-and-macbook-air-will-likely-both-be-released-next-year-185124991.html?src=rss
Netflix just dropped the official trailer for its upcoming Scott Pilgrim anime, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. The highly anticipated eight-episode series brings back the original cast from the 2010 movie, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and counts Bryan Lee O’Malley — creator of the comics it’s all based on — as one of its executive producers. Edgar Wright, who directed the movie, is also on board as an executive producer. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off will be released on November 17.
The show will return to the story of 23-year-old Sex Bob-Omb bass player, Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), and his plight to defeat the seven evil exes of his new love interest, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). While Scott Pilgrim Takes Off will build on what we’ve seen in the comics and movie, it won’t be a straight adaptation, according to the show’s creators. In an interview with the Netflix companion site Tudum, Wright said O’Malley’s idea for the show “was way more adventurous” than that.
Alongside Cera and Winstead, actors including Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong, Brie Larson, Chris Evans, and Aubrey Plaza will be reprising their roles. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off will also feature music by Anamanaguchi, the band that did the soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game. The action-packed trailer set to the Mortal Kombat theme is doing everything to drum up the hype, and honestly, it's working.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-full-trailer-for-scott-pilgrim-takes-off-is-here-and-it-brings-the-heat-161223113.html?src=rss
We’re not quite done with the busy fall season of tech events. It’s Baidu’s turn to reveal what it has been cooking up. The company will host its Baidu World showcase on October 16th at 10PM ET.
After several years of holding the event entirely virtually, Baidu is returning to an in-person format with "real-world demos and experiences" for the first time since 2019. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the direction almost every major tech company has gone in recent times, there will be a significant focus on artificial intelligence.
Baidu says it will discuss “a range of AI-native applications and the latest advances in foundation models.” That suggests we’ll learn more about what’s next for ERNIE Bot, its large language model and generative AI chatbot. The company may also have more to share about the impact of artificial intelligence on its self-driving initiatives.
The two-hour event will open with a keynote address from Baidu co-founder and CEO Robin Li. You can watch a live stream of Baidu World 2023 below.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/how-to-watch-baidus-ai-focused-product-event-150014257.html?src=rss
Siri and Alexa were only the beginning. As voice recognition and speech synthesis technologies continue to mature, the days of typing on keyboards to interact with the digital world around us could be coming to an end — and sooner than many of us anticipated. Where today's virtual assistants exist on our mobile devices and desktops to provide scripted answers to specific questions, the LLM-powered generative AI copilots of tomorrow will be there, and everywhere else too. This is the "voice-first" future Tobias Dengel envisions in his new book, The Sound of the Future: The Coming Age of Voice Technology.
Using a wide-ranging set of examples, and applications in everything from marketing, sales and customer service to manufacturing and logistics, Dengel walks the reader through how voice technologies can revolutionize the ways in which we interact with the digital world. In the excerpt below, Dengel discusses voice technology might expand its role in the aviation industry, even after the disastrous outcome of its early use in the Boeing 737 MAX.
Some workplaces involve greater risks than others. Today’s technology-driven society sometimes multiplies the risks we face by giving ordinary people control over once-incredible amounts of power, in forms that range from tractor trailers to jet airplanes. People carrying out professional occupations that involve significant risks on a daily basis will also benefit from the safety edge that voice provides — as will the society that depends on these well-trained, highly skilled yet imperfect human beings.
When the Boeing 737 MAX airliner was rolled out in 2015, it featured a number of innovations, including distinctive split-tip winglets and airframe modifications that affected the jumbo jet’s aerodynamic characteristics. A critical launch goal for Boeing was to enable commercial pilots to fly the new plane without needing new certifications, since retraining pilots is very expensive for airlines. To achieve that goal, the airliner’s software included an array of ambitious new features, including many intended to increase safety by taking over control from the crew in certain situations. These included something called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which was supposed to compensate for an excessive nose-up angle by adjusting the horizontal stabilizer to keep the aircraft from stalling— a complicated technical “hack” implemented by Boeing to avoid the larger cost involved in rewriting the program from the ground up.
The 737 MAX was a top seller right out of the gate. But what Boeing and its airline customers hadn’t realized was that the software was being asked to do things the pilots didn’t fully understand. As a result, pilots found themselves unable to interface in a timely fashion with the complex system in front of them. The ultimate result was two tragic crashes with 346 fatalities, forcing the grounding of the 737 MAX fleet and a fraud settlement that cost Boeing some $2.5 billion. Additional losses from cancelled aircraft orders, lowered stock value, and other damages have been estimated at up to $60 billion.
These needless losses — financial and human — were caused, in large part, by small yet fatal failures of cockpit communication between people and machines. The pilots could tell that something serious was wrong, but the existing controls made it difficult for them to figure out what that was and to work with the system to correct the problem. As a result, in the words of investigative reporter Peter Robison, “the pilots were trying to retake control of the plane, so that the plane was pitching up and down over several minutes.” Based on his re-creation of what happened, Robison concludes, “it would have been terrifying for the people on the planes.”
When voice becomes a major interface in airliner cockpits, a new tool for preventing such disasters will be available. In traditional aviation, pilots receive commands like “Cleared Direct Casanova VOR” or “Intercept the ILS 3” via radio from dispatchers at air traffic control. After the pilots get this information, they must use their eyes and hands to locate and press a series of buttons to transmit the same commands to the aircraft. In a voice-driven world, that time-wasting, error-prone step will be eliminated. In the first stage of voice adoption, pilots will simply be able to say a few words without moving their eyes from the controls around them, and the plane will respond. According to Geoff Shapiro, a human factors engineer at the former Rockwell Collins Advanced Technology Center, this shift trims the time spent when entering simple navigational commands from half a minute to eight seconds — a huge improvement in circumstances when a few moments can be critical. In the second stage, once veteran pilots have recognized and accepted the power of voice, the plane will automatically follow the spoken instructions from air traffic control, merely asking the pilot to confirm them.
A voice-interface solution integrating the latest capabilities of voice-driven artificial intelligence can improve airline safety in several ways. It gives the system self-awareness and the ability to proactively communicate its state and status to pilots, thereby alerting them to problems even at moments when they might otherwise be distracted or inattentive. Using increasingly powerful voice-technology tools like automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding, it also allows the airplane’s control systems to process and act on conversational speech, making the implementation of pilot commands faster and more accurate than ever. It facilitates real-time communications linking the cockpit, air traffic control, the airline carrier, and maintenance engineers to remove inconsistencies in communication due to human indecision or misjudgment. In the near future, it may even be able to use emerging voice-tech tools such as voice biometrics and real-time sentiment analysis to determine stress levels being experienced by pilots —information that could be used to transmit emergency alerts to air traffic controllers and others on the ground.
Voice technology won’t eliminate all the traditional activities pilots are trained to perform. But in critical moments when the speed of response to messages from a control tower may spell the difference between survival and disaster, the use of a voice interface will prevent crashes and save lives. This is not a fantasy about the remote future. Today’s planes have all the electronics needed to make it possible.
One field of aviation in which safety risks are especially intense is military flying. It’s also an arena in which voice-enabled aviation is being avidly pursued. Alabama-based Dynetics has received $12.3 million from DARPA, the Pentagon’s storied defense-technology division, to develop the use of AI in “high-intensity air conflicts.” The third phrase of the current three-phase research/implementation program involves a “realistic, manned-flight environment involving complex human-machine collaboration” — including voice communication.
The US Air Force is not alone in pursuing this technological advantage. The next generation of the MiG-35, the highly advanced Russian fighter jet, will apparently feature a voice assistant to offer advice in high-pressure situations. Test pilot Dmitry Selivanov says, “We call her Rita, the voice communicant. Her voice remains pleasant and calm even if fire hits the engine. She does not talk all the time, she just makes recommendations if the plane approaches some restrictions. Hints are also provided during combat usage.”
Voice-controlled flying is also in development for civilian aircraft. Companies like Honeywell and Rockwell are designing voice interfaces for aviation, with an initial focus on reducing pilot workload around tedious tasks involving basic, repetitive commands like “Give me the weather at LAX and any critical weather en route.” More extensive and sophisticated use cases for voice tech in aviation are steadily emerging. Vipul Gupta is general manager of Honeywell Aerospace Avionics. He and his team are deeply focused on perfecting the technology of the voice cockpit, especially its response speed, which is a crucial safety feature. Their engineers have reduced the voice system’s average response time to 250 milliseconds, which means, in effect, that the system can react more quickly than a human pilot can.
Over time, voice-controlled aircraft systems will become commonplace in most forms of aviation. But in the short term, the most important use cases will be in general aviation, where single-pilot operators are notoriously overloaded, especially when operating in bad weather or congested areas. Having a “voice copilot” will ease those burdens and make the flying experience safer for pilot and passengers alike.
Voice-controlled aircraft are also likely to dominate the emerging field of urban air mobility, which involves the use of small aircraft for purposes ranging from cargo deliveries to sightseeing tours within city and suburban airspaces. New types of aircraft, such as electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOLs) are likely to dominate this domain, with the marketplace for eVTOLs expected to explode from nothing in 2022 to $1.75 billion in 2028. As this new domain of flight expands, experienced pilots will be in short supply, so the industry is now designing simplified cockpit systems, controlled by voice, that trained “operators” will be able to manage.
Vipul Gupta is bullish about the future of the voice-powered cockpit. “Eventually,” he says, “we’ll have a voice assistant where you will just sit in [the aircraft] and the passenger will say, ‘Hey, fly me there, take me there. And then the system does it.’”
As a licensed pilot with significant personal experience in the cock- pit, I suspect he will be right —eventually. As with most innovations, I believe it will take longer than the early adopters and enthusiasts believe. This is especially likely in a critical field like aviation, in which human trust issues and regulatory hurdles can take years to overcome. But the fact is that the challenges of voice-powered flight are actually simpler in many ways than those faced by other technologies, such as autonomous automobiles. For example, a plane cruising at 20,000 feet doesn’t have to deal with red lights, kids dashing into the street, or other drivers tailgating.
For this reason, I concur with the experts who say that we will have safe, effective voice-controlled planes sooner than autonomous cars. And once the technology is fully developed, the safety advantages of a system that can respond to spoken commands almost instantly in an emergency will be too powerful for the aviation industry to forgo.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-the-sound-of-the-future-tobias-dengel-publicaffairs-143020776.html?src=rss
Anyone sitting on a mountain of cryptocurrency can now use it to buy a Ferrari in the US. According to Reuters, the luxury carmaker is working with the crypto payment processor BitPay to accept bitcoin, ether, and USDC for purchases stateside, which customers were apparently begging for. Europe is expected to get the same treatment in early 2024, with other regions to follow.
There won’t be any upcharges for those paying with crypto, Ferrari’s Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer Enrico Galliera told Reuters, and BitPay will convert those payments to traditional currency at the time of the transaction to avoid any issues of volatility. Galliera said the move will help the company reach “people who are not necessarily our clients but might afford a Ferrari.”
Just last year, Ferrari announced a commitment to more sustainable operations, including reducing its environmental footprint, and embracing the notoriously energy-intensive cryptocurrencies would seem to go against that. But, the company insists this doesn’t get in the way of its mission. Galliera cited recent strides in improving crypto’s carbon footprint, like heavier reliance on renewable energy sources, and told Reuters, “Our target to reach for carbon neutrality by 2030 along our whole value chain is absolutely confirmed.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/you-can-now-buy-a-ferrari-with-crypto-in-the-us-if-thats-your-thing-214639691.html?src=rss
