ars-rss
Apple refreshes MacBook Pro lineup with M4 chips, introduces the M4 Max
More memory and better display support make the $1,599 Pro more appealing.
Apple is following the M4 iMac and the redesigned Mac mini updates with one more major refresh this week: a new lineup of M4 MacBook Pros. These updates mostly follow the template set by last year’s M3 MacBook Pro refresh: there’s a 14-inch $1,599 base model with the standard M4, and then beefed up 14- and 16-inch versions with the M4 Pro and M4 Max processors that also offer more RAM, storage, an optional nano-texture display finish, and other amenities for power users.
All three versions of the M4 MacBook Pro are available for preorder today and begin arriving November 8, the same date as the new iMac and Mac mini refreshes.
New chips, same designs
Even without the M4’s improvements, the new $1,599 MacBook Pro addresses the biggest gripe about the original: it upgrades the base model from 8GB to 16GB of RAM without increasing the price. If this was the only change Apple made, it would have been a good upgrade (and the company has taken exactly that approach to updating the M2 and M3 MacBook Airs, which also start with 16GB beginning today). Base storage still starts at 512GB.
AI, cloud boost Alphabet profits by 34 percent
Google’s cloud business is still a distant third to Microsoft and Amazon.
Alphabet’s profit jumped 34 percent in the third quarter as the parent company of search giant Google reported strong growth in its cloud business amid robust demand for computing and data services used to train and run generative artificial intelligence models.
The solid results released on Tuesday helped alleviate investors’ fears about the financial returns on the vast sums being spent on AI by Alphabet and other Big Tech peers as they seek to dominate the nascent sector. The standout unit was Google Cloud, where revenue increased 35 percent to $11.4 billion and operating profit increased sevenfold to $1.9 billion from $266 million in the same period last year.
Net income was $26.3 billion compared with $19.7 billion in the same period a year earlier, exceeding analysts’ expectations for $22.8 billion. Revenue rose 15 percent to $88.3 billion in the three months through to the end of September, beating the average estimate for $86.3 billion.
New Glenn rolls to the launch pad as end-of-year deadline approaches
Up next is a hot-fire test of the massive rocket.
Blue Origin took another significant step toward the launch of its large New Glenn rocket on Tuesday night by rolling the first stage of the vehicle to a launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Although the company’s rocket factory in Florida is only a few miles from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, because of the rocket and transporter’s size the procession had to follow a more circuitous route. In a post on LinkedIn, Blue Origin’s chief executive, Dave Limp, said the route taken by the rocket to the pad is 23 miles long.
Limp also provided some details on GERT, the company’s nickname for the “Giant Enormous Rocket Truck” devised to transport the massive New Glenn first stage.
The sad, bizarre tale of hype fanning fears modern cryptography was slain
The advance was incremental at best. So why did so many think it was a breakthrough?
There’s little doubt that some of the most important pillars of modern cryptography will tumble spectacularly once quantum computing, now in its infancy, matures sufficiently. Some experts say that could be in the next couple decades. Others say it could take longer. No one knows.
The uncertainty leaves a giant vacuum that can be filled with alarmist pronouncements that the world is close to seeing the downfall of cryptography as we know it. The false pronouncements can take on a life of their own as they’re repeated by marketers looking to peddle post-quantum cryptography snake oil and journalists tricked into thinking the findings are real. And a new episode of exaggerated research has been playing out for the past few weeks.
All aboard the PQC hype train
The last time the PQC—short for post-quantum cryptography—hype train gained this much traction was in early 2023, when scientists presented findings that claimed, at long last, to put the quantum-enabled cracking of the widely used RSA encryption scheme within reach. The claims were repeated over and over, just as claims about research released in September have for the past three weeks.
These hornets break down alcohol so fast that they can’t get drunk
“No signs of intoxication or illness, even after chronically consuming huge amounts of alcohol.”
Many animals, including humans, have developed a taste for alcohol in some form, but excessive consumption often leads to adverse health effects. One exception is the Oriental wasp. According to a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, these wasps can guzzle seemingly unlimited amounts of ethanol regularly and at very high concentrations with no ill effects—not even intoxication. They pretty much drank honeybees used in the same experiments under the table.
“To the best of our knowledge, Oriental hornets are the only animal in nature adapted to consuming alcohol as a metabolic fuel,” said co-author Eran Levin of Tel Aviv University. “They show no signs of intoxication or illness, even after chronically consuming huge amounts of alcohol, and they eliminate it from their bodies very quickly.”
Per Levin et al., there’s a “drunken monkey” theory that predicts that certain animals well-adapted to low concentrations of ethanol in their diets nonetheless have adverse reactions at higher concentrations. Studies have shown that tree shrews, for example, can handle concentrations of up to 3.8 percent, but in laboratory conditions, when they consumed ethanol in concentrations of 10 percent or higher, they were prone to liver damage.
GitHub Copilot moves beyond OpenAI models to support Claude 3.5, Gemini
News sparks speculation Microsoft will go multi-model with other AI products.
The large language model-based coding assistant GitHub Copilot will switch from using exclusively OpenAI’s GPT models to a multi-model approach over the coming weeks, GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke announced in a post on GitHub’s blog.
First, Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet will roll out to Copilot Chat’s web and VS Code interfaces over the next few weeks. Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro will come a bit later.
Additionally, GitHub will soon add support for a wider range of OpenAI models, including GPT o1-preview and o1-mini, which are intended to be stronger at advanced reasoning than GPT-4, which Copilot has used until now. Developers will be able to switch between the models (even mid-conversation) to tailor the model to fit their needs—and organizations will be able to choose which models will be usable by team members.
The Ars redesign 9.0.2 brings the text options you’ve requested
Wide mode, font size controls, hyperlink colors, and more!
Readers of those other sites may not care much about font size and column widths. “40-character line lengths? In 18-point Comic Sans? I love it!” they say. But not you, because you are an Ars reader. And Ars readers are discerning. They have feelings about concepts like “information density.” And we want those feelings to be soft and cuddly ones.
That’s why we’re today rolling out version 9.0.2 of the Ars Technica site redesign, based on your continued feedback, with a special emphasis on text control. (You can read about the changes in 9.0.1 here.) That’s right—we’re talking about options! Font size selection, colored hyperlink text, even a wide column layout for subscribers who plonk down a mere $25/year (possible because we don’t need to accommodate ads for subs).
Here’s a quick visual look at some of the main changes:
“Impact printing” is a cement-free alternative to 3D-printed structures
Impact printing uses a high-velocity jet of material, fusing it into a structure.
Recently, construction company ICON announced that it is close to completing the world’s largest 3D-printed neighborhood in Georgetown, Texas. This isn’t the only 3D-printed housing project. Hundreds of 3D-printed homes are under construction in the US and Europe, and more such housing projects are in the pipeline.
There are many factors fueling the growth of 3D printing in the construction industry. It reduces the construction time; a home that could take months to build can be constructed within days or weeks with a 3D printer. Compared to traditional methods, 3D printing also reduces the amount of material that ends up as waste during construction. These advantages lead to reduced labor and material costs, making 3D printing an attractive choice for construction companies.
A team of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, however, claims to have developed a robotic construction method that is even better than 3D printing. They call it impact printing, and instead of typical construction materials, it uses Earth-based materials such as sand, silt, clay, and gravel to make homes. According to the researchers, impact printing is less carbon-intensive and much more sustainable and affordable than 3D printing.
CrowdStrike accuses Delta of blaming its own IT failures on global outage
CrowdStrike and Delta’s legal battle has begun. Will Microsoft be sued next?
Delta and CrowdStrike have officially locked legal horns, threatening to drag out the aftermath of the worst IT outage in history for months or possibly years.
Each refuses to be blamed for Delta’s substantial losses following a global IT outage caused by CrowdStrike suddenly pushing a flawed security update despite Delta and many other customers turning off auto-updates.
CrowdStrike has since given customers more control over updates and made other commitments to ensure an outage of that scale will never happen again, but Delta isn’t satisfied. The airline has accused CrowdStrike of willfully causing losses by knowingly deceiving customers by failing to disclose an unauthorized door into their operating systems that enabled the outage.
How The New York Times is using generative AI as a reporting tool
LLMs help reporters transcribe and sort through hundreds of hours of leaked audio.
The rise of powerful generative AI models in the last few years has led to plenty of stories of corporations trying to use AI to replace human jobs. But a recent New York Times story highlights the other side of that coin, where AI models simply become a powerful tool aiding in work that still requires humanity’s unique skillset.
The NYT piece in question isn’t directly about AI at all. As the headline “Inside the Movement Behind Trump’s Election Lies” suggests, the article actually reports in detail on how the ostensibly non-partisan Election Integrity Network “has closely coordinated with the Trump-controlled Republican National Committee.” The piece cites and shares recordings of group members complaining of “the left” rigging elections, talking of efforts to “put Democrats on the defensive,” and urging listeners to help with Republican turnout operations.
To report the piece, the Times says it sifted through “over 400 hours of conversations” from weekly meetings by the Election Integrity Network over the last three years, as well as “additional documents and training materials.” Going through a trove of information that large is a daunting prospect, even for the team of four bylined reporters credited on the piece. That’s why the Times says in a note accompanying the piece that it “used artificial intelligence to help identify particularly salient moments” from the videos to report on.