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Get ready for another wave of urgent motherboard updates for your desktop PC. Intel has just announced a new microcode update for its 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake processors — the ones that could possibly get permanently damaged and begin to crash your PC. While there’s still no fix for chips that are already crashing, the company is now releasing microcode update 0x12B to motherboard manufacturers to help prevent one of the root causes of damage. In this case, it prevents the Intel CPU from asking for too much power when it’s just sitting idle or performing light tasks. (Too much voltage can prematurely age a chip.) Intel says it may take several weeks for motherboard manufacturers to validate and roll out BIOS updates across their...

Ancient Polynesians were encouraged to settle new territories because they had a reliable and hardy crop, new research suggests.

Giant monsters of the ocean.

Master Replicas is working with original design company used by The Next Generation's production team to revive the sci-fi-esque mug, after it was discontinued 8 years ago.

Enlarge , the federal body that sets technology standards for governmental agencies, standards organizations, and private companies, has proposed barring some of the most vexing and nonsensical password requirements. Chief among them: mandatory resets, required or restricted use of certain characters, and the use of security questions. Choosing strong passwords and storing them safely is one of the most challenging parts of a good cybersecurity regimen. More challenging still is complying with password rules imposed by employers, federal agencies, and providers of online services. Frequently, the rules—ostensibly to enhance security hygiene—actually undermine it. And yet, the nameless rulemakers impose the requirements anyway. Last week, NIST released its second public draft of SP 800-63-4, the latest version of its Digital Identity Guidelines. At roughly 35,000 words and filled with jargon and bureaucratic terms, the document is nearly impossible to read all the way through and just as hard to understand fully. It sets both the technical requirements and recommended best practices for determining the validity of methods used to authenticate digital identities online. Organizations that interact with the federal government online are required to be in compliance.

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket hit a significant milestone this week, completing its first second-stage hot fire test that validates the interactions between the subsystems, its two BE-3U engines, and the ground control systems. The test lasted for 15 seconds and allowed the launch operations team to practice launch procedures in the lead-up to New Glenn’s planned November launch. New Glenn is Blue Origin’s big rocket answer to SpaceX when it comes to shooting things into space, but Jeff Bezos’ company has been moving slowly and has only so far conducted tourist flights to suborbital space using its New Shepard rocket. New Glenn was supposed to launch the smallsat ESCAPADE in conjunction with NASA this year as its first mission, but it...

Amazon corporate office building in Sunnyvale, California. An overwhelming majority of Amazon employees are “dissatisfied” with Amazon killing remote work and requiring them to be in the office five days a week next year. That's according to a survey of 2,585 employees by Blind, an online community where verified employees can discuss their work culture anonymously. Since May, Amazon employees have been able to work remotely up to twice per week—a policy that Amazon has reportedly enforced by keeping track of badge swipes and how many hours workers spend in offices. On September 16, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a memo to employees stating that Amazon would require most workers to come into the office five days a week at the start of 2025. "We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective,” the memo said.

OpenAI describes its business structure as “a partnership between our original Nonprofit and a new capped profit arm,” which has been a contributing factor in last year’s short-lived board coup against CEO Sam Altman and a recent lawsuit by cofounder Elon Musk. But that’s reportedly set to change along with a massive new funding round that’s still being negotiated but could value the ChatGPT maker at more than $150 billion. Now, Reuters cites unnamed sources saying that part of the new plan includes providing an equity stake to Altman for the first time, which Bloomberg reports could be about 7 percent. Reuters sources said that in the new structure, OpenAI would proceed as a for-profit benefit corporation, like rival AI company...

Pour one out for the Rabbit R1. Only 5,000 people of the 100,000 who bought the orange AI gadget are still using it daily, five months after it launched. That’s straight from the mouth of Rabbit founder Jesse Lyu, who gave the number to Fast Company while explaining that the device had to launch before it was ready in order to beat big tech companies to the punch. That’s a big fall from the moment AI gadgets were having earlier this year. There was tremendous hype around the R1 after its CES debut, and an air of mystery surrounded Humane’s AI Pin before its reveal. Both shipped without any of the futuristic grandeur that was promised. As The Verge’s David Pierce wrote in his review of the R1, “the whole thing just feels broken.” Maybe...