MojoKid writes: AMD just launched its latest flagship desktop processors, the Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Ryzen 9 9950X3D is a 16-core/32-thread, dual-CCD part with a base clock of 4.3GHz and a max boost clock of 5.7GHz. There’s also 96MB of second-gen 3D V-Cache on board. Standard Ryzen 9000 series processors feature 32MB of L3 cache per compute die, but with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, one compute die is outfitted with an additional 96MB of 3D V-Cache, bringing the total L3 up to 128MB (144MB total cache). The CCD outfitted with 3D V-Cache operates at more conservative voltages and frequencies, but the bare compute die is unencumbered.

The Ryzen 9 9950X3D turns out to be a high-performance, no-compromise desktop processor. Its complement of 3D V-Cache provides tangible benefits in gaming, and AMD’s continued work on the platform’s firmware and driver software ensures that even with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D’s asymmetrical CCD configuration, performance is strong across the board. At $699, it’s not cheap but its a great CPU for gaming and content creation, and one of the most powerful standard desktop CPUs money can buy currently.

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With all the announcements from automakers planning for more gasoline and hybrid cars in their future lineups, you’d think that electric vehicles had stopped selling. While that might be increasingly true for Tesla, everyone else is more than picking up the slack. According to analysts at Rho Motion, global EV sales are up 30 percent this year already. Even here in the US, EV sales were still up 28 percent compared to 2024, despite particularly EV-unfriendly headwinds.

Getting ahead of those unfriendly winds may actually be driving the sales bump in the US, where EV sales only grew by less than 8 percent last year, for contrast. “American drivers bought 30 percent more electric vehicles than they had by this time last year, making use of the final months of IRA tax breaks before the incentives are expected to be pulled later this year,” said Charles Lester, Rho Motion data manager.

With the expected loss of government incentives and the prospect of new tariffs that will add tens of thousands of dollars to new car prices, now is probably a good time to buy an EV if you think you’re going to want or need one.

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As Disney looks to stage a diminished premiere for its latest live-action adaptation, it marks the end of a long and winding road of the studio’s similarly long-and-winding lack of confidence in the film.

Microsoft is ending support of its Remote Desktop app for Windows on May 27th. From a report: If you use the Remote Desktop app to connect to Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, or Microsoft Dev Box machines then you’ll have to transition to the Windows app instead.

The new Windows app, which launched in September, includes multimonitor support, dynamic display resolutions, and easy access to cloud PCs and virtual desktops. Microsoft says “connections to Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, and Microsoft Dev Box via the Remote Desktop app from the Microsoft Store will be blocked after May 27th, 2025.”

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A new chapter has begun for two of the world’s most popular preprint platforms, bioRxiv and medRxiv, with the launch of a non-profit organization that will manage them, their co-founders announced today. From a report: The servers allow researchers to share manuscripts for free before peer review and have become an integral part of publishing biology and medical research. Until now, they had been managed by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) in New York. The new organization, named openRxiv, will have a board of directors and a scientific and medical advisory board. It is supported by a fresh US$16-million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the projects’ main financial backer.

“It’s just exciting to see this key piece of infrastructure really get the attention that it deserves as a dedicated initiative,” says Katie Corker, executive director of ASAPbio, a scientist-driven non-profit organization, which is based in San Francisco, California. Preprints are “the backbone of the scientific publishing ecosystem, maybe especially at the current moment, when there’s a lot of worries about who has control of information.”

The launch of openRxiv “reflects a maturation of the projects,” which started as an experiment at CSHL, says Richard Sever, a co-founder of both servers and chief science and strategy officer at openRxiv. It has “become so important that they should have their own organization running them, which is focused on the long-term sustainability of the servers, as opposed to being a side project within a big research institution,” says Sever.

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Papa Roach’s ‘Last Resort’ will get you motivated to watch Devil May Cry come April.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: An Amazon-backed self-driving taxi failed to meet vehicle safety standardsbecause it lacks basics like a brake pedal and rearview mirrors, according to a report by federal inspectors that raises questions about the industry’s plans to put a new generation of autonomous vehicles on U.S. roads. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report was produced as part of a review last year of an unusual vehicle by Amazon subsidiary Zoox that, without a steering wheel or other human controls, has no way for a person to drive. Zoox has asserted that the vehicle’s technology, backed by artificial intelligence, complies with the agency’s standards. But the NHTSA report documents “apparent noncompliances” with eight safety rules.

The contents of the previously undisclosed review suggest that rules written when autonomous vehicles were the stuff of futuristic musings pose a legal impediment to the industry’s ambitions, even as plans for self-driving vehicles accelerate. Zoox has a small pilot fleet on the roads in California and Nevada and says it has completed thousands of trips carrying employees and guests. It is finalizing plans to launch public service in Las Vegas this year. […] By documenting the apparent noncompliances of the Zoox, NHTSA could be setting the table for a recall, under agency procedures. It is unclear whether the Trump administration will attempt a change in course. The agency said it remains in discussion with Zoox and was “considering all options.”

Zoox could have sought an exemption from the safety rules, but NHTSA has never granted one to an autonomous passenger vehicle. Instead, the company self-certified that its vehicle complied with the rules as it raced to be the first company to put a purpose-built robotaxi on the road and claim a share of what could become a multi trillion-dollar market. Zoox’s vehicle bears little resemblance to a normal car. The plan is for customers to summon a ride using an app, much like a regular ride-hailing vehicle, getting in through bus-like doors and sitting facing one another. The vehicle navigates itself, seeing the world through a set of cameras and laser-based sensors. It largely relies on its own abilities to drive, but the company says teams of remote operators can seize control to help handle unusual situations. Passengers can call for assistance via a touch screen and open the doors using an emergency release. “We will continue to support transportation technology innovation while maintaining the safety of America’s roads,” NHTSA said in a statement.

“Our recent discussions with NHTSA are about mirrors, windshield wipers, a defroster, and a foot-activated brake pedal — equipment that makes sense for vehicles with human drivers, but not for the Zoox purpose-built robotaxi,” Zoox said in a statement. “Our purpose-built design means that the robotaxi can never be operated by a human driver, and our AI driver doesn’t rely on this equipment to view the world.”

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“The future of podcasting shouldn’t be locked behind walled gardens,” writes the team at Pocket Casts. To push that point forward, Pocket Casts, owned by the company behind WordPress, Automattic Inc., has made its web player free to everyone.

Previously available only to logged-in Pocket Casts users paying $4 per month, Pocket Casts now offers nearly any public-facing podcast feed for streaming, along with controls like playback speed and playlist queueing. If you create an account, you can also sync your playback progress, manage your queue, bookmark episode moments, and save your subscription list and listening preferences. The free access also applies to its clients for Windows and Mac.

“Podcasting is one of the last open corners of the internet, and we’re here to keep it that way,” Pocket Cast’s blog post reads. For those not fully tuned into the podcasting market, this and other statements in the post—like sharing “without needing a specific platform’s approval” and that “podcasts belong to the people, not corporations”—are largely shots at Spotify, and to a much lesser extent other streaming services, that have sought to wrap podcasting’s originally open and RSS-based nature inside proprietary markets and formats.

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Chrono Trigger is an icon for many reasons, but the Dragon Ball creator’s vision of its time-travel universe has helped it endure for the last 3 decades.

The Ballista botnet is actively exploiting a high-severity remote code execution flaw (CVE-2023-1389) in TP-Link Archer AX-21 routers, infecting over 6,000 devices primarily in Brazil, Poland, the UK, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Tom’s Hardware reports: According to a new report from the Cato CTRL team, the Ballista botnet exploits a remote code execution vulnerability that directly impacts the TP-Link Archer AX-21 router. The botnet can lead to command injection which then makes remote code execution (RCE) possible so that the malware can spread itself across the internet automatically. This high severity security flaw (tracked as CVE-2023-1389) has also been used to spread other malware families as far back as April 2023 when it was used in the Mirai botnet malware attacks. The flaw also linked to the Condi and AndroxGh0st malware attacks.

Ballista’s most recent exploitation attempt was February 17, 2025 and Cato CTRL first detected it on January 10, 2025. Of the thousands of infected devices, the majority of them are concentrated in Brazil, Poland, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria and Turkey; with the botnet targeting manufacturing, medical/healthcare, services and technology organizations in the United States, Australia, China and Mexico.

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The Remote Desktop app for Windows is (almost) dead; long live the Windows app. Microsoft said on Monday that its legacy Remote Desktop client, which has already been replaced on other platforms, will no longer be supported on Windows after May 27, 2025. But you aren’t losing any functionality here. You can still do tech support for your parents using built-in Windows functionality or the modern Windows app, which is somehow both the simplest and most confusing naming convention Microsoft’s marketing team could have mustered.

“Starting May 27, 2025, the Remote Desktop app for Windows from the Microsoft Store will no longer be supported or available for download and installation,” Microsoft’s Hilary Braun wrote on its Windows IT Pro Blog. “Users must transition to Windows App to ensure continued access to Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop and Microsoft Dev Box.”

The company says connections to Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop and Microsoft Dev Box via the Remote Desktop app from the Microsoft Store will be blocked in the Remote Desktop app on the app’s expiration date of May 27. For all other users, it will continue working but will no longer be supported.

Increasing the confusion, Windows has a built-in Remote Desktop Connection app that will remain the only way to use Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) connections after May 27. But Microsoft will eventually incorporate that into the Windows app.

As Thurrot.com notes, Microsoft warned that it would eventually replace the Remote Desktop with the Windows app when the operating system’s namesake app launched last fall. The new app even arrived as an update to the Remote Desktop client on Apple’s App Store.

As for the, uh, interestingly named Windows app, the company likely chose that branding because it wants to move Windows increasingly to the cloud. Its Windows 365 service, introduced in 2021, even lets you stream a virtual version of the OS from any device. So, calling the unified app used to access cloud and remote PCs “Windows app” seems maybe slightly less bizarre from that angle.

Still, a Reddit thread from the Windows app’s September launch held some entertaining reactions from the company’s fans. “Microsoft needs to collect all the staff responsible for naming or renaming their products in the past 15 years and shoot them into the sun,” u/AlignedHurdle posted. Meanwhile, u/Shoddy_Eye7866 seized an opportunity to use the Xzibit meme: “Yo dawg, I heard you like Windows, so I took Windows App and put in your Windows so you can Windows while you Windows.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/microsoft-is-phasing-out-its-remote-desktop-app-in-may-211320714.html?src=rss

Blue Ghost is in the midst of spending an entire lunar day on the surface of the Moon, or the equivalent of 14 days on Earth.

iRobot just announced some new Roomba vacuums and they feature interesting capabilities. The Roomba 205 DustCompactor Combo Robot is being advertised as “the industry’s first onboard mechanical debris-compacting system.” In other words, it squeezes dust and debris together like, well, a garbage compactor.

This allows users to go eight weeks without having to empty the vacuum. It also eliminates the need for a dedicated debris bin. 

iRobot

Otherwise, the 205 is a full-featured hybrid vacuum/mop. There’s a 4-stage vacuuming system with ClearView LiDAR for improved navigation. The company says this unit offers “250 percent more power-lifting suction and improved cleaning performance” when compared to Roomba 600 series robots.

The Roomba Plus 405 Combo Robot + AutoWash Dock is another hybrid, but this one pays special attention to the mopping capabilities. It includes the company’s new DualClean mop pads that spin at 200 RPM for some extra oomph. It also comes with Roomba’s AutoWash dock, which washes and dries the mop pads on its own. This tech was first used in last year’s Roomba Combo 10 Max. 

iRobot

The company also announced the 505 Combo Robot + AutoWash Dock, which is better at cleaning edges. To coincide with these new products, the Roomba Home app is getting some much-needed upgrades. The redesign should allow for “more intuitive control, the ability to create routines and schedules, access to real-time monitoring of their device and advanced customized cleaning options.”

The Roomba 205 DustCompactor Combo Robot starts at $469 and the Roomba Plus 405 Combo Robot + AutoWash Dock costs $800. The 505 costs a whopping $1,000. Preorders go live on March 18 via iRobot or select retailers. The company also announced a new entry-level vacuum called the Roomba 105 that costs $319.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/home/smart-home/roombas-irobot-205-robovac-can-go-eight-weeks-without-being-emptied-210014269.html?src=rss

Media Matters for America (MMFA) has a plan to potentially defuse Elon Musk’s “thermonuclear” lawsuits filed so far in three cities around the world, which accuse the nonprofit media watchdog organization of orchestrating a very costly X ad boycott.

On Monday, MMFA filed a complaint in a US district court in San Francisco, alleging that X violated its own terms of service by suing MMFA in Texas, Dublin, and Singapore. According to the TOS, MMFA alleged, X requires any litigation over use of its services to be “brought solely in the federal or state courts located in San Francisco County, California, United States.”

“X Corp.’s decision to file in multiple jurisdictions across the globe is intended to chill Media Matters’ reporting and drive up costs—both of which it has achieved—and it is directly foreclosed by X’s own Terms of Service,” MMFA’s complaint said.

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A pro-corporate libertarian movement is attempting to take over the U.S., with Trump’s help.

The AI industry is doing its best to will “agents”—pieces of AI-driven software that can perform multistep actions on your behalf—into reality. Several tech companies, including Google, have emphasized agentic features recently, and in January, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote that 2025 would be the year AI agents “join the workforce.”

OpenAI is working to make that promise into a reality. On Tuesday, OpenAI unveiled a new “Responses API” designed to help software developers create AI agents that can perform tasks independently using the company’s AI models. The Responses API will eventually replace the current Assistants API, which OpenAI plans to retire in the first half of 2026.

With the new offering, users can develop custom AI agents that scan company files with a file search utility that rapidly checks company databases (with OpenAI promising not to train its models on these files) and navigate websites—similar to functions available through OpenAI’s Operator agent, whose underlying Computer-Using Agent (CUA) model developers can also access to enable automation of tasks like data entry and other operations.

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Take your bets whether you’ll be able to find Nvidia’s lower-end RTX 5060 and RTX 5050 in stock anywhere.

Spain’s government has approved legislation imposing substantial fines of up to 35 million euros or 7% of global turnover on companies that fail to clearly label AI-generated content. Reuters reports: The bill adopts guidelines from the European Union’s landmark AI Act imposing strict transparency obligations on AI systems deemed to be high-risk, Digital Transformation Minister Oscar Lopez told reporters. “AI is a very powerful tool that can be used to improve our lives … or to spread misinformation and attack democracy,” he said. Spain is among the first EU countries to implement the bloc’s rules, considered more comprehensive than the United States’ system that largely relies on voluntary compliance and a patchwork of state regulations. Lopez added that everyone was susceptible to “deepfake” attacks – a term for videos, photographs or audios that have been edited or generated through AI algorithms but are presented as real. […]

The bill also bans other practices, such as the use of subliminal techniques – sounds and images that are imperceptible – to manipulate vulnerable groups. Lopez cited chatbots inciting people with addictions to gamble or toys encouraging children to perform dangerous challenges as examples. It would also prevent organizations from classifying people through their biometric data using AI, rating them based on their behavior or personal traits to grant them access to benefits or assess their risk of committing a crime. However, authorities would still be allowed to use real-time biometric surveillance in public spaces for national security reasons.

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The first-ever published research out of Tinshemet Cave indicates the two human species regularly interacted and shared technologies and customs.

One day after X went down for hours, security researchers are throwing cold water on Elon Musk’s public comments about who might be behind the DDoS attack. On Monday, as X was still struggling to remain online, Musk said in a post that the site had been brought down by a “massive cyberattack” executed by “a large, coordinated group and/or a country.” Later that day, in an interview with Fox News, he said the attack involved “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.”

He never provided evidence for either claim. But, in a new report from Wired, security researchers offered a very different view on the attack. Security experts interviewed by the publication said that they had seen little evidence that Ukrainian IP addresses played a significant role in the DDoS attack, with one researcher saying the country wasn’t even in the top 20 countries of origin involved.

The report also suggests that, despite Musk’s assertion there were “a lot of resources” involved, X may have inadvertently left its systems susceptible to a DDoS attack like the one that happened Monday. “X origin servers, which respond to web requests, weren’t properly secured behind the company’s Cloudflare DDoS protection and were publicly visible,” Wired writes. “As a result, attackers could target them directly. X has since secured the servers.”

Notably, this wouldn’t be the first time Musk has blamed an unspecified “cyberattack” when faced with an embarrassing failure of X’s systems. Last year, Musk blamed a “massive DDoS attack” for crashing a planned livestream with Donald Trump, who was running for president at the time. Musk never explained how a DDoS attack could bring down only one feature on the site. The Verge later reported that there had been no such attack.

X didn’t respond to a request for comment.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/security-researchers-arent-buying-musks-spin-on-the-cyberattack-that-took-down-x-203402687.html?src=rss