The so-called iPhone 17 Air, which is rumored to be coming this fall, is said to be Apple’s thinnest iPhone ever. But, if the company had gone through some of its earlier plans for the device, slimness may not have been the most talked-about element. In the Power On newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman writes that Apple at one time planned to ditch the USB-C port “to make the Air device Apple’s first completely port-free iPhone.”

The company reportedly shelved the idea to avoid sparking fresh problems with EU regulators. According to Gurman, however, Apple is still holding onto it for future slim iPhones depending on the success of the iPhone 17 Air. Apple is expected to release four iPhones this year, in line with its strategy of the last few years, with the one currently nicknamed the iPhone 17 Air being roughly 2 millimeters thinner than the rest. Leaker Sonny Dickson this weekend shared a series of photos said to be of iPhone 17 dummies, showing just how slim the Air could look alongside the rest of the family.

Gurman reports that the iPhone 17 Air will be priced at around $900, sitting between the entry-level iPhone 17 and the two higher-end models with similar battery life to what we’re already used to, a roughly 6.6-inch screen, Dynamic Island and the Camera Control button. Of course, nothing’s been confirmed officially yet, but the iPhone 17 rumors and leaks are sure to keep coming over the next few months.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/apple-considered-making-the-rumored-iphone-17-air-completely-port-free-according-to-report-165334942.html?src=rss

“The number of discrete GPU developers from the U.S. and Western Europe shrank to three companies in 2025,” notes Tom’s Hardware, “from around 10 in 2000.” (Nvidia, AMD, and Intel…)
No company in the recent years — at least outside of China — was bold enough to engage into competition against these three contenders, so the very emergence of Bolt Graphics seems like a breakthrough. However, the major focuses of Bolt’s Zeus are high-quality rendering for movie and scientific industries as well as high-performance supercomputer simulations. If Zeus delivers on its promises, it could establish itself as a serious alternative for scientific computing, path tracing, and offline rendering. But without strong software support, it risks struggling against dominant market leaders.

This week the Sunnyvale, California-based startup introduced its Zeus GPU platform designed for gaming, rendering, and supercomputer simulations, according to the article. “The company says that its Zeus GPU not only supports features like upgradeable memory and built-in Ethernet interfaces, but it can also beat Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 by around 10 times in path tracing workloads, according to slide published by technology news site ServeTheHome.”

There is one catch: Zeus can only beat the RTX 5090 GPU in path tracing and FP64 compute workloads. It’s not clear how well it will handle traditional rendering techniques, as that was less of a focus. In speaking with Bolt Graphics, the card does support rasterization, but there was less emphasis on that aspect of the GPU, and it may struggle to compete with the best graphics cards when it comes to gaming. And when it comes to data center options like Nvidia’s Blackwell B200, it’s an entirely different matter.
Unlike GPUs from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia that rely on proprietary instruction set architectures, Bolt’s Zeus relies on the open-source RISC-V ISA, according to the published slides. The Zeus core relies on an open-source out-of-order general-purpose RVA23 scalar core mated with FP64 ALUs and the RVV 1.0 (RISC-V Vector Extension Version 1.0) that can handle 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit data types as well as Bolt’s additional proprietary extensions designed for acceleration of scientific workloads… Like many processors these days, Zeus relies on a multi-chiplet design… Unlike high-end GPUs that prioritize bandwidth, Bolt is evidently focusing on greater memory size to handle larger datasets for rendering and simulations. Also, built-in 400GbE and 800GbE ports to enable faster data transfer across networked GPUs indicates the data center focus of Zeus.

High-quality rendering, real-time path tracing, and compute are key focus areas for Zeus. As a result, even the entry-level Zeus 1c26-32 offers significantly higher FP64 compute performance than Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 — up to 5 TFLOPS vs. 1.6 TFLOPS — and considerably higher path tracing performance: 77 Gigarays vs. 32 Gigarays. Zeus also features a larger on-chip cache than Nvidia’s flagship — up to 128MB vs. 96MB — and lower power consumption of 120W vs. 575W, making it more efficient for simulations, path tracing, and offline rendering. However, the RTX 5090 dominates in AI workloads with its 105 FP16 TFLOPS and 1,637 INT8 TFLOPS compared to the 10 FP16 TFLOPS and 614 INT8 TFLOPS offered by a single-chiplet Zeus…
The article emphasizes that Zeus “is only running in simulation right now… Bolt Graphics says that the first developer kits will be available in late 2025, with full production set for late 2026.”
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader arvn for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A genAI Aloy may not pop up in Horizon 3, but the possibility has still left a bad taste in viewers’ mouths.

Slashdot reader rikfarrow summarizes an article they wrote for Usenix.org about the Open Source Python compiler Codon:

In 2023 I tried out Codon. At the time I had difficulty compiling the scripts I most commonly used, but was excited by the prospect. Python is essentially single threaded and checks the shape (type) of each variable as it interprets scripts. Codon fixes types and compiles Python into compact, executable binaries that execute much faster.

Several things have changed with their latest release: I have successful compiles, the committers have added a compiled version of NumPy (high performance math algorithms), and changed their open source license to Apache 2.

“The other big news is that Exaloop, the company that is behind Codon, has changed their license to Apache 2…” according to the article, so “commercial use and derivations of Codon are now permitted without licensing.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We’ve recently heard rumors that Apple is working on the next generation of its Studio Display, and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman now reports that there may actually be two new models in the works. Building on his previous reporting about a potential update to the 2022 Studio Display that could be released next year, Gurman writes this weekend in the Power On newsletter that sources have told him “Apple is working on a second new monitor.” The first is code-named J427, while the second is reportedly being referred to as J527.

It’s been three years since Apple introduced the $1,599 27-inch Studio Display and twice that since the release of the $5,000 Pro Display XDR. Considering the age of both monitors, Gurman says one of two scenarios may play out, either that “Apple is developing both and will choose one to launch, or it’s a second model with a different screen size or set of specifications.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/apple-is-reportedly-working-on-two-new-versions-of-the-studio-display-145521711.html?src=rss

A ransomware-as-a-service variant called “Medusa” has claimed over 300 victims in “critical infrastructure sectors” (including medical), according to an joint alert from CISA, the FBI, and the Multi-State Information Sharing Analysis Center.

And that alert reminds us that Medusa is a globe-spanning operation that recruits third-party affiliates to plant ransomware and negotiate with victims, notes the Register. “Even organizations that have good ransomware recovery regimes, meaning they don’t need to unscramble encrypted data as they have good backups and fall-back plans, may consider paying to prevent the release of their stolen data, given the unpleasant consequences that follow information leaks.

Medusa actors also set a deadline for victims to pay ransoms and provide a countdown timer that makes it plain when stolen info will be sprayed across the internet. If victims cough up $10,000 in cryptocurrency, the crims push the deadline forward by 24 hours.

The advisory reveals one Medusa actor has taken things a step further. “FBI investigations identified that after paying the ransom, one victim was contacted by a separate Medusa actor who claimed the negotiator had stolen the ransom amount already paid,” the advisory states. That separate actor then “requested half of the payment be made again to provide the ‘true decryptor’,” the advisory states, describing this incident as “potentially indicating a triple extortion scheme.”

The security groups’ advisory stresses that they “do not encourage paying ransoms as payment does not guarantee victim files will be recovered. Furthermore, payment may also embolden adversaries to target additional organizations…” (But “Regardless of whether you or your organization have decided to pay the ransom, FBI, CISA, and MS-ISAC urge you to promptly report ransomware incidents…)

Besides updating software and operating systems, the alert makes these recommendations for organizations:

Require VPNs (or jump hosts) for remote network access
Block remote access from unknown/untrusted origins, and disable unused ports
Segment networks to help prevent the spread of ransomware
Use a networking monitoring tool to spot and investigate abnormal activity — including lateral movement (using endpoint detection and response tools). Log all network traffic, and monitor it for unauthorized scanning and access attempts.
Create recovery plans with encrypted offline backups of sensitive/proprietary data and servers
Require multifactor authentication, use strong (and long) passwords, and “consider not requiring frequently recurring password changes, as these can weaken security.” (Also audit access control following the principle of least privilege, and watch for new and/or unrecognized accounts.)
Disable command-line and scripting activities and permissions.

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Jonathan Hickman’s ready to shake up Marvel’s world again with Federico Vizentini and Iban Coello in the cosmic epic Imperial.

Stanford Medicine researchers have identified a promising, naturally occurring molecule that could help people lose weight—without the nauseating symptoms now commonly seen with GLP-1 drugs.

Researchers manipulated water waves to move ping pong balls and grains of rice with a level of precision that seems straight out of a sci-fi movie.

The Washington Post reports:
Oceans last year reached their highest levels in three decades — with the rate of global sea level rise increasing around 35% higher than expected, according to a NASA-led analysis published Thursday… Last year’s rate of average global sea level rise was 0.23 inches per year, higher than the expected 0.17 inches per year, NASA said in a news release.

The rate of global sea level rise follows a trend of rapidly increasing rates over the past 30 years. From 1993 to 2023, the rate of global sea level rise doubled, increasing from 0.08 inches per year to 0.18 inches, another NASA-led study showed. Overall, the global sea level has climbed by 4 inches since 1993.

More details from ABC News:

Climate change was a major driver to an unexpected level of sea level rise in 2024, according to a new NASA analysis… The majority of the difference between predicted and actual sea level rise was attributed to thermal expansion — or the ocean waters expanding as they warm, researchers said. An unusual amount of ocean warming, combined with meltwater from land-based ice such as glaciers, led to the increase of sea level rise last year, according to NASA.

About two-thirds of sea level rise in recent years has resulted from the melting of ice sheets and glaciers, with a third coming from thermal expansion, according to NASA. In 2024, those metrics flipped, with two-thirds of the rise attributed to expanding ocean water and one-third attributed to contributions from melting ice. “With 2024 as the warmest year on record, Earth’s expanding oceans are following suit, reaching their highest levels in three decades,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, head of physical oceanography programs and the Integrated Earth System Observatory at NASA… Human-amplified climate change is the primary cause for present-day rising sea levels, climate research shows.

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Large language models still struggle with simple tasks like telling time.