Many expected Apple to have its own 5G modem chip ready for the 2023 iPhone but that roadmap no longer appears to be valid. In July, Bloomberg said the initiative had been slowed by overheating prototypes and suggested 2024 might be the earliest date for an Apple modem. A month earlier, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said his latest survey suggested the initiative “may have failed.” Comments accompanying Qualcomm’s earning report this week indicated the chipmaker will provide the vast majority of modem chips for next year’s iPhone....

On Wednesday, Apple released iOS 15.3 to beta with a slight rewording of its iCloud Private Relay warning. Private Relay is an encryption feature for paid iCloud subscribers that hides their IP address and masks their browser activity so that even Apple can’t see it. Earlier this month, some users were getting an error stating that their cellular provider was blocking the use of the feature. Despite carriers like Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, and Telefonica being vocally against Private Relay and lobbying for regulators to block it in Europe just days ago, cellular providers denied they were blocking the feature....

When testing with Povray v3.6 you’ll notice that this software appears to favor AMD processors and as a result both the Phenom II X4 955 and Phenom II X6 1090T were able to defeat the Core i7 920. The Core i5 750 configurations produced the lowest numbers here, with the Asrock P55 Extreme4 taking almost a second longer than the Asus P7P55D Deluxe to complete the test. We used CINEBENCH R11....

Axios reports that Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot revealed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s record-breaking revenue during a call with investors yesterday. Valhalla was always going to make Ubisoft a lot of money. As with other Assassin’s Creed games, there is an entire DLC marketplace worth of items such as weapons, armor, mounts, etc. that can be purchased by players. It helps that the game is gigantic, requiring well over 100 hours if you want to see and do pretty much everything....

The official model number for the Tegra 2 chip is “Tegra 250 T20” which uses a 40nm design process and is based on the ARMv7 CPU instruction set. It features a 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU combined with the GeForce ULP (Ultra Low Power), which works at 333MHz and single-channel LPDDR2 DDR2 667MHz memory module on the same board. Also included is 16GB or 32GB of internal storage and a MicroSD slot for optional storage expansion, a mandatory 3....

Mass Effect 2 seems to favor AMD cards slightly, so the GeForce GTX 580 was 19% slower than the Radeon HD 5970. However, it still beat the Radeon HD 5870 by a comfortable 22% lead. That lead was even cozier when looking at the GTX 480, which performed 40% worse.

Of course, there’s a beta for a reason and we have to try and treat it as such. The night after the beta went live our editor Matthew DeCarlo organized a Friday Night Fragfest (we host such an event every Friday night), so I felt it was best to ask him about his impressions of the game. Matt felt the game’s graphics were great – especially if the final version is going to be even better – and that the audio was fantastic....

Speaking during a shareholder meeting for Los Angeles-based newspaper chain Daily Journal Corp., Munger said crypto was only useful for extortion, kidnappings, and tax evasion, calling it “beyond contempt.” In case anyone was still unsure about how he feels, Munger added that he wished crypto had been banned immediately and praised China for banning it. “I certainly didn’t invest in crypto. I’m proud of the fact that I avoided it....

Before we move on to the latest and greatest devices of 2013, we figure it’s worth revisiting some of 2012’s most popular devices as suggested by our Product Finder, which includes reviews by hundreds of seasoned specialists across the Web. We’ve included 59 products across 14 categories along with their aggregate review score and a brief commentary that explains why they’re special. 58 Reviews 15 Reviews 21 Reviews 24 Reviews 6 Reviews 14 Reviews 7 Reviews 14 Reviews 38 Reviews 16 Reviews 11 Reviews 9 Reviews 6 Reviews 11 Reviews 13 Reviews 13 Reviews 10 Reviews 49 Reviews 8 Reviews 11 Reviews 52 Reviews 4 Reviews 11 Reviews 17 Reviews 83 Reviews 12 Reviews 6 Reviews 14 Reviews 5 Reviews 7 Reviews 85 Reviews 17 Reviews 34 Reviews 28 Reviews 54 Reviews 9 Reviews 22 Reviews 34 Reviews 17 Reviews 10 Reviews 18 Reviews 11 Reviews 18 Reviews 12 Reviews 109 Reviews 6 Reviews 9 Reviews 8 Reviews 6 Reviews 14 Reviews 50 Reviews 7 Reviews 11 Reviews 11 Reviews 40 Reviews 20 Reviews 9 Reviews 28 Reviews 62 Reviews

Fresh in our memory are failed products like the Blackberry Playbook and HP’s TouchPad, the PlayStation Network getting hacked, Microsoft’s Kin smartphones being removed from circulation after a mere 48 days, AMD’s FX relaunch and Duke Nukem Forever. Those and a few others have served as inspiration for us to look further back and revisit some of the biggest flops of the new millennia, starting with what many consider Microsoft’s worst OS ever....

BOE has announced a 27-inch 1080p gaming monitor. That wouldn’t usually attract much attention, but its 500Hz refresh rate makes it a world’s first. The panel achieves that blistering speed through a high-mobility oxide backplane. The monitor’s other specs include a 1ms response time, support for an 8-lane eDP connection, and a true 8-bit color gamut. It appears to still be in the prototype stage, so we could be waiting a while before it hits the market....

The Epic Games Store’s Mega Sale kicked off on Thursday. As part of the deep discounts available on many titles, the company is giving away four games throughout the event. The first is Borderlands 3, which is available from now until May 26 at 11 am EDT. Borderlands 3 was released in 2019 and hailed by many as one of the best games in the franchise—initial sales were the highest of the entire Borderlands series....

The PCmark 7 importing picture test shows that for the most part the lower capacity SSDs were slower than the higher capacity models. The OCZ Vertex 4 128GB was the only exception delivering the same performance as the larger 256GB unit. The same capacity Crucial m4 128GB drive was 15% slower than the Vertex 4 giving OCZ a clear advantage in this test. For the most part the video editing results were more of the same....

With all cores active, the Xeon E5-2670’s operating frequency is 13% lower than that of the Core i7-5960X. Keep in mind that the 5960X is built around a much newer and more power-efficient CPU architecture - yet the E5-2670 consumed 18% less power in the Prime95 stress test. Of course the motherboard can also account for quite a bit of power usage, but even so, this is an impressive result for the E5-2670....

The GeForce GTX 470 barely broke the 60fps barrier, meaning that just the top five graphics cards were able to handle 2560x1600. The GeForce GTX 285 and Radeon HD 6870 averaged 52fps, while the GeForce GTX 460 managed 51fps. The Radeon HD 5850 spat out 49fps, making it a fraction faster than the old GeForce GTX 275 which rendered 48fps. Beyond that the rest of the field really struggled at this extreme resolution, though this is not likely going to be an issue as we do not imagine many gamers playing on a 30" LCD will be using anything less than a GeForce GTX 460 anyway....

At 1920x1200 the frame rates are only reduced slightly compared to the 1680x1050 results. The Radeon HD 6870, for example, has barely dipped below 60fps with an average of 57fps. The GeForce GTX 480 which is over two and a half years old managed 59fps, and the three year old Radeon HD 5870 was even faster with 62fps. Current generation budget graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 650 Ti and Radeon HD 7770 were good for roughly 40fps which can be considered as playable....

As reported by the SCMP (via Hackaday), China uses a combination of AI bots and human appraisers, called Jian Huang shi, most of whom are women, to search the web for images and decide if they contain explicit content deemed illegal. But tiredness and overexposure mean even these safeguards don’t stop every bit of x-rated material from slipping through the cracks. This is your brain on porn Researchers at Beijing Jiaotong University developed a way to potentially make life easier for the appraisers....