I'd describe myself as a skeptic of the generative AI revolution—I think the technology as it currently exists is situationally impressive and useful for specific kinds of tasks, but broadly oversold . I'm not sure it will vanish from relevance to quite the extent that other tech fads like the metaverse or NFTs did, but my suspicion is that companies like Nvidia and OpenAI are riding a bubble that will pop or deflate over time as more companies and individuals run up against the technology's limitations, and as it fails to advance as quickly or as impressively as its most ardent boosters are predicting.

Maybe you agree with me and maybe you don't! I'm not necessarily trying to convince you one way or the other. But I am here to say that even if you agree with me, we can all celebrate the one unambiguously positive thing that the generative AI hype cycle has done for computers this year: the RAM floor for many PCs and all Macs is now finally 16GB instead of 8GB.

Companies like Apple and Microsoft have, for years, created attractive, high-powered hardware with 8GB of memory in it, most egregiously in $1,000-and-up putative "pro" computers like last year's $1,599 M3 MacBook Pro or the Surface Pro 9 .

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I'd describe myself as a skeptic of the generative AI revolution—I think the technology as it currently exists is situationally impressive and useful for specific kinds of tasks, but broadly oversold . I'm not sure it will vanish from relevance to quite the extent that other tech fads like the metaverse or NFTs did, but my suspicion is that companies like Nvidia and OpenAI are riding a bubble that will pop or deflate over time as more companies and individuals run up against the technology's limitations, and as it fails to advance as quickly or as impressively as its most ardent boosters are predicting.

Maybe you agree with me and maybe you don't! I'm not necessarily trying to convince you one way or the other. But I am here to say that even if you agree with me, we can all celebrate the one unambiguously positive thing that the generative AI hype cycle has done for computers this year: the RAM floor for many PCs and all Macs is now finally 16GB instead of 8GB.

Companies like Apple and Microsoft have, for years, created attractive, high-powered hardware with 8GB of memory in it, most egregiously in $1,000-and-up putative "pro" computers like last year's $1,599 M3 MacBook Pro or the Surface Pro 9 .

Read full article

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I'd describe myself as a skeptic of the generative AI revolution—I think the technology as it currently exists is situationally impressive and useful for specific kinds of tasks, but broadly oversold . I'm not sure it will vanish from relevance to quite the extent that other tech fads like the metaverse or NFTs did, but my suspicion is that companies like Nvidia and OpenAI are riding a bubble that will pop or deflate over time as more companies and individuals run up against the technology's limitations, and as it fails to advance as quickly or as impressively as its most ardent boosters are predicting.

Maybe you agree with me and maybe you don't! I'm not necessarily trying to convince you one way or the other. But I am here to say that even if you agree with me, we can all celebrate the one unambiguously positive thing that the generative AI hype cycle has done for computers this year: the RAM floor for many PCs and all Macs is now finally 16GB instead of 8GB.

Companies like Apple and Microsoft have, for years, created attractive, high-powered hardware with 8GB of memory in it, most egregiously in $1,000-and-up putative "pro" computers like last year's $1,599 M3 MacBook Pro or the Surface Pro 9 .

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It's that time again, when families and friends gather and implore the more technically inclined among them to troubleshoot problems they're having behind the device screens all around them. One of the most vexing and most common problems is logging into accounts in a way that's both secure and reliable.

Using the same password everywhere is easy, but in an age of mass data breaches and precision-orchestrated phishing attacks, it's also highly unadvisable. Then again, creating hundreds of unique passwords, storing them securely, and keeping them out of the hands of phishers and database hackers is hard enough for experts, let alone Uncle Charlie, who got his first smartphone only a few years ago. No wonder this problem never goes away.

Passkeys—the much-talked-about password alternative to passwords that have been widely available for almost two years—was supposed to fix all that. When I wrote about passkeys two years ago , I was a big believer. I remain convinced that passkeys mount the steepest hurdle yet for phishers, SIM swappers, database plunderers, and other adversaries trying to hijack accounts. How and why is that?

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It's that time again, when families and friends gather and implore the more technically inclined among them to troubleshoot problems they're having behind the device screens all around them. One of the most vexing and most common problems is logging into accounts in a way that's both secure and reliable.

Using the same password everywhere is easy, but in an age of mass data breaches and precision-orchestrated phishing attacks, it's also highly unadvisable. Then again, creating hundreds of unique passwords, storing them securely, and keeping them out of the hands of phishers and database hackers is hard enough for experts, let alone Uncle Charlie, who got his first smartphone only a few years ago. No wonder this problem never goes away.

Passkeys—the much-talked-about password alternative to passwords that have been widely available for almost two years—was supposed to fix all that. When I wrote about passkeys two years ago , I was a big believer. I remain convinced that passkeys mount the steepest hurdle yet for phishers, SIM swappers, database plunderers, and other adversaries trying to hijack accounts. How and why is that?

Read full article

Comments

It's that time again, when families and friends gather and implore the more technically inclined among them to troubleshoot problems they're having behind the device screens all around them. One of the most vexing and most common problems is logging into accounts in a way that's both secure and reliable.

Using the same password everywhere is easy, but in an age of mass data breaches and precision-orchestrated phishing attacks, it's also highly unadvisable. Then again, creating hundreds of unique passwords, storing them securely, and keeping them out of the hands of phishers and database hackers is hard enough for experts, let alone Uncle Charlie, who got his first smartphone only a few years ago. No wonder this problem never goes away.

Passkeys—the much-talked-about password alternative to passwords that have been widely available for almost two years—was supposed to fix all that. When I wrote about passkeys two years ago , I was a big believer. I remain convinced that passkeys mount the steepest hurdle yet for phishers, SIM swappers, database plunderers, and other adversaries trying to hijack accounts. How and why is that?

Read full article

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The art of space mission patches is now more than six decades old, dating to the Vostok 6 mission in 1963 that carried Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into low-Earth orbit for nearly three days. The patch for the first female human spaceflight showcased a dove flying above the letters designating the Soviet Union, CCCP.

That patch was not publicly revealed at the time, and the use of specially designed patches was employed only infrequently by subsequent Soviet missions. NASA's first mission patch would not follow for two years, but the practice would prove more sticky for missions in the United States and become a time-honored tradition.

The first NASA flight to produce a mission-specific patch worn by crew members was Gemini 5. It flew in August 1965, carrying astronauts Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad on an eight-day mission inside a small Gemini spacecraft. At the time, it was the longest spaceflight conducted by anyone.

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The art of space mission patches is now more than six decades old, dating to the Vostok 6 mission in 1963 that carried Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into low-Earth orbit for nearly three days. The patch for the first female human spaceflight showcased a dove flying above the letters designating the Soviet Union, CCCP.

That patch was not publicly revealed at the time, and the use of specially designed patches was employed only infrequently by subsequent Soviet missions. NASA's first mission patch would not follow for two years, but the practice would prove more sticky for missions in the United States and become a time-honored tradition.

The first NASA flight to produce a mission-specific patch worn by crew members was Gemini 5. It flew in August 1965, carrying astronauts Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad on an eight-day mission inside a small Gemini spacecraft. At the time, it was the longest spaceflight conducted by anyone.

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The art of space mission patches is now more than six decades old, dating to the Vostok 6 mission in 1963 that carried Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova into low-Earth orbit for nearly three days. The patch for the first female human spaceflight showcased a dove flying above the letters designating the Soviet Union, CCCP.

That patch was not publicly revealed at the time, and the use of specially designed patches was employed only infrequently by subsequent Soviet missions. NASA's first mission patch would not follow for two years, but the practice would prove more sticky for missions in the United States and become a time-honored tradition.

The first NASA flight to produce a mission-specific patch worn by crew members was Gemini 5. It flew in August 1965, carrying astronauts Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad on an eight-day mission inside a small Gemini spacecraft. At the time, it was the longest spaceflight conducted by anyone.

Read full article

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