HOL 2021 MAXIMUMPC 9
TRIUMPHS TRAGEDIES
FCC EYES SPAMTEXTS
The FCC is looking to make
mobile carriers block spam
texts. A staggering 7. 4 billion
were delivered in March 20 21.
BIGGEST BUG BOUNTY YET
Immunefi paid a researcher $
million for discovering a bug on
a finance platform that put $8 50
million of cryptocurrency at risk.
STEEL WOOD
Scientists have found a way to
make wood tough enough to take
an edge better than a steel knife.
AMAZON’S PRACTICES
Internal documents prove that
Amazon copies popular items
then fiddles with search code
to promote them over rivals.
FACEBOOK UNFOLLOWING
A developer who built an
extension that enabled you to
empty the News Feed has been
banned from Facebook.
BITCOIN POWER
Half of Bitcoin mining is carried
out by just 50 miners. The top
10% of miners control 90 % of it.
A monthly snapshot of what’s good and bad in tech
Tech Triumphsand Tragedies
WONDERFUL AS IT IS, Windows is no lightweight OS, which is something of
a liability in a world where smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices
outnumber PCs considerably. Enter Win1 1 SE, a cut-down version aimed at
the school laptop. Builds of Win 11 SE have been leaked online, but the official
release is set for 2 022. The leaked version has a few features disabled,
including customization settings, but isn’t a final build. It will come ready-
installed in a range of budget-friendly devices, such as Surface laptops,
but isn’t a replacement for Win1 1 Education Edition, a version designed for
school PCs. Bringing the Windows experience to smaller devices has been
a Microsoft goal, but it cannot be shoe-horned onto anything smaller than a
laptop without compromises. In a recent interview, Bill Gates said Microsoft’s
failure to catch the smartphone OS market was “his biggest mistake”. – CL
A cut-down version foryour school laptop
WIN 11 SE TO LAND NEXT YEAR
ALEXA IS LISTENING
SMART SPEAKERS, or digital assistants, have been a huge hit. There are over 90 million
of them in the US, and by 2025 it is expected that three-quarters of homes will have at
least one smart device. And all of them are gathering data. It transpires that Alexa is the
most adept at this. A new report from Reviews.org looked at all the major players to see
just what you are giving away to their parent companies.
The top five all collect the basics: your name, time zone, phone number, location, and
IP address. Some dig a little deeper, including your address, payment information, age,
and personal interests. The best at this is Alexa, which collects this and more, including
your voice characteristics. It also delves into your
profile and tracks your buying habits.
Another recent study looked at 48 data
points and found that Alexa recorded 37 of
them. We know data is being collected, but
to see it laid out clearly is sobering stuff.
Your data is worth something, as Silicon
Valley big cheese and founder of VR, Jaron
Lanier noted, “if it’s valuable, you should get
paid for it”. Now there’s an idea. –CL
AND WRITINGIT ALL DOWNFOR LATERUSE
A LITTLE OVER a year ago, Apple’s M 1
processors arrived, and from nowhere
Apple entered the processor market with
a chip that was touted by many as a real
rival to x 86 silicon. Now it has returned
with two new versions: the M 1 Pro, and
the M 1 Max. These two ARM-based SoC
designs build on the original but are
much bigger beasts. The M1 Pro has eight
high-performance cores, double that of
the original M1, plus two high-efficiency
cores. These are coupled to 14 or 16 GPU
cores, again twice the original number.
There’s 2 4MB of L 2 cache, a 16 core
Neural Engine, and up to 32 GB of unified
memory. This adds up to a total of 3 3.
billion transistors. The M 1 Max is the true
monster, with 57 billion transistors. It has
the same processor core count as the M 1
Pro, but with 24 or 32 GPU cores, and up
to 6 4GB of unified memory. Much work
has been done to improve the memory
bandwidth. The original M 1 managed
68GB/s, the M 1 Pro jumps to 200 GB/s, and
the M1 Max doubles this to 40 0GB/s.
On paper, the M 1 chip is a proper rival to
the blue and red teams. Initial benchmarks
show it can keep pace with Intel’s best. In
floating-point calculation, it does more
than that, due to the memory bandwidth.
These chips can even give the best
desktop machines a hard time. Perhaps
more impressive is the amount of power
required to do this. Running a punishing
benchmark such as Cinebench R2 3 an M
Max laptop draws around 40 W. A system
using a top-flight Core i9 will chew through
more than twice that. High performance
usually means high power consumption,
Apple has managed one without the other.
Should Intel be worried? The M 1 will
only be a rival in terms of numbers if Apple
starts selling to other manufacturers, and
building more affordable rigs. There’s no
sign of that happening, but it does give
Apple impressively quick machines. The
M1 chips make their debut in the new 1 4-
inch and 1 6-inch MacBook Pros which
start at $1,99 9 and rise to $3,499. –CL
Two versionsof M 1 chip
land in MacBook Pros
APPLE’S NEW
SILICON
©^
AP
PL
E^ C
OR
P,^
AM
AZ
ON
