• Intel's Arrow Lake Refresh desktop CPUs are here - the 250K and 270K Plus.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Are they fast?  Yes.  They close in on the regular AMD parts for gaming, and the 270K competes with the 9950X for heavy desktop workloads.
  
  Are they power-efficient?  Not especially, but they are a big improvement over Intel's notoriously power-hungry 13th and 14th generation chips.
  
  Are they good value?  Definitely.  $200 for the 250K with 6P and 12E cores, and $300 for the 270K with 8P and 16E cores would make them hard to resist if you could buy the rest of the components for a system.
  
  Should you buy one?  Probably not.  These run in Intel's Socket 1851 platform and that will be retired within a year for Nova Lake and its Socket 1954.
  
  If that's not a concern - and particularly if you already have DDR5 memory sitting around - then yes, these look worth considering.

• GrapheneOS has refused to comply with new age verification laws that target operating systems.  (Tom's Hardware)

  If GrapheneOS devices can't be sold in a region due to their regulations, so be it.

  Meanwhile fuck systemd.
  
  
  
• Walmart tried using ChatGPT and in-chat purchases.  It failed.  Hard.  (Search Engine Land)
  
  Sales rates were one third of just directing people to the website.
  
  
  
• There are new exploits circulating that can trivially hack any iPhone or iPad running iOS 18 or older.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  But there's only about half a billion of those so no need to worry.
  
  
  
• Google's new Pixel 10a phone is a Pixel 9a.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Is it a bad phone?  No.  Is it a new phone?  Also no.

1 Musical Interlude song - saw a reaction video to this song being done by a gal. After listening to the lyrics for a while she started blushing. Almost fifty years later, and still getting special effects

Posted by: Frank at Tuesday, March 24 2026 06:18 PM (zCiG7)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, March 24 2026 09:50 PM (1zWbY)

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