Antonio G. Di Benedetto, The Verge:

Somehow, the PC makers still don’t see it coming. Here’s how [Asus CFO Nick] Wu described the MacBook Neo, specifically its 8GB of RAM limitation:

“I think when Apple positioned the product, it’s probably focused more on content consumption. This differs somewhat from mainstream notebook usage scenarios, because in that case, the Neo feels more like a tablet — because tablets are mostly for content consumption.”

Hang on. Can we hold up for a second here? [...]

The proof of the MacBook Neo’s performance for the money is in the numbers. In single-core benchmarks tests — which most accurately measure the kinds of everyday tasks you do on a computer — the Neo’s A18 Pro chip beats out all manner of Windows laptops, including the new flagship Intel Panther Lake chip in Asus’ own $2,400 Zenbook Duo. Is a Zenbook Duo more capable than the MacBook Neo for heavier tasks, like photo and video editing or playing more graphically demanding games? Yes, and it’s part of why I loved that dual-screen laptop when I reviewed it. But the Zenbook Duo also costs four times as much. And, again, the Neo can hang with it for most common tasks, even with its 8GB of RAM.

This idea that because it’s “an iPhone chip” the Neo is not capable of, say, editing 4K video is utterly ignorant. You know what computers are fully capable of editing 4K video? iPhones. So of course the same chip that enables smooth 4K video editing in an iPhone can do the same in a Mac.

It’s folly to look at the MacBook Neo and presume that an Apple laptop with iPad-like specs must be iPad-like in its capabilities. Anyone who finds iPads limiting for work — and I’m one of them! — isn’t limited because of the hardware. It’s because iPadOS isn’t designed to suit the way we work. The MacBook Neo is a full-fledged kick-ass Macintosh. It really is. If PC makers think it’s something akin to an iPad in a laptop enclosure, they’re even dumber than I thought, and I’ve long thought most of them are pretty dumb.

According to Reuters, Meta is looking to offset spending on AI and data centers with a massive round of layoffs. Sources familiar with the matter say the company could lay off as much as 20 percent of its staff, eliminating roughly 15,800 positions. That would be the largest series of layoffs at the company since […]

Vicky Ge Huang / Wall Street Journal:
Kaiko: cumulative trading volume on crypto exchange Hyperliquid's perpetual oil futures surged to ~$7.3B on March 12 from $339M on February 28 amid the Iran war  —  A new generation of investors doesn't want to wait for the traditional market open  —  While traditional energy investors spent …

Maggie Harrison Dupré, writing for Futurism:

Earlier this month, Ars retracted the story after it was found to include fake quotes attributed to a real person. The article — a write-up of a viral incident in which an AI agent seemingly published a hit piece about a human engineer named Scott Shambaugh — was initially published on February 13. After Shambaugh pointed out that he’d never said the quotes attributed to him, Ars’ editor-in-chief Ken Fisher apologized in an editor’s note, in which he confirmed that the piece included “fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them” and characterized the error as a “serious failure of our standards.” He added that, upon further review, the error appeared to be an “isolated incident.”

Shortly after Fisher’s editor’s note was published, Edwards, one of the report’s two bylined authors, took to Bluesky to take “full responsibility” for the inclusion of the fabricated quotes.

Edwards:

I sincerely apologize to Scott Shambaugh for misrepresenting his words. I take full responsibility. The irony of an Al reporter being tripped up by Al hallucination is not lost on me. I take accuracy in my work very seriously and this is a painful failure on my part.

When I realized what had happened, I asked my boss to pull the piece because I was too sick to fix it on Friday. There was nothing nefarious at work, just a terrible judgement call which was no one’s fault but my own.

Ars fired him at the end of February.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II is best remembered for a scene featuring rapper Vanilla Ice, but it's so much more