Liquid Helium, One Core, Nine-Point-Two Gigahertz: A New CPU World Record

Liquid Helium, One Core, Nine-Point-Two Gigahertz: A New CPU World Record

An overclocker known online as "wytiwx" just did something that would destroy a normal PC in seconds. By stripping an Intel Core i9-14900KF down to a single active performance core, removing all power limits, and bathing the whole thing in liquid helium, they pushed the chip to 9.2GHz — clearing the previous world record of 9.1GHz set just last August. The rig: an Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex motherboard, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1600-watt power supply from Asus ROG.

For context, the same chip boosts to 6GHz out of the box. The gap between "consumer fast" and "world record fast" is bridged entirely by extreme cooling and conditions that are sustainable for validation runs lasting seconds, not gaming sessions. Intel only recently clawed back this crown from AMD, whose heavily overclocked FX-series chips dominated the frequency rankings for years before Raptor Lake processors changed the math.

The record proves that modern silicon still has headroom that nobody's daily driver will ever touch.

Gobble's Take: Impressive flex, but the only thing running 9.2GHz on your desk is your electricity bill.

Source: r/technology

Amazon Kills 13 Kindle Models on May 20th — Owners Are Already Fighting Back

On May 20th, Amazon is cutting off technical support for 13 older Kindle devices — including the Kindle Keyboard, Kindle Touch, first-generation Paperwhite, and both generations of the original Kindle Fire. After that date, users will only be able to read content already downloaded to their devices. No new purchases. No new downloads. Functional hardware, artificially capped.

So people are jailbreaking them. Bypassing Amazon's software restrictions lets owners install custom fonts, new screensavers, alternative reading apps, and third-party tools that expand what the device can actually do. The process isn't simple — it requires disabling Wi-Fi to block Amazon's updates from closing jailbreak loopholes, sourcing trusted files from forums like MobileRead, and copying specific files via USB. It can also brick the device entirely if something goes wrong, and it likely violates Amazon's terms of service. In most jurisdictions, jailbreaking for personal use isn't a criminal offense — but it can become one if it involves copyright infringement or selling modified devices.

The people doing it aren't pirates. They're readers who bought a device that still works and refuse to be told it doesn't.

Gobble's Take: Amazon can end support, but they can't end the part where you actually own the hardware.

Source: r/technology

AI Is Eating the DRAM Supply — and PC Gamers Are the Ones Going Hungry

A Tom's Hardware survey of more than 1,500 readers in May found that 60% of PC gamers have no plans to build a new system in the next two years. The reason is blunt: AI data center buildouts are consuming the global DRAM supply, and the price shock has trickled all the way down to your local shopping cart. Thirty-two gigabytes of RAM now costs $360. SSDs aren't far behind. Graphics cards are feeling the same squeeze, with shortages and price increases that rival the worst days of the Bitcoin mining frenzy.

Of the remaining 40% of total respondents, 15% said they were building a PC in the next two years, 25% within the next twelve months, 15% within six months, and 10% within the next three months. The further out the timeline, the fewer takers — which tracks with a market that has no clear path back to pre-AI pricing. The article notes that even retail events like Black Friday are unlikely to produce discounts anywhere close to what components used to cost.

The AI boom has found its first real casualty: the PC enthusiast who just wanted to play games.

Gobble's Take: Your GPU is now competing for silicon with a data center, and the data center has a bigger budget.

Source: r/technology

Greg Brockman Is Back at OpenAI — and Now He's Running the Whole Product Operation

OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman is stepping into a new role: leading the company's product strategy. According to TechCrunch, the restructuring merges ChatGPT, the AI coding agent Codex, and OpenAI's developer-facing API into a single unified product team under Brockman's direction, alongside his existing work on AI infrastructure.

The move signals OpenAI tightening its internal structure as competition in the AI space intensifies. Brockman is one of the company's original architects — he was briefly pushed out alongside CEO Sam Altman in the boardroom drama before both returned. Now, with a mandate that spans consumer products, developer tools, and coding agents, he's the person responsible for turning OpenAI's research into things people actually use every day. The man who helped build the lab is now responsible for what it ships.

Gobble's Take: When your co-founder takes over product, it usually means the previous roadmap wasn't moving fast enough.

Source: TechCrunch

Quick Hits

• Does AI actually "understand" anything? A thread on r/artificial digs into the 40-year-old Chinese Room argument and asks whether the distinction between "true understanding" and statistically indistinguishable outputs even matters anymore. r/artificial
• Enterprise AI is failing at the data layer, not the model layer: A viral r/artificial post argues the real bottleneck for enterprise AI isn't model capability — it's that most large companies can't produce a coherent picture of their own operations for AI to work with. r/artificial
• ArXiv will ban authors for a year if AI writes their entire submission: The research preprint platform is cracking down on fully AI-generated papers, according to TechCrunch. TechCrunch

In Case You Missed It

Yesterday's top stories:

• One Person + AI = An Entire Institution
• Did the AI Owe a Mass Shooter's Victims a Warning?
• OpenAI Launches an AI to Hunt the Bugs Other AIs Create
• A Worm Named After a Sand Monster Just Crawled Through the AI Supply Chain