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When Apple introduced the new iPad Pro, the company boasted that its slim slate is more powerful than 92 percent of PCs out there. Now that we've benchmarked the 12.9-inch iPad Pro for our review over at Laptop Mag, it looks like that claim could very well be legit. Credit: Tom's Guide The 7-nanometer A12X Bionic chip processor inside the iPad Pro packs four performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, and there's a new GPU that promises twice the graphics performance as the A10X processor inside the last iPad Pro. And the benchmark results are quite impressive. Geekbench 4 On...

Apple announced several updates to the Mac lineup earlier this month at WWDC. Now that results for these Macs have started to appear in the Geekbench Browser, let’s take a close look at the performance of the of the 27-inch iMac. Let’s see how the new iMac CPUs and GPUs perform using Geekbench 4. Also, since the 27-inch iMac is popular with many pro users, I’ve included Geekbench 4 results for the Mac Pro as well. If you’re not familiar with Geekbench 4, or how it measures performance, higher scores are better, and double the score means double the...

Apple’s new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are far and away the most powerful smartphones the world has seen thus far. In terms of both raw benchmark test scores on paper and real-world performance, Apple’s latest mobile devices outshine every other phone on the market. In fact, they’re even more powerful than Apple’s latest iPad Pro tablets, which is no small feat.As powerful as they already are though, Apple is constantly working on next-generation products, looking to make them better and faster than their predecessors. Now, it looks like benchmark tests from Apple’s next-gen processor have leaked, revealing...

The U.S. is failing to meet “key milestones” in advance of the Oct. 1 handover of responsibilities in Iraq from the U.S. military to the State Department, says a report being issued Thursday by the State Department’s inspector general.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration is preparing a set of about 50 benchmarks for Afghanistan, senior officials said Monday, redefining how to measure success in a war now widely assessed as a stalemate. The benchmarks will test how well the U.S. military and civilian "surges" ordered by President Barack Obama are working. The new measures, ordered by Congress, are due Sept. 24 amid creeping skepticism among many Democrats about the war's prognosis and costs.

Can we spell failure (in everything he has done) F A I L U R E

I used the "recommended server" for my test, which is only 150 miles from here. Test and post results. See who's fast and who's slow. Use the "hyperlink" option to copy and paste your result.

Question: On the Motion Category: Motion Vote description: This $120 billion dollar package was passed in the Senate by an 80-14 vote on May 24. The bill primarily focuses on funding for the Iraq war but also addresses other unrelated topics. A previous war funding bill was vetoed by the president because it included troop withdrawal deadlines, which were largely supported by anti-war Democrats. Ten Democrats opposed this new bill with no withdrawal deadlines, while 37 supported its passage. Congress had to act to replace war funding that would have ended May 28. According to the Washington Post, this bill...

WASHINGTON, July 1, 2008 – A new book released by the Army examines the challenging period of transition from conventional combined-arms operations to full-spectrum and counterinsurgency operations in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003. On Point II was written to provide a historical account for future Army leaders on the decisive 18 months following the overthrow of Saddam’s regime, Army Col. Timothy Reese, an armor officer and one of the book’s authors, told online journalists and bloggers in a teleconference yesterday. “We tried to capture the improvisation and ingenuity of the average American soldier as...

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2008 – Iraq is enjoying some substantial political, and economic progress in addition to better security, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said during an interview on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” today. “As security has improved, the environment has changed for the better,” Ryan C. Crocker from Baghdad. “That allows for compromises to emerge that simply were not possible before.” He pointed to better budget execution as one piece of evidence pointing toward Iraq’s changes for the better, and also noted provinclial elections are coming up. “Those elections, in the latter part of this year, will...

Democrats no longer talk of the 18 benchmarks for measuring progress in Iraq because so much progress has now taken place. Way back in the dark days of 2007, when the only popular question about the Iraq war concerned the degree of tragedy, Congress’s Iraq “benchmarks” were all the rage among Democrats. Every argument against a continued U.S. presence in Iraq was constructed around the Maliki administration’s apparent inability to meet the political and security-based milestones as outlined by America’s Democratic-majority Congress. Then something happened. The gains of the troop surge allowed the Iraqi government and citizenry to implement the...

The last time General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker reported to Congress on the state of the Iraq war, "benchmarks" were all the rage. Congress had established 18 criteria in early 2007 both to pressure the Iraqis and to keep score on their progress. And in September, Congress faulted the Iraqi government for failing to meet many of those measures. Concocting a checklist of laws and actions that would lead to national reconciliation in Iraq was always a fool's errand and misunderstood the complexity of the situation. But having laid down this marker, Congress would want to hear an...

S THE REDUCTION IN violence in Iraq has become incontestable (the insistence of early critics that no such reduction was possible notwithstanding), war opponents have fallen back on their next line of defense--that the military progress has not been matched by the political progress it was supposed to enable. This talking point, however, is also outdated and invalid. The Bush administration, commanders and ambassadors in the field, and supporters of the effort to win in Iraq have long pointed to evidence of grassroots reconciliation and political progress. This evidence is growing and the importance of these developments is becoming increasingly...

A year ago, when neither the war nor political reconciliation was going well, the Bush administration reluctantly agreed to 18 benchmarks for judging progress in Iraq. And the Democratic Congress eagerly wrote the benchmarks into law, also requiring the administration to report back in July and September on whether the benchmarks were being met.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the most stalwart supporters of the war in Iraq, said Thursday that he might propose that the Iraqi government meet certain benchmarks for the United States to continue its engagement. Fellow senators and independent political scientists said McCain's thinking reflected growing concerns within the Republican Party about the course of the war, and also might mark a turning point for the likely 2008 presidential contender, whose previous unconditional backing of the war may have hurt his prospects. McCain said Thursday that he hadn't yet decided on precise benchmarks. "They'd have to be specific, and...

McCain considers setting benchmarks for Iraqis By Margaret Talev McClatchy-Tribune Tucson, Arizona | Published: 01.26.2007 WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the most stalwart supporters of the war in Iraq, said Thursday that he might propose that the Iraqi government meet certain benchmarks for the United States to continue its engagement. Fellow senators and independent political scientists said McCain's thinking reflected growing concerns within the Republican Party about the course of the war, and also might mark a turning point for the likely 2008 presidential contender, whose previous unconditional backing of the war may have hurt his prospects....

Our rant about those $7,250 Pear Anjou speaker cables found its way to the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF), and Randi offered $1 million to anyone who can prove those cables are any better than ordinary (and also overpriced) Monster Cables. Pointing out the absurd review by audiophile Dave Clark, who called the cables "danceable," Randi called it "hilarious and preposterous." He added that if the cables could do what their makers claimed, "they would be paranormal." We see that the Pear Cable company is advertising a pair of 12-foot "Anjou" audio cables for $7,250; that's $302 a foot! And,...

Iraq has failed to meet most of the congressionally mandated benchmarks, says a draft of a report obtained by The People's Cube."Overall, cure for cancer has not been found, a manned mission to Uranus is being delayed, and it is unclear whether the Iraqi government will ever install gold-plated urinals in Falujah's public toilets," the report says. The document contradicts the Bush administration's conclusion in July that the average number of Iraqi gay-pride parades in urban areas has increased. "While there have been fewer attacks against U.S. forces," it notes, Iraq still suffers from"a glaring lack of midnight basketball facilities...

The Iraqis are at present conducting an experiment with no equivalent anywhere else in the world. Despite a confrontation between terrorists from all over the world and the forces of the state, a democratic experiment is being built and developed. But we are bound by a principle of unanimity. We must all be in agreement - we different Iraqi political families - before moving forward. This does not facilitate decisionmaking. It is less easy than in democracies that function according to a simple majority, or a two-thirds majority, for fundamental decisions. Of course our European friends and Arab brothers are...

For Americans to talk so disdainfully about a "dysfunctional" government in Iraq is just a little on the cocky side. The term was already common before early September, when a Government Accountability Office report said Iraq's Maliki administration had failed to meet 11 out of 18 benchmarks. Now it is part of everybody's vocabulary when referring to the Iraqi government. So, we hear regularly of a government in Baghdad paralyzed by partisan ideology and strife. Sound a little familiar? Substitute the U.S. Congress for the Iraqi Parliament and substitute Republicans and Democrats for Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds, and things might...