If you’re drowning in student debt, you might be tempted to refinance or consolidate your loan. This is basically taking on a new, completely different loan to pay for your original debt. When you take on a new loan to pay off your student loan, you may lose some benefits you could need later.
Source: LifeHacker – PSA: You Could Lose Benefits If You Refinance Your Federal Student Loan
Parents resort to elaborate negotiation to get children to eat nutritiously, but perhaps it’s much simpler than that.
Source: TreeHugger – How do you teach kids to like vegetables?
Fallout 4 is already a good-looking game (insofar as a nuclear wasteland can look good, anyway), but Bethesda is about to kick things up a notch. An update rolling out next week will add a High-Resolution Texture Pack that adds an absurd level of vi…
Source: Engadget – ‘Fallout 4’ visual upgrade demands a monster PC
Google developers have been investing in improvements to their rendering pipeline of Chrome in order to yield better performance, lower input latency, smoother scrolling, and more…
Source: Phoronix – Chrome Rendering Pipeline Improvements For Better Performance
The Humble Monthly subscription plan delivers you a selection of new games (to keep!) every month, gives you 10% off everything in the Humble Store, and donates 5% of each month’s proceeds to charity, but if all that wasn’t enough to get you to sign up, how about a free copy of X-COM UFO Defense?
Source: Kotaku – For 48-Hours Only, Humble is Giving Away X-COM UFO Defense for Free
Ana got a new skin for Overwatch’s Year of the Rooster event, and some players think it’s a little bit spooky.
Source: Kotaku – Ana’s New Skin Is Freaking Some Overwatch Players Out
Get simple but powerful personal actions delivered to your inbox every 3 days; 30 actions in all – are you up to the challenge?
Source: TreeHugger – Save the trees! Sign up for Rainforest Alliance’s 30-Day Sustainability Challenge
Sony has warned investors that it will take roughly $978m writedown on its film business, blaming a goodwill impairment charge that dates back to an acquisition of a Hollywood studio almost three decades ago. From a report on Reuters: The impairment charge came as Sony cut its outlook for profits from DVD, blu-ray discs and other home entertainment operations in line with a broader market decline, the company said in statement on Monday. Sony has been working to revive its movie business. In November, the Japanese conglomerate’s chief financial officer, Kenichiro Yoshida, said a turnaround was “progressing, but it takes time for the benefit to be realized.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot – Sony Warns It Will Take Billion Writedown, Blames Slowing DVD Sales
With Nintendo’s consoles in later years falling behind competitors from Sony and Microsoft in terms of raw performance and graphical fidelity, many have made the argument that Nintendo ought to focus on what they do best, namely their titles. Well, Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo has heard these arguments, and he’s here to tell you why they are wrong.
Is Nintendo still adding value with their hardware, or should they just focus on titles?
‘What Nintendo does for the industry is important. It’s what we take pride in,’ he said, referring to Nintendo’s role as the innovator of the gaming world. ‘Innovating the world of video games, pushing the industry forwards… and a big part of that is by creating unique hardware that allows for more unique gaming experiences. The biggest and most obvious example of this is the Wii, which introduced a tracking system and accelerometer, and made gaming more than just the press of a button. We did this all at a price point that most families could afford. By taking a risk, Nintendo was able to introduce the world to a new way of playing. It made gamers out of people who had never touched a gaming console before.
Discussion
Source: [H]ardOCP – Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime Explains Why Nintendo Needs To Keep Making Consoles
The CEO of Seagate has confirmed plans to release new nearline harddrives with 12 TB capacity in the coming months, and HDDs with 16 TB capacity over the course of the next several quarters. The latter are believed to be based on HAMR technology and the comment by the CEO essentially means that the company is on track with its next generation of heat assisted magnetic recording technology.
Seagate’s CFO confirmed plans to release nearline HDDs with 12 TB capacity in early November, 2016. Last week Steve Luczo, CEO of Seagate, said that such drives had been evaluated by the company’s customers for about two quarters now and the feedback about the drives had been positive. He did not elaborate on the exact launch timeframe for the product, but given the fact that the drive is nearly ready, it is logical to assume that the 12 TB HDD should be announced formally in the coming weeks or months.
The hard drive maker has not revealed many details about its 12 TB Nearline HDD so far, but previously Seagate disclosed that this drive is filled with helium and is based on PMR technology, whereas last week the company implied that it uses eight platters. Keeping in mind that Showa Denko recently launched 1.5 TB platters for 3.5” drives, it is likely that Seagate uses eight of such platters for its 12 TB HDDs. In fact, Western Digital’s HGST Ultrastar He12 HDD with 12 TB capacity introduced last December comes with eight PMR disks as well.
“As you know, going from 8 to 10 to 12 to 16 [TB], you are going from six to eight disks, at least, on the nearline products,” said Steve Luczo, CEO of Seagate, during a conference call with investors and financial analysts.
The 12 GB drive will be Seagate’s top-of-the-range model for enterprise and other demanding applications for quite a while and will become the company’s highest-capacity PMR-based drive. But, for the second time last week, the company mentioned 16 TB HDDs due in the next 12 to 18 months. Moreover, since such drives will be based on HAMR technology (Seagate discussed the feasibility of HAMR-based HDDs at 16 TB last year), they will cause a certain level of disruption on the market.
“During the next 12 to 18 months, we expect the nearline market to be diversified in capacity points for different application workloads, with use cases from 2 to 4 TB products for certain applications up to 16 TB for other use cases,” said Mr. Luczo.
Hard drives featuring heat-assisted magnetic recording technology will cost more to build compared to traditional HDDs because of the increased number of components and use of new materials. As a result, such drives will also be more expensive to actual customers. At present, we do not know specifics, but what Seagate says is that in the future the market of nearline HDDs will get more diverse and its lineup will get wider. In the past, the product stack used to remained similar, and as larger drives were introduced every year, previous-gen products were moved down the stack and low-capacity models discontinued. This may not be the case in the future and customers who need maximum capacity (i.e., who would like to store 3840 TB of data per rack and require 16 TB drives) in 2018 will probably have to pay more than they pay for leading edge HDDs today.
It is noteworthy that Seagate also mentioned 14 TB and 20 TB HDDs in the conference call, but without specifics, it does not sound like a good business to make assumptions about them. So far, the company has not explicitly announced any plans to release SMR-based 14 TB HDDs for specific workloads to compete against Western Digital’s Ultrastar He14.
Moving on with the comments made by the head of Seagate, we noticed that Mr. Luczo also mentioned higher-capacity HDDs for consumer applications. In particular, when talking about increasing amount of disks and heads per drive, CEO of Seagate indicated that the numbers are also increasing for consumer HDDs as well.
“We do think there [are] opportunities for more heads and disks on desktop and notebook, as people need higher capacity as well,” said Steve Luczo.
Keeping in mind that Seagate currently offers BarraCuda Pro desktop HDDs with 6 TB, 8 TB and 10 TB drives for consumers, and these drives use enterprise-class platforms (albeit with multiple changes). The remark by the CEO is an indication that the company will keep doing so in the future. Meanwhile it is interesting to note that the head of Seagate also mentioned mobile drives with increased number of platters and heads, hinting on increasing demand for higher-end 2.5” HDDs with more than one platter. At present, Seagate offers 5TB drives in a 2.5-inch form factor, although these come in at 15mm and typically tend not to fit in most mobile environments.
Related Reading:
Source: AnandTech – Seagate Confirms Plans for 12 TB HDD in Near Future, 16 TB HDD Due in 2018
Last year, Dropbox introduced an interesting new feature called Project Infinite, which promised to let you view and access all of your files, whether they’re on your hard drive or in the cloud. The idea here is that all your files will appear right…
Source: Engadget – Dropbox SmartSync lets you collaborate across Mac and Windows PCs
Tracking your habits is a great way to keep an eye on your progress for a variety of self-improvement goals, and you have an insane number of apps for doing so on the iPhone. However, when it comes to performance and ease of use, we like Productive, because it blends simplicity with the statistics you want to see.
Source: LifeHacker – The Best Habit Tracking App for iPhone
While convenient for keeping drinks chilled, lugging a hardside cooler everywhere is less-than-ideal. How about picking up one of RTIC’s softsided coolers, in either 20 or 30L for their best prices ever? Save some money and save your back.
Source: LifeHacker – Never Drink Warm Beer Again With These Soft Pack RTIC Coolers
It’s been a long time since the first Psychonauts was released — more than 10 years, in fact. However, developer Double Fine announced in late 2015 that it was bringing the series back with a pair of game: Psychonauts 2, a proper sequel, and Psychon…
Source: Engadget – ‘Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin’ will launch on February 21st
Or, to be more specific, that small, sculpted models of said Space Vikings stop being depicted as wearing fur. Or, to be even more specific, PETA UK have written to Games Workshop, makers of Warhammer 40,000 and its myriad table-top gaming models, asking them to cease depicting imagery of its myriad characters wearing…
Source: io9 – PETA Wants Fictional Space Vikings From the Year 40,000 to Stop Wearing Fur
Some KDE developers are embracing Ubuntu’s Snap packaging technology and are beginning to offer KDE Applications via the Ubuntu Snap Store…
Source: Phoronix – KDE Applications Begin Appearing In The Ubuntu Snap Store
Reddit can feel like a cesspool of hate most days, but occasionally, it turns up some internet gems. Today, for example, a user posted a bonkers photo of a posse of large, intimidating-looking birds chilling on an airplane.
Source: Gizmodo – Someone Brought a Bird Army on a Flight and Everyone Seems Pretty Chill About It
Starbucks is continuing its efforts to stay on top of technological trends by adding new voice-ordering functions to its iOS app and Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant. Called “My Starbucks barista” on iOS, the service is being rolled out to select cus…
Source: Engadget – Starbucks’ iPhone app lets you order by talking to it
Twitch broadcaster IronPhoenix87 was streaming Call of Duty on the PS4 for a few viewers late December when he was suddenly pummeled by dozens of random messages. “I have have hacked your twitch beware,” they read, over and over. “Spam by https://spampsn.com – – -.” IronPhoenix87 was playing an open game and doesn’t…
Source: Kotaku – PlayStation Players Are Harassing Each Other With Millions of Spam Messages
If you received a 1099-C tax form in the mail, you might be wondering where it came from and why it exists. You typically get this form when you settle a debt. It means you owe taxes on the amount of debt that was forgiven or canceled. There are a few other reasons you may have received this form, though.
Source: LifeHacker – Why You Might Have Received a 1099-C Tax Form in the Mail
