Western Digital Spins Off Flash Memory Business After Kioxia Merger Talks Fizzle

Western Digital Spins Off Flash Memory Business After Kioxia Merger Talks Fizzle
In a surprise move, Western Digital is splitting its hard disk drive (HDD) and flash memory storage businesses into separate companies, effectively spinning off its solid state drive (SSD) division. The move comes around the eight-year anniversary of when Western Digital announced plans to acquire SanDisk for $19 billion (the deal closed in

Source: Hot Hardware – Western Digital Spins Off Flash Memory Business After Kioxia Merger Talks Fizzle

Coding futures: Celebrating our educational partnership in Telangana

On September 29 2023, amidst much excitement and enthusiasm, a significant event took place at a unique school in Moinabad, Telangana: the teams of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS) gathered to celebrate our partnership on the esteemed Coding Academy of TSWREIS.

SEC Charges SolarWinds CISO With Fraud and Cybersecurity Failures

wiredmikey shares a report from SecurityWeek: In a surprising development on Monday that is spooking the cybersecurity community, the SEC filed charges against SolarWinds and its Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Timothy G. Brown, alleging that the software company misled investors about its cybersecurity practices and known risks. The charges stem from alleged fraud and internal control failures related to known cybersecurity weaknesses that took place between the company’s October 2018 initial public offering (IPO) and its December 2020 revelation of the infamous supply chain cyberattack dubbed “SUNBURST.” […] The SEC’s complaint also points to internal communications among SolarWinds employees, including Brown, in 2019 and 2020, which raised questions about the company’s ability to protect its critical assets from cyberattacks.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – SEC Charges SolarWinds CISO With Fraud and Cybersecurity Failures

Crucial T500 Gen4 NVMe SSD: New Flagship Melds Micron 232L 3D TLC and Phison E25

Crucial is unveiling its latest addition to its Gen4 consumer NVMe SSD lineup today – the T500 PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD. It takes over flagship duties from the Crucial P5 Plus in this category. The company had started to put focus on the high-end consumer SSD segment earlier this year with the launch of the T700 Gen5 NVMe SSD – it was one of the first to offer more than 12 GBps read speeds. The company is now introducing a T-series drive in the Gen4 segment with similar flagship credentials – sequential read and write speeds of 7400 / 7000 MBps.


The Crucial T500 is one of the first consumer SSDs to utilize the Phison E25 controller launched last year. The Micron 232L 3D TLC NAND in the SSD has been in mass production for a few quarters now, allowing the company to price the product competitively. Similar to the T700, this drive is targeted towards gamers, content creators, and professional users. While PCIe 5.0 SSDs are slowly getting introduced into the market, Gen4 units are still a sweet spot in terms of system compatibility, price, and performance for many use-cases.


The T500 is launching in three capacities and two variants – a heatsink and non-heatsink one. The 500GB version comes in a non-heatsink SKU only, while the 1TB and 2TB ones come in both variants. Crucial is promising a 4TB version next year. The company indicated that the heatsink SKUs is low-profile enough to be be used in the PlayStation 5.


Phison has been pushing DirectStorage optimizations in its high-end controllers, and it is no surprise that the T500 advertises the use of Phison’s ‘I/O+ Technology’ to appeal to gamers. Given its high-performance nature, it is no surprise that the E25 controller needs to be equipped with DRAM for managing the flash translation layer (FTL). Crucial is using Micron LPDDR4 DRAM (1GB / TB of flash) in the T500 for this purpose.


















Crucial T500 Gen4 NVMe SSD Specifications
Capacity 500 GB 1 TB 2 TB
Controller Phison PS5025-E25
NAND Flash Micron 232L 3D TLC NAND
Form-Factor, Interface Single-Sided M.2-2280, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 2.0
Sequential Read 7200 MB/s 7300 MB/s 7400 MB/s
Sequential Write 5700 MB/s 6800 MB/s 7050 MB/s
Random Read IOPS 800K 1150K 1180K
Random Write IOPS 300K 600K 1200K
SLC Caching Static / Dynamic (up to 20% of user capacity)
TCG Opal Encryption Yes
Warranty 5 years
Write Endurance 300 TBW

0.33 DWPD
600 TBW

0.33 DWPD
1200 TBW

0.33 DWPD
MSRP $90 (18¢/GB) $120

(Non-Heatsink) (12¢/GB)

$130

(Heatsink) (13¢/GB)
$170

(Non-Heatsink) (8.5¢/GB)

$180

(Heatsink) (9¢/GB)


Flash pricing is quite low, with the memory industry being caught up in one of its downturns currently. While this has not been kind to the revenue numbers for the NAND flash / DRAM vendors, it has translated to excellent launch pricing for even flagship SSDs such as the Crucial T500 – starting from as low as 8.5¢/GB for the 2TB non-heatsink SKU.




Source: AnandTech – Crucial T500 Gen4 NVMe SSD: New Flagship Melds Micron 232L 3D TLC and Phison E25

You Can Get the Google Pixel 7a for Its Lowest Price Ever Right Now

The Google Pixel 8 came out on Oct. 12 after a much-anticipated release, and inevitably, this meant that the Google Pixel 7 was bound to come down significantly in price at some point. That moment is now, according to Camelcamelcamel and Honey’s price history, with the 128GB unlocked Google Pixel 7a currently going…

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Source: LifeHacker – You Can Get the Google Pixel 7a for Its Lowest Price Ever Right Now

Toyota has built an EV with a fake transmission, and we’ve driven it

A man's hand operates the gear lever in a Lexus EV

Enlarge / The Lexus UX300e is an electric crossover available in Europe, China, and Japan, but not usually with three pedals or a gear lever. (credit: Toyota)

Electric cars do a lot of things well. They’re smooth. They’re quiet. They’re easier on the environment, and they’re even scientifically proven to be less stressful. But what they don’t tend to be is engaging, at least not in the way that a traditional car with three pedals and a stick shift is.

A manual car requires a lot more of the driver. That level of forced engagement brings with it a sort of focus that can make the simple act of driving a lot more fun. In an ideal world, it would be possible to layer that kind of engagement on top of the otherwise ideal EV experience.

That is exactly what Toyota has done with what it calls the “Manual BEV concept.” Think of it as an EV that brings all the hands-on enjoyment of a manual transmission—despite lacking a manual transmission. It’s something of a testbed to find ways to bring more fundamental driver enjoyment to the next generation of battery-powered electric vehicles, and after running a few laps around Toyota’s test track in one, I’m convinced every sports-oriented EV in the future needs this.

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Source: Ars Technica – Toyota has built an EV with a fake transmission, and we’ve driven it

Apple Warns Indian Opposition Leaders of State-Sponsored iPhone Attacks

Apple has warned over a half dozen Indian lawmakers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s main opposition of their iPhones being targets of state-sponsored attacks, these people said Tuesday, in a remarkable turn of events just months before the general elections in the South Asian nation. From a report: Rahul Gandhi, Indian opposition leader, said in a media briefing Tuesday that his team had received the said alert from Apple. Shashi Tharoor, a key figure from the Congress party; Akhilesh Yadav, the head of the Samajwadi Party; Mahua Moitra, a national representative from the All India Trinamool Congress; Priyanka Chaturvedi of Shiv Sena, a party with notable influence in Maharashtra reported that they too had been notified by Apple regarding a potential security attack on their iPhones. Asaduddin Owaisi, the leader of the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM); Raghav Chadha from AAP, originating from an anti-corruption crusade a decade prior and later securing a political foothold in the national capital region; Sitaram Yechury, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India; alongside Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera were also impacted, they said. Journalists Siddharth Varadarajan and Sriram Karri, along with Observer Research Foundation (ORF) India President Samir Saran shared that they had been served with identical warnings from Apple.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.



Source: Slashdot – Apple Warns Indian Opposition Leaders of State-Sponsored iPhone Attacks

Apple Announces M3 SoC Family: M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max Make Their Marks

Capping off a busy month for new processor announcements, Apple this week has announced a new generation of M-series Apple Silicon processors – and with it, a newly refreshed generation of MacBook Pros. Anchored by the new M3 series of processors, Apple has opted to launch most of the stack in a single go, announcing products based on the vanilla M3, and more powerful M3 Pro and M3 Max SoCs at the same time. Built on TSMC’s N3B process, Apple is looking to once again raise the bar on both CPU and GPU performance, as well as setting a new record for the number of transistors used in a single laptop SoC.

The launch of the new M3 chips goes hand-in-hand with new MacBook Pro laptops, as well as a refreshed 24-inch iMac. But as Apple isn’t making any external design or feature changes to any of these devices – they’re all the same dimensions with the same ports and parts as before – they are a straightforward update to the internals of these devices. As a result, the star of the show for these latest product launches are the new M3 family of SoCs, and the features and performance they bring.

With their latest generation of high-performance silicon for Macs (and, undoubtedly, high-end iPads), Apple is seemingly taking full advantage of the density and power improvements offered by TSMC’s N3B process. But at the same time, they are also changing how their SoCs are configured; the M3 Pro in particular is a significant departure from its predecessor. So although the M3 chips do not in and of themselves rise to the level of “groundbreaking”, there are some important changes here that we’ll be taking a look at.



Source: AnandTech – Apple Announces M3 SoC Family: M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max Make Their Marks

Use the RAFT Technique to Quickly Sort Emails

To manage your inbox, you need dedication. You need a plan. You need acronyms. One such acronym is RAFT, which will literally keep you afloat in the sea of emails you receive every day. You can combine it with others, like LIFO and 4D to maximize its benefits, but first you need to know what to do with it on its own.

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Source: LifeHacker – Use the RAFT Technique to Quickly Sort Emails

Daily Telescope: A spooky image of the Solar System’s largest planet

A view of Jupiter from 7,700 km above the surface.

Enlarge / A view of Jupiter from 7,700 km above the surface. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/ Image processing by Vladimir Tarasov)

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light; a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’re going to take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

Good morning. It is October 31—or, for people in many countries around the world, Halloween.

According to the US Library of Congress, Halloween has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. This was a pagan celebration to welcome the harvest at the end of summer, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. Celtic people believed that during the festival, spirits walked the Earth. Later on, Christian missionaries introduced All Souls’ Day on November 2, which perpetuated the idea of the living coming into contact with the dead around the same time of year.

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Source: Ars Technica – Daily Telescope: A spooky image of the Solar System’s largest planet

This Is the Right Way to Store Firewood

Cold weather is coming, which means it’s time to light up your fireplace or firepit and build up your woodpile for the season. Whether you’re chopping firewood yourself or buying it and bringing it home, make sure you’re storing it correctly—don’t just dump it on the ground.

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Source: LifeHacker – This Is the Right Way to Store Firewood

Diarrhea-Causing 'Crypto' Parasites Are Surging in the UK

The UK is currently dealing with an alarming rise of crypto—the diarrhea-causing intestinal parasite, not the baffling currency. In a report this month, health officials documented a much higher number of cases than expected so far in 2023. It’s not clear yet why crypto is surging in the country, though the increase…

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Source: Gizmodo – Diarrhea-Causing ‘Crypto’ Parasites Are Surging in the UK

Why you should take your 3DS along for a “StreetPass Halloween”

It's no trick, 3DS players are treating themselves to StreetPass tags this Halloween.

Enlarge / It’s no trick, 3DS players are treating themselves to StreetPass tags this Halloween. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

When it comes to unique gimmicks, the Nintendo 3DS is mainly remembered for the wow factor of its glasses-free stereoscopic 3D effects (which Nintendo would eventually abandon with the introduction of the 2DS line). But today, more than 12 years after the launch of the 3DS, a group of dedicated players has been gathering to ensure that another unique 3DS feature still has a bright and active future after being abandoned by Nintendo.

We’re talking about StreetPass, the proto-social-network that Nintendo devised to let 3DS owners instantly and silently exchange Mii avatars (and some basic information) when two consoles get close enough to communicate wirelessly. Those exchanged Miis can then be used as companions in simple minigames, like tiny board-game pieces crafted to look like 3DS-owning friends and strangers you pass on the street.

Even as most portable gamers have given up their 3DS consoles for the Switch or Steam Deck, thousands of 3DS fans have met at various events this year to trade StreetPass “tags” with their nostalgic brethren. The next such set of gatherings will take place on “StreetPass Halloween,” when participants are encouraged to throw a system in their candy bag, leave one on and idle near a candy distribution door, or even just drive slowly around town with a 3DS in the front seat.

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Source: Ars Technica – Why you should take your 3DS along for a “StreetPass Halloween”

The Morning After: Apple reveals a new MacBook Pros, M3 chips and a new iMac

During its Scary Fast product event last night, Apple officially debuted its new M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips. The company is positioning the M3 chips as major upgrades over its M1 hardware — if you bought an M2 system, you’re probably not itching for a replacement just yet.

The M3’s GPU is the biggest leap forward, delivering new features, like hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading, enabling more realistic lighting and better geometry handling. If you’re into chip architecture and other fun endeavors, the M3 chips are also notable for being the first PC chips built on a three-nanometer process — both the M1 and M2 families are based on a 5nm process. This means more transistors packed into the same space, which helps with power efficiency, as well as providing better overall performance. The M3 series will feature in the revamped MacBook Pro 14-inch and 16-inch (more on those below), as well as the 24-inch iMac.

That new chip will make the new iMac up to twice as fast as its predecessor, but there aren’t too many upgrades elsewhere in the latest Mac. Apple is sticking with a 4.5K Retina display, for instance. There are some handy changes on the connectivity front, now with support for Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 The new iMac starts at $1,299 and ships on November 7.

— Mat Smith

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Apple kills off the 13-inch MacBook Pro

But it has new 14- and 16-inch models, don’t worry.

TMA
Apple

Apple’s updated line of 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pros features a range of new M3 chips and a new Space Black chassis. Was that the spooky part of Apple’s event?

The 14-inch MBP with a base M3 processor will cost $1,599 — the first time the 14-inch laptop has hit that low of a price. The M3 Pro iteration will still cost you $1,999, and prices go up from there for M3 Max options. Meanwhile, a base 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M3 Pro chip will have the same $2,499 starting price as its M2 Pro predecessor. Alas, the 13-inch version is no more. Farewell, Touch Bar. 

Continue reading.

Lenovo Smart Paper review

A solid e-ink tablet spoiled by the cost.

TMA
Engadget

In the last few years, we’ve seen Amazon get into e-ink scribes, while startups like ReMarkable have carved out their own niche with capable hardware for a reasonable price. Lenovo, having dabbled with e-ink on devices like the Yoga Book, has joined the fray with a dedicated device, the Smart Paper. While the product hasn’t yet launched in the US, the Smart Paper has launched elsewhere, including the UK. At around $400 (or £500 in the UK), it’s expensive. The hardware is impressive (and useful), but it’s all tainted by a subscription service that demands even more money.

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X won’t pay creators for tweets that get fact checked with community notes

The ‘slight change’ is the latest attempt to address misinformation.

X will no longer pay creators for tweets promoting misinformation. Elon Musk said the company is making a “slight change” to its monetization program, and tweets fact-checked via community notes will no longer be eligible for payouts.

The latest change comes as researchers, fact-checkers and journalists have raised the alarm about the amount of viral misinformation spreading on X amid the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza. Recent analysis from NewsGuard, a nonprofit that tracks the spread of misinformation, found 74 percent of “the most viral posts on X advancing misinformation about the Israel–Hamas war are being pushed by ‘verified’ X accounts.”

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-apple-reveals-a-new-macbook-pros-m3-chips-and-a-new-imac-111552483.html?src=rss

Source: Engadget – The Morning After: Apple reveals a new MacBook Pros, M3 chips and a new iMac

A giant battery gives this new school bus a 300-mile range

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Source: Ars Technica – A giant battery gives this new school bus a 300-mile range