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Enlarge / Generic, non-Western Digital SD cards. (credit: Getty) Western Digital plans to release the first 4TB SD card next year. On Thursday, the storage firm announced plans to demo the product in person next week. Western Digital will launch the SD card, which follows the SD Association's Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) standard, under its SanDisk brand and market it toward "complex media and entertainment workflows," such as high-resolution video with high framerates, using cameras and laptops, the announcement said. The spacious card will use the Ultra High Speed-1 (UHS-1) bus interface, supporting max theoretical transfer rates of up to 104 MB per second. It will support minimum write speeds of 10 MB/s, AnandTech reported. Minimum sequential write speeds are expected to reach 30 MB/s, the publication said. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / From magnets we came, to magnets we return. (credit: Garner Products) There is the mental image that most people have of electronics recycling, and then there is the reality, which is shredding. Less than 20 percent of e-waste even makes it to recycling. That which does is, if not acquired through IT asset disposition (ITAD) or spotted by a worker who sees some value, heads into the shredder for raw metals extraction. If you've ever toured an electronics recycling facility, you can see for yourself how much of your stuff eventually gets chewed into little bits, whether due to design, to unprofitable reuse markets, or sheer volume concerns. Traditional hard drives have some valuable things inside them—case, cover, circuit boards, drive assemblies, actuators, and rare-earth magnets—but only if they avoid the gnashing teeth. That's where the DiskMantler comes in. Garner Products, a data elimination firm, has a machine that it claims can process 500 hard drives (the HDD kind) per day in a way that leaves a drive separated into those useful components. And the DiskMantler does this by shaking the thing to death (video). Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson) Another day, another dead Google product. The Google One VPN service we complained about last week is headed to the chopping block. Google's support documents haven't been updated yet, but Android Authority reported on an email going out to Google One users informing them of the shutdown. 9to5Google also got confirmation of the shutdown from Google. The Google One VPN launched in 2020 as a bonus feature for paying Google One subscribers. Google One is Google's cloud storage subscription plan that allows users to buy extra storage for Gmail, Drive, and Google Photos. In 2020, the plan was exclusive to the expensive 2TB tier for $10 a month, but later, it was brought down to all Google One tiers, including the entry-level $2-per-month option. By our count, Google has three VPN products, though "products" might be too strong a word since they are all essentially the same thing—VPN market segments? There's the general Google One VPN for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac—this is the one that's dying. There's also the "Pixel VPN by Google One," which came with Pixel phones (the "Google One" branding here makes no sense since you didn't have to subscribe to Google One) and the Google Fi VPN that's exclusive to Google Fi Android and iOS customers. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / President Biden speaking at the official opening of TSMC’s first Arizona fabrication plant in December 2022. The Taiwanese chipmaker plans to start manufacturing 2-nanometer chips in the US in 2028. (credit: Caitlin O’Hara/Bloomberg via Getty) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s decision to bring its latest technology to America is a big step forward for US President Joe Biden’s quest for security in the vital tech supply chain—but still leaves Washington short of being able to completely produce the most complex chips in the US. The world’s biggest chipmaker by sales must also pull off an intricate balancing act as it steps up its US presence, satisfying customers such as Nvidia without damaging its highly profitable business model, which has underpinned the development of the global semiconductor industry for more than 30 years. TSMC’s planned $65 billion of investments in Arizona are part of a construction race in the US that involves other global chipmakers such as Samsung and Intel, which are also taking big subsidies from Washington. Read 30 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / The 4th-gen Amazon Echo Dot smart speaker. (credit: Amazon) Alexa hasn't worked out the way Amazon originally planned. There was a time when it thought that Alexa would yield a robust ecosystem of apps, or Alexa Skills, that would make the voice assistant an integral part of users' lives. Amazon envisioned tens of thousands of software developers building valued abilities for Alexa that would grow the voice assistant's popularity—and help Amazon make some money. But about seven years after launching a rewards program to encourage developers to build Skills, Alexa's most preferred abilities are the basic ones, like checking the weather. And on June 30, Amazon will stop giving out the monthly Amazon Web Services credits that have made it free for third-party developers to build and host Alexa Skills. The company also recently told devs that its Alexa Developer Rewards program was ending, virtually disincentivizing third-party devs to build for Alexa. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

(credit: Getty Images) Apple has always had a strong preference that only its own parts be used in repairs, but only if they're brand-new. Now, soon after Oregon passed a repair bill forbidding devices from rejecting parts with software locks, or "parts pairing," Apple says it will allow for used Apple parts in future iPhone repairs. While noting that "pairing" is "critical to preserving the privacy, security, and safety of an iPhone," Apple states that it has worked for two years to allow for reusing Face ID and Touch ID sensors (i.e., biometric sensors) as well as moving part calibration from its remote repair certification tools onto the iPhone itself. As a result, "select iPhone models" this fall will allow for reusing biometric sensors and other parts, and anyone ordering parts from Apple can skip sending a device's serial number, so long as the repair doesn't involve a new main logic board. The new policy "is designed to maintain an iPhone user's privacy, security, and safety, while offering consumers more options, increasing product longevity, and minimizing the environmental impact of a repair," according to Apple's release. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / Google's Magic Editor and Photo Unblur. (credit: Google) Google Photos is opening up its premium editing tools to more users. The company says features like Magic Editor, Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur, and Portrait Light will be open to everyone, though the editor will have some usage limits for free users. Previously these were exclusive to Pixel devices or users subscribing to Google One. All of these AI-powered photo manipulators will be hit-or-miss depending on your exact photo, but "Portrait Light" will brighten up people's faces, and "Photo unblur" claims to be able to remove blur from movement or camera shake from your photos. Magic Eraser is Google's much-touted photo feature that lets you circle an item and have some AI processing remove it, generating a new background from the existing picture. These features will now all be free to Android and iOS users. For an even bigger extension of Magic Eraser, there's "Magic Editor" that lets you remove things and move them around. Magic Editor lets you imprecisely circle objects via your touchscreen, and it's entirely up to the AI system to both 1) correctly identify and cut out the object you very roughly circled and 2) replace the background where it used to be. It's a lot to ask of a photo editor. Moving an item won't correct its perspective, and Google's examples all do their best to stay away from that with landscape shots and moving an object only a small amount. The nicest part of the editor is that when it has to generate something, you'll get several different solutions presented in a lineup and can pick the one that looks the best. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / A Google Axion Processor. (credit: Google) Google is joining the custom Arm data center chip trend. Google Cloud, the cloud platform division that competes with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, is following in the footsteps of those companies and rolling out its own Arm-based chip designs. Google says its new "Google Axion Processors" are "custom Arm-based CPUs designed for the data center" and offer "industry-leading performance and energy efficiency." Google has been developing custom data center accelerators for things like AI and video transcoding, but this is the first time the company is making a CPU. Google says it's seeing "50% better performance and up to 60% better energy-efficiency than comparable current-generation x86-based instances." Google's "Axion" chip is based on the Arm Neoverse V2 CPU, so just like the ARM chips we see on mobile devices, by making "custom" chips, these companies are closely following a lot of blueprints that Arm makes available. Google says it did include a custom microcontroller called "Titanium," which it says handles networking, security, and storage I/O. Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge / The Fairbuds and their replaceable components, including the notably hand-friendly, non-soldered batteries. (credit: Fairphone) Fairphone has spent years showing us that it could do what major phone manufacturers suggest is impossible: make a modern-looking phone, make it brazenly easy to open up, design it so battery swaps are something you could do on lunch break, and also provide software support for an unbelievable eight to 10 years. Bluetooth headphones, specifically wireless earbuds, seemed destined to never receive this kind of eco-friendly, ownership-oriented upgrade, in large part because of how small they are. But the Fairbuds have arrived, and Fairphone has made them in its phones' image. They're only available in the EU at the moment, for 149 euro (or roughly $160 USD). Like the Fairphone 4, there's a chance interest could bring them to the US. The highlights include: Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Enlarge (credit: Getty) The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs the city's Muni Metro light rail, claims to be the first US agency to adopt the train control system it currently uses, which has software run off floppy disks. But today, the SFMTA is eager to abandon its reliance on 5¼-inch floppy disks—just give it about six more years and a few hundred more million dollars. Members of the SFMTA recently spoke with the ABC7 Bay Area News and detailed the agency's use of three 5¼-inch floppy disks every morning. The floppies have been part of Muni Metro's Automatic Train Control System (ATCS) since its installation in the Market Street subway stop in 1998. The ATCS has multiple components, "including computers onboard the trains that are tied into propulsion and brake systems, central and local servers, and communications infrastructure, like loop cable signal wires," Michael Roccaforte, an SFMTA spokesperson, told Ars Technica. The floppy disks are for loading the software running the central servers, Roccaforte said: Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

"There’s power in our history, in our joy, and in our votes," Obama wroteView the full article

When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance will drop April 30View the full article

In 2022, Other Half released Soft Action and it was our Album Of The Week. Today, the Norwich trio is announcing its follow-up, Dark Ageism, and releasing the lead single “Lifted Fingers” featuring Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws. View the full article

"The over zealous and overtly militarized force used against my sons Justin and Christian is deplorable,” Misa Hylton wrote. “If these were the sons of a non-Black celebrity, they would not have been handled with the same aggression”View the full article

The annual charity event — which returned after a 26-year hiatus in 2023 — will take place in Fort Payne, Alabama on June 1View the full article

"Magical," "a true sweetheart," and "to-the-core funny" are just some of the descriptions people such as Martin Scorsese and Paul Feig used to describe FlahertyView the full article

Post-punk has been one of indie rock’s trendier subgenres of the past half-decade or so, with British bands like Idles and Dry Cleaning leading a wave of talky, rhythm-forward art music. But post-punk can be fun, too, as groups like Wet Leg and Yard Act have ably demonstrated. And as heard from bands like Omni, there’s even room for melody in the mix, without abandoning the body-moving herks and jerks that define the style. View the full article

John Sinclair, the jazz poet and activist, has died at 82. As The Detroit News reports, a representative said that he passed away from congestive heart failure at Detroit Receiving Hospital on Tuesday morning. View the full article

The musician was accused of sexual harassment and fostering a toxic workplace environment in two lawsuits last yearView the full article

The event will be hosted in Kansas City on Saturday, May 18 with additional appearances from DJ Irie and moreView the full article

The indie-pop band talks about recording its sixth LP, Daniel, and learning not to overthink thingsView the full article

"Nobody sings like you," White wrote about Queen BeyView the full article

Enlarge (credit: Aurich / Thinkstock) Google offers a VPN via its "Google One" monthly subscription plan, and while it debuted on phones, a desktop app has been available for Windows and Mac OS for over a year now. Since a lot of people pay for Google One for the cloud storage increase for their Google accounts, you might be tempted to try the VPN on a desktop, but Windows users testing out the app haven't seemed too happy lately. An open bug report on Google's GitHub for the project says the Windows app "breaks" the Windows DNS, and this has been ongoing since at least November. A VPN would naturally route all your traffic through a secure tunnel, but you've still got to do DNS lookups somewhere. A lot of VPN services also come with a DNS service, and Google is no different. The problem is that Google's VPN app changes the Windows DNS settings of all network adapters to always use Google's DNS, whether the VPN is on or off. Even if you change them, Google's program will change them back. Most VPN apps don't work this way, and even Google's Mac VPN program doesn't work this way. The users in the thread (and the ones emailing us) expect the app, at minimum, to use the original Windows settings when the VPN is off. Since running a VPN is often about privacy and security, users want to be able to change the DNS away from Google even when the VPN is running. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart's interview with FTC Chair Lina Khan. The conversation about Apple begins around 16:30 in the video. Before the cancellation of The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV+, Apple forbade the inclusion of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan as a guest and steered the show away from confronting issues related to artificial intelligence, according to Jon Stewart. This isn't the first we've heard of this rift between Apple and Stewart. When the Apple TV+ show was canceled last October, reports circulated that he told his staff that creative differences over guests and topics were a factor in the decision. The New York Times reported that both China and AI were sticking points between Apple and Stewart. Stewart confirmed the broad strokes of that narrative in a CBS Morning Show interview after it was announced that he would return to The Daily Show. Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Billie Eilish, R.E.M., Jason Isbell, and 200 more artists have signed an open letter warning developers against using artificial intelligence in music creation. The letter, put together by the Artist Rights Alliance, issues a call on “AI developers, technology companies, platforms, and digital music services to cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists. View the full article