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AMD has recently dropped support and distribution for its intelligent storage acceleration software solution, StoreMi.

The software was licensed from a development company called Emmotus and allowed slow hard disk drives to be “fused” with faster drives for SSD-like performance. Apple and Intel have both attempted to accomplish the same goal in the past two decades with the Fusion drive and Robson/Turbo Memory respectively.

StoreMi is compatible with NVMe, SATA and 3D Xpoint storage, with Emmotus now using it to pair slow QLC and fast SLC into hybrid SSD. But AMD may be looking to push beyond StoreMi's capabilities. AnandTech reports the company is “focus[ing] its internal development resources on a replacement solution,” which is set to be released before July 2020.

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AnandTech adds that “AMD is explicitly noting the use of ‘internal’ resources, [which] strongly suggests whatever the company is working on, it’s an in-house solution rather than a licensed solution like StoreMi”.

What about Radeon RAMdisk?

We also contacted AMD and partner Dataram to find out more about their collaboration on a little-known piece of software called Radeon RAMDisk, which can be used to create RAM-based storage devices that are far faster than most solid state drives on the market. The last version of Radeon RAMDisk was released in December 2013, which leads us to believe the software has been abandoned.

One of Intel’s current unique selling points has been to use Optane to differentiate itself from AMD. The technology has even trickled down to consumer laptops, such as this HP model with a seventh generation Core i3 CPU and a 1TB hard disk drive. The marketing blurb boasts of “storage acceleration, creating speeds of an SSD hard drive without the extra cost.”

So, could AMD be looking to bring out its own Optane rival? Perhaps a software-based solution? After all, the firm could harness learnings from the storage technology it deployed in the brand new Xbox One X games console.

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Via AnandTech

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In addition to ventilators and face masks, US state governments are now in dire need of COBOL programmers to help out during the global pandemic.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy recently put out a call for volunteers who know how to code the decades-old computer programming language as many of the state's systems are still running on older mainframes. Governor Murphy explained that many of New Jersey's systems are outdated during a coronavirus briefing, saying:

"Literally, we have systems that are 40-plus-years-old. There'll be lots of postmortems and one of them on our list will be how did we get here where we literally needed COBOL programmers?"

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According to Kansas Governor Laura Kelly, the state's Departments of Labor were in the process of modernizing their systems from COBOL before the coronavirus outbreak began. 

A lack of COBOL programmers is also hurting Connecticut as the state is currently struggling to process its large volume of unemployment claims using a COBOL mainframe and four other separate systems. New Jersey is facing a similar situation as 362,000 of the states residents have filed for unemployment in the past two weeks and its 40-year-old mainframes are now being overloaded.

COBOL

COBOL, which stands for Common Business Oriented Language, was first developed back in 1959 and is surprisingly still in use today.

For instance, a 2017 report from Reuters revealed that there are still 220bn lines of COBOL in use today as 43 percent of banking systems and 95 percent of ATM swipes still rely on the aging computer programming language.

COBOL is also still used by the US federal government across a variety of agencies including the Department of Veteran Affairs, the Department of Justice and the Social Security Administration.

Additionally, a report from the inspector general for the Social Security Administration released in 2018 revealed that the administration still maintains more than 60m lines of COBOL along with millions more lines of other legacy programming languages.

If you've ever wanted to learn COBOL, now would be the perfect time to do so.

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Via CNBC

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Honor Play 8A smartphone that was launched in China last year, is now believed to be getting an upgraded version in the UK. The new version is reportedly called Honor 8A 2020 and has been listed on a UK retail website Clove.

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Microsoft said on Thursday that video calling and educational usage of its Teams productivity software had risen in recent weeks as employees work remotely and some US schools cancel in-person classes for the rest of the academic year.

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Google Pixel 4a specifications and the retail box image have allegedly leaked online ahead of launch that could be take place next month.

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Honor Play 4T Pro and Honor Play 4T have been launched as the latest smartphone models by the Huawei sub-brand Honor. While the Honor Play 4T Pro comes with a waterdrop-style notch, the Honor Play 4T has a hole-punch display.

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The Honor 30 release date is imminent, as the phone is set to be announced on April 15, likely alongside the higher-end Honor 30 Pro and possibly also the lower-end Honor 30 Lite.

Ahead of that, a number of leaks and rumors have emerged, giving us a good idea of the likely specs. We’ve even seen leaked images of the devices. You’ll find all that below, along with everything we know about the availability and price.

And as soon as we hear anything more about the Honor 30 range we’ll be sure to add it to this article, so check back for updates.

Cut to the chase

• What is it? The successor to the Honor 20
• When is it out? April 15
• What will it cost? It's likely to have a mid-range price

Honor 30 release date and price

We know that the Honor 30 range is being announced on April 15, as the company has revealed as much in a post containing the image above, though oddly it has since removed the post, so there’s a chance the date has slipped.

Of course, that’s not necessarily when you’ll be able to buy the Honor 30 range. You’re likely going to have to wait at least a little longer until you can do that, and in some regions it probably won’t go on sale at all.

The US for example is very unlikely to get the phones based on past form, and given the lack of Google apps and services (due to Honor being owned by Huawei, which is banned from most US products and services) there’s a high chance many other regions may not offer the Honor 30 range either.

We don’t know what it will cost, but the Honor 20 started at £400 (roughly $560, AU$810), while the Honor 20 Pro started at £549.99 (around $670, AU$970), and the Honor 20 Lite started at £249.99 (approximately $335, AU$480).

The Honor 30, Honor 30 Pro and Honor 30 Lite will probably cost at least as much as their predecessors.

Honor 30 news and leaks

There haven’t been a huge number of Honor 30 leaks, but the things that have leaked out have painted a fairly comprehensive picture.

First up, there’s an actual photo supposedly showing the Honor 30 Pro. You can see this below.

This image – which was shared on Weibo (a Chinese social network) and spotted by IndiaShopps – shows a quite steeply curved display and a dual-lens front-facing camera placed in a cut-out in the top left of the screen.

Teaser images of the Honor 30 Pro have also been shared on Weibo (and again spotted by IndiaShopps), showing a quad-lens camera complete with a periscope telephoto lens (the square one). The phone is shown in both blue/silver and grey shades.

Our only other real glimpse of the Honor 30 range comes from the official announcement invite image above, which shows a phone in silver, but keeps all the details hidden.

Moving on to the specs, the Honor 30 and Honor 30 Pro have both been listed on TENAA (a Chinese telecommunications equipment certification center), complete with a partial specs list.

This reveals that both handsets will apparently have 6.57-inch 1080 x 2340 screens, 32MP front-facing cameras, 3,900mAh batteries, 5G support, 128GB or 256GB of storage, and dimensions of 160.3 x 73.6 x 8.63mm.

The listings add that there’s a 50MP main camera on the Honor 30 Pro, while the standard Honor 30 gets a 40MP one, and that both phones have at least 8GB of RAM, but that the Honor 30 Pro also comes in a 12GB configuration.

@OnLeaks (a reliable leaker) has added more details to the camera specs, saying that according to his sources the Honor 30 has a 50MP main sensor which can combine four pixels into one. This is then paired with a 12MP ultra-wide snapper, and an 8MP telephoto one with 3x optical zoom.

Additionally he supplied a sketch of the phone, showing the triple-lens camera block running down the top left edge of the back, though he added that this image may not be 100% accurate.

It’s worth noting that his claim doesn’t quite line up with the TENAA information above, unless he’s actually talking about the Honor 30 Pro.

Finally, the Honor 30 Pro has seemingly been listed on Geekbench (a benchmarking website that judges mobile performance). Here it’s listed as having 8GB of RAM and a Kirin 990 chipset.

That’s the same top-end chipset as you’ll find in the likes of the Huawei P40 and Huawei P40 Pro, and we’d expect it will also be in the standard Honor 30, based on past form.

Of course, we’d take all of these leaks with a pinch of salt. Very little is official yet, but it will be soon, so stay tuned for all the Honor 30 information.

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Vodafone Idea has introduced a new #RechargeforGood programme that enables a subscriber to earn commission for recharging other prepaid accounts.

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Apple TV Plus offers free access to some original programming - CNET

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A federal appeals court on Thursday revived US nationwide litigation accusing Facebook of violating users' privacy rights by tracking their internet activity even after they logged out of the social media website.

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Singapore has suspended the use of video-conferencing tool Zoom by teachers, its education ministry said on Friday, after "very serious incidents" occurred in the first week of a coronavirus lockdown that has seen schools move to home-based learning.

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The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has agreed Google can be allowed to operate a portion of an undersea internet cable running between the US and Taiwan.

Funded in part by Google and Facebook, the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN) connects Los Angeles to Hong Kong, the Philippines and Taiwan. Until now, US regulators have blocked its activation over fears the project could jeopardise national security.

Approaching capacity in the APAC region, Google submitted an appeal on the grounds it would face significant premiums if required to route traffic through other systems, which would diminish the value of recent capital investments in the US.

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The tech giant claims it has, “an immediate need to meet internal demand for capacity between the US and Taiwan, in particular to connect Google’s Taiwan data center to Google data centers in the United States and to serve users throughout the Asia-Pacific region.”

Pacific Light Cable Network

Announced in 2016, PLCN was originally billed as the first undersea web cable to connect the US and Hong Kong. The fibre optic cable network boasts 12,800km of cabling and an estimated capacity of 120TB per second, which would make it the highest capacity trans-Pacific route.

In response to Google’s appeal, the FCC has granted the company permission to run the US to Taiwan portion of the submarine cable for six months, while it awaits a final decision on the activation of the PLCN.

However, sections running to Hong Kong will remain inactive amidst security fears and ongoing conflict between Washington and Beijing. Regulators also harbour concerns about the involvement of Dr Peng Telecom & Media Group in the project - a company with strong links to embattled Chinese tech firm Huawei.

Google celebrated the FCC’s decision and added that its “dedicated global network deployment and operations team is continually increasing capacity to meet the needs of our users.”

According to the FCC, Google will also “pursue diversification of interconnection points in Asia” as part of the temporary agreement.

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Via Reuters

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