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We're fast approaching Samsung's first Galaxy Unpacked Event of 2023 - and that means we're mere hours away from the probable unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S23 series.

Yes, after months of rumors and speculation, we'll finally be getting eyes on the company's trio of new flagship phones, alongside a bevvy of new laptops (if the leaks hold true).

The Samsung Unpacked event starts at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT tomorrow (February 1), and we'll be with you every step of the way. Samsung will be streaming the whole thing online, and we've embedded the placeholder for that below. We also have a guide explaining How to watch the Samsung Galaxy S23 launch online live. 

But you don't even need to do that, because we'll be at the event ourselves and will be reporting back as Samsung lifts the lid on its latest flagships. So scroll down for more details about what to expect, then keep this page bookmarked for all the last-minute rumors before the event, then all the news once it starts.

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2023 - what to expect

Samsung Galaxy S23: The S23 looks like a relatively minor upgrade on the Samsung Galaxy S22, with the same 6.1-inch FHD+ screen, the same 120Hz refresh rate, and the same rear camera setup. But a new chipset - most likely the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 - looks a cert, and the design should be brought more in line with the S23 Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Plus: As with the S23, the Galaxy S23 Plus is likely to be an evolution rather than revolution. Expect a bigger 6.6-inch FHD+ screen and a larger battery than on the vanilla model, but not many other differences.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra: The standout reveal at Galaxy Unpacked should be the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. As well as getting a powerful new chipset it's tipped to get a whopping 200MP sensor on the rear camera. Elsewhere, a 6.8-inch QHD+ screen, up to 12GB of RAM, up to 1TB of storage, and a 5,000mAh battery should give it the specs to compete with the best phones.

Samsung Galaxy Book 3 family: Rumors suggest that there will be several Galaxy Book 3 models debuting at Unpacked, including the Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro, the Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360, and the Galaxy Book 3 Ultra.

One UI 5.1: The only software reveal at the event is likely to be the latest version of Samsung's One UI. This is unlikely to be a huge release, with bigger changes likely held back for the arrival of Android 14 later this year.

Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2023 - livestream

Good afternoon and welcome to our Samsung Galaxy S23 event live blog. 

We're just under 24 hours out from Samsung Galaxy Unpacked, which is set to start at 10am PT / 1pm ET / 6pm GMT on February 1 (or 5am AEDT on February 2). 

We'll be keeping a close eye on any breaking news ahead of the event, as well as giving you our verdict on the rumors so far. Then, once the event begins, we'll be sharing all the big news as it happens.

So, on with the show… 

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Intel has steered a bumpy road with its Arc Alchemist graphics cards, but a forthcoming driver update might offer a sizeable enough performance gain to keep the company's hopes of cracking into the discrete graphics market alive a little while longer.

Since the launch of the first Intel Arc A380 discrete GPU, halfway into 2022, Intel's GPU series has been plagued by a number of incompatibilities and driver issues, especially with older games running on DirectX 9. 

According to a new report by German media outlet PC Games Hardware (via VideoCardz), Intel has tracked down the source of the performance bottleneck and fixed the issue. A major driver update in the near future aims to roll these changes out to the broader Arc ecosystem.

This would be a major boon for Team Blue since reported issues, including incompatibility and visual corruption, are going to be a major turn off for gamers. That's the one audience these cards needs to appease if Intel ever hopes to take on the best graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia.

To that end, PCGH tested 66 games across the years, going as far back as Unreal Tournament 2004 GOTY Edition (a DirectX 8 title), and only Halo Infinite had severe issues. Most games in the trial ran perfectly — and that was before the forthcoming driver update, which is said to fix major performance issues Intel's Arc cards have been facing.

Its not too late for Intel Arc, but time may be running out 

With Intel Arc seemingly on the ropes for months (if not years), there's definitely reason to be cautionous about how much of a difference this driver update will make.

Intel's most recent earnings call did not exactly inspire confidence in the market, and Intel is going to be under enormous pressure to increase earnings in the year ahead. Intel's discrete graphics unit has already been in the crosshairs as the company's considerable investment hasn't resulted in a major graphics card launch that could compete with the likes of AMD and Nvidia.

Still, while Intel's Arc cards might be threatened, they haven't been shut down yet, and the company says it remains committed to seeing its discrete graphics project through. 

With so much of the delay in the card's release being tied to issues with software drivers rather than the hardware itself, there is reason to hope that Intel's new cards can prove themselves to be major contenders for the best cheap graphics cards available, 

That is sorely needed, as both AMD and Nvidia continue to release unacceptably expensive graphics cards that a majority of gamers have little hope of being able to afford.

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Super Bowl 2023: How to Watch, Stream Chiefs vs. Eagles From Anywhere - CNET

The Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will play in Super Bowl LVII on Sunday, Feb. 12, on Fox.

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It’s been almost five years since Samsung unveiled what was then the world’s biggest solid state drive (SSD) in terms of capacity. The PM1643 was, for a very long time, the apex storage device but it did come with a hefty tag. Back in 2020, it retailed for just under $8,400 and three years later, still commands a hefty $4,939 sticker price. 

A relatively newcomer is about to change all that, the Intel SSDPFWNV307TZ (soon to become Solidigm SSD D5-P5316) has dropped in price and now costs less than $2,699 at Walmart (and Newegg). At a little over $87/TB, it is quite an achievement given that 4TB PCIe Gen4 drives struggle to smash the $100/TB floor.

At the time of writing, a 4TB WD_Black SN850 retailed for $399.89 - which makes it TB for TB, more expensive than Solidigm’s - although Kingston’s NV2 2TB SSD could be had for $110. Born out of the acquisition of Intel’s NAND business back in 2021 and the subsequent spin off by SK Hynix, Solidigm’s D5-P5316 uses 144-layer QLC technology to reach write/read speeds of 3.6GBps and 7GBps respectively.

As it is a EDSFF L 9.5mm drive, it can be used in a compatible 1U server rack to reach a 1PB capacity but it won’t fit your laptop or desktop since it is a server product, it comes with support for hardware encryption (256-bit AES), temperature monitoring and logging as well as enhanced power data loss protection.

Solidigm states that the drive comes with a 5-year warranty as well as a lifetime between 23PBW (64K random) and 104PBW (64K sequential).

The rise of super SSDs

High capacity SSDs are gradually becoming mainstream; Nimbus Data’s Exadrive SSD reaches capacities of up to 100TB but costs about $40,000, a 5x increase in price compared Solidigm’s D5-P5316.

Kioxia, Seagate, Samsung, Micron and Solidigm alongside a host of smaller players (Nimbus Data, Dapustor Union Memory, Teamgroup, ScaleFlux and Memblaze) are vying for the enterprise market as consumer demand for storage components is petering.

While hard disk drives are still affordable, they consume more electricity (and dissipate more heat), are more likely to break down (because of mechanical parts), are generally heavier, are far slower and have only slowly grown in capacity. 30TB hard disk drives are expected to come later this year but for now 26TB is the absolute maximum available capacity on the market.

The only two things that make hard drives still attractive to hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, Facebook are price (as low as $17 per TB, five times lower than the P5316) and the huge installed based of existing hard drives which makes it easier to just replace HDD rather than rip-and-replace or upgrade.

While some services like cloud storage or cloud backup will happily use hard drives, others like web hosting will gladly get rid of the bottleneck that spinning disks are.

With Kioxia, Samsung and Micron already ramping up production of NAND technology that uses 230 layers or more (50% extra capacity and more), it’s only a matter of time before SSDs reach parity, on a per TB basis, with hard disk drives.

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Super Bowl 2023 Ads So Far: See Spots Starring Bryan Cranston, Meghan Trainor, Kevin Bacon - CNET

The teams are finally set for the Feb. 12 game, and some of the planned commercials are already out.

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Intel appears to have quietly killed off its open source RISC-V developer environment, Pathfinder. 

The news may come as a shock to many SoC architects, software developers, and product research teams, primarily because Pathfinder was only announced in August 2022, however to others, it may have been an expected move.

The company reported a catastrophic end to 2022, with its Q4 alone accounting for $661 million in losses, and has pulled the plug on a number of its other operations. Besides this, 544 of its California-based workers are at risk of redundancy, with the potential for more layoffs globally as the company gears up to what it calls a “meaningful number” of job cuts.

Intel Pathfinder

The 2022 press release unveiling Pathfinder details the number of RISC-V-focused initiatives that have rolled out over the years, indicating Intel’s commitment, however just months later, users began to report that it had been cut.

Intel has since updated its website with a statement that reads:

“We regret to inform you that Intel is discontinuing the Intel Pathfinder for RISC-V program effective immediately.”

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The web page directs users to “promptly transition” to alternative RISC-V software tools, highlighting that bug fixes have also been stopped.

The program was designed to help its users develop RISC-V chips using industry-standard toolchains and as such had been supported by a number of RISC-V companies. It was split into a Professional Edition, and a more stripped back Starter Edition for hobbyists looking to give it a go.

Vijay Krishnan remained general manager for RISC-V ventures at the company for over a year and a half until it shut its doors this month, pushing him into a new role as general manager for new initiatives, indicating that Intel is turning its back on its RISC-V operations for now.

TechRadar Pro has asked Intel to confirm its decision to stop the Pathfinder program and whether it plans to continue investing in RISC-V in the future.

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A new cyberattack that appears to be targeted at Ukraine and is designed to overwrite crucial Windows files has been spotted by security firm ESET.

“On January 25th #ESETResearch discovered a new cyberattack in Ukraine. Attackers deployed a new wiper we named #SwiftSlicer using Active Directory Group Policy. The #SwiftSlicer wiper is written in Go programing language. We attribute this attack to #Sandworm," a Tweet by the firm read.

Also known as Unit 74455, Sandworm is allegedly a group of Russian cybermilitary hackers working for the General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU). The group is also credited with a number of other attacks in Ukraine, including a 2015 attack on the power grid, though these claims are currently unsubstantiated.

Sandworm SwiftSlicer cyberattack

“Once executed it deletes shadow copies, recursively overwrites files located in %CSIDL_SYSTEM%\drivers, %CSIDL_SYSTEM_DRIVE%\Windows\NTDS and other non-system drives and then reboots computer," ESET added in a further tweet.

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Go, the programming language that underpins the attack, is said to be valued by threat actors for its versatility (via Bleeping Computer), and is used by a number of genuine companies for legitimate reasons, including Google, Twitter, and PayPal.

According to Ukraine’s Computer Emergency Response Team, Sandworm has been busy launching a number of other attacks in the country, including five data-wiping attacks on the National News Agency of Ukraine - Ukrinform.

One strain found in the new agency attack, CaddyWiper, has been observed in a number of attacks on Ukraine, indicating a link back to Sandstorm.

If Sandstorm is indeed an arm of the Russian military, then it’s clear that the multifaceted war is continuing to wreak havoc on the lives of so many Ukrainian companies and citizens.

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The 2024 iPhone SE 4 May Already Be Canceled - CNET

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Seriously, Hold Off on Buying a Samsung Galaxy S22 - CNET

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NASA Looks Down at Mars, Sees Adorable Bear Face Staring Back - CNET

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WWE Royal Rumble 2023: Results, Live Updates and Match Ratings - CNET

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'The Last of Us' Release Schedule: When Is Episode 3 Out on HBO Max? - CNET

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