Getting your hands on a 4TB SSD for just $158 ahead of Amazon Prime Day seems just too good to be true – but that’s exactly what you’ll get with the FanXiang S660, a high-capacity and low-cost NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD.
Amazon Prime Day starts on October 10, with some of the best SSDs and fastest hard drives likely to be available at cut-price deals.
At 4TB, the S660 is one of the biggest consumer-grade SSDs you’ll find – as well as being the cheapest at $158. It’s certainly the most economical in terms of pure dollars per GB. Just prepare yourself for seriously sluggish performance, according to testing by Serve the Home.
The cheapest, and largest, SSD on the market
Its price makes the FanXiang S660 4TB the lowest-cost PCIe 4.0 4TB SSD on the market right now, beating the Silicon Power 4TB UD90 SSD by just $5. But these two are emblematic of a wider trend of cheaper high-capacity SSDs that just fail to live up to expectations, with performance nosediving.
The fastest SSDs out there, including the Samsung 980 Pro, tend to only be sold in variants up to 2TB, and they generally hit read/write speeds of 7,000MB/s. This is true for the Samsung for reads, with writes hitting roughly 5,000MB/s.
The fastest 4TB SSD we’ve seen, meanwhile, is the Crucial T700, which achieved reads of 12,400MB/s and writes of 11,800MB/s. But this will set you back $529.99 on Amazon at the time of writing.
The S660 4TB, by contrast, reached reads of 5,057MB/s – not bad – but writes of just 406MB/s, which is atrocious for an SSD. Serve the Home achieved these results on CrystalDiskMark.
The site corroborated this with additional results in ATTO – another benchmarking software. Here, the S660 hit reads of 6,738MB/s but writes of an abysmal 365MB/s. What’s worse is that writes drop to 180MB/s in further testing when the drive is filled to the 85% mark.
When browsing Prime Day on October 10 and 11, it’s important to be wary of how these drives perform in testing and real-world contexts - check out our guide to the best cheap SSD deals to make sure you get the best value and performance to boot.
A dangerous new Android malware strain has been observed making the rounds, capable of stealing money from dozens of banking apps.
This alarm was sounded by cybersecurity researchers Group-IB, which spotted the new campaign in June this year. In this campaign, unnamed threat actors were delivering a piece of malware called GoldDigger. The malware was being delivered via two separate apps - one impersonating a Vietnamese government portal, and another one impersonating an energy company.
The attack vector itself wasn’t discovered, but the researchers are making an educated guess that the attackers were reaching out to victims via social media channels, email messages, and other usual methods. Through these channels, they were navigating the victims to at least a dozen fake Google Play websites, where they were offered to download the apps.
Accessibility and other red flags
Once on the device, the apps would do the usual - ask for the Accessibility permissions. This is also probably the best way to spot a malicious app - if it demands excessive permissions. If the victim grants these permissions, GoldDigger will start by digging out sensitive user information, including passwords. It will then look for any of the 51 Vietnamese financial organizations' apps, e-wallet apps, and cryptocurrency wallet apps. If it finds any, GoldDigger will seek out and exfiltrate the login data for them, essentially granting the attackers unobstructed access to the victim’s money.
One thing that makes GoldDigger unique, the researchers further explained, is Virbox Protector, a piece of integrated software used for obfuscation and encryption. While Virbox Protector itself is generally legitimate, here it’s being used for nefarious purposes and makes cybersecurity researchers’ jobs that much more difficult.
There is no way of knowing exactly how many people fell for the trick and lost their money, but the warning is always the same - only download apps from legitimate sources and always be suspicious of links and attachments coming in through the mail.
It's time for your daily dose of Quordle hints, plus the answers for both the main game and the Daily Sequence spin off.
Quordle is the only one of the many Wordle clones that I'm still playing now, around 18 months after the daily-word-game craze hit the internet, and with good reason: it's fun, but also difficult.
What's more, its makers (now the online dictionary Merriam-Webster) are also keeping it fresh in the form of a variant called the Daily Sequence, which sees you complete four puzzles consecutively, rather than concurrently.
But Quordle is tough, so if you already find yourself searching for Wordle hints, you'll probably need some for this game too.
I'm a Quordle and Wordle fanatic who's been playing since December 2021, so I can definitely help you solve Quordle today and improve your game for tomorrow. Read on for my Quordle hints to game #622 and the answers to the main game and Daily Sequence.
SPOILER WARNING: Information about Quordle today is below, so don't read on if you don't want to know the answers.
Quordle today (game #622) - hint #1 - Vowels
How many different vowels are in Quordle today?
• The number of different vowels in Quordle today is 4*.
* Note that by vowel we mean the five standard vowels (A, E, I, O, U), not Y (which is sometimes counted as a vowel too).
Quordle today (game #622) - hint #2 - total vowels
What is the total number of vowels in Quordle today?
• The total number of vowels across today's Quordle answers is 9.
Quordle today (game #622) - hint #3 - repeated letters
Do any of today's Quordle answers contain repeated letters?
• The number of Quordle answers containing a repeated letter today is 2.
Quordle today (game #622) - hint #4 - total letters
How many different letters are used in Quordle today?
• The total number of different letters used in Quordle today is 13.
Quordle today (game #622) - hint #5 - uncommon letters
Do the letters Q, Z, X or J appear in Quordle today?
• No. None of Q, Z, X or J appear among today's Quordle answers.
Where Wordle challenges you to guess a new five-letter word each day, Quordle presents you with four puzzles to solve. And rather than complete them in turn, you do so simultaneously. You get nine guesses, rather than the six for Wordle, but the rules are otherwise very similar.
As with Wordle, the answers are the same for every player each day, meaning that you're competing against the rest of the world. And also as with Wordle, the puzzle resets at midnight so you have a fresh challenge each day.
The website also includes a practice mode - which I definitely recommend using before attempting the game proper! - and there are daily stats including a streak count. You also get Quordle Achievements - specific badges for winning a game in a certain number of turns, playing lots of times, or guessing particularly hard words.
Oh, and it's difficult. Really difficult.
What are the Quordle rules?
The rules of Quordle are almost identical to those of Wordle.
1. Letters that are in the answer and in the right place turn green.
2. Letters that are in the answer but in the wrong place turn yellow.
3. Letters that are not in the answer turn gray…
4. …BUT the word you guess appears in all quadrants of the puzzle at the same time, so an A could turn green in one square, yellow in another and gray in the final two.
5. Answers are never plural.
6. Letters can appear more than once. So if your guess includes two of one letter, they may both turn yellow, both turn green, or one could be yellow and the other green.
7. Each guess must be a valid word in Quordle's dictionary. You can't guess ABCDE, for instance.
8. You do not have to include correct letters in subsequent guesses and there is no equivalent of Wordle's Hard mode.
9. You have nine guesses to find the Quordle answers.
10. You must complete the daily Quordle before midnight in your timezone.
What is a good Quordle strategy?
Quordle needs to be approached in a different way to Wordle. With four puzzles to solve in nine guesses, you can't blindly throw letters at it and expect to win - you'll stand a far better chance if you think strategically.
That's the case in Wordle too, of course, but it's even more important in Quordle.
There are two key things to remember.
1. Use several starting words
Firstly, you won't want just a single starting word, but almost certainly two or three starting words.
The first of these should probably be one of the best Wordle starting words, because the same things that make them work well will apply here too. But after that, you should select another word or possibly two that use up lots more of the most common consonants and that include any remaining vowels.
For instance, I currently use STARE > DOILY > PUNCH. Between them, these three words use 15 of the 26 letters in the alphabet including all five vowels, Y, and nine of the most common consonants (S, T, R, D, L, P, N, C and H). There are plenty of other options - you might want to get an M, B, F or G in there instead of the H, maybe - but something like that should do the trick.
If all goes well, that will give you a good lead on what one or sometimes two of the answers might be. If not, well good luck!
2. Narrow things down
Secondly, if you're faced with a word where the answer might easily be one of several options - for instance -ATCH, where it could be MATCH, BATCH, LATCH, CATCH, WATCH, HATCH or PATCH - you'll definitely want to guess a word that would narrow down those options.
In Wordle, you can instead try several of those in succession and hope one is right, assuming you have enough guesses left. It's risky, but will sometimes work. Plus, it's the only option in Hard mode. But in Quordle, this will almost certainly result in a failure - you simply don't have enough guesses.
In the scenario above, CLAMP would be a great guess, as it could point the way to four of the seven words in one go.
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The GPU Flex series is Intel’s answer to one of the biggest pain points in the entire virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) market – allowing customers able to tap into this GPU available without incurring any license fees.
Businesses are increasingly turning to VDI systems to give workers a cost-effective way to access critical apps and services from anywhere. On that front, there are plenty of great remote desktop and virtualization software solutions to choose from.
But because many modern workloads are also becoming increasingly resource-intensive, they’re turning to GPU-powered virtual desktop systems to support their remote workers. The problem? It costs to license the best GPUs that power them - but that's where Intel’s Flex GPU family comes in.
Stripping GPU-powered VDI of license fees
Tailored for VMware ESXi environments, and complemented with the VMware Horizon connection manager, these GPUs are available for use with no hidden virtualization licensing fees.
Businesses can tap into two configurations of Intel’s license fee-free Flex GPUs. The Intel Data Center GPU Flex 140 is a 75W single-width PCIe Gen 4 add-in with 12GB GDDR and 8 TFLOPS of peak computing power. The Intel Data Center GPU Flex 170, meanwhile, is a 150W iteration with 16GB of memory and can hit 16 TFLOPS.
The Flex 140 can support up to 12 VDI sessions per GPU, while the Flex 170 can support 16, according to Intel’s testing.
Both include ray tracing, as well as a built-in AV1 encoder, which Storage Review says is the first GPU with this feature. This significantly boosts impression efficiency in AVC and HEVC formats to the tune of a 30% bandwidth improvement.
VMware previously announced it would support Flex GPUs in its VMware Horizon VDI service, with Intel announcing availability at its Intel Innovation 2023 event last month.
It's almost time for Amazon's second Prime Day of the year and the October event is nearer than ever. These are the best Apple deals we've found so far.
It is not uncommon for cars to feature in video games. After all, who doesn’t remember manically piloting a Ferrari Testarossa Spider in Sega’s iconic Outrun game?
But BMW has leveraged the power on online gaming’s massive audiences to introduce the uninitiated to its upcoming all-electric iX2 model. The German brand announced that it is the first to introduce a Car Creator in Fortnite.
To do so, BMW created a virtual city of the future with the island "Hypnopolis", which is fully explorable by Fortnite players, while a bespoke storyline has been created that (you guessed it) heavily revolves around the BMW iX2.
Cleverly, BMW has also digitally replicated and incorporated many of its architectural landmarks, such as the company headquarters (or BMW Welt), which are recognizable by the unique Four Cylinder design.
There’s a lot of talk about the "digital brand experience" and opening up "new dialogue opportunities with Next Gen target groups" by Stefan Ponikva, Vice President BMW Brand Communication and Brand Experience, who sees the move as bringing "the brand to life in the hands of the players”.
To take this notion to the next level, BMW has also introduced a neat Car Creator within its virtual world, which is located below the double cone in BMW Welt and is unlocked by completing various challenges. Here, players can design their own BMW iX2.
At first, the iX2 appears in "prototype disguise", with players are initially restricted to a limited palette of gamified paint schemes, rims or trunk contents. But BMW plans to launch the vehicle IRL later next week, whereby the official paint finishes, rims and interior options for the new BMW iX2 will then also be available within the Car Creator.
A taste of things to come?
We can expect BMW to experiment with more virtual experiences in the near future(Image credit: BMW/Epic Games)
Although leveraging Fortnite looks like a canny way to connect with new customers (particularly a younger audience), BMW is investing a lot of time, money and effort to increase its virtual experiences offering in general.
Recently, it hosted its BMW Group Supplierthon, which invited hundreds of companies working in the virtual space to effectively pitch their best ideas. Some of the winners will have their concepts implemented into products over the coming years.
One of the chosen innovations transforms an efficient driving style into an entertaining race against other BMW drivers, while Chinese start-up DeepMirror Inc's virtual spaces experience and Web3 Studio's expertise in blockchain development and design also caught the Bavarian brand's eye.
On top of this, the German brand partnered with Nvidia earlier this year to build the perfect digital twin of its future 400-hectare plant in Debrecen, allowing designers and engineers to make tweaks in the virtual world.
Adobe MAX 2023 is less than a week away, and to promote the event, the company recently published a video teasing its new “object-aware editing engine” called Project Stardust.
According to the trailer, the feature has the ability to identify individual objects in a photograph and instantly separate them into their own layers. Those same objects can then be moved around on-screen or deleted. Selecting can be done either manually or automatically via the Remove Distractions tool. The software appears to understand the difference between the main subjects in an image and the people in the background that you want to get rid of.
What’s interesting is moving or deleting something doesn’t leave behind a hole. The empty space is filled in most likely by a generative AI model. Plus, you can clean up any left-behind evidence of a deleted item. In its sample image, Adobe erases a suitcase held by a female model and then proceeds to edit her hand so that she’s holding a bouquet of flowers instead.
Image 1 of 2
(Image credit: Adobe)
Image 2 of 2
(Image credit: Adobe)
The same tech can also be used to change articles of clothing in pictures. A yellow down jacket can be turned into a black leather jacket or a pair of khakis into black jeans. To do this, users will have to highlight the piece of clothing and then enter what they want to see into a text prompt.
(Image credit: Adobe)
AI editor
Functionally, Project Stardust operates similarly to Google’s Magic Editor which is a generative AI tool present on the Pixel 8 series. The tool lets users highlight objects in a photograph and reposition them in whatever manner they please. It, too, can fill gaps in images by creating new pixels. However, Stardust feels much more capable. The Pixel 8 Pro’s Magic Eraser can fill in gaps, but neither it nor Magic Editor can’t generate content. Additionally, Google’s version requires manual input whereas Adobe’s software doesn’t need it.
Seeing these two side-by-side, we can’t but wonder if Stardust is actually powered by Google’s AI tech. Very recently, the two companies announced they were entering a partnership “and offering a free three-month trial for Photoshop on the web for people who buy a Chromebook Plus device. Perhaps this “partnership” runs a lot deeper than free Photoshop considering how similar Stardust is to Magic Editor.
Impending reveal
We should mention that Stardust isn't perfect. If you look at the trailer, you'll notice some errors like random holes in the leather jacket and strange warping around the flower model's hands. But maybe what we see is Stardust in an early stage.
There is still a lot we don’t know like whether it's a standalone app or will it be housed in, say, Photoshop? Is Stardust releasing in beta first or are we getting the final version? All will presumably be answered on October 10 when Adobe MAX 2023 kicks off. What’s more, the company will be showing other “AI features” coming to “Firefly, Creative Cloud, Express, and more.”
Be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the best Photoshop courses online for 2023 if you’re thinking of learning the software, but don’t know where to start.
The Google Pixel 8 event didn't deliver any massive surprises, thanks to the huge number of leaks we've seen recently. But as is tradition, Google did use its big annual phone launch to reveal an array of new camera tricks that are equal parts impressive, useful, and downright creepy.
The actual camera hardware of the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro isn't anything particularly earth-shattering. The Pixel 8's rear cameras are largely unchanged from the Pixel 7, while the Pro version does get bigger upgrades with a new main camera, an improved ultra-wide, and a 48MP telephoto lens.
But it's been a while since sensor size and lens apertures were the biggest drivers of smartphone camera performance. These days, it's all about computational photography (and video) tricks, an art form that Google has pioneered. So what new modes did we get this year?
Quite a few actually, with Google's focus very much on video, in the form of Audio Magic Eraser and (for the Pixel 8 Pro, at least) new Video Boost and Night Sight Video features. But thanks to the combined powers of Google's Tensor G3 chip and some Google Photos algorithms, we also saw some powerful (and potentially controversial) new photography tricks in the form of Best Take and Zoom Enhance.
Here's a full breakdown of all of those new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 camera tricks, starting with the one we're feeling most conflicted about.
1. Best Take
Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro
(Image credit: Google)
Let's start with what is arguably the most controversial new Pixel camera feature because it effectively lets you change the facial expressions of people in your group shots. Are you saying we aren't photogenic, Google?
The key thing is that Best Take isn't using generative AI to change a frown into a smile – instead, it takes a series of photos and then lets you pick the best facial expressions for your final shot.
That makes it far more palatable to those who think AI is ruining photography, as it's effectively just doing an automated Photoshop-style blend on a burst of shots. And in our early demos, it's surprisingly effective, with little sign of the uncanny valley giveaways we expected. But this is one we'll want to test to destruction before risking it on our wedding snaps.
2. Video Boost
Pixel 8 Pro only
(Image credit: Google)
Google went particularly hard on new video features at its Made by Google event – and the biggest one was arguably Video Boost, which is coming to the Pixel 8 Pro in December.
In theory, this is computational video done properly – rather than messing about with trying to introduce fake bokeh like the iPhone's Cinematic Mode (which Apple has gone very quiet on), the Pixel 8 Pro's new mode instead processes every video frame using its cloud-based HDR Plus pipeline.
This is a huge technological feat and one that will involve a little wait for your boosted video. But the results could also be polarizing. Google was keen to show side-by-sides of Video Boost with the iPhone 15 Pro Max's video, pointing to its improved dynamic range and vivid color.
This saturated HDR look isn't necessarily to everyone's taste, though, so it could be one to reserve for particular situations (like high-contrast scenes).
3. Night Sight Video
Pixel 8 Pro only
(Image credit: Google)
Google's Night Sight has been a hugely influential computational photography trick, and now it's coming properly to videos on the Pixel 8 Pro, from December.
Night Sight Video is effectively a low-light version of Video Boost, using multi-frame processing to enhance detail and exposure in dark scenes. Google claims the mode is the "best low-light video on any smartphone", which it says is based on third-party evaluation comparing major US smartphone brands.
While Google has announced a version of Night Sight for videos before at Google IO 2021, this effectively just stitched photos together to make an animation. We don't yet know what resolution and frame rates Night Sight Video is available for, but we're looking forward to taking it for a spin around a wintery London.
4. Audio Magic Eraser
PIxel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro
(Image credit: Google)
Audio quality has long been an afterthought in smartphone video, but Google's aiming to change that on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro with a new 'computational audio' trick called Audio Magic Eraser.
This uses machine learning to recognize and divide the audio in your video into separate channels – for example, speech, crowd, wind, noise, and music. You can then turn off any unwanted ones.
Google's demo of a baby talking with a dog's loud background barking removed was impressive, but we'll be keen to test this in the field to see how much it impacts the quality of those individual sound layers.
5. Magic Editor
Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro
(Image credit: Google)
Back in May, Google announced that Magic Editor (a new generative AI trick that aims to make bad photos obsolete) was en route to select Pixel phones later this year. Well, now we know that those phones are the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.
Magic Editor is effectively Magic Eraser on steroids, letting you pick and move objects in your photos, reposition them, and effectively become a Photoshop whizz without having to go anywhere near masking tools and adjustment layers.
It even gives you contextual suggestions on things to change, like swapping out your grey sky for a golden-hour sunset. Some will call it the death of photography. Others will see it as a massive time-saving crutch. Either way, the "experimental" feature will now be available in Google Photos on its latest Pixel phones.
6. Zoom Enhance
Pixel 8 Pro only
(Image credit: Google)
Google seems to take great delight in making sci-fi concepts an unsettling reality –see its Call Screen feature, which sees an AI robot interview the person calling you to see if they're worthy of being put through to the real you. Another slightly less chilling, but equally impressive feature, is Zoom Enhance.
Yes, the CSI:Miami 'Enhance' meme is going to get a few more hits today, as the Google Photos feature is the closest we've seen to a real-world equivalent – kind of. Because it's powered by generative AI, Zoom Enhance will very much invent some extra detail when you pinch to zoom into a photo.
That isn't a million miles from how interpolation works, though we doubt it'll stand up in court. Still, it does look like another impressive photographic trick to add to the PIxel 8 Pro's armory – and it even gives you an 'Enhance' button so you can pretend you're in a detective drama.
7. Pro Controls
Pixel 8 Pro only
(Image credit: Google)
Apple's reluctance to build pro-friendly camera controls into its Pro phones has always been a bit baffling, but that's what Google has done on the Pixel 8 Pro. Its new Pro Controls lets you tweak settings like ISO sensitivity, shutter speed, and focus.
That promises to be a particularly big bonus for video shooters, though Google doesn't go anywhere near as far as phones like the Sony Xperia 1 V – which has three separate camera apps (Photo Pro, Video Pro, and Cinema Pro). Still, more control is always good if you don't want to rely on one of the best camera apps.
