Best Laptop Deals: Score Mega Savings on Apple, Microsoft and More - CNET

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The Sp1d3r cybercrime gang is making quite a name for itself as it is now selling sensitive data on thousands of Truist banking employees.

Truist is a major US commercial bank formed in late 2019 after SunTrust Banks and BB&T merged, and now has $535 billion AUM (assets under management). It offers different banking services, from consumer and small business banking, commercial banking, corporate and investment banking, to insurance, wealth management, and payments.

Sp1d3r says they stole information on 65,000 employees, including bank transactions with names, account numbers, balances, and IVR funds transfer source code. The going price is $1 million.

No connection to Snowflake

The breach apparently happened in October 2023, but Truist only confirmed it now, once data went on sale. 

"In October 2023, we experienced a cybersecurity incident that was quickly contained," a Truist Bank spokesperson told BleepingComputer. "In partnership with outside security consultants, we conducted a thorough investigation, took additional measures to secure our systems, and notified a small number of clients last Fall.

For those unfamiliar with the name Sp1d3r, it is a threat actor that was recently selling sensitive data on 358,000 employees of top American carmaker Advance Auto Parts, as well as 380 million customer profiles, and plenty of other information. The going price was $1.5 million.

Sp1d3r was also seen selling 34 million emails and other personally identifiable information (PII) belonging to customers, employees, and partners, of cybersecurity giant Cylance, for $750,000.

Since Sp1d3r’s breach of Advance Auto Parts happened through data storage provider Snowflake, the media speculated the same might be the case here. However, the Truist spokesperson confirmed this had nothing to do with Snowflake.

“To be clear, we have found no evidence of a Snowflake incident at our company."

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NAND controller and storage solution firm Phison used its premier appearance at Computex to debut several new products, including the PS2251-21 (U21), the world’s first native USB4 single-chip controller. 

The company says this chip offers up to 4,000MB/s read and write performance, and is the first available direct USB- to NAND solution on USB4 Gen3x2.

The U21 currently supports capacities of up to 8TB, but 16TB is achievable, and it is backwards compatible with all existing USB standards, including USB 2.0 and USB 3.2 in different generation and lane options.

LLM training and inference

The company also used its presence at Computex to show off its high-performance DRAM-Less E31T SSD storage solution, which can achieve speeds of up to 10GB/s, as well as its new Pascari series of SSDs designed for servers and enterprise applications. Pascari offerings include the high-performance X range, boot-drive B range, data center D products, SATA S range, and the AI series for AI model fine-tuning.

Another “world’s first” on display was the company’s PCIe 5.0/CXL 2.0 Retimer PS7201, a full range of PCIe 5.0 Redriver IC solutions, and the next-generation PCIe 6.0 Retimer IC PS7162. 

Because AI was the big focus at this year's Computex, which should surprise absolutely no one,  Phison also showcased the aiDAPTIV+ LLM training and inference platform which it has developed in collaboration with ADVANTECH, Acer Synergy Tech, and ASROCK RACK.

“The new products on display not only reflect our technical strength but also our proactive response to market demands," noted K.S. Pua, CEO of Phison. "We believe these innovative products will bring significant value and competitive advantages to our customers.”

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Anyone looking for the best portable monitors will have come across Asus and its range of external monitors that are perfect for on-the-go work, as while big laptops are more common, some of us still need a big screen wherever they are. 

At Computex 2024, Asus took the wraps off an exciting range of new monitors, offering everything from 8K resolutions to foldable form factors.

What caught our eye, though, was the new range of foldable monitors, particularly its ZenScreen Duo OLED (MQ149CD) portable monitor.

Ultra-portable

The ZenScreen Duo OLED, the standout display announced by Asus, offers a 14-inch 16:10 FHD dual-OLED display that can fold out to 21 inches thank to its 360° hinge and fold-up stand. The end result is that you can work in both portrait and landscape on the go. 

Even more incredibly, the ZenScreen Duo OLED weighs only 700g – or under half of the latest M3 MacBook Pro at 1.55kg – meaning that you can actually move this display with relative ease in a backpack or laptop bag. 

The Duo has two USB-C ports, but there was no mention of touchsreen capability, which seems odd to us given the focus on portability - getting hands-on with your content in cramped or smaller spaces should be a certainty for a product like this.

Asus didn't seem to announce a price or release date for the ZenScreen Duo OLED, but we can assume it will be reasonably expensive and out sometime in 2024.

The fancy way to do productivity 

(Image credit: ASUS)

For anyone with a MacBook Pro or any of the other best laptops, the urge to take your work on the go is pretty hard to avoid, and using a portable monitor that can be easily attached to a laptop but remain light enough to carry around is ideal.

In our extensive testing, we found the Asus ZenScreen OLED MQ13AH (ie, the previous generation of these displays) was the best choice, offering a 13.3-inch display, USB-C, mini HDMI, weighing in at only 490g, and costs around £400 right now at most retailers.

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Intel recently unveiled its Xeon 6 family, the latest addition to its server CPU lineup, replacing the former "Scalable" branding. This release introduces two lines of chips: Granite Rapids, which boasts P (Performance) cores, and Sierra Forest which feature E (Efficient) cores.

Intel plans to stagger the rollout of the Xeon 6 CPUs, with the initial launch of the 6700E chips, followed by the scheduled release of the Intel Xeon 6900P CPUs in Q3 of this year. Further releases, including the 6900E, 6700P, 6500P, Xeon 6 SoC, and 6300P, are expected in Q1 of 2025.

The Xeon 6700E series is specifically designed to cater to hyperscalers and boasts a 144-core configuration, supported by DDR5 memory and PCIe Gen5, all within a 250W TDP. Serve The Home had the chance to put the Xeon 6780E and 6766E CPUs through their paces and, spoiler alert, said they 'Shatter Xeon Expectations'.

“Super” power consumption

The two Sierra Forest processors were pitted against AMD’s EPYC Bergamo and Siena series and against older Intel models, such as the Xeon Gold 5218 from the Cascade Lake generation. 

The Intel chips were also compared with the Ampere Altra Max, an ARM-based processor known for its efficiency. Finally, the E-cores were compared to the P-cores of the 5th Gen Intel Xeon “Emerald Rapids” series.

For the full results you’ll need to check out Serve The Home’s exhaustive testing, but the Xeon 6780E and 6766E performed competitively and excelled in power efficiency (the site refers to Sierra Forest’s power consumption as “super”) and multi-threaded workloads. 

Intel’s move to a dual-socket capability with these chips clearly gives them an upper hand over competitors like AMD’s EPYC series and allows for better scalability and flexibility in high-density server environments.

Summing up the review, Serve The Home’s Patrick Kennedy observed, “If you still have Xeon E5 servers or 1st/ 2nd gen Intel Xeon Scalable virtualization or container hosts, Sierra Forest offers wild consolidation gains that will drive big power savings. Those power savings can be directly channeled to add more AI servers, even if your traditional computing demands are slowly growing.”

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Apple’s iPhones are finally getting a feature that the best Android phones have had for years, all thanks to the newly revealed iOS 18 – and that feature is Game Mode. 

While the Game Center in iOS provided things like cloud-synced saves and an avatar, it’s pretty limited in terms of specific in-the-moment gaming features. Comparatively, dedicated game modes found on the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S24 and OnePlus 12 can do things like mute notifications and ramp up performance to run mobile games that push on-the-go graphics rather hard. 

Revealed at WWDC 2024 – make sure to check out our WWDC 2024 live blog for the latest announcements – Game Mode in iOS 18 will ape some of the game modes found in rival Android phones, by slowing down things like background activity to enable more processing power to be piped to games. 

While the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max have access to the already powerful A17 pro chip, Game Mode should help your phone extract more power from the silicon to run demanding games like the version of Death Stranding for iOS. 

Equally, this mode could help to optimize the power of older iPhones that may struggle a little when it comes to running games on iOS 17. 

All this ties in nicely with Apple’s continued building out of Apple Arcade, and its efforts to bring demanding console games to its mobile devices. Add in the rather neat controller support that iPhones offer, notably with the PS5 DualSense controller, and iOS starts to feel like a platform that could be used for pretty serious gaming. 

Enhanced gaming audio 

Gaming on iOS is getting a boost on the audio font too, with Personalized Spatial Audio coming to the AirPods 3, AirPods Pro and AirPods Max, which brings in dynamic head tracking for games, meaning that positional sound is maintained despite any potential head-bobbing. 

And when the AirPods Pro and AirPods Max are used in conjunction with Game Mode, users get the lowest-latency wireless audio Apple has ever delivered, and voice communication in 16-bit, 48kHz audio. 

One thing to bear in mind here is that in order to make the most of these gaming audio upgrades, developers need to bake-in advanced sound design into their games using an Apple API. 

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This year's Xbox Games Showcase has finally given us an official release window for Fable. 

The Playground Games developed role-playing game (RPG) is set to arrive in 2025 and will launch for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. It has also been confirmed that the game will be available as part of Xbox Game Pass from day one.

This comes from the latest trailer for the game, which focused on the new character Humphrey - a retired hero seemingly portrayed by British comedian Matt King. You can watch the trailer for yourself below.

The latest instalment of the long-running Fable franchise, Fable is a reboot that has been described as a "new beginning" for the series. It was originally revealed back in 2023, with a cinematic trailer that featured actor Richard Ayoade.

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At the recent International Memory Workshop (IMW 2024) in Seoul, South Korea, Kioxia discussed the technology and challenges of increasing the storage density of 3D NAND flash memory. 

Kioxia predicts that by 2027, storage density will reach 100Gbit/mm2 with 1,000 word line stacks.

Reporting on Kioxia’s keynote, PC Watch notes that a storage density of 100Gbit/mm2 would mean a silicon die of 64 square millimeters could hold 6.4 Tbit (approximately 800 GB). A package with eight such dies would offer 6,400GB, and flash storage with four packages would provide 25.6TB. If sold as a 20TB SSD in 2028, it could cost between $250 and $350, making it competitive with 20TB HDD prices.

Using molybdenum

Kioxia’s forecast of reaching 1,000 layers by 2027 is ambitious but plausible, considering historical trends. However, forming channel holes that penetrate the stacked word lines becomes increasingly difficult as layers increase. 

Advanced etching techniques like low-temperature RIE (Reactive Ion Etching) are necessary to manage the high aspect ratio of these deep holes. Additionally, channel resistance and signal noise increase with depth, prompting a potential shift from polycrystalline to single-crystal silicon using MILC (Metal Induced Lateral Crystallization) technology. This switch could double the cell current, improving performance.

Increasing the number of word line stacks does not necessarily improve storage density due to the “staircase” area used for vertical electrodes. Innovations like combining vertical electrodes and switching from TLC (3 bits/cell) to QLC (4 bits/cell) can boost storage density. Density can also be greatly increased by promoting multilevel processing such as PLC (5 bits/cell), HLC (6 bits/cell), and HeLC (8 bits/cell).

Increasing word line stacks raises delay times due to resistance and capacitance. Reducing stacking pitch and changing the word line metal material from tungsten to molybdenum may mitigate these issues.

While the storage density of 3D NAND flash memory has historically improved steadily, Kioxia, and rivals like Samsung, are very aware that future advancements will require new technologies and innovations to maintain this pace and hit the dream goal of petabyte SSDs.

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Software is dull. Platforms, the software that underpins all applications, might even be duller. WWDC 2024, which will feature a conference devoted to platforms and a keynote on Monday at 1PM ET that will spend up to two hours talking about software that almost all ends in "OS" sounds deadly. I get it, but once you consider that a change in operating systems is akin to removing your brain, and possibly the circulatory, muscles, and skeletal systems from your body and replacing them with new parts, it might sound, if not more interesting, then at least a lot more important.

Depending on the scale of change across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS the hardware throughout Apple's vaunted ecosystem could look and work considerably different than they do right now.

Considering we know (or believe) Apple will unveil its own brand of AI – hello, "Apple Intelligence" – it's almost a given that the changes will go deep and broad. They will change some of the fundamental aspects of how these platforms work but will also extend to simple day-to-day interactions with the systems. Think of it as an intelligence that goes deeper for more proactive systems but also surfaces at the top to connect the dots between Apple's hardware, applications, and services.

Momentous upgrades

I think Apple might use AI to make every piece of hardware more self-aware. iPhones and iPads that know their home screens and can intuit your interests by how you've organized them. I'm hoping Apple doesn't force feed "Apple Intelligence," but I'm also ready for tvOS that auto-organizes the home page and learns and relearns my current binge interests, and an Apple Watch that understands my morning routine well enough to automatically load a functional workout at 5:30 AM.

Apple cannily gets that to causal observers WWDC's software and development focus feels as dry and antiseptic as a CPU clean room, so it usually fills the keynote with relatable moments, highlighting how each new feature can improve a consumer's life.

The challenge is a bit different this time. For consumers, it's been two years of hearing how AI will improve their lives, a sentiment they have a hard time believing when AI's been full of bias and appears ready to take their jobs (it's really not), the chatbots and large language models still get so much wrong, and AI development companies capriciously overreach. Some reports have Apple climbing into an algorithmic bed with OpenAI, the leading company for all things AI, but also the same firm that causally (or accidentally) ripped off Scarlett Johanssan's voice.

To counter this, Apple's WWDC 2024 keynote must not only inspire consumers, it has to reassure them. Caution and care, especially about AI and privacy, are important, but they're a lot less sexy, which means Apple's efforts to inspire may need twice the effort.

Inescapable

Of course, that's the show part of the keynote, the flash that will inspire thousands of stories about every facet of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, tvOS 18, watchOS11, and visionOS 2. These stories are less about why you should eventually upgrade than they'll be about what's coming.

In Apple's ecosystem, unlike Android, there is ultimately no escaping upgrades. They come to all iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, and Apple Watches. Your world will change. You may not want the change, you may not understand it, but you will live it. Maybe you should get excited about it. I know that's a tall order, though.

As I said at the start, operating systems are usually confusing and dull. I think back almost 30 years to the launch of Windows 95 and how Microsoft worked for at least the prior 18 months to educate people on the existence of this new platform. They succeeded to the point that I couldn't run into a friend or family member in the summer of 1995 who didn't have a question about it. None were excited about the prospect, but at least they knew what to expect from new Windows PCs.

For Apple fans, that's why WWDC 2024 matters. There will rarely be the big Vision Pro level moment, but considering we now live our lives through this technology virtually every word out of Apple CEO Tim Cook's mouth (and those of his colleagues) will end up mattering to you.

That's sexy in a scary kind of way, right?

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