Samsung Unpacked Live Blog: Galaxy S25 and New Galaxy AI Reveals Expected

Samsung's annual winter event will likely tee up the next generation of the company's Galaxy phone line.

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Best Internet Providers in New Paltz, New York

This upstate New York town offers several top broadband provider options. Here are CNET's picks for home internet in New Paltz.

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Latest Tech News

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• Getac ZX10 rugged slate is aimed at professionals working in challenging outdoorenvironments
• It uses a Qualcomm CPU with a NPU, making it ready for AI workloads
• It has hot swappable batteries and is IP66 certified - but you can't use it underwater

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Rugged phones and tablets are increasingly providing features beyond just durability. Some rugged devices include thermal scanners, camping lights and even laser projectors, while many now come with giant batteries that can last for weeks between charges.

Getac, which has been making rugged computer products for over 30 years, has unveiled its latest tablet, the ZX10, a 10-inch fully rugged Android device built specifically for professionals who work in tough environments, so it’s all about strength and reliability rather than non-essential features.

Designed for industries like public safety, utilities, and logistics, the tablet is built to last with MIL-STD-810H and IP66 certifications, protecting it from drops, dust, and water. It works in temperatures from -29°C to 63°C, and in heavy rain (but not underwater) and weighs only 906g, making it the lightest rugged tablet of its size.

Hot swappable batteries

The ZX10 is powered by Qualcomm’s QCS6490 processor and NPU, which should provide strong performance and support for advanced AI tasks without using too much power. It comes with 8GB LPDDR5 memory and up to 256GB of storage. The bright 1,000 nits LumiBond screen can be used in sunlight, rain, or with gloves. There is also an option for a stylus and digitizer for more accurate input.

Connectivity is provided in the form of Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, and it has dual SIM support (Nano SIM and eSIM) and optional dual-band GPS for quick data transfer and precise location tracking. Other options include 4G LTE, 5G Sub-6, NFC, and barcode scanning.

The ZX10 comes with two batteries that can be swapped during use to avoid downtime, and customers can choose a single-battery setup for use in vehicles or a high-capacity battery.

Running Android 13, the ZX10 is Android Enterprise Recommended, with security updates and feature improvements for five years. Getac says it will support three Android OS upgrades for the device.

“For field-based professionals, device weight can have a significant impact on productivity, particularly when carrying and/or operating it for extended periods of time,” says James Hwang, President of Getac Technology Corporation.

“Not only is the next generation ZX10 the lightest 10-inch fully rugged tablet currently available on the market, but its powerful combination of AI-ready performance, extensive configurability, fully rugged reliability, and intuitive Android OS makes it one of the most versatile as well.”

The ZX10 works with Getac’s Essentials Suite for improved productivity and it is available to buy now, with pricing available on request.

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Best Weight Loss Programs for 2025

A weight loss program can help you make progress toward your health goals. Here are our top picks for you to consider.

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Latest Tech News

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• US DOE seeks to purchase 20MW super computer to maintain its nuclear stockpile better
• ATS-5 is expected to launch in 2027 and will take over HPE Intel's based ATS-3
• It will have at least 10PB of compute memory, the largest amount ever seen in a single device

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The US Department of Energy is preparing to deploy a massive supercomputer called ATS-5 in 2027.

The system, which is designed to advance national security efforts by supporting nuclear stockpile management, marks a shift into what the DOE describes as the “post-exascale” computing era.

It will be installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and replace the existing 30-petaflop Crossroads (ATS-3) supercomputer. The Cray HPE Crossroads debuted at number 24 in the Top500 list in November 2023, but is now ranked 43.

Hero simulations

ATS-5 will be capable of handling massive 3D simulations essential for the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) stockpile stewardship program, and help to manage the US nuclear arsenal - hopefully with a better sense of caution than WarGames' WOPR supercomputer.

The system will feature a staggering 10 petabytes of compute memory in a single machine, and is projected to run within a 20-megawatt power envelope.

Designed as a mixed-architecture machine, ATS-5 will feature a combination of CPUs and GPUs, with the DOE pushing for architectural diversity. Flexibility is reportedly central to its design, with a modular architecture enabling hot-swappable compute modules, memory, and accelerators to keep up with ever-evolving technologies during the machine's lifetime.

A key goal for ATS-5 is reducing "time-to-solution," the time required for complex simulations to deliver meaningful insights. The system will tackle some of the largest-scale 3D simulations, known as "hero" simulations, reducing the completion time for tasks that previously took months to just days.

ATS-5 will also have the capacity to run multiple such hero simulations simultaneously, improving efficiency for critical defense analysis tasks such as modeling aging warhead materials, production techniques, and flight dynamics.

The DOE has already set performance milestones for ATS-5, reportedly seeking a 10x improvement over Crossroads in both single-node and system-wide scaling for critical workloads. This does not mean raw power but rather faster simulation scaling and greater efficiency. Memory performance, in particular, is a key focus, with the system aiming to overcome the "memory wall" by improving bandwidth and latency.

ATS-5 will be delivered in late 2026, with full benchmarking expected by the third quarter of 2027. It will run a Linux-based operating system with open-source software at its core, although HPCWire reports support for CUDA will be considered if Nvidia is selected as the vendor.

Other potential contenders to help build ATS-5 include HPE, which has experience in supercomputing projects with its Slingshot interconnect technology, used in Frontier and El Capitan, and Intel, which has an ongoing quantum project at Argonne National Laboratory.

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Best Portable Grills of 2025, Tested and Reviewed

Take your grill skills to-go with the best travel grills you can get.

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Latest Tech News

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• Kioxia reveals new project called AiSAQ which wants to substitute RAM with SSDs for AI data processing
• Bigger (read: 100TB+) SSDs could improve RAG at a lower cost than using memory only
• No timeline has been given, but expect Kioxia's rivals to offer similar tech

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Large language models often generate plausible but factually incorrect outputs - in other words, they make stuff up. These "hallucination"s can damage reliability in information-critical tasks such as medical diagnosis, legal analysis, financial reporting, and scientific research.

Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) mitigates this issue by integrating external data sources, allowing LLMs to access real-time information during generation, reducing errors, and, by grounding outputs in current data, improving contextual accuracy. Implementing RAG effectively requires substantial memory and storage resources, and this is particularly true for large-scale vector data and indices. Traditionally, this data has been stored in DRAM, which, while fast, is both expensive and limited in capacity.

To address these challenges, ServeTheHome reports that at this year’s CES, Japanese memory giant Kioxia introduced AiSAQ - All-in-Storage Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search (ANNS) with Product Quantization - that uses high-capacity SSDs to store vector data and indices. Kioxia claims AiSAQ significantly reduces DRAM usage compared to DiskANN, offering a more cost-effective and scalable approach for supporting large AI models.

More accessible and cost-effective

(Image credit: Kioxia)

Shifting to SSD-based storage allows for the handling of larger datasets without the high costs associated with extensive DRAM use.

While accessing data from SSDs may introduce slight latency compared to DRAM, the trade-off includes lower system costs and improved scalability, which can support better model performance and accuracy as larger datasets provide a richer foundation for learning and inference.

By using high-capacity SSDs, AiSAQ addresses the storage demands of RAG while contributing to the broader goal of making advanced AI technologies more accessible and cost-effective. Kioxia hasn't revealed when it plans to bring AiSAQ to market, but its safe to bet rivals like Micron and SK Hynix will have something similar in the works.

ServeTheHome concludes, “Everything is AI these days, and Kioxia is pushing this as well. Realistically, RAG is going to be an important part of many applications, and if there is an application that needs to access lots of data, but it is not used as frequently, this would be a great opportunity for something like Kioxia AiSAQ.”

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Best Internet Providers in Val Verde Park, Texas

While Spectrum is the best internet provider in Val Verde Park, there are other options to consider depending on your internet needs.

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Latest Tech News

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• Corsair Memory and others show off USB 4 portable SSDs at CES 2025
• USB 4 is as fast as Thunderbolt 3/4 and twice as fast as USB 3.2 Gen2x2
• It allows for far more demanding storage requirements like 8K RAW storage

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Working with a slow SSD can be highly frustrating - but luckily there are a range of solutions to the problem on the horizon.

A host of manufacturers demoed USB 4 portable drives at CES 2025, giving us a tantalizing glimpse at a future without sluggish USB 3.2 SSDs, and among the most eye-catching of these was a teaser for the new EX400U SSD from Corsair.

This nifty piece of hardware boasts a 40Gbps USB 4 interface and comes in a 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB format. According to Corsair, the new SSD offers 4,000MB/s sequential read speeds, along with 3.600MB/s write speeds.

Why USB 4 is the way forward

Elsewhere, Adata made a big announcement with the launch of the new XPG SE940 portable SSD, marking the first time the storage firm has harnessed USB 4 technology in its product roster.

This powerful piece of kit can reach sequential read and write speeds of up to 4,000 MB/s. Notably, this not only makes the SE940 the fastest portable drive in the company’s lineup, but as TechRadar Pro recently noted, one of the top-performing products on the external storage market.

But in an industry awash with marketing jargon and grandiose claims, does USB 4 really live up to the hype?

First announced in 2019, USB 4 heralded a new standard of connectivity - and it’s certainly lived up to expectations so far. In terms of bandwidth, USB 4 offers up to 4oGbps, making it twice as fast as USB 3.2 (Gen2x2) and on-part with Thunderbolt 3 and 4 connections.

That’s a significant boost in capacity when dealing with transfers. Especially when one considers the increasingly bulky datasets organizations and everyday users now contend with.

USB 3.2’s performance capabilities - or lack thereof- have been particularly evident when dealing with storage and transferal of 8K data files, for example.

There’s been a steady flow of devices, particularly SSDs, released of late that utilize USB 4, but given the focus at CES 2025, hopefully this develops into a torrent in the year ahead.

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Best Internet Providers in Roscommon, Michigan

The top choice in the Roscommon area is Spectrum, but there are a few other options if there's something you don't like about the provider.

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Latest Tech News

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• Bloomberg reports the contact is for Elon Musk's X social media platform
• xAi's Colossus uses 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPU and doesn't seem to be part of the contract
• Supermicro has had troubles, but is still a major player in AI hardware

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The rising demand for computing power to support AI workloads has fueled rapid growth in the market for high-powered servers. It is a lucrative business for firms like Dell, Supermicro, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, who have all seen increased demand for their high-performance server products in recent years.

A report from Bloomberg claims HPE has secured a massive deal worth more than $1 billion to supply Elon Musk’s X social network with servers optimized for artificial intelligence work.

The report doesn’t specify exactly how the servers will be used, but since it’s for X, there’s a good chance some of the capacity will be for Grok, the social network’s AI chatbot. At the end of 2024, X announced that it was rolling out Grok-2 to all users for free, and it’s fair to conclude that extra capacity will require more server infrastructure.

Dell and Supermicro outbid

Bloomberg says X’s agreement with HPE was reached in late 2024, according to people familiar with the matter.

Musk’s companies, including xAI and Tesla, are major buyers of AI hardware. The Colossus supercomputer, built by xAI in Memphis, was previously declared by Musk to be the "most powerful AI training system in the world." The billionaire stated it was built "from start to finish" in just 122 days.

Colossus uses 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, but there are plans to massively expand its operations. Supermicro has faced some challenges recently, including the resignation of its auditor and other related matters. However, as MarketWatch reports, it remains a "major player in the AI revolution" and recently established operations in Memphis to support xAI's goal of building a supercomputer facility with 1 million GPUs.

Supermicro and Dell provided the servers for Colossus originally, and Bloomberg says that while both firms did bid to supply the equipment for this new venture they were ultimately unsuccessful.

Bloomberg’s report notes, “HPE’s liquid-cooling technology may have played a role in the win,” wrote Woo Jin Ho, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. While good for sales, larger deals can be a drag on margins, he added.”

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• Elon Musk shows us what $1 billion worth of AI GPUs looks like
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Best Blood Pressure Monitors for 2025

Keeping an eye on your blood pressure at home can help you stay on top of your health. Here are the best blood pressure monitors to help you do just that.

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Latest Tech News

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• Researchers say criminals are hiding malware in images hosted on reputable websites
• At least two different groups were seen deploying two types of infostealers
• The campaigns abuse an ancient Excel flaw, HP Wolf Security claims

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Hackers are hiding malware in website images to go unnoticed and compromise as many computers as possible, experts have warned.

A new Threat Insights Report from HP Wolf Security, based on data from millions of endpoints, claims there are currently large campaigns active spreading VIP Keylogger and 0bj3ctivityStealer. Since the same techniques and loaders are used in both, the researchers suspect two groups are using the same malware kits to deliver different payloads.

“In both campaigns, attackers hid the same malicious code in images on file hosting websites like archive.org, as well as using the same loader to install the final payload,” the researchers explained. “Such techniques help attackers circumvent detection, as image files appear benign when downloaded from well-known websites, bypassing network security like web proxies that rely on reputation.”

Throwing GenAI into the mix

The attack starts with a phishing email pretending to be an invoice, or purchase order. The attachment is usually an Excel document designed to exploit CVE-2017-11882, an ancient bug in the Equation Editor, to download a VBScript file.

Alex Holland, Principal Threat Researcher in the HP Security Lab, said phishing kits, paired with Generative AI (GenAI) tools, have significantly lowered the barrier to entry, exacerbating the ever-present risk of malware: “This allows groups to concentrate on tricking their targets and picking the best payload for the job – for instance by targeting gamers with malicious cheat repositories.”

Discussing GenAI, the researchers said miscreants are using it to create malicious HTML documents. They also identified an XWorm remote access trojan (RAT) campaign initiated by HTML smuggling, which contained malicious code that downloads and runs the malware.

The loader was quite obviously written by an AI, they added, since it included a line-by-line description and the design of the HTML page.

Both VIP Keylogger and 0bj3ctivityStealer are infostealer malware which record, and exfiltrate, sensitive information such as passwords, cryptocurrency wallet information, sensitive files, and more.

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Latest Tech News

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• Minisforum N5 Pro is unlike anything I've seen before: a powerful mini PC and expansive NAS
• It has a 10Gb + 5Gb LAN not unlike the MS01 I covered a while back
• Add in an OCuLink port and a PCIe x16 slot and you've got a pretty capable workstation PC

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One of my favorite mini PC makers, Minisforum, best known for its compact workstation systems like the MS-01 and MS-A1, is expanding into the NAS market with the introduction of the N5 Pro, a 5-bay desktop NAS designed for performance and scalability.

NASCompares, which went hands on with Minisforum’s new device at CES 2025, says the N5 Pro is the first of three planned NAS devices expected to launch this year.

The N5 Pro is powered by an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 370 (Strix Point) processor, equipped with 12 cores and 24 threads, running at a base clock of 3.5 GHz and capable of boosting up to 5.2 GHz. Built on AMD's Zen 5 architecture, the processor includes an integrated AI engine delivering 50 INT8 TOPS for enhanced data processing. The NAS supports up to 96GB of DDR5 ECC memory across two slots, providing the sort of reliable error correction commonly found in enterprise solutions.

Modular motherboard

As you’d expect, storage options are extensive, with five hot-swappable SATA bays supporting up to 22TB drives each, suitable for both hard drives and SATA SSDs. The device also features three M.2 NVMe slots - one PCIe 4.0 x2 and two PCIe 4.0 x1 - along with U.2 SSD support for expanded capacity and faster performance. RAID configurations are software-driven, with compatibility for platforms such as TrueNAS and Unraid.

One particularly welcome touch is the N5 Pro’s modular motherboard, which can be removed with a simple button press. This approach, which follows Minisforum’s design for the MS-01 workstation, simplifies upgrades and maintenance, making it easier for users to access and replace memory modules, storage, and PCIe expansion cards.

The N5 Pro offers a solid range of connectivity options, including a 10Gbps Ethernet port and a 5Gbps Ethernet port for dual high-speed wired connections. Additional ports include three USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A ports, one internal USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A port, a USB 2.0 port, and two USB4 Type-C ports with 40Gbps transfer speeds. The system also supports an HDMI 2.0 output, two USB-C ports with DisplayPort 2.0 Alt Mode, and a 3.5mm audio jack.

Expansion options are further boosted with a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (operating at x4 bandwidth) and an OCuLink 4i port, allowing for external GPU support or additional storage.

With its powerful hardware, flexible storage options, and Minisforum’s usual clever, user-friendly design, the Minisforum N5 Pro is unquestionably a versatile NAS choice for both home and professional environments. Pricing and availability have not yet been revealed, but it should be available soon.

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Best Internet Providers in Jackson, Tennessee

Jackson offers some great internet options including fiber providers like local company EPlus. Here are all the providers you should consider.

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