Latest Tech News

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• Write-once memory card offers tamper-proof, long-term data storage
• TeamGroup’s 256GB D500R WORM SD card can store up to 374 CDs’ worth of data
• Built-in protection features guard against power loss, damage and tampering

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CDs and DVDs are (or rather were) great for storage, but they can be affected by disc rot, a form of physical deterioration that affects optical discs, causing them to become unreadable over time due to corrosion or damage to the reflective layer. If you have a lot of important data stored on discs and are worried about losing it, TeamGroup has a solution to your fears – the D500R ISD WORM SD card.

Shown off at Embedded World 2025 (where it won the Embedded Vision category's top honor and the 2025 Community Choice Award), the D500R WORM card uses Write Once, Read Many technology for non-erasable, tamper-proof, long-term data retention storage.

The D500R ISD uses MLC NAND Flash, which offers better durability and steady performance, and promises read and write speeds of up to 70MB/s and 65MB/s. It supports capacities from 8GB to 256GB. That largest card is big enough to store data from around 374 CDs, so it can likely back up all your discs easily.

Seals the data in place

As you can tell from the description, the card can be read many times, but only written to once. Via a combination of hardware design and firmware control, the D500R ISD seals the data in place and ensures it can’t be deleted, overwritten, or updated. This makes it useful for users who require lasting data protection without the risk of accidental changes or even malicious tampering from ransomware.

The card includes features like Power Fail Management, which helps preserve data in the event of an unexpected power cut, and Bad Block Management, which detects and isolates faulty storage sectors, helping extend the product’s lifespan.

It also has a built-in S.M.A.R.T system that tracks usage and sends alerts if an attempt is made to alter or delete the data in some way.

Built to withstand demanding environments, it meets multiple military-grade shock and vibration standards and is rated IP58 for dust and water resistance.

TeamGroup suggests it could be useful for law enforcement footage, medical records, or financial archives, but it could be used for backing up family photos and videos or company data.

While it’s clearly a great solution for long-term archival storage, it’s probably worth noting that the D500R WORM card is a lot easier to lose than a box of CDs or DVDs, so you might want to think about where you’ll keep it. There’s also no word on pricing yet, but it's fair to assume it won’t be cheap.

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Latest Tech News

Saturday Night Live is one of the most iconic pieces of programming in TV history, and it’s currently in its 50th season. To celebrate that achievement, NBC and showrunners, including Lorne Michaels, planned, produced, and executed well – all live – the SNL 50th Anniversary Special, which aired a few weeks back on February 16, 2025.

Rather than firing up a classic TV antenna or opting for my Hulu live TV subscription, I decided to open up Peacock, using an Apple TV 4K – one of the best streaming devices – to ultimately watch the anniversary special. It’s not the first time I’ve turned to the NBC-owned streaming service to watch a live event, that honor goes to the Summer 2024 Paris Olympics, in which I also used the multiview functionality to watch multiple competitions at once.

This time around, I was greeted with an SNL 50 overlay and could jump right into the live broadcast of the show with a single click. For those wondering, I hopped in about midway through the opening with Paul Simon and Sabrina Carpenter on one of the best streaming services.

(Image credit: Peacock)

The stream began without a hitch and looked pretty sharp if I do say so myself. I also didn’t encounter stutters or a stoppage in the stream, and I didn’t even see commercials either – rather, I was presented with a text along the lines of “the SNL 50th Anniversary would resume soon” with the theme song playing on a loop and various glam shoots of the acclaimed 8H studio where the show tapes.

It was a nice experience for a live-stream event, an easy way to watch the 50th special without the need for a linear TV experience, and it went off pretty much without a hitch. Something that the linear broadcast for some didn’t as the special ran over. Even so, 14.8 million viewers across Peacock and NBC (linear TV) watched the special either live or within the same day. That makes it NBC’s most primetime event in the last five years, besting the Golden Globes.

Peacock has a sort of special sauce in the streaming service sector – yes, it’s a new offering since its premiere in 2020, but it’s backed by NBC, which has been in the business of live TV and events rolling in real time for years. The streaming service also knows how to curate its backlog of content with other elements and live events. We saw back with the Paris Olympics the ability to watch each individual category, a few of them together in multiview, and a trove of new content, including Snoop Dog at the games and a show hosted by Alex Cooper.

The SNL 50 takeover was a similar feat, which had a goal of letting fans reach the content they wanted – be it all the episodes from the 50th season or previous ones, specially-released documentaries, or even the SNL 50 Homecoming Concert, which also streamed live on Peacock. We’ll also see a similar takeover come March 21, 2025, when Wicked hits Peacock and begins streaming for all subscribers of the service.

Building a platform that supports the highest levels of performance

Speaking to TechRadar, Patrick Miceli, CTO of global streaming and the NBCU Media Group, said that since Peacock’s inception, “we’ve invested in building a platform and technical infrastructure that supports the highest levels of performance, security, and reliability to deliver a seamless and incomparable experience for our customers.”

(Image credit: Theo Wargo/NBC)

Miceli further noted that even with the complexities of live-streaming, Peacock has “achieved a 100% success rate in video quality and reliability on our NFL and Olympics coverage last year”. This comes as other services, including Netflix with the Logan Paul vs Mike Tyson fight, have struggled to keep streams afloat with heavy audience demand.

Suffice to say, Peacock and NBC at large felt confident going into the weekend with the Olympics, NFL games, and other events, including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the history books. Still, Miceli shared, “we do still spend a lot of time preparing for each event, accounting for a variety of different scenarios to ensure we’re ready for anything”.

I was impressed with Peacock’s performance, and countless others shared that the stream was a top performer on social media using the hashtag #SNL50. Given the performance here, I’m keen to see what kind of package Peacock curates for future specials, live events like the next Olympics, and NBA games, which will hit the streaming service in 2025.

Of course, even though it’s not live, I’ll still head to Peacock whenever I need my Bravo fix like Summer House, reruns of Vanderpump Rules, or a rewatch of a timeless classic with SNL alums Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation).

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Latest Tech News

Since its inception in 2020, YouTube Shorts has been TikTok’s fierce competitor in the short-form content sector, but as of recently YouTube has been having a bit of run-in with issues that many users have picked up on. As reported by people on Reddit (see below), a new bug auto-plays the Shorts tab as soon as you open the YouTube app.

YouTube app opens to shorts from r/youtube

This issue has been quite on and off for YouTube and has somehow resurfaced for more and more people over the past few weeks. For many users, the app will automatically open to show its Shorts tab if it was the last thing viewed/ used, as opposed to opening the YouTube homepage as it usually would.

However, according to 9to5Google, it’s noticed a growing trend where YouTube automatically launches Shorts no matter what was previously viewed - and this is the case for both free users and paying subscribers of YouTube Premium. As it stands, it’s not certain if this issue is cropping up for iOS users, however 9to5Google has noticed that Android devices - notably the Nothing Phone (3a) and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold - have fallen victim to this annoying bug.

There’s no doubt that YouTube has contributed a substantial amount of attention to launching its answer to TikTok’s popular short video feed, and even gained an edge over it with a music video remix feature last year. But it’s hard to tell if this bug is a minor fault in the system, or a tactic to get more users to ride the YouTube Shorts train.

How you can fix the YouTube Shorts bug

If you’re an Android user who’s having issues with YouTube playing you Shorts as soon as you launch the app, then there’s a way you can change this. As recommended in 9to5Google’s report, opening and force-stopping the app won’t be enough to solve the issue, but clearing your storage/ cache will help.

Though this is the trick to getting YouTube to stop auto-playing the Shorts tab when you open the app, 9to5Google says that the issue will return when Shorts are opened again. YouTube has yet to comment on its efforts to fix the issue, but we’ll update this story if any new information surfaces.

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Latest Tech News

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• Despite predictions, HDDs are here to stay and increasing in capacity
• Seagate recently sold one exabyte of HAMR storage to two hyperscalers
• The "tens of thousands of drives" likely cost between $33 and $35 million

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Although the likes of Pure Storage, IBM, and Meta believe the writing is on the wall for hard drives, the technology doesn’t look like it will be going away any time soon.

Seagate and its main rival Western Digital are working on magnetic recording methods that will allow the drives to continue increasing in capacity, helping them maintain a clear advantage over SSDs when it comes to storage density.

The main technology leading this charge is HAMR, or heat-assisted magnetic recording, which could see HDDs hitting incredible 100TB capacities. HAMR works by briefly heating the disk surface with a laser to make it easier to write data at higher densities. HDMR - short for heated dot magnetic recording - is HAMR’s likely successor and could lead to even larger drives by focusing the heat and magnetic energy into smaller, more precise areas for even denser data storage.

Not an unreasonable outlay

In a recent The Wall Street Journal article, John Keilman wrote an article covering Seagate’s “fight to store the world’s data”, and mentioned something which caught my attention. “Seagate said two large cloud-computing customers have each ordered one exabyte’s worth of HAMR storage, which works out to tens of thousands of hard drives.”

Keilman didn’t name names - Seagate wouldn’t have told him who the buyers were - but we can narrow the list of suspects down to the usual big US hyperscalers, including Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta. It’s possible that Chinese hyperscalers could have come shopping for the drives, but that seems unlikely to me.

Keilman doesn’t say what capacity drives were sold, but we can assume they will have been Seagate’s highest commercial HDD, the Exos M, which ranges from 30TB (CMR) to 36TB (SMR), with a breakthrough 3TB-per-platter density. Based on timing, it’s likely we’re talking about the 30TB models, as the 32TB drive was only added to the range in December 2024, followed by the 36TB model just a month later.

Assuming the hyperscalers in question paid bulk pricing of around $500 per drive (refurbished models of Seagate's Exos 28TB HDD can currently be purchased for as low as $365), their combined bill likely came to somewhere between $33 and $35 million. For a full exabyte of cutting-edge, high-capacity storage, $16 billion or so isn't an unreasonable outlay.

Seagate previously revealed that a 60TB drive was on its way, and the firm recently announced plans to acquire Intevac, a HAMR specialist, which could help it achieve that 100TB capacity goal faster, as well as ramp up HAMR drive production.

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Latest Tech News

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• Meta is reportedly readying its first in-house AI training chip for deployment
• The dedicated AI accelerator, made with TSMC, completed tape-out
• Meta’s shift to custom silicon aims to reduce its dependence on Nvidia hardware

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Like many of Nvidia’s highest spending customers, Meta is looking to slash its reliance on the GPU maker’s expensive AI hardware by making its own silicon.

In 2024, the social media giant began advertising for engineers to help build its own state-of-the-art machine learning accelerators, and now, according to an exclusive report from Reuters, Meta is at the testing stage for its first in-house chip designed for training AI systems.

Sources told Reuters that following its first tape-out of the chip, Meta has started a limited deployment, and if testing goes well, it plans to scale production for wider use.

RISC-V business

According to Reuters, “Meta's new training chip is a dedicated accelerator, meaning it is designed to handle only AI-specific tasks. This can make it more power-efficient than the integrated graphics processing units (GPUs) generally used for AI workloads.”

Taiwan-based chipmaker TSMC produced the silicon for Meta as part of the Facebook owner’s Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA) program, something which Reuters points out has had “a wobbly start for years and at one point scrapped a chip at a similar phase of development.”

In 2023, Meta unveiled its first-generation in-house AI inference accelerator designed to power the ranking and recommendation systems for Facebook and Instagram, and then in April 2024 it debuted a new version that doubled the compute and memory bandwidth.

At the 2024 Hot Chips symposium, Meta revealed that its inference chip was built on TSMC's 5nm process, with the processing elements on RISC-V cores.

Like a growing number of tech firms, Facebook has thrown its weight behind RISC-V in order to recognize its AI ambitions, and although the Reuters report doesn’t provide any details on the technical aspects of Meta’s new AI training chip, it seems a fair bet that it too will be based on the open source RISC-V architecture.

The Reuters article does note that Meta executives say they want to start using their own chips for training by next year.

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Latest Tech News

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• New leaked pictures seemingly show a Hasselblad X2D II top plate
• The camera will likely be an iterative X2D 100C upgrade
• It could be the camera Hasselblad registered with the FCC in December 2024

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If I could have one camera, money no object, the Hasselblad X2D 100C would probably be it. However, I might soon be adding a 'II' to that moniker, following leaks of my dream camera's upcoming successor.

The folks at Photo Rumors shared a post containing a Hasselblad FCC registration for product 'HB722', dated December 4, 2024, followed by a photo that seemingly shows a top plate of an X2D II camera, leading us to believe the upcoming product could be a X2D successor, and that it's coming soon.

The current model is a 100MP medium-format camera with stunning minimalist design and stripped-back user experience. I loved reviewing the camera when it launched in 2022, but an upgrade could deliver meaningful improvements

Yes, the X2D 100C floats my boat, but that doesn't make it the perfect camera.

The next model, seemingly being called a X2D II, suggests an iterative update – I'd expect a major upgrade to be called an X3D instead. However, that's pure speculation, and there's no leaked specs to go off, yet.

I'd be all for a new Hasselblad camera, be it a modest or substantial upgrade. Here are the top 5 upgrades I'm hoping for.

I hope the X2D 100C's successor has largely the same design – it's a stunning camera to look at and to use. (Image credit: Future)

Getting up to speed

I've no complaints with the X2D 100C's image quality – its 100MP stills are packed full of detail and divine natural color. A higher-resolution sensor next time around would grab headlines, but I don't think it's necessary, or likely.

Nor would I change much of anything design-wise; the grip provides a firm hold whether shooting in vertical or horizontal format, there's a lovely balance with most lenses, while the minimalist control layout and menus give you quick access to the settings you use the most, doing away with the rest.

If image quality and form factor are fine as they are, what would I change? My desired upgrades largely center on focusing and speed.

First and foremost, I'd love a precise subject detection autofocus mode, specifically people autofocus with eye detection. The X2D 100C features Hasselblad's best-ever autofocus system, but it's still years behind the best mirrorless cameras from Sony, Canon, Nikon and more.

Autofocus precision is key, especially given the huge 100MP files that further highlight poor user technique / camera limitations. Being armed with reliable eye detection AF would make photoshoots way more relaxed.

Focusing on this occasion for this portrait taken with the X2D 100C is precise, but I found myself constantly second guessing if focusing is where I want it to be. (Image credit: Future)

In addition to precise autofocus, I'd also like autofocus to be significantly faster and reliable. Not that I would plan on using the X2D 100C for sports and wildlife photography, but speedier focusing for portraits would be appreciated.

While we're on the subject of speed, the X2D 100C's continuous burst shooting is limited to just 3.3fps. Understandable given the huge file sizes, but Fujifilm's rival GFX100 II goes at more than double that speed. Again, I'm not shooting action with a medium-format camera, but I would like the option there for faster frame rates, especially for portrait sessions.

Quicker burst shooting could also power a usable high-res shot mode – the type you get with smaller format cameras to quadruple resolution. Imagine a 400MP file from a Hasselblad!

Landscape photography is an obvious strength of a 100MP medium-format camera, for which better weather-sealing and improved battery life could be really useful in a future X2D II – I wasn't overly impressed by the X2D 100C on those two fronts.

Video recording is completely absent in the X2D 100C. Again, I wouldn't naturally think of using such a camera for video work, but when I think about how stunning Hasselblad's color science is for stills, the prospect of 8K video with such gorgeous color is exciting.

To summarize: a faster processor, precise and speedier autofocus, refined handling, and video recording. Those asks amount to a modest and entirely doable upgrade. More lenses are always welcome, too.

Have you experienced the Hasselblad X2D 100C? If so, what improvements would you like to see? Let me know in the comments below.

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Latest Tech News

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• Microsoft warns of new version of the XCSSET infostealer
• It comes with new obfuscation, infection, and persistence techniques
• It was seen in "limited" attacks in the wild

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A new variant of a known macOS malware is making rounds on the internet, targeting users through infected Xcode projects.

Researchers from the Microsoft Threat Intelligence team said that the modular malware is seen in “limited attacks” at this time, but suggested that people should still keep their guard up.

According to the researchers, this is the first upgrade to XCSSET in three years. It now has enhanced obfuscation methods, updated persistence mechanisms, and new infection strategies.

Scrutinize Xcode projects

“These enhanced features add to this malware family’s previously known capabilities, like targeting digital wallets, collecting data from the Notes app, and exfiltrating system information and files,” Microsoft said.

Microsoft first reported of this new XCSSET strain in mid-February this year, and has now come forward with an in-depth analysis.

Xcode is Apple's official integrated development environment (IDE) for creating apps on macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It includes a code editor, debugger, Interface Builder, and tools for testing and deploying apps.

In essence, XCSSET is an infostealer. It is capable of pulling system information and files, stealing digital wallet data, and grabbing information from the official Notes app.

For obfuscation, XCSSET now uses a “significantly more randomized approach” for generating payloads to infect Xcode projects. When it comes to updated persistence mechanisms, the new variant uses two techniques: “zshrc”, and “dock”. Finally, for infection, there are now new methods for where the payload is placed in a target Xcode project.

“Users must always inspect and verify any Xcode projects downloaded or cloned from repositories, as the malware usually spreads through infected projects,” the company concluded. “They should also only install apps from trusted sources, such as a software platform’s official app store.”

The in-depth analysis of the malware and its modus operandi can be found on here.

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Latest Tech News

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• The beta version 2.25.7.7 of WhatsApp for Android includes a feature that groups related messages into a thread.
• This could make parsing sprawling chats far easier.
• I'm glad that it looks like a practical feature rather than an AI tool.

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While companies are falling over themselves to add AI tools to all manner of products and services, WhatsApp seems to be treading a different path, with the messaging service looking to add a feature that groups specific replies to messages into a thread rather than showing them as disparate responses.

This news comes courtesy of WABetaInfo, which spotted the feature in the beta version 2.25.7.7 of WhatsApp for Android. Such betas usually offer a strong indication of what features users can expect to see rolled out in future WhatsApp updates.

In effect, this new feature looks set to be an easy way to track messages that relate back to each other.

Currently, WhatsApp only lets users reply to a single message in isolation. If, like me, you have friends who seem to discuss multiple topics at once, and you’re like me and ask a lot of questions or have thoughts about those different topics, then keeping track of particular elements of a convoluted WhatsApp chat can be a nightmare.

So what might seem like a small upgrade to WhatsApp could be a godsend for folks like me. It’s also gratifying that WhatsApp is looking at a feature that has a tangible real-world use, rather than adding generative AI elements to smoosh emojis together or change the tone of a message – tone never communicates well in text anyway.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, as iPhone users will be familiar with message threads in the default Messages app in iOS. But Apple's implementation isn’t perfect, so if WhatsApp can create a more elegant take, then I’m all for it.

Exactly when this threads feature will actually roll out to WhatsApp users isn’t clear. It might appear soon, or it could take a few more updates for WhatsApp to get it right, and working smoothly across Android and iOS.

For now it’s a case of watch this space, but I’m crossing my fingers that the update will come sooner rather than later, before certain friends drive me mad with too many points and subjects crammed into a blast of messages.

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