Toshiba this week announced the industry's first hard drive featuring flux-control microwave-assisted magnetic recording (FC-MAMR) technology. The new MG09-series HDDs are designed primarily for nearline and enterprise applications, they offer an 18 TB capacity along with an ultra-low idle power consumption. From a report: The Toshiba MG09-series 3.5-inch 18 TB HDD are based on the company's 3rd generation nine-platter helium sealed platform that features 18 heads with a microwave-emitting component which changes magnetic coercivity of the platters before writing data. The HD disks are made by Showa Denko K.K. (SDK), a long-time partner of Toshiba. Each aluminum platter is about 0.635 mm thick, it features an areal density of around 1.5 Tb/inch2 and can store up to 2 TB of data. The MG09 family also includes a 16 TB model which presumably features a lower number of platters (based on the same performance rating).

For modern enterprise and nearline 3.5-inch HDDs, Toshiba's MG09-series drives uses a motor with a 7200-RPM spindle speed. The HDDs are also equipped with a 512 MB buffer and are rated for a 281 MB/s maximum sustained data transfer rate. Unfortunately, Toshiba has not updated the random access performance of the new products, though it is likely that their per-TB IOPS performance is lower when compared to predecessors. The manufacturer will offer its new drives both with SATA 3.3 (6 Gbps) and SAS 3.0 (12 Gbps) interfaces as well as a selection of logical data block length.

One of the noteworthy things about Toshiba's MG09-series FC-MAMR HDDs is their power consumption. In active idle mode, they typically consume 4.16/4.54 Watts (SATA/SAS models), which is considerably lower when compared with Seagate's Exos X18 as well as Western Digital's Ultrastar DC HC550. As far as power consumption efficiency at idle (large hard drives could spend plenty of time idling) is concerned, the 18 TB MG09 is an undeniable champion consuming just 0.23 Watts per TB (in case of the SATA version). Meanwhile, the new drives are rated for 8.35/8.74 Watts (SATA/SAS SKUs) during read/write operations, which is higher when compared to the DC HC550 as well as predecessors from the MG07 and the MG08-series.

Over the past week, some M1 Mac users have been reporting alarming SSD health readings, suggesting that these devices are writing extraordinary amounts of data to their drives. From a report: Across Twitter and the MacRumors forums, users are reporting that M1 Macs are experiencing extremely high drive writes over a short space of time. In what appear to be the most severe cases, M1 Macs are said to be consuming as much as 10 to 13 percent of the maximum warrantable total bytes written (TBW) value of its SSD. Flash memory on solid-state drives, such as those used in Macs, can only be written to a certain number of times before they become unstable. Software ensures that load is spread evenly across the drive's memory cells, but there is a point when the drive has been written to so many times that it can no longer reliably hold data. So while SSD wear is normal, expected behavior, drives should not be exhausting their ability to hold data as quickly as some M1 Macs seem to be. One user showed that their M1 Mac had already consumed one percent of its SSD after just two months, while another M1 Mac with a 2TB SSD had already consumed three percent. The total data units written for these machines is running into many terabytes, when they would normally be expected to be considerably lower.

James Gilboy, writing at The Drive: Over the week spanning Jan. 4-10, 1998, a trio of massive ice storms wracked the northeastern United States and parts of Canada. Knocking over transmission towers, the storms deprived up to 1.35 million people of electricity, in some cases for weeks (sound familiar?). Rather than leave town, though, one Canadian mayor stepped up to bring in the biggest mobile power generators they could get their hands on: Diesel-electric freight train locomotives. This unusual solution to a power problem unfolded in Boucherville, a Montreal suburb just northeast of famed Formula 1 racetrack Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Having reportedly heard of locomotives being used to generate electricity during another emergency years prior, Boucherville's Mayor Francine Gadbois asked the Canadian National Railway to lend the city a couple of units. CN obliged, sending over two Montreal Locomotive Works M-420s per the 1998 issue of Trains, as recounted by members of its forum.

Both locomotives were powered by Alco 251C prime movers; 131.4-liter, single-turbo diesel V12s making some 1,950 horsepower according to the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. Rather than power the wheels through hydraulic or mechanical transmissions, these massive motors turned traction generators that could send juice to motors connected to the wheels. In a pinch, however, that power can be routed outside the locomotive for whatever purpose one desires, like keeping municipal buildings operating in times of crisis. And that's exactly what these locomotives did for Boucherville. According to yet another account from a train forum, officials craned M-240 number 3502 off the line down the street from city hall before moving it some 1,000 feet down the street, carving deep ruts in the asphalt. Once at its destination and hooked in, its V12 had to be run at a specific, constant rpm' to generate AC current at 60 hertz, the frequency used by most North American utilities.

Texas' power grid was "seconds and minutes" away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months, officials with the entity that operates the grid said yesterday. Texas Tribune reports: As millions of customers throughout the state begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which operates the power grid that covers most of the state, said Texas was dangerously close to a worst-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts across the state. The quick decision that grid operators made in the early hours of Monday morning to begin what was intended to be rolling blackouts -- but lasted days for millions of Texans -- occurred because operators were seeing warning signs that massive amounts of energy supply was dropping off the grid. As natural gas fired plants, utility scale wind power and coal plants tripped offline due to the extreme cold brought by the winter storm, the amount of power supplied to the grid to be distributed across the state fell rapidly. At the same time, demand was increasing as consumers and businesses turned up the heat and stayed inside to avoid the weather.

"It needed to be addressed immediately," said Bill Magness, president of ERCOT. "It was seconds and minutes [from possible failure] given the amount of generation that was coming off the system." Grid operators had to act quickly to cut the amount of power distributed, Magness said, because if they had waited, "then what happens in that next minute might be that three more [power generation] units come offline, and then you're sunk." Magness said on Wednesday that if operators had not acted in that moment, the state could have suffered blackouts that "could have occurred for months," and left Texas in an "indeterminately long" crisis. While generators rapidly dropped off the grid as the weather worsened, operators monitored the difference between the supply of power on the grid and the demand for that power. As supply dwindled and demand grew, the margin narrowed to more and more dangerous levels, forcing grid operators to enact emergency protocols to either increase supply or decrease demand. Further reading: Texas Leaders Ignored Warnings A Decade Ago That Their Power Supply Was In Danger

Worried that the GeForce RTX 3060 will be sold out as cryptocurrency miners snap up every GPU in sight? NVIDIA thinks it has a simple way to help: make the new card unattractive to the crypto crowd. From a report: The company has revealed that it's cutting the hash rate (mining efficiency) of the RTX 3060 in half for Ethereum miners. The driver software can detect the Ethereum mining algorithm and throttle performance in response. The rationale is simple: NVIDIA wants to put GeForce cards "in the hands of gamers," not just those hoping to turn a profit by generating digital money. While the extremely high demand from miners has been good for NVIDIA's bottom line in the short term, it has frustrated gamers, professionals and everyday users who just want better than integrated graphics -- NVIDIA even brought back years-old GPUs just to give customers some options. Scalping and price gouging have been all too common for those GPUs that do become available.

It's not leaving miners empty-handed. The firm is launching a new CMP (Cryptocurrency Mining Processor) line of add-in cards that doesn't do graphics, but is fine-tuned for crypto mining performance. The absence of video ports allows for greater airflow and more densely-packed cards, for example. The first CMP designs are the 26 megahash per second 30HX and 36 megahash 40HX, both of which should be available this quarter from vendors like ASUS, EVGA and Gigabyte. More powerful 50X (45MH/s) and 90HX (86MH/s) boards are due in the second quarter. The company said it won't limit the performance of GPUs that are already sold.

With millions of Texans still without power in the wake of a winter storm and frigid temperatures, everyone is looking for someone to blame. From a report, shared by a reader: Many Democrats are blaming Gov. Greg Abbott (R) for failing to adequately prepare for the storm. Many conservatives are blaming the environmental movement -- insisting that frozen wind turbines show the limits of alternative energy sources. (This is a gross exaggeration.) But the primary fall guy is the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), an independent organization that operates Texas' power grid. "This was a total failure by ERCOT," said Abbott on Tuesday. "These are the experts. These are engineers in the power industry. These aren't bureaucrats or whatever the case may be. These are specialists, and government has to rely upon on these specialists to be able to deliver in these types of situations." The story, as you might guess, is actually slightly more complicated than that. It's rooted in Texans' views of their state as a quasi-independent country -- and a desire to have as little federal interference in their lives as possible. Yes, there are politics at the root of this. "Texas' secessionist inclinations have at least one modern outlet: the electric grid," wrote the Texas Tribune back in 2011.

To understand what is happening right now in Texas -- and who's to blame -- you have to go back to 1935, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which governed electricity sharing and sales between the states. Basically, it allowed the federal government to regulate states who brought power in from outside their state lines. Texas, never a fan of federal intrusion, set up its own power grid system -- split between northern and southern Texas -- to avoid any federal involvement. That led eventually to the formation of ERCOT in 1970 and this strange fact: There are three power grids in the United States -- the eastern power grid, the western power grid and, well, Texas. Yes, you read that right. Texas has its own power grid. Because it is Texas. And while being independent from the yoke of federal regulation has always been a point of pride for Texas, the limits of that strategy are being realized now. See, because Texas -- or at least 90% of the state -- is controlled by ERCOT, they can't simply borrow power from either the eastern or western power grids. That's never been a problem before because Texas has always been able to generate more power than its citizens need. But the reality is that Texas is an electricity island, which isn't a problem until the lights go out, and you don't have enough power in the state to turn them back on. Now, there's no question that ERCOT bears some blame here, too.

Some of the world's largest technology companies are complaining to U.S. antitrust regulators about Nvidia's acquisition of Arm because the deal will harm competition in an area of the industry that is vital to their businesses. Alphabet's Google, Microsoft and Qualcomm are among companies worried about the $40 billion deal and are asking antitrust officials to intervene, Bloomberg News reported Friday, following up on CNBC's report from earlier today that talked only about Qualcomm's efforts. At least one of the companies wants the deal killed, Bloomberg added. From the report: The acquisition would give Nvidia control over a critical supplier that licenses essential chip technology to the likes of Apple, Intel, Samsung Electronics, Amazon.com and China's Huawei Technologies. U.K.-based Arm is known as the Switzerland of the industry because it licenses chip designs and related software code to all comers, rather than competing against semiconductor companies. The concern is that if Nvidia owns Arm, it could limit rivals' access to the technology or raise the cost of access.

U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm has told regulators around the world that it is against Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of British chip designer Arm, CNBC reported Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The company has told the Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission, the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority and China's State Administration for Market Regulation that it has concerns about Nvidia buying Arm, which is currently owned by Japanese tech giant SoftBank. The FTC's investigation has moved to a "second phase" and the U.S. regulator has asked SoftBank, Nvidia and Arm to provide it with more information, according to two sources who are familiar with the deal but wished to remain anonymous due to the private nature of the discussions. Complying with the information request is likely to take many months as several large documents will need to be produced, the sources said. During the second phase, the FTC will also engage with other companies who may have relevant information that could help it to make a decision, they added.

Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: Bitcoin uses more electricity annually than the whole of Argentina, analysis by Cambridge University suggests. 'Mining' for the cryptocurrency is power-hungry, involving heavy computer calculations to verify transactions. Cambridge researchers say it consumes around 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) a year -- and is unlikely to fall unless the value of the currency slumps. Critics say electric-car firm Tesla's decision to invest heavily in Bitcoin undermines its environmental image.

The online tool has ranked Bitcoin's electricity consumption above Argentina (121 TWh), the Netherlands (108.8 TWh) and the United Arab Emirates (113.20 TWh) - and it is gradually creeping up on Norway (122.20 TWh). The energy it uses could power all kettles used in the UK for 27 years, it said. However, it also suggests the amount of electricity consumed every year by always-on but inactive home devices in the US alone could power the entire Bitcoin network for a year. "Bitcoin is literally anti-efficient," David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, explained. "So more efficient mining hardware won't help -- it'll just be competing against other efficient mining hardware. This means that Bitcoin's energy use, and hence its CO2 production, only spirals outwards. It's very bad that all this energy is being literally wasted in a lottery."

In regard to Tesla's decision to buy bitcoin, Mr Gerard added: "Elon Musk has thrown away a lot of Tesla's good work promoting energy transition. This is very bad... I don't know how he can walk this back effectively. Tesla got $1.5 billion in environmental subsidies in 2020, funded by the taxpayer. It turned around and spent $1.5 billion on Bitcoin, which is mostly mined with electricity from coal. Their subsidy needs to be examined."

The Biden administration is working to address the global semiconductor shortage that has caused production halts in U.S. industries including autos, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. From a report: The administration is identifying choke points in supply chains and discussing an immediate path forward with businesses and trading partners, Psaki told reporters at the White House on Thursday. In the longer term, policy makers are looking for a comprehensive strategy to avoid bottlenecks and other issues the semiconductor industry has been facing for years. President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order directing a government-wide supply chain review for critical goods in the coming weeks, with the chip shortage a central concern behind the probe. The order will compel a 100-day review led by the National Economic Council and National Security Council focused on semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging, critical minerals, medical supplies and high-capacity batteries, such as those used in electric vehicles, two people familiar with the draft said. Additional supply-chain assessments are expected within a year, focused on critical products -- materials, technology and infrastructure -- and other materials tied to defense, public health, telecommunications, energy and transportation.

If you're one of the few people still using a PC with an x86 processor more than 15 years old, here's another reason to upgrade: the devices will not work with future Chrome releases, starting with version 89 of the world's most popular browser. TechSpot reports: The Chromium development team announced that CPUs older than the Intel Core 2 Duo and AMD Athlon 64 would not work with Chrome 89 and future versions as they do not meet the new minimum instruction set requirement of SSE3 (Supplemental Streaming SIMD Extensions 3) support. So, if you are still sporting an Intel Atom or Celeron M CPU, you'll soon be counting Chrome as one of the many programs that are incompatible with your potato-like rig. The devices will no longer attempt to install the browser, while running it will result in the software crashing. It's noted that the change only affects Windows as Chrome OS, Android and, Mac already require SSE3 support.

Thanks to the hard work of the SwitchRoot team, it's now possible to enjoy an Android 10-based LineageOS 17.1 port on your Nintendo Switch console. XDA Developers reports: The Android 10 release is based on the LineageOS 17.1 build for the NVIDIA SHIELD TV and brings many improvements over the previous release, including a much-needed deep sleep mode so the OS doesn't murder your console's battery life. It's also generally faster and more responsive than the previous Android 8.1 Oreo version, according to the SwitchRoot team.

The ROM comes in two flavors: a Tablet build that offers a standard Android UI with support for all apps and an Android TV build that supports both docked and undocked use cases but has more limited app support. The former is recommended if you primarily use your Nintendo Switch while undocked, while the latter will offer a much-better docked experience. As for bugs and broken things, the developer says games built for the SHIELD (Half-Life 2, Tomb Raider, etc.) aren't supported, and you might notice some stuttering with Bluetooth audio. Some apps also may not support the Joy-Con D-Pad.

In order to install this build, you'll need an RCM-exploitable Nintendo Switch, a USB-C cable, a high-speed microSD card (formatted to FAT32), and a PC. If you already have the Android 8.1 Oreo build installed on your SD card, just make sure to back up your data before installing the Android 10 build, as flashing this new ROM will wipe all data. After installing the ROM itself, be sure to flash the Google Apps package, Alarm Disable ZIP, and Xbox Joycon Layout ZIP if you use an Xbox controller. You can download LineageOS 17.1 for Nintendo Switch here.

Qualcomm has unveiled the X65, what it says is the "world's first" 10-gigabit 5G modem. Engadget reports: While that's not hugely faster than the 7.5Gbps of the X60, it promises a speed that was previously reserved for Ethernet and other wired connections. The X65 also boasts some helpful functional improvements, including AI-based antenna tuning that better responds to hand grips. You'll also find better power-saving measures and a newer "Smart Transmit" system that boots upload speeds and overall coverage.

The X65 is currently sampling to customers and should reach shipping devices in 2021, although Qualcomm didn't name customers. Don't count on it reaching many phones, at least not at first. [...] While it will support "premium smartphone experiences," you're more likely to see it used in laptops, fixed 5G broadband or similar areas where a separate modem isn't an issue.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Bad news for lovers of smaller phones: the iPhone 12 mini has sold poorly compared to other phones in the iPhone 12 lineup -- poorly enough that analysts wonder whether Apple will remain committed to the smaller phone design moving forward. A data firm called Counterpoint Research found that the iPhone 12 mini accounted for just 5 percent of overall sales from the company's smartphone lineup in early January. And J.P. Morgan analyst William Yang told Reuters that screens under 6 inches now account for only 10 percent of smartphones sold industry-wide.

The data from Counterpoint is not the first to tell this story. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) broke down iPhone 12 lineup sales in detail last month. They found that the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max made up about 20 percent of sales from the larger iPhone 12 lineup during the launch window, while the non-Pro, 6.1-inch iPhone 12 accounted for 27 percent. But they also said the iPhone 12 mini "likely disappointed Apple" with only 6 percent of sales during the period measured -- pretty close to the number Counterpoint shared a couple of months later.

While all this data shows that the iPhone 12 mini has underperformed, it doesn't tell us why. According to CIRP's data, the also-small iPhone SE performed a little better (likely due to its significantly lower price) but it still didn't make up a huge chunk of sales. So while it's possible that the iPhone 12 mini's slow sales are partially a result of cannibalization by the cheaper SE, small phones are clearly not doing well in general. There are a lot of reasons small phones are less popular now. For one thing, users are consuming more rich media content. Many people watch as much TV and film on their phones as they do on their TVs now, and some social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat are focused on rich media that may be more enjoyable to some on a larger display. But if anything, these sales numbers make the future of one-handed smartphones look even dimmer than before.

Sometimes one screen isn't enough and you need two. Sometimes even two doesn't get the job done, and you need three. If your job requires seven screens, a UK firm now has you covered. Gizmodo reports: The Aurora 7 laptop seems lifted straight from the imagination of a Hollywood prop builder working on a bad hacker flick. But with seven foldout screens, there's little chance anyone could actually use this beast on their laps. It's a mobile transforming workstation for those who need more screen real estate than they have room for monitors. Created by a UK company called Expanscape, the Aurora 7 is very much just a prototype at this stage in the game (as is evident by the extensive use of 3D-printed parts), but it's designed to be true mobile workstation for everyone from developers to content creators to even well-funded gamers wanting a more immersive experience from a computer they don't have to leave at home. Powered by an Intel i9 9900K processor backed by 64GB of DDR4 RAM and an NVIDIA GTX 1060 series graphics card, the Aurora 7 also comes with 2TB of hard drive storage and an additional 2.5 TB of SSD storage, plus all the ports you could ever need to expand its capacity even further. But the star of the show is the complicated mosaic of screens which includes four 17.3-inch 4K (3840 x 2160) LCDs -- two in portrait mode and two in landscape -- as well as three smaller 7-inch screens all pushing 1920 x 1200 pixels, with one located in the laptop's wrist rest. The laptop has a battery life of one hour. No word on pricing or when it starts shipping.