President-elect Donald Trumpâs second term is a regulatory wild card hanging over Big Tech.
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Seagate is getting ready to launch its first high-capacity HAMR hard drive
Itâs been more than two decades since Seagate began working on heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) â and now the company may finally be ready to release a hard drive using the technology. A new product page spotted by Tomâs Hardware shows an Exos M hard drive sporting up to 32TB of storage using Seagateâs Mozaic 3 Plus HAMR platform.
Seagateâs Mozaic 3 Plus technology allows for bigger hard drive capacities by making data bits smaller and closer together on each disk. To write data, a laser diode attached to the driveâs recording heads heats small areas of the disk. âEach bit is heated and cools down in a nanosecond, so the HAMR laser has no impact at all on drive temperature, or on the temperature, stability, or reliability of the media overall,â Seagate writes on its website.
Seagate says its Exos M hard drive has a 3TB per platter density, making it useful for enterprise applications like powering AI systems. We still donât know when Seagate could release its Exos M hard drive, as its product page currently shows a link to âStay Informed,â but a launch seems imminent.
As pointed out by Tomâs Guide, Seagate said in a filing earlier this month that it had âsuccessfully completed qualification testingâ for its HAMR hard drives with âseveral customers within the Mass Capacity markets, including a leading cloud service provider.â It says it will start shipping its HAMR-based hard drive to the unnamed cloud provider in the âcoming weeks.â
The Verge reached out to Seagate with a request for more information but didnât immediately hear back.
Seagate isnât the only company working on high-capacity hard drives. In October, Western Digital launched a 32TB hard drive using energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR), while Toshiba recently demonstrated high-capacity hard drives with HAMR and microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR).
Death of a Unicornâs first trailer brings a fairytale creature into a dark comedy
A24âs lineup of films for 2025 is starting to become stacked â with fantastical creatures, that is. While the fantasy adventure The Legend of Ochi is slated to hit theaters next February, the dark comedy Death of a Unicorn is due out in the spring. And you can get a feel for it in the brand-new trailer above.
The film follows a father and daughter (Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega) who are driving to a weekend retreat, and accidentally kill an animal … which just so happens to be a unicorn. From there, it seems as though the dadâs rich boss (Richard E. Grant) and his family canât help but see ways to exploit the creatureâs magical powers for profit. While the vibe is light and funny early one, things not only get darker, but take a turn towards horror by the end of the trailer.
Death of a Unicorn is the directorial debut from Alex Scharfman, and it also stars Will Poulter, Sunita Mani, and TĂŠa Leoni. Hereditary director Ari Aster serves as a producer, while horror legend John Carpenter.
The quickly disappearing web
The internet is forever. But also, it isnât. What happens to our culture when websites start to vanish at random?
Intel finally notches a GPU win, confirms Arc B580 is selling out after stellar reviews
Intel is having an incredibly rough year â but at long last, the companyâs discrete graphics card initiative has produced a card worth celebrating. While we havenât managed to review it ourselves due to a fluke issue, the $250 Arc B580 âBattlemageâ GPU launched to nigh-universal praise, has already sold out most everywhere, and Intel tells The Verge itâs working to ship new units every week.
âDemand for Arc B580 graphics cards is high and many retailers have sold through their initial inventory. We expect weekly inventory replenishments of the Intel Arc B580 Limited Edition graphics card and are working with partners to ensure a steady availability of choices in the market,â Intel spokesperson Mark Anthony Ramirez tells The Verge.
To give you an idea, here are some of the headlines weâve seen on reviews of this card:
- âThe new $249 GPU champion has arrivedâ
- âThe first worthy budget GPU of the decadeâ
- âThe fastest mainstream GPUâ
- âA New Mainstream Kingâ
- âIntel Fixed Its Problemsâ
Mind you, in some ways the B580 is a glass of ice water in GPU hell, as its primary competition â the RTX 4060 and AMD RX 7600 â utterly failed to impress last year, following years of GPU prices that were more inflated than inflation itself. (Linus Tech Tips called the $300 4060 a âwet fart of a GPUâ but considers the B580 âgreat and affordableâ now.)
While reviewers have showed the B580 doesnât beat the 4060 and 7600 in every game, especially for gamers who still play at 1080p resolution, it does seem to pull ahead on average, the drivers seem more mature than Intelâs earlier attempts, and the lower price and generous 12GB of video RAM make it relatively easy to recommend.
If you can find one at $250, that is â which you probably canât, because theyâve sold out so quickly. For what itâs worth, Hardware Unboxedâs Steve Walton doesnât think this is a so-called âpaper launchâ where a manufacturer ships a token number of components for bragging rights instead of mass-producing a product; he said that manufacturers, retailers and distributors told him that supply of the card was âquite substantial.â
That said, AMD and Nvidiaâs next GPUs are apparently right around the corner.
Newegg may restock the $250 âLimited Editionâ model early next month, according to its listing, and itâs still âcoming soonâ at B&H. A $279 Acer model is listed as coming to Newegg in as soon as a few days. Some models started at far higher prices: you can still purchase several Gunnir variants from China at around the $400 mark.