As AMD prepares the reveal of Zen-4 based Ryzen 7000 series of processors in the coming weeks, they have started to send out engineering samples of the CPUs to various partners. While most of these samples will stay with those partners, occasionally some will slip through the cracks and have a chance to reach consumers. This has happened many times before. Case in point, last year there were multiple Intel 12th-gen engineering samples that showed up on black market sites in China, most prominently the Core i9-12900K....

The 830 Series SSD stood out in its sequential read/write performance which saw it match the best SandForce SF-2200 SSDs when measuring read performance, while it crushed the competition in the sequential write tests. Real-world application testing was also a mixed bag. Windows boot times, multi-tasking tests, and gaming level load times all appeared average, but the Samsung 830 Series excelled when copying data not just to and from the drive but also across it....

That works out to $190 for the 256GB 840 Pro, which is fair but puts the aging enthusiast series in an awkward position just beyond today’s finest budget options, including Samsung’s own 840 Evo ($0.57 per gig for 250GB) and the $0.43/GB Crucial MX100, which is beside the point that not everyone wants a cut-down drive. That’s not to say there isn’t already a plethora of high-end SSDs. Enthusiasts have loads of options with Plextor M6S, SanDisk Extreme Pro, OCZ Vertex 460, Intel 730 Series, Crucial M550 and some we forgot to list....

While I still don’t believe 1440p provides a significant upgrade in display quality over 1080p, there’s no denying the high resolution panel used for the Galaxy S6 looks sharp and generally excellent. Samsung obviously isn’t concerned about issues with performance or display power consumption, and brightness is just as good as the Galaxy S5 with auto-brightness (and therefore the brightness booster) enabled. In fact out of all of the 1440p displays I’ve used so far, the Galaxy S6 display has been the easiest to view outdoors, thanks to excellent peak brightness and low reflectivity....

Compared to competing devices, the battery in the TabPro is pretty typical. The Surface Pro 4, for example, packs a 38.2 Wh battery and a processor that consumes more energy. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro targets a slightly different market, but it packs a 38.8 Wh battery which again is similar in size. In general, the battery life exhibited by the TabPro S is very good. I was able to get a solid day’s worth of usage out of the device, which mostly included web browsing and document editing over Wi-Fi on a moderate brightness level....

As you likely know, while manufacturers claim impressive peak I/O performance out of the box, this performance can diminish over time. Unlike a conventional hard drive, any write operation made to an SSD is a two-step process: a data block must be erased and then written to. Obviously if the drive is new and unused there will be nothing to erase and therefore the first step can be bypassed, but this only happens once unless the drive is trimmed....

Recent formal complaints to California regulators reveal strange incidents that have occurred since fully-autonomous taxis started operating in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The cases mainly involve robotaxis disrupting first responders or otherwise wasting their time. Wired notes that one letter sent to the California Public Utilities Commission claims that sleeping passengers have resulted in unnecessary 911 calls. GM-owned Cruise operates self-driving taxis in San Franciso, featuring two-way communication between passengers and company staff....

Seagate has pointed to the familiar problem of “weakening global economic conditions” for its disappointing revenue forecast of $2.35 billion in the current period—analysts were expecting $3 billion. Profit, meanwhile, is expected to be around $1.40 per share, much lower than average estimates of $2.27. Seagate said it was scaling back production plans due to lower demand, thereby avoiding a situation where the company is sitting on an excess of components it can’t shift....

That’s not to say DDR5 delivers the most bang for buck or that those already using DDR4 should upgrade. Somehow this was the takeaway for some from that previous review, but we assure you that wasn’t what we meant. What we did mean to say is that if you’re going to build a new PC right now, and that requires you to buy a new motherboard and memory, we feel you’re best off going DDR5 and choosing affordable entry-level 8GB modules, which you can upgrade in the future once DDR5 becomes the mainstream option....

A combination of larger apertures and advanced image sensor technology will be instrumental in getting there, we’re told. Nikkei’s report specifically mentions two-layer transistor pixel technology and artificial intelligence processing, which effectively doubles how much light each pixel is exposed to. Sony announced its two-layer transistor pixel tech last year. Traditional CMOS image sensors house both the photodiodes and pixel transistors on the same substrate, but Sony’s new tech separates them on different substrate layers....

Sony has an answer in the form of the Xperia Z1 Compact. Nearly everything about this smartphone is the same as its large-screened brother, the Xperia Z1. There’s a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC inside, a 20.7-megapixel rear camera, and a fully water resistant aluminium-glass build - but it’s all in a body barely larger than its 4.3-inch display. In Sony’s eyes, this is a no-compromises, ultra-portable handset for those that don’t want to carry around something with a 5-inch or larger display....

The front camera is Sony’s IMX132 2.4-megapixel 1/6.95" CMOS with 1.12 µm pixels, that captures either 1080p or 1600 x 1200 shots depending on whether you want to capture in a 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio. The actual sensor itself is neither of these aspect ratios, but provides for both. The sensor is paired with a fairly mediocre f/2.8 32mm (effective) lens. There’s one main question regarding the Xperia Z3’s camera: is it any different from the Xperia Z2?...

Axiom Space, together with SpaceX, successfully launched their first private crew mission on Friday. The four astronauts launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. They will arrive at the ISS tomorrow, making this the first all-private human spaceflight mission to the station. The crew consists of Spanish-American Michael López-Alegría, former NASA astronaut and flight commander; American Larry Connor, founder of real estate investment firm Connor Group; Israeli Eytan Stibbe, former fighter pilot and founder of investment fund Vital Capital; and Canadian Mark Pathy, CEO of investment and financing company Mavrik....

At this resolution with these quality settings gamers are going to want a high-end graphics card such as the GeForce GTX 480/470 or Radeon HD 5870/5850. We cannot recommend other high-end configurations such as the Radeon HD 4870 X2, GeForce GTX 295, Radeon HD 5970 or Radeon HD 5770 Crossfire since the second GPU is going to be unutilized. Those with mid-range graphics cards hoping to play at 1920x1200 (native resolution for many 24" LCD monitors) will be forced to use the medium visual settings with anti-aliasing disabled....

The first half of Stranger Things season 4 has sent Kate Bush’s 1985 track Running Up That Hill flying up the charts (to number one in the UK) thanks to its use as the song that saves Max from a bone-snapping death at the hands of Vecna. With the second part of Stranger Things season 4 arriving tomorrow, Spotify has launched The Upside Down Playlist, which could help you find your own savior song....

Driving sim fans might be interested in 60 percent off Wreckfest or 35 percent off SnowRunner. You’ll also find Euro Truck Simulator 2 marked down to just $4.99, a 75 percent discount over the usual $19.99 asking price. A similar discount can also be had on American Truck Simulator, yours for only $4.99 after a 75 percent price cut. Techies may want to try Hacker Simulator, which is down to $17....

Recently, a listing appeared on SteamDB sounding suspiciously similar to Sony and Housmarque’s award-winning roguelike shooter Returnal. Titled Oregon, the listing’s tags accurately describe the game with terms like “third-person shooter,” “bullet hell,” “rouge-lite,” and “female protagonist.” Its history section mentions a Tower of Sisyphus—an extra mode in Returnal. Released last year, Returnal was one of the PlayStation 5’s first AAA exclusives. It won two awards at the DICE Summit in February and the top prize at the BAFTAs....

The first seven episodes of volume 1 of Stranger Things season 4, which premiered on May 27, managed to rack up 930.32 million hours over their first 28 days, writes The Hollywood Reporter, while episodes 8 and 9 reached 221 million hours viewed in the week of June 27th to July 3. Those 1.15 billion total viewing hours is a record for an English-language show on Netflix, but Stranger Things season 4 still hasn’t managed to beat Squid Game....

Interestingly, we saw exceptionally high sequential write (upload) performance for the Synology DS1515 in CrystalDiskMark and its read performance maxed out the Gigabit LAN connection. The random 512K read and write performance were also great with the DS1515 sitting between the DS415+ and Asustor AS7004T when comparing write (upload) performance. The DS1515 is relatively weak when comparing write (upload) performance in CrystalDiskMark’s 4K-QD32 test, though its read (download) performance wasn’t bad....

Synology’s portfolio has since grown to include hefty 5 to 12-bay devices, which we find intriguing having only reviewed one NAS beyond 4 bays, the 8-bay QNAP TS-809 Pro Turbo. At $1,700, the TS-809 Pro Turbo was, and still is the most expensive product QNAP makes with the exception of rack mount hardware. Considering we tested the TS-809 Pro Turbo over a year and a half ago, Synology has been slow to respond with a device that meets or exceeds the TS-809’s storage capacity....