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When caching doesn’t work – as is often the case in our experience – you’re left with sluggish disk speeds, so it has made more sense for most enthusiasts to just spring for a decent primary SSD alongside a secondary storage HDD. Besides losing up to a gig of memory, the primary disadvantage of Samsung’s RAPID technology is the chance of data loss if the power goes out, which is probably why the technology is disabled by default....

Silverstone has been a driving force behind many advancements in the field with its Raven series flipping things sideways, its Fortress cases bringing next-level thermals, and its Sugo range holding high-end hardware in an impossibly small footprint. Those of you who follow CES might recall Silverstone’s “Mammoth” case from 2013. It was a rough prototype at the time but it hinted at a massive EATX chassis that was said to be completely dust and spill-proof....

The Raven series employs an unconventional design that rotates the motherboard and power supply so they are mounted vertically with the I/O panel facing the top of the chassis. Among other benefits, this design makes it much easier to access the system’s power, display, USB, Ethernet and other connectors. The other main advantage is improved cooling courtesy of the “stack effect,” because top and bottom-mounted fans guide rising heat out of the case....

Marvel’s Spider-Man is the next PlayStation-exclusive title to arrive on PC next month. Developer Nixxes has given the game many of the same technical and accessibility features we saw in the PC ports of Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War. The system requirements are similar as well, so modest gaming PCs should be able to handle it at 1080p, but Sony recommends the most recent performance cards for 4K....

As reported by Bloomberg, the South Korean semiconductor industry saw year-on-year output fall by -1.7% in August, marking the first YoY decline since January 2018. It comes as inventories reach 67.3% and factory shipments decline (-20.4%) for a second consecutive month. This isn’t the first sign of a sector under pressure. The largest US maker of memory chips, Micron, yesterday forecast quarterly sales that were almost $2 billion below Wall Street estimates, while Japanese NAND giant Kioxia said it is reducing output and will lower production by 30% over the coming months....

Car Thing makes it easier for listeners to play music and podcasts in their vehicles, especially if said vehicle is an older model lacking an advanced stereo head unit. The device itself features a four-inch touchscreen display alongside a control dial, a back button, a settings button and four preset buttons. There’s also an array of four noise-cancelling microphones to process voice commands. Car Thing connects to the Spotify app on your smartphone, and uses its Wi-Fi or mobile data plan....

Spotify reported an operating loss of €228 million for the quarter on revenue of €3.04 billion, the latter of which represented an increase of 21 percent year over year. CFO Paul Vogel said 2022 has been a year of investment. It’s too early to provide guidance with respect to 2023, but the executive said they do expect profitability rates to improve next year relative to 2022. Speaking of paying subscribers, CEO Daniel Ek said a Spotify price hike would be coming sometime in 2023....

The patch notes don’t detail each and every controller that is supported, so The Verge reached out for clarification. Valve spokesperson Kaci Aitchison Boyle confirmed that the Switch-specific NES, SNES, Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64 controllers are all compatible with Steam. The SNES controller retails for $29.99 while the Genesis and N64 controller command $49.99 each. A two-pack of the NES controllers is priced at $59.99. A bit frustrating (especially now) is the fact that you must have a Nintendo Switch Online membership to be eligible for purchase....

Then we had the 4-bay Synology Disk Station 409+, priced at $600 without hard drives, which might come as a more reasonable choice for the home or small office, while still delivering good performance and a compelling feature set. There are a number of legitimate reasons why NAS devices are becoming so popular in work environments, but because of the costly setup investment, they have remained more of a luxury than a necessity for home users....

The random write results paint somewhat of a different picture compared to the previous test – and it was bad news for Synology’s latest NAS. Here the DS410j appeared to lack any real horsepower with a throughput of just 24MB/s for both the read and write tests. Performance was again similar to that of the DS109, while write speeds were 42% greater when using the Promise SmartStor NS4600. Finally, we used the SiSoftware Sandra 2009 benchmark to measure network performance....

Like most modern NAS devices the Synology DS1515 had no trouble maxing out a single Gigabit LAN connection when working with large data as it managed to sustain a throughput of 112.4MB/s. When downloading our game data from the DS1515 we saw a throughput of 82MB/s, which is up there with some of the fastest 4-6 bay devices we have tested. The Core i3-powered AS7004T was only slightly faster with 84....

OpenAI’s Dall-E image generator is both powerful and weird. So far, the developers have only allowed a handful of AI researchers to use the tool. However, OpenAI announced on Wednesday that it would open the image creator in beta to the public in a limited capacity. The artificial intelligence startup began a waiting list and will soon send out invites to one million people. Users will receive 50 credits for their first month and 15 additional credits in subsequent months....

Samsung maintained its position as Europe’s top smartphone vendor with a 35 percent share of the market despite seeing shipments decline 16 percent YoY. Apple finished in second place with a 25 percent piece of the pie but experienced six percent negative growth. Both companies launched new devices during the period - Samsung with its Galaxy S22 series and Apple with its third-gen iPhone SE. Xiaomi took the bronze thanks to its 14 percent shipment share but was the biggest loser year over year as its shipments declined 36 percent compared to the first quarter of 2021....

The latest news on Nvidia’s renaming of the RTX 4080 12GB comes from reliable leaker MEGAsizeGPU. They backed up Kopite7kimi’s claims from earlier this week that Nvidia will be going with the RTX 4070 Ti name, which is something we expected, and launching in January. MEGAsizeGPU believes the next Lovelace entry will arrive on January 5. Other sources claim that Nvidia will unveil the RTX 4070 Ti on January 3, lift the review embargo on January 4, and launch a day later....

For the second time in two years, the White House is hosting an international gathering about the ever-growing ransomware issue. The Second International Counter Ransomware Initiative Summit is bringing 36 nations together from around the world, reflecting the borderless nature of the threat posed by cyber-criminals and their nefarious encryption-based cyber-attacks. The nations invited by the Biden Administration include many members of the European Union (Austria, France, Germany, Italy and more), Australia, Israel, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates....

The Web

Again we find that when working with large files the QNAP TS-435mini has no trouble maxing out the Gigabit Ethernet connection, this time reaching 111MB/s when uploading. The Synology DS414slim on the other hand was limited to just 64MB/s when armed with a high performance SATA SSD and just 48.2MB/s with four WD Red 1TB hard drives. The game upload test features a mixture of small and large, compressed and non-compressed files....

On Thursday, Ubisoft shared a rundown of the PC system requirements and features for its upcoming pirate sandbox game Skull & Bones. It’s one of the first major releases to forego supporting the last-generation consoles, so its demands on PC are understandably a step up from what many users may be used to. Many AAA games over the last few years, including Spider-Man Remastered, have listed the GTX 1060 – currently the most popular GPU on Steam – as the recommended card for playing at 60 frames per second in 1080p at high settings....

Deadline reports that Netflix is currently “exploring” the launch of livestreaming and has confirmed that the capability is in the early stages of development. The publication notes the feature could be used to engage audiences with live voting for talent contests—something we see plenty of on traditional TV. Live comedy could be another prime use for livestreaming. The first Netflix is a Joke festival was held earlier this year, featuring performances from over 300 comedians that included Dave Chappelle, Larry David, Bill Burr, and Jerry Seinfeld....

The Steam Deck’s official Twitter account posted that the giveaway is in celebration of the Game Awards, which takes place on December 8, and Valve’s machine being in stock—the latter likely being a jab at the tech products that are still experiencing shortages this year. One Steam Deck will be given away every minute the Game Awards is broadcast. The show usually lasts around three hours, so we can expect at least 180 consoles to be handed out....