Month: May 2021

The key to Mach.2's increased performance is a second set of actuator arms, which can be positioned independently from the first set. Essentially, this makes a Mach.2 "two drives in one chassis." (credit: Seagate)

Seagate has been working on dual-actuator hard drives—drives with two arms and read/write heads per platter—for several years. Its first production dual-actuator drive, the Mach.2, is now "available to select customers," meaning that enterprises can buy it directly from Seagate, but end-users are out of luck for now.

Seagate lists the sustained, sequential transfer rate of the Mach.2 as up to 524MBps—easily double that of a fast "normal" rust disk and edging into SATA SSD territory. The performance gains extend into random I/O territory as well, with 304 IOPS read / 384 IOPS write and only 4.16 ms average latency. (Normal hard drives tend to be 100/150 IOPS and about the same average latency.)

The added performance requires additional power; Mach.2 drives are rated for 7.2 W idle, while Seagate's standard Ironwolf line is rated at 5 W idle. It gets more difficult to compare loaded power consumption because Seagate specs the Mach.2 differently than the Ironwolf. The Mach.2's power consumption is explicitly rated for several random I/O scenarios, while the Ironwolf line is rated for an unhelpful "average operating power," which isn't defined in the data sheet.

Enlarge / A man uses a 24-inch orange iMac. (credit: Apple)

Several new Apple products announced earlier this month are now available for sale and shipping at the Apple Store and various other retailers.

The new products include the new 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro models, a revised Apple TV 4K, a completely redesigned iMac with a 24-inch screen, and a radically redesigned Siri Remote that is compatible with older Apple TV devices.

While these devices are available for order, some are in short supply, so they aren't all necessarily shipping today.

Enlarge (credit: Ars Technica)

Today's Dealmaster is headlined by the return of Epic's annual Mega Sale, which includes discounts on a number of noteworthy PC games. Like last year's deals event, the sale also includes a recurring coupon that takes $10 off any eligible game priced at $14.99 or more after existing sale discounts. You'll have to be signed in to an Epic Games account to access this feature, but once used, the coupon will immediately reset and become usable for your next purchase of a game priced at $15 or more. There's no way to stack multiple coupons for one purchase, but Epic says anyone who has pre-purchased a game that launches during the sale will get a $10 refund to account for the coupon when said game comes out. The company says the Mega Sale will last until June 17.

While the Epic Games Store still isn't quite as robust or well-stocked as Steam—and while we expect Valve's storefront to launch its own annual Summer Sale sometime in the coming weeks—this sales event includes good discounts on several games we like, including former Ars Game of the Year winners Hades and Control; the recently Ars Approved Loop Hero; widely heralded titles like Disco Elysium and Outer Wilds; and blockbusters like Red Dead Redemption II, Cyberpunk 2077, and Death Stranding. Also of note, NBA 2K21 is currently available at no cost until May 27, at which point Epic will roll out a new free game. We've picked out a sampling of steeper-than-usual discounts below.

If you can't stand the thought of adding even more games to your backlog, our curated deals roundup also includes sales on Apple's Mac Mini, various iPads and Roku media streamers, Fitbit's Sense smartwatch, microSD cards, portable batteries, and more. You can check out the full roundup below.

Enlarge / Robotic arm in action. (credit: University of Pittsburgh Medical Center)

One of the most stunning examples of the promise of brain implants is shown in a video in which a paralyzed person controls a robotic arm with nothing but her thoughts. The technology alone is impressive, but the joy on the participant's face as she grabs herself a drink for the first time in over a decade really drives home just how important this technology can be.

While we're still decades away from widespread implant use, there are continued signs of progress in making implants more functional. Last week, we saw a neural implant that could turn imagined writing into real text. This week, the research community has followed up with an implant-controlled robotic arm that sends touch feedback to the user via a second implant.

Adding senses

When we go to pick up an object, we locate the object primarily through vision. From there, other senses take over. Humans have a sense called proprioception, which helps us know where our body parts are, even when they're not visible. Our sense of touch tells us when we've made contact with the object, and pressure sensation gives us an indication of how firmly we've grasped the object. The visual system quickly becomes secondary to the process.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | R.Tsubin)

The Biden administration wants businesses to report cryptocurrency transactions with values of at least $10,000 to the Internal Revenue Service.

"Cryptocurrency already poses a significant detection problem by facilitating illegal activity broadly including tax evasion," the US Treasury Department said in its proposal for implementing the tax compliance initiatives in President Biden's American Families Plan. The larger Biden plan still needs approval from Congress.

The Treasury document said that crypto reporting is one part of "the President's tax compliance initiatives that seek to close the 'tax gap'—the difference between taxes owed to the government and actually paid." The proposal calls for a $4.5 billion investment in IT to implement a new information-reporting regime that would help close that gap, which was nearly $600 billion in 2019.

Enlarge / Maryland Governor Larry Hogan stands next to a person dressed as a lottery ball during a press conference on May 20 announcing the state's VaxCash promotion. (credit: Patrick Siebert)

The governors of New York and Maryland on Thursday each announced big cash lotteries to entice their residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19. The announcements came as westward-neighbor Ohio celebrated the success of its “Vax-a-Million” lottery campaign, which helped boost week-to-week vaccination numbers 53 percent.

The lotteries appear to be part of a growing trend of states and officials offering cash prizes or other incentives to combat slumping vaccination rates. The country's seven-day average for daily vaccinations has dropped to around 1.8 million, down from a peak of nearly 3.4 million in mid-April.

In a White House COVID-19 press briefing Friday, Senior White House Advisor Andy Slavitt said that, based on the data the administration has seen, the lotteries "appear to be working.”

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  The Pixel 6 Pro has three cameras and a curved screen.

The Pixel 6 leaks are coming in fast and furious. After leaker Jon Prosser debuted the new Pixel 6 design last week, another source has come forward corroborating the design: OnLeaks. The venerable leaker has produced renders for the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro with new details and specs. OnLeaks has an excellent track record with making accurate early renders, especially for Pixel devices. These renders are based on CAD files that OnLeaks has somehow acquired; the files are usually passed around early so accessory manufacturers can be ready for launch.

OnLeaks says the bigger Pixel 6 (watchers have taken to calling it the "Pro" model) has a 6.67-inch display with curved sides on the left and right. Prosser's render does not offer information on the camera system and simply shows three placeholder lenses on the "Pro" model. OnLeaks pegs one of the cameras as being a periscope telephoto lens but doesn't have details on the other two. Besides the three cameras and an LED flash, we see three sensors sprinkled around the camera bump, along with one microphone just above the LED flash.

A normal triple-camera layout would include a main "wide-angle" camera, a telephoto camera, and an ultra-wide-angle camera—that's probably a safe assumption here. Those two sensors right above the first two camera lenses also look a lot like the layout for a laser autofocus system.

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  A relative minority of games on iOS make money via free downloads and in-app purchases, a la Fortnite.

Arguments in the pitched legal battle between Epic and Apple over control of the iOS App Store are set to wrap up in the next few days. From the opening arguments onward, the legal maneuvering has involved plenty of arcane points of fact and law, from the precise definition of the market in question to the effectiveness of Apple's iOS security procedures to the definition of "game" itself.

Amid all that wrangling, the case has also given the general public increased visibility into the numbers that drive Apple's and Epic's businesses. We've already taken a deep dive into the money-losing metrics behind the Epic Games Store revealed at the trial. Here's a quick run-down of some more interesting numbers presented in court highlighting the relative sizes of the iOS gaming business—and Fortnite in particular.

(Unless otherwise noted, all the numbers here come from company evidence presented in court documents or testimony in the court itself.)