Month: February 2023

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  We tested iDrive with its free Basic tier, which offers 10GB of storage. [credit: Jim Salter ]

If there's one rule of computing every system administrator preaches, it's to always back up important data. Unfortunately, even among sysadmins, this rule is often preached more than it is practiced—backups tend to be slow, cumbersome affairs that are ignored for years until they're (desperately) needed, by which time it's often too late to get them right.

Fortunately, backups don't need to be tedious—and there are plenty of relatively low-cost, consumer-friendly cloud services that make protecting your data easy. The five services we discuss in this article—Carbonite, Arq, iDrive, Spideroak One, and Backblaze—are cloud-based and inexpensive, and they operate seamlessly in the background.

What we’re looking for

For a backup service to work, it needs to be easy to install and use. Beyond ease of use, our preferred solution needs to be affordable and have a simple billing model. It also needs to operate reliably in the background, offer easy recovery, and provide archive depth—meaning you'll have backups to previous versions of your files in addition to the current saved copy.

• 

  We tested iDrive with its free Basic tier, which offers 10GB of storage. [credit: Jim Salter ]

If there's one rule of computing every system administrator preaches, it's to always back up important data. Unfortunately, even among sysadmins, this rule is often preached more than it is practiced—backups tend to be slow, cumbersome affairs that are ignored for years until they're (desperately) needed, by which time it's often too late to get them right.

Fortunately, backups don't need to be tedious—and there are plenty of relatively low-cost, consumer-friendly cloud services that make protecting your data easy. The five services we discuss in this article—Carbonite, Arq, iDrive, Spideroak One, and Backblaze—are cloud-based and inexpensive, and they operate seamlessly in the background.

What we’re looking for

For a backup service to work, it needs to be easy to install and use. Beyond ease of use, our preferred solution needs to be affordable and have a simple billing model. It also needs to operate reliably in the background, offer easy recovery, and provide archive depth—meaning you'll have backups to previous versions of your files in addition to the current saved copy.

Enlarge / Tesla Model Y electric vehicles in a lot at the Tesla Inc. Gigafactory in Gruenheide, Germany, on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2023. (credit: Liesa Johannssen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Barely three weeks after slashing its prices in order to qualify for federal tax incentives for clean vehicles, Tesla has increased the prices of some of its best-selling electric vehicles. At the beginning of January, a five-seat Tesla Model Y long-range crossover cost $65,990; on January 12 Tesla dropped this to $52,990. Now, that has gone up by $2,000 to $54,990. And the Model Y Performance saw its price drop from $69,990 to $56,990; today that same EV will cost $57,990.

The original price drops in January allowed the Model Y to qualify for new clean vehicle tax credits introduced in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Among other changes, the new tax credit regulations imposed a price cap on new EVs in order to qualify, with a larger $80,000 price cap for SUVs, trucks, and vans compared to sedans, which are capped at $55,000 for eligibility.

Originally, the Treasury said it would use the US Environmental Protection Agency's Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency classification to determine what was a car and what was a light truck—a category that includes SUVs and vans but excluded crossovers like the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Cadillac Lyriq, the Volkswagen ID.4, and yes, the Tesla Model Y. (The seven-seater Model Y was classified as an SUV, however.)

Enlarge / Tesla Model Y electric vehicles in a lot at the Tesla Inc. Gigafactory in Gruenheide, Germany, on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2023. (credit: Liesa Johannssen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Barely three weeks after slashing its prices in order to qualify for federal tax incentives for clean vehicles, Tesla has increased the prices of some of its best-selling electric vehicles. At the beginning of January, a five-seat Tesla Model Y long-range crossover cost $65,990; on January 12 Tesla dropped this to $52,990. Now, that has gone up by $2,000 to $54,990. And the Model Y Performance saw its price drop from $69,990 to $56,990; today that same EV will cost $57,990.

The original price drops in January allowed the Model Y to qualify for new clean vehicle tax credits introduced in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Among other changes, the new tax credit regulations imposed a price cap on new EVs in order to qualify, with a larger $80,000 price cap for SUVs, trucks, and vans compared to sedans, which are capped at $55,000 for eligibility.

Originally, the Treasury said it would use the US Environmental Protection Agency's Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency classification to determine what was a car and what was a light truck—a category that includes SUVs and vans but excluded crossovers like the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Cadillac Lyriq, the Volkswagen ID.4, and yes, the Tesla Model Y. (The seven-seater Model Y was classified as an SUV, however.)

Enlarge (credit: zhengshun tang via Getty Images)

Big Tech companies are aggressively pursuing investments and alliances with artificial intelligence startups through their cloud computing arms, raising regulatory questions over their role as both suppliers and competitors in the battle to develop “generative AI.”

Google’s recent $300 million bet on San Francisco-based Anthropic is the latest in a string of cloud-related partnerships struck between nascent AI groups and the world’s biggest technology companies.

Anthropic is part of a new wave of young companies developing generative AI systems, sophisticated computer programs that can parse and write text and create art in seconds, that are rivaling those being built in-house by far larger companies such as Google and Amazon.

Enlarge (credit: zhengshun tang via Getty Images)

Big Tech companies are aggressively pursuing investments and alliances with artificial intelligence startups through their cloud computing arms, raising regulatory questions over their role as both suppliers and competitors in the battle to develop “generative AI.”

Google’s recent $300 million bet on San Francisco-based Anthropic is the latest in a string of cloud-related partnerships struck between nascent AI groups and the world’s biggest technology companies.

Anthropic is part of a new wave of young companies developing generative AI systems, sophisticated computer programs that can parse and write text and create art in seconds, that are rivaling those being built in-house by far larger companies such as Google and Amazon.