Month: February 2023

Enlarge / Samsung's T7 portable SSD works with computers, Android tablets, and the iPad Pro. (credit: Samsung)

Samsung is currently running a sale on a handful of its best storage solutions and wearables that matches their all-time low prices. We’ve featured all of them in various guides and deal posts for their solid performance and pricing, especially with discounts.

Ars Technica may earn compensation for sales from links on this post through affiliate programs.

Samsung T7 Shield portable SSD: 1TB for $90 ($100), 2TB for $150 ($180)

Samsung’s original T series portable SSD has been a top pick of ours for years. The latest T7 improves speeds by nearly double over its predecessor, the T5. In our testing, we found that the T5 lived up to its hype in both speed and reliability. The T7 ups read and write speeds to 1,050MB/s and 1,000MB/s, respectively.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

One of the biggest hospital chains in the US said hackers obtained protected health information for 1 million patients after exploiting a vulnerability in an enterprise software product called GoAnywhere.

Community Health Systems of Franklin, Tennessee, said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday that the attack targeted GoAnywhere MFT, a managed file transfer product Fortra licenses to large organizations. The filing said that an ongoing investigation has so far revealed that the hack likely affected 1 million individuals. The compromised data included protected health information as defined by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, as well as patients’ personal information.

Two weeks ago, journalist Brian Krebs said on Mastodon that cybersecurity firm Fortra had issued a private advisory to customers warning that the company had recently learned of a “zero-day remote code injection exploit” targeting GoAnywhere. The vulnerability has since gained the designation CVE-2023-0669. Fortra patched the vulnerability on February 7 with the release of 7.1.2.

Enlarge (credit: Tom Williams / Contributor | CQ-Roll Call, Inc.)

Today, the Biden administration announced new standards for expanding the national electric vehicle (EV) charging network in order to encourage widespread EV adoption by providing a "predictable" user experience. All charging stations will soon be required to adopt the same connector types, payment methods, and data privacy assurances. These new standards have pushed Tesla, for the first time, to make part of its proprietary charging network compatible with non-Tesla EVs in the United States.

Joining other industry stakeholders in supporting Biden’s goal to build 500,000 EV chargers nationwide by 2030, Tesla has pledged to make "at least 7,500 chargers available for all EVs by the end of 2024," Biden’s announcement said. This will include 3,500 new and existing 250 kW "superchargers" along highway corridors and 4,000 slower “destination chargers” at hotels and restaurants in urban and rural areas.

Any EV driver should be able to use the Tesla app or website to access these charging stations, but it’s currently unclear how Tesla will adapt its charging network to comply with new connector-type standards. The most widely used connector type is the Combined Charging System (CCS), and Reuters reported that any company hoping to secure a portion of $7.5 billion in federal funding for Biden’s EV initiative would have to adopt the CCS standard. A White House official said that Tesla would be adopting the CCS standard, already has "a hardware and a software solution" to do so, and could qualify for state funding to retrofit its charger network, Reuters reported. Earlier this year, InsideEVs reported that Tesla’s solution could be a mysterious “Magic Dock” to retrofit Tesla charging stations to charge non-Tesla EVs. No one's sure exactly how the Magic Dock would work yet.

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Last year Google Fiber announced it was kind of coming back to life. For years, the service—which had Google roll into a town, lay down miles of fiber-optic cable, and start competing with the local ISP monopoly—had "paused" further expansion. Now, for whatever reason, Fiber is back, and the company is offering a new high of 5 gigabits per second.

Of course the downside to Google Fiber is always the very limited rollout area. Google says 5 Gig service is coming to "Kansas City, West Des Moines, and all our Utah cities," and that's it. Google Fiber announced plans last year to roll out to five new states eventually but has no plans to ever reach a wide rollout.

If you live in one of the blessed Fiber cities, the service sounds great, though. That's 5Gbps symmetrical, so 5Gbps download and upload speeds, which is a massive improvement over something like Comcast and its ~35MB upload speeds. If you're a content creator, developer, or, especially, someone who regularly generates 4K video, normal ISP upload speeds can be crippling. Google's 5Gbps service is $125 a month, which includes a professionally installed 10 Gig fiber modem and "a Wi-Fi 6 router and two mesh extenders."

Enlarge / A World Health Organisation (WHO) alert team takes out a body in Nganakamana village near Uige on April 26, 2005. In outbreaks of viral haemorrhagic fevers, including Marburg, unprotected exposure to dead bodies is a significant cause of further spread. (credit: Getty | Christopher Black)

Health officials are racing to stamp out a rare and concerning outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in Equatorial Guinea, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

The outbreak, first confirmed Monday, is the country's first ever from Marburg. The virus is a relative of Ebola and has similar transmission (via direct contact and bodily fluids), hemorrhagic disease symptoms, and alarmingly high fatality rates.

So far, there have been nine deaths linked to the outbreak, which stretches back to January. One of the deaths has been confirmed as being from Marburg virus disease, while eight others are considered suspected. They appear to be in the same transmission chain, but officials were unable to obtain samples to confirm the infections.

Enlarge / Western Digital's My Book Duo has two 3.5-inch HDDs inside. (credit: Western Digital)

Western Digital today announced bigger-capacity versions of its My Book and dual-drive My Book Duo external hard disk drives (HDDs). The new 22TB and 44TB offerings represent some of the roomiest consumer offerings the company has ever offered.

Targeting people needing large-scale options and prioritizing price per GB over speed, the new external storage devices consist of one (in the case of the 22TB My Book) or two (My Book Duo) 3.5-inch drives. Western Digital's announcement today said the 22TB My Book is its "highest capacity consumer drive ever," but, as noted by Tom's Hardware, the company started selling 22TB network-attached storage (NAS) drives ($400 MSRP as of writing) in July. But with the My Book line offering the components neatly packed into an enclosure and ready to live on top of a desk as backup storage, the series has broader appeal.

The My Book measures 5.48×1.93×6.72 inches and now goes up to 22TB. (credit: Western Digital)

The My Book Duo, which Western Digital had already been selling in 16TB to 36TB capacities, also adds ports to your setup. It has a USB-C port supporting up to 5Gbps for connecting to systems and also gives you two USB-A ports.