SanDisk Releases 4TB SD Card
SanDisk, a Western Digital brand, recently released the industry’s first SD card with a capacity of 4TB at an industry trade show and is expected to be available in 2025, according to AnandTech. The product, SanDisk Extreme Pro SDUC 4TB, supports SDUC standard, UHS-I interface, and Class 10 speed, which can reach a maximum data transfer rate of 104MB/s. It also supports Video Speed Class V30 standard, which can reach a sequential write speed of no less than 30MB/s to meet the needs of 8K video recording. Video Speed Class V30 standard is supported. The press release does not mention whether the product supports DDR208, the private mode previously seen in the 1TB model, which can achieve read rates of up to 170MB/s, provided the device is compatible. Pricing for the product has not been announced. For reference, the current price of the 1TB SanDisk Extreme Pro is around $140.
Hackers Tried to Trick employees by Using AI to Impersonate LastPass CEO
Password manager LastPass has revealed that hackers launched a voice-phishing attack on its employees, using deeply-faked audio to impersonate its CEO Karim Toubba, but failed to do so due to employee vigilance, Bleeping Computer reports. LastPass said its employees were alerted and reported the incident after noticing that the caller was using WhatsApp to initiate contact, rather than the usual work communication channels, and that the communication reflected typical social engineering tactics, such as falsely stating that the situation was urgent. The audio used in this attack was likely generated using the Deepfake audio model and trained using a public recording of the LastPass CEO as source material.
Windows 11 Testing Addition of Start Menu Ads
On April 12, Microsoft announced in an update note on the Windows Insider Blog that the newly released Beta Channel Preview 22635.3495 will test the inclusion of ads in the Start Menu’s “Recommended” field, showcasing recommended apps from the Microsoft Store. Currently, the ads are only shown to users in the United States and are not available on commercial devices. Users who don’t want to see the ads can head to System Settings and turn off the ‘Show tips, app promotions, and other suggestions’ switch in the Start Menu settings. Microsoft says it will be collecting feedback on this, so it’s unclear if things will change in the final release.
On a related note, Microsoft has intentionally blocked some well-known third-party UI customization tools in the upcoming Windows 11 24H2 release. Running tools such as StartAllBack and ExplorerPatcher on 24H2 will see a warning and be organized to run. However, the blocking is actually based on the filename, so just change the exe program to another name and it will work as usual.
Apple News
The first AI features Apple plans to introduce in iOS 18 will not be networked and will run entirely natively, according to Mark Gurman’s claims. iOS 18 is not expected to include Apple’s own ChatGPT-like features, but it’s not clear if it will integrate AI chat based on Gemini or other models. iOS 18’s AI features could benefit Spotlight Search, Siri, Safari, Quick Commands, Apple Music, Messages, Health, iWork apps, and more; for example, improving Siri’s ability to answer more complex questions and providing sentence autocompletion in messages.
According to Mark Gurman, Apple is proposing to release the M4 line of Macs according to the following schedule:
MacBook Pro 14″ M4, released around the end of 2024
iMac 24″ M4 released late 2024 to early 2025
MacBook Pro 14″/16″ M4 Pro/Max released late 2024 to early 2025
Mac mini M4/M4 Pro released late 2024 to early 2025
MacBook Air 13″/15″ M4 released around Spring 2025
Mac Studio M4 high-end model released around mid-2025
Mac Pro M4 Ultra released late 2025
Published by Tony Shepherd & last updated on April 15, 2024 3:02 am
