Gadgetory

everyone welcome back to another hardware news recap this is probably one of the the last news episodes we'll be filming for the year but it's got some pretty fun items for example if you're a fan of Internet Service Providers which everybody is shorter the company that operates the spectrum just got slapped with a 174 million dollar settlement so that might be some good news for the end of the year to make you a bit happy and if that's not enough nann prices could be going down by about 10 percent in 2019 which will affect as the steep prices but there's not all good news and these losing more talent and then RGB software has opened attack vectors for malware suitable before that this video is brought to you by US and the gamers access store you can go to store it on cameras nexus net to pick up one of our ceramic mugs critically acclaimed mod mats or educational video card tear down and PCB Anatomy posters that teach the names and placements of all the key PCB components learn more at store des cameras XS net or click the link below let's start with the good news and that will move to the the really good news which is the chartered fine or settlement so the good news first nande prices we've already seen sharp decline in SSD prices for the latter half of this year it's been pretty good for the SSD market overall despite the RAM market for most of the year being on a sharp incline for price so SSDs if you hadn't noticed around Black Friday they were 120 850 bucks for a pretty decent one terabyte SSD which up until this year was more or less impossible to find on something that was reliable that's continuing though DRAM exchange which is one of the most reliable predictors for market prices and they have actual costs pricing to not just consumer pricing but cost to manufacturers DRAM exchange predicts that prices could continue to decline in early 2019 and that's thanks to bit output being higher than anticipated for 2018 manufacturers have also seen a steady implementation of 64 layer yield or they've seen their yields for 64 layer nand increase which is good and there's been more sluggish demand than expected in other segments of the flash market which in this instance benefits us because it drives down cost typically with a dram you might see some some kind of maybe artificial artificial limitations of the supply but this all has led to the market being an oversupply currently and that oversupply is expected to intensify in first quarter 2019 so DRAM exchange expects that client SSD markets will fall by as much as 10% and this is as demand grows more sluggish over time even among the increase in SSD adoption rate for desktop computers DRAM exchange also cites the ongoing china-us trade situation and the Intel CPU shortage and then week notebook shipments along with slow sales of the new iPhone all being key areas that are affecting the NAND pricing and output leading to oversupply and pretty much all of those aforementioned sectors so down news here if you're if you're an Andy fan and he continues to lose talent we've been covering this sort of Andy brain drain over the last couple weeks now but for most of the year Andy's been cycling and new people specifically into the RTG team the Radeon graphics group and the CPU side has been doing well overall hasn't been too much turn over there and rise ins obviously been a great change for Andy but RTG has been struggling a bit for for talent in the last year just recently andy lost a former reviewer damien trio leigh and lost him to Intel they of last year around this time lost Raja Kaduri to Intel Chris hooked to Intel and so forth this time it's Mike gray field buddy's not going to Intel so Mike gray field announced his retirement from the company Rayfield served as the senior vice president and general manager of RTG Rayfield also headed up the group after Roger Kaduri laughs for Intel and has been as replacements since Andy released the following statement saying mike is retiring at the end of the year he made the decision to spend more time with his family and pursue personal passions David Wayne will be the interim lead for Radeon technologies group while we finalized search for a new business leader and unlike others it seems like ray field hasn't been poached by Intel although as a note Tom's Hardware further reports Rayfield is not actively seeking employment so this is more of an instance of just genuinely stepping out but they're gonna replace him at some point we'll try and keep you updated on who that may be does AMD needs to bring on some some people on the GPU architecture side or the SVP side charter this one's a there's a good uplifting story so Charter was slapped with a one hundred and seventy four point two million dollar settlement by New York and some time back we reported on charter which operates spectrum formerly Time Warner Cable being booted out of the state of New York for fraudulent activity so fraudulent claims and poor customer service were cited in the initial lawsuit brought against charter by the state of New York and the Attorney General and this is an ongoing lawsuit that was well it's originally when we reported on this may be called months ago this story was you're getting kicked out of New York and that's evolved too you're getting kicked out of New York unless as we understand it you pay these fines and implement these service changes that are very significant and if you haven't been paying attention to this one spectrum or charter whatever has agreed to pay a hundred seventy four point two million dollars in settlement and it's a record for any ISP in terms of customer payouts which is good they can still probably afford more but it's a good first step so the settlement will see charter pay 75 to 150 dollars each and refunds to customers and which well I guess you could take what you get at this point and that's in addition to customers receiving free premium channels and streaming services for the hooded Time Charter will also have to reframe the way they market their services and this is the bigger deal here so marketing for example needs to no longer be fraudulent and incorrect has to actually be based in reality and also marketing services now they are required to say that they're wired for the speeds that are wired and that Wireless may be variable of course and also have to perform routine speed tests as an audit and report them back attorney Jen all barbara de Underwood had this to say in a statement about the lawsuit quote not only is this the largest ever consumer payout by an Internet service provider returning tens of millions of dollars to New Yorkers who were ripped off and provided an additional streaming and premium channels as restitution but also sets a new standard for how internet providers should fairly market their services and Charter was penalized for a few things but the chief among them was quote defrauding Internet subscribers and they'll be paying out sixty two point five million dollars directly to customers as restitution with the difference being split in two mandated free services for customers different kind of thoughts on that in a moment Charter was under requirement also to bring higher speed internet to the state of New York failed to deliver on that promise and then fraudulently marketed their services to promote things that were never provided and that's where the lawsuit started the Attorney General stated quote fulfill your promises were pay the price noting that this is a quote wake-up call for ISPs the restitution is listed on the AG's website for customers and is required for the following infractions one leasing and inadequate modem two leasing an inadequate wireless router three subscribing to a Time Warner Cable legacy speed plan of 100 megabits per second or higher then they have a couple of other infractions listed on that site as well so if you want something for to uplift your spirits maybe you don't particularly like Time Warner Cable or a spectrum then I would encourage you to read the AG's posting because it'll probably probably leave you a bit happy after that so spectrums gonna be paying out now we'll see what happens one issue that that we kind of have with the free premium services is that some of them are free channels for a month so more free channels for three months ultimately what's gonna happen is people are gonna like that service that something I subscribed to it so probably like usual the ISPs going to end up in a better situation than where they started despite having to pay millions of dollars and fines but it's a start so we'll take it where we can get it and you can check the AG website for more on that next up TSMC to build a facility for three nanometer semiconductor manufacturing as Taiwan news reports TSMC has been clear through China's EPA to begin construction on a new facility that will primarily focus on three a nanometer fabrication this is a nineteen billion dollar project that is slated to begin in 2022 at present and the three nanometer fab will occupy the same vicinity as TSM sees five nanometer site and currently that is under construction so they'll have a few projects going at once the five nanometer site is expected to be up and running in about a year at this point maybe maybe a year and a half and the the three nanometer site will be in 2022 so allegedly in order to swing the Chinese EPA on the project tsmc made a few concessions and among those tsmc vowed that the site will be renewable or more renewable than most in terms of energy tsmc stated that the new fab will use 20 percent renewable energy and will use 50 percent recycled water for its silicon fabrication of water is a pretty big cost in these fabrication facilities and then finally this one well this is a bit of an i-told-you-so moment about RGB RGB software which we are of course massive fans of as you've seen over the years that's that's not true if you're new here RGB software opening up attack vectors if you remember spectra and melt down and how profound those vulnerabilities were the same team that worked on discovering some of those Google's project zero turned its attention towards software for peripherals it's a bit of a bit of a step down in terms of achievements from the biggest known exploit ever to affect silicon but it's still an important one because RGB is the next biggest infectious disease that has affected the industry so first reported by Google's project zero there's a critical flaw in Logitech options the software is called that allows hackers to gain remote access through the software by opening an unauthorized WebSocket port and the vulnerability was reported to logitech back in September as part of Google's security teams policies they reveal these exploits to the companies first and then publicly later logitech hasn't well they just implemented a fix so they hadn't until now and after the vulnerability was made public is when he saw that update so if you're using that software you should download the update because otherwise you're at risk of a security vulnerability additionally secure auth found vulnerabilities in seven drivers affecting Asus and gigabyte motherboards software the vulnerability is according to secure auth and their research will allow two attackers to gain escalated permissions they will allow them to take control of the system and run non trusted code and according to the report communication with ACS and gigabyte has been less than fruitful and many of the vulnerabilities remain unaddressed can't say we're surprised about that but if you think about it though from a serious standpoint RGB software by and large already has access to Hardware it's got permissions to do pretty much anything that wants to do in your system at a low level and so that is a very smart vector to exploit as an attacker because it's probably not that secure it's not like it's windows or Intel and it's it's probably widespread and it has access to hardware so key loggers would be a good example of something that might be a concern there so anyway if you have any of that software annoy them on Twitter and see if maybe they'll fix it but otherwise those are unaddressed and Logitech has fixed it's a lot of options so that's good to see one last news item we're shoving in here at last last minute here because it's in the middle of working on the Titan RT extra view when we got news that now a PC perspective which recently lost editor-in-chief and found a Ryan trout to Intel now it looks like Alan mal ventano and Ken Addison are leaving PC / as well for Intel's work in Ryan's team so just wanted to include that because pc / has been one of the the leading technical publications in the space that has remained bound to primarily written articles but they've had a podcast as well and Alan is has been one of the leading storage reviewers in the entire industry as far as we're concerned he was our primary go-to source for storage questions ssds or otherwise ken had taken over for Ryan after Ryan departed from PC per couple about a month or two ago so it's interesting PC / will be now placing sebastian peak as editor-in-chief were not familiar with Sebastian's work to the extent as the other folks who have left PC / but we wish him luck there and we just wanted to point out that it looks like int Intel strategy of media relations is just to hire the entire organization but so yeah Ryan Allen and Ken best of luck to all of you in your new role at Intel new roles at Intel and Sebastian best of luck to you at PC / and for anyone who might be starting to think I'm not going anywhere so don't worry about that but that's it for this one so as always you can go to Stuart I can razaaq's at net to help us out directly if you want to pick up something like the shirt I'm wearing or you can go to patreon.com/scishow and Nexus tops out there as well subscribe for more will have Titan reviews coming up shortly that you were watching I'll see you all next time