Crucially, the difference in flash access speeds is not advertised by Apple; buyers are kept in the dark. It's a little detail the iGiant would rather you didn't know.

The eightfold speed difference is probably due to the 256GB model using eight blobs of 32GB of flash in parallel. That's very convenient for Apple. That design decision means that for the fastest storage memory, you have to make a larger donation to the Temple of Apple. Your pennies will not do.

HP Inc. today said it will restore the ability of certain OfficeJet printers to use third-party ink cartridges, after being criticized for issuing a firmware update that rejects non-HP ink.

This customer-friendly move may just be a one-time thing. HP said it will continue to use security features that "protect our IP including authentication methods that may prevent some third-party supplies from working."

Thousands of HP printers around the world started to show error messages on the same day, the 13th of September 2016.

It’s very unlikely that a firmware update caused the issues and the only other logical explanation is that HP programmed a date in its firmware on which non-HP cartridges would no longer be accepted.

A temporarily workaround is flashing firmware from 2014 but, according to 123inkt, this can’t be easily performed by regular consumers. The retailer calls for HP to at least make the old firmware available to its customers.

Today, that leftover tape can now help us stave off a webcam hack—at least an attack that secretly films unsuspecting computer users. That's what James Comey, the Federal Bureau of Investigation director, said Wednesday. In April, he told Americans that he puts tape on his webcam.

Tape probably won't stop a nefarious hacker from listening to you, however. And toward that advanced goal, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg has also covered his computer microphone with tape. However, there's still no consensus among security experts about how effective that measure is, because adjusting a microphone's gain may still allow attackers to pick up ambient sounds.

According to Sophos, Seagate Central devices contain a public folder accessible to all users, even anonymous non-logged-in users, which can't be deactivated or deleted.

One of the files it copies is called Photo.scr, a script file that malware coders have modified to use a standard Windows folder icon.

Because Windows has a bad habit of hiding file extensions, whenever the device owner accesses their NAS, they see this file as a folder, fooled by the fake icon.

Luckily, Andrew Tierney and Ken Munro, the two security researchers who created the ransomware, actually have no ill intention. They just wanted to make a point: some Internet of Things devices fail to take simple security precautions, leaving users in danger.

“It actually works, it locks the thermostat,” Munro, who last year found that a Samsung smart fridge leaked Gmail passwords, said sitting next to three thermostats that were displaying the famous quote from the movie Hackers: “Hack The Planet.”

Apart from the 12-inch MacBook, which was refreshed in April, every single Mac line from the mini to the Pro is designated as "Don’t Buy" because of how long it’s been since Apple updated them.

The Mac mini has gone 657 days since its last update, which was controversial in itself since Apple removed quad-core options and made the product harder to upgrade after purchase.

Seagate thinks it can grow and profit from the world's expanding need for storage for reliably increasing exabytes-shipped demand, which flash has no hope of significantly denting in the next five to ten years.

In Seagate's view, the high-capacity disk sweet spot is 8TB over the next few quarters, and it has a cost advantage as its air-filled 8TB drive has fewer heads and platters than WD's 8TB helium-filled drive. Western Digital thinks it will be a 10TB sweet spot instead.

Another day, another rumor that Apple is going to ditch the headphone jack on the next iPhone in favor of sending out audio over Lightning.

But just face facts: ditching the headphone jack on phones makes them worse, in extremely obvious ways.

Announcing his decision in a blog post Friday, the head and cofounder of the smart home company now owned by Google parent Alphabet and most famous for its thermostat, said his decision was "bittersweet" but that now was the right time to leave.

But the real clash came when Nest inexplicable decided to end support for a smart home control product it has bought, Revolv. That decision effectively bricked the hardware leaving customers fuming and causing a culture clash with its stablemate Google.