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If you were bummed that this fall's Creators Update for Windows 10 didn't include Microsoft's version of Handoff, we feel you. But if you're a Windows Insider Program member, there's good news: Timeline will soon be available to folks in the Fast Rin...

When it comes to multitasking, few UI upgrades were as helpful as browser tabs. Instead of juggling dozens of windows on your computer, they let you place multiple websites in a single pane. It's the sort of thing we take for granted today -- especia...

Samsung has launched an app that makes watching TV a more vibrant experience for people with color vision deficiency (CVD) -- the inability to distinguish certain shades of color (also known as color blindness). Through the SeeColors app, users can t...

Here’s some heavenly news for The Good Place: NBC just renewed the afterlife comedy for a third season.

The network announced on Tuesday that it has ordered 13 additional episodes of Michael Schur’s critical darling starring Ted Danson and Kristen Bell. In season 2, the show is averaging a 2.0 rating in the 18-to-49 demo and 6.2 million viewers (when factoring in a week of DVR playback). 

The Good Place — which also stars D’Arcy Carden, William Jackson Harper, Jameela Jamil and Manny Jacinto — unveiled its fall finale earlier this month, and returns to the schedule with its final five episodes of season 2 starting on Jan. 4.

NBC has already renewed This Is Us and Will & Grace for next season.

New Girl is coming back from the dead for a seventh and final season, thanks, in part, to Jake Johnson. The actor revealed how he joined some other cast members in pleading their case to Fox to green light more episodes after the initial planned finale.

“I was one of that wrote them and asked for more,” Johnson told TVLine of his efforts towards Dana Walden and Gary Newman, co-chairmen of the network. “I said, ‘I don’t think you gave us enough time to finish the show the right way. And I would really appreciate — and I think the fans would appreciate — a final goodbye to these characters.'”

Executive producers Dave Finkel and Brett Baer didn’t know what the fate of New Girl would be when EW interviewed them for the season 6 finale.

“Dave and I have been down this road before with a show called The United States of Tara… so we had to do the same thing, which is come up with a season finale that could serve as an adequate and satisfying, perfectly legitimate series finale should it be, but also leave the door open for coming back to do more,” Baer said. “It’s a tricky tightrope to walk and a hard one, but we did our best.”

“I’ve done a lot of projects — and some of the projects have fans and some don’t,” Johnson said “And to be on a television show that actually has a group of people who care .”

The cap on season 6 saw Jess (Zooey Deschanel) and Nick (Johnson) reigniting their relationship, Schmidt (Max Greenfield) and Cece (Hannah Simone) expecting, and Winston (Lamorne Morris) calling his father. The new season will consist of eight episodes and pick up four years in the future.

“I think it’s cool to do a time jump,” Johnson added. “I think we we were running in circles a little bit, so I think jumping forward . Everyone is a little further along .”

New Girl will return sometime in 2018.

CBS has given full season orders to Monday night comedies Man with a Plan and Superior Donuts.

The comedy series are both in their second season and have earned a full season pick-up on the heels of their sophomore premieres. Man with a Plan, which stars Matt LeBlanc, debuted Nov. 13, while Superior Donuts, featuring Jermaine Fowler and Judd Hirsch, launched Oct. 30.

Both shows will now run complete second seasons during the 2017-2018 broadcast year.

Man with a Plan marks LeBlanc’s return to network television after rising to fame as Joey Tribbiani on Friends and spin-off Joey and playing a fictional version of himself on Episodes to much acclaim.

Superior Donuts is a sitcom from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts that centers on an aging Polish proprietor of a donut shop and his young African-American employee.

Man with a Plan and Superior Donuts air Mondays at 8:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. respectively on CBS.

SPOILERS below for Justice League! You've been warned!

As has been widely chronicled by now, Justice League went underwent several weeks of reshoots during summer 2017 under the direction of Joss Whedon, who also receives a co-screenwriting credit on the final film.

While the exact percentage of how much the final film is Whedon's footage as opposed to original (and officially credited) director Zack Snyder's will likely remain a hotly contested subject, many of the scenes glimpsed in the early trailers -- along with several characters who were slated to appear in the film -- are definitely not in the final theatrical cut of Justice League.

Here's everything we caught that's missing in the final film of Justice League, starting with ...

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A Wrinkle in Time is a classic sci-fi novel that's being brought to the big screen by director Ava Duverney. The book, originally published in 1963, is by Madeleine L'Engle and features Meg Murry, a twelve-year-old girl who goes on a quest across the...

Last year, Russian scientist Igor Ashurbeyli announced the formation of Asgardia -- a new virtual nation that will ultimately exist entirely in space. Since its debut, Asgardia has attracted over 300,000 registrants, created a constitution and, as of...

At an event adjacent to SpaceX, the Tesla Semi (yes, that's its name) electric truck was introduced with the same pomp and circumstance the company uses for all its automobile launches. The tall, slick big rig follows the Tesla minimalist design lang...

At Tesla's Semi event, the automaker dropped its new Roadster. It'll have a 620-mile range via a 200kWh battery pack."You'll be able to travel from LA to San Francisco and back without recharging," CEO Elon Musk said. The new Tesla Roadster will do z...

There's no shortage of superheroes on Netflix, yet it's found room for a subversive spin on Hollywood's favourite genre, courtesy of Josh Gad. The streaming giant outbid Disney to nab the film, dubbed Super-Normal, according to The Hollywood Reporter...

With reshoots, post-production, new marketing material, and expanded availability for other stars, it will cost millions to replace Kevin Spacey in Ridley Scott's upcoming film.

It is no easy feat replacing an actor in an already-finished movie, but that is exactly what Ridley Scott and film financiers at Imperative Entertainment are doing with All The Money In The World, according to Variety. We already knew that Christopher Plummer would be replacing Spacey in the role of J. Paul Getty, and despite logistical difficulties, reshoots are only expected to take eight to 10 days.

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Just days ago, scientists found a previously undiscovered chamber inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. As it turns out, the makers of Assassin's Creed: Origins had the jump on them. As Kotaku's Stephen Totilo notes, the space itself is already built int...

Scientists have overcome huge barriers in the past year to get us even closer to nuclear fusion, and with it a near-limitless supply of clean energy. But, what if there's something far more powerful out there? According to researchers at Tel Aviv Uni...

If weird food trends (cronut, anyone?) have taught us anything it's that people are prepared to wait a long time for a seat at a restaurant, so whether you're visiting a popular local eatery or Time Out's latest gastro-pick, you're faced with two cho...

When Matrix co-founder Douglas Tham handed me my review unit of the PowerWatch, I had to fight the instinct to ask for a charger. This thermal-powered wearable doesn't need one -- it gets energy by converting your body heat into electricity. It's bee...

Star Trek: Discovery is doing pretty well, it seems, with CBS All Access bringing in record numbers of subscribers. In fact, the network has given the go-ahead for a second season of the latest Star Trek series. According to a report over at Deadline...

CBS wants to remind you that All Access doesn't just revolve around Star Trek: Discovery. It just premiered the trailer for its third All Access original series, the police comedy No Activity, ahead of its November 12th debut. The adaptation of an...

Battery-powered toothbrushes are convenient if you don't like brushing your teeth the old-fashioned way, but they have a catch: batteries. Typically, you either need to dock your brush (and remember to carry a charger with you on long trips) or toss...

Veteran Microsoft exec Julie Larson-Green is leaving the tech giant to explore new opportunities. During her almost 25 year stint at the company, Larson-Green really did see it all, making her way from Windows software to Xbox and Surface hardware. A...

Earlier this week, Netflix announced that the next (sixth) season of its show House of Cards would be its last -- and then suspended production -- when allegations emerged of sexual harassment by lead actor Kevin Spacey. Today, eight people who worke...

No, you weren't hallucinating -- the President's personal Twitter account was unplugged earlier this evening. It disappeared, and then reappeared without warning or reason, however now Twitter is offering an explanation. The account was "inadvertentl...

YouTube has been steadily improving its Kids app for youngsters lately, and now Mountain View is giving it a bit of a revamp. Parents will be able to create profiles for each of their kids now, and even better, they'll be accessible regardless of the...

The dark web is no longer just a marketplace for illicit drugs, weapons, and other nefarious material. Mainstream media and social networks, from The New York Times to Facebook, are also using it to give users an anonymous way to access their sites....

This is a non-spoiler review for all six episodes of Netflix's Alias Grace - adapted from Margaret Atwood's novel of the same name, premiering Friday, November 3rd.

Written with melancholy flair by Sarah Polley (Go, Dawn of the Dead) and directed with a tragic ghost story panache by Mary Harron (American Psycho), Alias Grace takes us into the enchanting, incarcerated mind of a 19th century celebrity "murderess" to experience her many indignities, sufferings, and endured cruelties in a deeply rich and layered murder mystery based on true events.

Margaret Atwood, of The Handmaid's Tale's fame, crafted a story -- a devilish narrative designed to unravel and mesmerize -- around the real-life case of Grace Marks. The teenage Irish immigrant maid was convicted in 1843, in Canada, of killing her employer (while suspected of also having a hand in the death of a fellow housekeeper during the same manic spree). Alias Grace is, all at once, a coming of age story, an immigrant tale, a "whodunnit?," and a chilling tragedy. It doesn't involve ghosts, but it is haunted in its own way. There's definitely a "presence" involved, a phantom feeling that permeates through the story - which is mostly, at its core, a collection of recollections.

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Oscar-nominated Ant-Man and The Wasp actor Laurence Fishburne has revealed he's working with Marvel on a different secret project.

Fishburne told Collider about the secret project which he pitched to Marvel before being cast as Bill Foster in the Ant-Man sequel.

“I’ve got Black-ish going on, I’m developing something else for Marvel that I can’t talk about. It’s gonna be really cool. It’s gonna change the world, we hope

. I went to Marvel and pitched them something that really couldn’t work out—there was a lot of legal red tape that just

something they couldn’t work out. But then they came back with the offer for Ant-Man and The Wasp and then they said, ‘Hey, what do you think of this?’ and I went ‘Oh yeah that, yes!’ so…”

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If House of Cards comes back for its planned sixth and final season, it won't happen on Netflix with Kevin Spacey attached. After accusations of sexual misconduct surfaced yesterday from crew members working on the show, the streaming video company i...

Western Digital has started to ship its new HGST Ultrastar Hs14 hard drives, promoted as being suitable for cloud datacenters and for hyperscale developments. The capacity increase from its predecessor, the Ultrastar Ha10, from 10TB to 14 TB offers a significant performance improvement. The new 14 TB HDD is based on shingled magnetic recording technology, which is a system that naturally focuses more on sequential write performance. These drives will only be available with host management, which means it will not be available to general consumers, but only to select customers of HGST. 

The HGST Ultrastar Hs14 relies on Western Digital’s fourth-generation HelioSeal enterprise platform which integrates eight platters and features various internal components specially designed for such hard drives. The new helium-filled HDD has a 7200 RPM spindle speed, a 512 MB cache. and numerous enhancements when it comes to reliability and durability of the drive. As with other HGST enterprise-class HDDs, the Ultrastar Hs14 is rated for 2.5 million hours MTBF and comes with a five-year warranty.

Unlike the Ultrastar He12, which is based on the same fourth-gen HelioSeal platform, the Ultrastar Hs14 uses shingled magnetic recording (SMR) and thus has a number of peculiarities when it comes to re-writing. As described numerous times here at AnandTech, HDDs featuring SMR increase their bit density by recording new magnetic tracks and partly overlapping the previously recorded tracks in a 'shingle' fashion. This process is usually suitable for sequential writes, but as multiple tracks need to be adjusted when re-writes occur, this will slow down the rewriting process

Unlike its rival Seagate, Western Digital does not incorporate any special features into the SMR-based HDDs that mitigate peculiarities of the recording technology, but requires their hosts to manage writing process on such drives. This naturally reduces addressable market of such HDDs to a relatively limited number of companies who run cloud and hyperscale datacenters and which can optimize their software for particular hardware. When it comes to the HGST Ultrastar Hs14, Western Digital explicitly says that the drive was designed specifically for sequential write environments, such as archives and content delivery networks: basically data that is not updated frequently (if at all).

The Ultrastar Hs14 drive comes with 1.75 TB platters and therefore can offer a significantly higher sustained transfer rate than its predecessor, the Ultrastar Ha10, which relied on 1.42 TB platters. Meanwhile, the improvements offered by the Hs14 vs. the Ha10 are not limited to higher areal density.

First off, the Ultrastar Hs14 comes with a 512 MB DRAM buffer for indirection table management, which is double the size of the Ha10. For sustained performance, HGST claims that the new Ultrastar Hs14 drive offers 233 MB/s read/write performance, which is a 48% increase over the Ha10 when it comes to reads and nearly 3.5x increase when it comes to writes (note that the areal density of the Hs14 increased by 24%). The manufacturer does not want to share all of its secrets but claims that with its first-gen host-managed SMR drive it had to make a tradeoff between performance and reliability which resulted in a rather low read and write speeds. In particular, the Ultrastar Ha10 performs 100% read verify of previous track after all write commands to ensure that the previous tracks was not destroyed at sequential write (due to a narrower track than a conventional PMR HDD). Therefore each write operation requires several revolutions to complete. The company called this tech “Write Verify”. Meanwhile, the new Ultrastar Hs14 no longer does 100% verification, but only does read verify a previous track when the drive sees a failure at write command. So, if there are no write failures, the drive moves to next track write and therefore has an improved write performance (and since it does not have to perform a read operation, its read speeds are also higher). The company calls the new tech “Intelligent Write Verify”. Since the Ultrastar Hs14 works differently than the predecessor, the new drive also reduces average read seek time to 7.7 ms, down from 8.5 ms in case of its predecessor.

With the new Ultrastar Hs14 design characteristics, the company is shipping with an MTBF of 2.5 million hours at sustained performance levels that people expect from enterprise-class drives. Operating power consumption of the Ultrastar Hs14 (SATA) was reduced to 6.4 W, down from 7.6 W in case of the Ultrastar Ha10.

HGST Ultrastar Hs14 General Specifications
		HSH721414ALE6M0 HSH721414ALE6M4 HSH721414ALN6M0 HSH721414ALN6M4	HSH721414AL52M0 HSH721414AL52M4 HSH721414AL42M0 HSH721414AL42M4
Capacity		14 TB
RPM		7200 RPM
Interface		SATA 6 Gbps	SAS 12 Gbps
DRAM Cache		512 MB
Format: Sector Sizes		4Kn: 4096 512e: 512	4Kn: 4096, 4112, 4160, 4224 512e: 512, 520, 528
Helium-Filling		Yes
Areal Density		1034 Gbit/inch2
Sustained Transfer Rate		233 MB/s
Average Latency		4.16 ms
Seek Time (read/write)		7.7/12 ms
Acoustics		2.0/3.6 Bels
Power Rating	Idle	5.2 W	6.2 W
	Operating	6.4 W	8.3 W
MTBF		2.5 million hours
Warranty		5 Years

Since the HGST Ultrastar Hs14 HDDs are aimed at customers with software optimized for SMR, the first clients to be interested in the new drives will be operators of cloud and hyperscale datacenters who already run the Ultrastar Ha10 hard drives. For them, the new drives open up an opportunity to increase their storage capacity by 40% without increasing their power consumption, without expanding the footprint of the datacenter, and changing other hardware.

Performance Specifications of HGST Ultrastar Hs14 vs. Ultrastar Ha10
		Ultrastar Hs14	Ultrastar Ha10
Capacity		14 TB	10 TB
RPM		7200 RPM
Interface		SATA 6 Gbps
DRAM Cache		512 MB	256 MB
Helium-Filling		Yes
Areal Density		1034 Gbit/inch2	830 Gbit/inch2
Sustained Transfer Rate	Read	233 MB/s	157 MB/s
	Write	233 MB/s	68 MB/s
Average Latency		4.16 ms
Seek Time (read/write)		7.7/12 ms	8.5/? ms
Power Rating	Idle	5.2 W	5.1 W
	Operating	6.4 W	7.6 W
Power consumption efficiency at Idle		0.37 W/TB	0.57 W/TB
MTBF		2.5 million hours	2 million hours
Warranty		5 Years

Western Digital is currently sampling its HGST Ultrastar Hs14 with select OEMs and is qualifying them with customers. It will ship them commercially when its clients demand the new 14 TB HDDs. Regular consumers will not be able to buy the new Ultrastar Hs14 HDDs and will not be able to take advantage of it until mainstream operating systems learn how to 'host-manage' SMR drives. In the meantime, WD Gold drives of 12 TB and 10 TB capacities are available from retailers like Amazon and Newegg.

Related Reading

• Western Digital Ships 12 TB WD Gold HDD: 8 Platters and Helium
• Western Digital Starts Shipments of HGST Ultrastar He12 12 TB HDDs
• Western Digital Announces Ultrastar He12 12 TB and 14 TB HDDs
• Western Digital: Sales of Helium-Filled HDDs Accelerating, 15M Sold So Far

Earlier this year, Razer bought the smartphone company Nextbit, so it should perhaps not come as much of a surprise to see the gaming-focused company step into the smartphone market, but Razer wants to bring more than just another 'me too' Android phone. Today the company is launching the Razer Phone with a couple of industry firsts, which is impressive considering the competition in the smartphone space.

One of the first questions we asked the Razer engineers is 'how can one design a phone specifically for gaming - what features would it have over and above other devices out there?'. This seems like an obvious question, however it was greeted with a good answer: Razer has designed the phone for prolonged use to maintain high frame rates. Most modern smartphones that use either the Snapdragon 835 (like the Razer), an Exynos 8890, a Kirin 960/970 or a MediaTek chip will have an immediate turbo profile for the CPU and GPU, and depending on the design, will at some point jump to a lower frequency in order to maintain an appropriate thermal profile. Razer has stated that they have built their design to maintain the top frequencies for as long as possible: where other devices throttle after 2-10 minutes, Razer's engineers say that their device should have a much better frequency response to external thermals - we're invited to test when we get a sample to see how long it can sustain those higher clocks.

Razer Phone, aka 'Project Cheryl'
SoC	Qualcomm Snapdragon 835
RAM	8GB dual-channel LPDDR4-1600
Storage	Internal: 64GB UFS External microSD class 10 2TB max
Display	5.7" IGZO LCD 2560x1440 120 Hz Ultramotion Wide Color Gamut Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Rear Cameras	12MP AF f/1.75 Wide 12MP AF f/2.6 Zoom Dual PDAF Dual-tone, dual-LED Flash
Front Camera	8MP f/2.0
Sound	Stereo front facing speakers Dual amplifiers USB-C Audio Adapter with THX certified DAC
Power	4000 mAh battery Qualcomm QuickCharge 4.0+
Wireless	802.11ac Bluetooth 4.2 NFC
Bands	GSM: Quad-band GSM UMTS: B1/2/3/4/5/8 LTE:B1/2/3/4/5/7/8/12/17/19/20/25/26/28/29/30/66 TDD LTE: B38/39/40/41 TD-SCDMA: B34/39
Dimensions	158.5 x 77.7 x 8 mm 6.24 x 3.06 x 0.31 in
Weight	197 grams
OS	Android Nougat 7.1.1
Price	$699
Availability	Pre-orders on Nov-1 Shipping from 17-Nov

The Razer Phone will feature a 5.72-inch display, but with Razer’s roots, it shouldn’t be a big surprise to see them wanting to one-up the competition here. Razer has long used Sharp IGZO LCD panels in its laptops, and the Razer Phone continues that trend with a 5.72-inch IGZO LCD with a 2560x1440 resolution, which works out to just over 500 pixels per inch. That should be plenty sharp for almost any application, and due to it being LCD there shouldn’t be any issues with subpixels like you see in OLED. Also to appeal to gamers, the Razer Phone is the first shipping smartphone to have a screen that can run a 120 Hz refresh rate. The faster refresh rate should help smooth out animations, and gameplay, but because 120 Hz would be a power draw if used all the time, it also supports variable refresh to lower the refresh rate down to 30 Hz. The display also supports a wide color gamut, and is protected by Gorilla Glass 3 from Corning.

Powering the Razer Phone is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, which we’ve seen in most of the high-end smartphones this year. Razer is turning up the notch a bit though, with 8 GB of LPDDR4 1600 MHz RAM. The combination should provide plenty of performance, as well as great multitasking. There’s 64 GB of UFS internal storage, and microSD support for an additional 2 TB of storage. Implementation of the SoC, including the power profiles, and cooling capabilities, can all play into how the phone performs, so we'll hopefully get a chance to review this and see how they did.

Just over a year ago, Razer also acquired the majority of THX assets, and Razer has been applying their audio knowledge to some of their products already, but the Razer Phone is the first smartphone to bear the THX certification. In this case, Razer is offering a THX certified DAC for external audio, which will be available as a USB-C adapter since the Razer phone doesn’t offer a headset jack. Apparently, this is the new normal now, so RIP 3.5mm on phones. But the company also wanted to provide a great sound experience for local playback, and they’ve included stereo front-facing speakers, which feature dual-amplifiers. The company said on the briefing that they wanted to provide the best audio experience from a phone, so we look forward to checking it out.

Smartphones have to also be great cameras to even be considered at the high-end of the market, and Razer has chosen to ape the camera hardware from the iPhone, with dual 12 MP rear cameras. One offers a f/1.75 wide angle, and the other offers a f/2.6 zoom lens. It offers phase-detection auto-focus, and a dual-tone dual-LED flash. The front camera is an 8 MP f/2.0 camera.

Razer wanted great battery life as well, so they packed in a 4000 mAh battery, and to get it charged quickly, they are the first smartphone to offer Qualcomm QuickCharge 4.0+. The phone is shipping with Android 7.1.1, although not much was said about Android 8in the future.

Despite offering a premium smartphone in 2017, Razer is actually coming in with a price under what some of the competition is asking. The Razer Phone is available for pre-order today for $699, and shipments will start on November 17th. They'll also be offering a special edition model, replacing the muted gray Razer logo with the more customary green version.

Source: Razer