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Tom's Hardware tested two sub-$400 Thunderbolt 5 docks with built-in M.2 SSD slots: the $349 VectoTech V-Core and the $399 Orico TB5. Both include USB and Thunderbolt ports plus 2.5GbE Ethernet, but the review found the V-Core's mostly plastic build and flimsy top cover compared unfavorably to typical aluminum dock construction, with a single review ultimately favoring one product over the other.
Boox has begun taking preorders for the Picco, a credit-card-sized ereader with a 3.94-inch monochrome ePaper display and 235 PPI resolution, weighing about 58 grams. It starts at $100, ships in November, includes a 16GB microSD card expandable to 2TB, page-turn buttons, touchscreen controls, four-way orientation, and an adjustable warm/cool front light, plus a magnetic ring case for attaching to a phone.
A tutorial outlines how to repurpose an old MacBook as a home Network Attached Storage device, ranging from simple macOS sharing features to more advanced Linux-based setups. It recommends resetting the Mac to factory settings, updating to the most stable macOS version, using external drives for storage, and connecting via Ethernet for reliability. For Intel Macs with HDMI output, a headless display plug and the free Amphetamine app are suggested to keep the GPU active and prevent sleep.
A technical essay examines how Amazon S3 and similar cloud object stores, built around spinning-disk economics from two decades ago, now underpin most modern data architectures including data lakes, Kafka alternatives, and vector databases. The author notes S3's per-request throughput and latency limits stem from disk physics, forcing developers to add caching layers, batch writes, and separate metadata stores to work around them. The piece highlights that SSD prices have fallen steadily since S3's 2005 launch, narrowing the cost gap with hard disks to about 3x.
Several Pixel 10 Pro and Pro XL users report redeeming an additional 12-month trial of Google AI Pro with 5TB storage after their original one-year promo expired. Users found the offer either in the My Pixel app or the Google One app, with reports suggesting it may be limited to certain regions, likely including the US.
A tech reviewer evaluated three newly launched home battery systems designed for easier installation than earlier models. The testing comes as electricity prices climb and power outages become more frequent for many households. The reviewer reported spending weeks hoping for an outage to properly assess how the batteries would perform during a real blackout.
A hobbyist developer completed a multi-year project to increase the storage capacity of a third-generation iPod Nano to 16GB by replacing its NAND flash chip. The creator, who started with no soldering or reverse-engineering experience, chose the Nano 3G because its NAND chip has legs rather than being surface-mounted, making it more approachable than other Apple devices with soldered BGA chips.
Cryptomator is an open-source tool that creates encrypted vaults on a user's device, encrypting individual files and their filenames with AES-256 before they sync to services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, pCloud, Nextcloud and ownCloud. It also works offline for local drives, USB storage and network folders, and has apps for Android and iOS. Users can create a recovery key to reset a lost vault password, since Cryptomator itself cannot decrypt files or recover passwords.
Android Authority found Spotify developing a 'Cache Limit' feature for its Android app, letting users set a maximum size for the app's temporary storage cache. The tool would warn that smaller limits increase mobile data use and could affect playback, while suggesting a default size for balance. Downloaded music and podcasts stored offline would remain unaffected by this cache limit.
A software glitch in iOS 27 and iOS 27.2 is causing the Settings app to display an unremovable red badge urging users to 'Activate iCloud Storage,' even when they already have ample space, including those on 2TB Apple One family plans. Tapping the alert only leads to the storage purchase screen and dismissing it does not clear the badge.
Meta has published an architectural overview of Delta, an internal object storage service designed to hold build and distribution artifacts and support disaster recovery bootstrap operations. Delta exposes just four operations—put, get, delete, and list—and prioritizes reliability and horizontal scalability over latency or storage efficiency.
Testing by Bilibili channel Homolab found that the 1TB iPhone 18 Pro Max, which uses QLC NAND, suffers major performance drops compared to the 512GB TLC-based iPhone 18 Pro. Once its SLC and secondary TLC caches are exhausted, sustained writes fall to about 79.4 MB/s and can dip as low as 25.6 MB/s, worsening to just 1.1 MB/s once the drive is 60% full.