Bookmarks | The music industry has a hard drive problem

These are the articles, videos, podcasts and more that caught the attention of TechCentral’s editorial team in the past 24 hours.

Music industry’s 1990s hard drives, like all HDDs, are dying: The music industry’s reliance on 1990s hard drives for archiving has hit a serious snag: around 20% of those drives are now unreadable. Despite replacing tape with hard drives to avoid tape deterioration, hard drives themselves aren’t suited for long-term storage. Their mechanical failures, along with software format challenges, highlight the broader issue: no storage medium is permanent, and constant copying to fresh storage is essential. Read more on Ars Technica. DM
Intel is on life support. Can anything save it?: Intel, once a leader in chip manufacturing, is struggling for survival. The company missed major shifts in the mobile and GPU markets and now faces fierce competition from TSMC and AMD. Intel’s past dominance, fuelled by Moore’s law, is fading. Read more in The Economist (hard paywall). DM
YouTube on TVs is cramming ads down your throat even when pausing videos: If you watch YouTube on your smart TV and don’t have a YouTube Premium subscription, you might soon start seeing ads when you pause a video. YouTube first announced this “pause ads” format in May 2023 and briefly tested it in selected markets. It now appears to be rolling out to more users. More on Android Authority. TS
Xbox has reportedly been told to ‘go dark’ today: The news follows, and is likely linked to, the announcement that Xbox’s parent company, Microsoft, is laying off hundreds of employees from various gaming divisions, a trend that has embittered the gaming community in its past occurrences. Read more on Game Rant. TS
JLR reveals Rover the robotic guard dog: Jaguar Land Rover has partnered with Boston Dynamics to create an AI-powered robotic guard dog for its electric vehicle build-and-test facility in Coventry, England. The good ole boy not only monitors machinery and valves, freeing up engineers’ time, but also assists in moving components around the factory floor. Watch the video on LinkedIn. NN
CrowdStrike ex-employees: ‘Quality control was not part of our process’: Ex-CrowdStrike employees have claimed that the company prioritised speed over quality, leading to technical issues and rushed deadlines long before a major July software failure caused widespread outages. Read more on Semafor. DM
The entire staff of beloved game publisher Annapurna Interactive has reportedly resigned: The entire staff of Annapurna Interactive, the publisher behind indie hits like Stray and Outer Wilds, has reportedly resigned after failing to negotiate a spin-off into an independent entity. Despite this, Annapurna stated that ongoing games and projects will continue under the company. (Oh, and if you haven’t played Stray yet, get it – it’s a great game!). Read more on The Verge. DM
10 new gadgets you will want to buy: From smart monitors and e-bikes to a portable cable exercise machine, this list looks at some of the newest tech available to support various aspects of everyday living. Granted, not all the gadgets on this list will become mainstream super-sellers, but one might just solve a problem close to home for everyone out there. Watch the video from Future Tech on YouTube. NN