Customers of Lloyds Bank are being given the ability to unsubscribe from services they signed up to during downtime caused by the coronavirus lockdown. The bank says that subscription services can be amended or cancelled from within its mobile banking app using just three clicks.
Lloyds, which also runs Halifax and Bank of Scotland, has been piloting the new service and plans to launch in the next few months. Customers of the three banks will be able to sign up for automatic notifications when subscriptions are due to be billed, or if price rises are planned.
Most banks let their customers manage core features online, including the ability to cancel direct debits and standing orders. Many offer this functionality through their mobile apps, but the ability to cancel subscription services, which have quadrupled during lockdown, is less common.
The bank has seen record numbers of sign-ups for digital services during the lockdown, with 1.3 million in March and a further 600,000 in April. Popular options have included TV streaming services and online food deliveries. The ability to cancel subscriptions via the app means that customers will no longer have to call their bank.
Simplified subscriptions
Nick Edwards, Digital Service Director, Lloyds Bank, said: “Customers have been able to manage direct debits and standing orders online for some time. With the growing popularity of subscription services we’ve launched this market leading service to respond to our customers’ desire for more control and flexibility in the ways they manage their money.
With over 16 million customers online and 12 million using our mobile app, this is one in a series of new and exciting features we are launching this year to continually improve customers online experience.”
The new service is being provided through partnerships with Minna Technologies, a Swedish FinTech, and Visa.
AMD plans to release its 3rd Generation EPYC processors, codenamed Milan, sometimes in late 2020, so it is not surprising that virtually all of its partners are busy testing early samples of the CPUs.
With thousands of samples in the wild, leaks become almost inevitable, as seen this past weekend where some preliminary information about the upcoming CPUs got published.
AMD’s 3rd Generation EPYC processors are based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture and feature EPYC Rome-like nine-die MCM design. Meanwhile, the new Zen 3 Core Complex Dies (CCDs) are made using an improved version of TSMC’s 7 nm process technology. In total, the CPUs are set to offer up to 64 cores with SMT, 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes, and an eight-channel DDR4-3200 memory subsystem. The new processors continue to use AMD’s SP3 socket and feature a TDP of up to 225 W – 240 W.
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AMD EPYC
As it turns out, AMD decided to alter internal arrangement of its CCDs with its Zen 3 cores. Previously, each CCD features two quad-core Core Complexes (CCXs) with 16 MB of L3 cache per CCX. With Zen 3, each CCX features eight cores and a unified ‘32+ MB’ L3 cache. Such a CCD design lowers internal latencies and promises to improve instructions per clock (IPC) performance.
(Image credit: AMD)
Reports have already emerged of one AMD partner currently testing three EPYC ‘Milan’ CPUs featuring 64 and 32 cores and marked as 100-000000114-07 (64 cores, 9-die MCM with 256 MB of L3), 100-000000114-09 (64 cores, 9-die MCM with 256 MB of L3), and 100-000000117-03 (32 cores, 5-die MCM with 128 MB of L3). All the processors are based on the early A0 stepping silicon.
AMD’s 64-core 100-000000114-09 processor features a 1.6 GHz base clock as well as a 3 GHz boost frequency, whereas the 32-core 100-000000117-03 CPU runs at 1.8 GHz base and 3 GHz boost clocks. By contrast, today’s EPYC 7002 ‘Rome’ chips operate at up to 2.6 GHz base and up to 3.4 GHz boost frequencies.
Typically, early versions of CPUs are not supposed to run at high clocks, so expect final AMD EPYC 7003 processors to feature higher frequencies. Meanwhile, 3 GHz for a 64-core MCM seems high enough for A0 silicon, so it is plausible to expect AMD’s 3rd Generation EPYC processors to feature rather high clocks.
Also check out our complete list of the best business laptops: top devices for working from home, SMB and more
Apple is preparing to sell a lot more MacBook Pro laptops in the near future, after having already flogged a lot of them – and other MacBooks – according to recent figures.
As MacRumors spotted, according to DigiTimes, Apple will ‘significantly increase’ the amount of MacBook Pros it will be ordering in the third quarter of 2020, and overall MacBook shipments are expected to rise 20% compared to Q2 (going by sources in the component supply chain).
The report claims that Apple shifted around 3.2 million to 3.5 million MacBooks in Q2, and that will increase to about 4 million in Q3.
As ever, any DigiTimes report needs to be treated with a fair helping of wariness, as it isn’t always the most accurate source, but it has certainly proved to be on the mark (or thereabouts) a number of times in the past.
Working from home
A lot of this increase in MacBook sales is driven by the folks who are now working at home due to the Covid-19 outbreak, an uptick which was originally thought to only have an impact for a limited time, but now the expectation is sales will be driven by this for a lot longer than anticipated.
In the case of the MacBook Pro, the sales are coming from creatives, unsurprisingly, with a lot more of these professionals working from home instead of the office.
So, prospects look good for the next quarter, after impressive sales in the second quarter already, as we’ve also seen from recent figures for Mac sales provided by Gartner which observed a sizable uptick in Q2 2020 compared to the previous year.
What’ll be really interesting, of course, is to see how sales change when Apple starts offering its new ARM-based MacBooks, the first two of which are expected to arrive late in 2020.
If that launch happens to coincide with a falloff in coronavirus-related demand for Apple’s portables, that could be rather unfortunate timing which could cancel out any potential gains – unless the ARM-powered MacBooks are really popular, of course, which is doubtless what Tim Cook is hoping for.
Or indeed this could exacerbate any failure, but of course all this is simply speculation based on a rumor, and as ever we’ll just have to wait and see how future MacBooks pan out.
Businesses are losing millions annually due to failed transactions, new research has found.
The report from GoCardless claims that the number is increasing year on year, with businesses that use manual, labour-intensive procedures to chase up and collect cash suffering the worst.
GoCardless survey data has found that enterprise businesses could be losing up to £1m annually and those in the mid-market circa £200k plus. Small businesses could be taking a hit of over £6k a year.
Payments collected via digital wallets were identified as having the highest failure rate at 12%. These were closely followed by credit and debit cards, at 8.2%, which is nearly three times as high as businesses using optimisation services like those offered by GoCardless.
Improving payments
Duncan Barrigan, Chief Product Officer, GoCardless, said: “Payment failures are widely accepted as an inevitability. We don’t believe this should be the case. They can seriously hurt a business - they are costly and can damage reputation and customer relationships.”
Without embracing new technology, business are spending thousands unnecessarily, with additional financial services costing £140,400, IT £138,800, health and wellbeing £86,400 and utilities £85,200 per annum according to survey data.
Charlie Francis, Founder and Director at Equation Training, an online fitness coaching and personal training business said: “When I was first starting out, I used to have to manually chase payments that failed. Now that I have Success+ in place, it means a process that used to take 2-3 hours a week now doesn’t take me any time at all.”
Traditional gaming consoles have come a long way from using proprietary components. Today, home entertainment essentials like the Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch all feature components derivative of mid-to-lower tier gaming PCs. Both the Playstation 4 and Xbox One even use similar chipsets provided by AMD.
Mid-console cycle releases through the Playstation 4 Pro and Xbox One X brought 4K gaming into the mix despite having issues matching higher tier gaming rig performance. With the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X slated to hit shelves this upcoming holiday, expect these next-gen devices to follow suit as well. Take a look at the reported specs below:
Xbox Series X
CPU: 3.8ghz Custom Zen 2
RAM: 16GB GDDR6
GPU: 12 TFLOPs, 1.825ghz RDNA 2
Storage: 1tb Custom NVME SSD
(Image credit: Sony)
Playstation 5
CPU: 3.5ghz Custom Zen 2
RAM: 16GB GDDR6
GPU: 10.28 TFLOPs, 2.23GHz RDNA 2
Storage: 825GB SSD
Though highly touted buzzwords like Ray Tracing and SSDs may sound like relatively new technologies for next-gen consoles, PC gamers have been enjoying those features for a few years now. It’s similar to the streaming/sharing and multitasking capabilities of eighth-gen hardware that were familiar to PC users when they launched. Doesn’t hurt that a large majority of popular third-party games from AAA studios like Electronic Arts, Activision, Bethesda Studios and Rockstar Games are also available for PC.
Most of the time, PC ports simply run better with proper optimization. Purchasing a console is also significantly cheaper as the next-gen releases are reportedly slated to run around $500. Meanwhile, a top of the line graphics card alone can run as high as $2,499 (£2,452, AU$4,599) for the Nvidia Titan RTX. That doesn’t even consider additional costs like a case, power supply, sound output, motherboard, CPU and storage. However, PCs still offer everything from a fully functional operating system for non gaming tasks to modding.
At this very moment, individuals with expendable funds can build their own rigs capable of matching PS5 and Xbox Series X specs. So, we went ahead and picked out the components you’ll need to build a gaming PC that can outpower the PS5 and Xbox Series X – in theory, at least.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
(Image credit: AMD)
Both the PS4 and Xbox One featured versions of AMD’s eight-core x86-64 Jaguar chipset when they launched in 2013. The PS5 and Xbox Series X will stick to AMD processors through their Zen 2 line of CPUs. With clock speeds between 3.5GHz - 3.8GHz between eight-cores and 16 threads, this is a significant jump from its predecessors relatively weak CPUs hovering around 1.6GHz.
As of now, the comparable AMD Ryzen 7 3700X can churn out 3.6GHz - 3.9GHz through its eight cores and 16 threads. Cost for that chipset currently runs around $300 on average; more than half the estimated price of a next-gen console.
Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super
(Image credit: Nvidia)
The most expensive component for those looking to have their gaming rig match-up with Microsoft and Sony’s next gen consoles is undoubtedly the graphics card. This is where things also get a bit tricky. Both next-gen consoles are set to include GPUs based on the upcoming AMD RDNA 2 graphics architecture, launching by the end of the year. These graphics cards will be the first from AMD to offer Ray Tracing capabilities. Ray Tracing will allow for more realistic shadows, reflections and just better visual fidelity.
Games including Control, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Battlefield V and Metro Exodus support the feature currently exclusive to Nvidia’s Turing series of graphics cards. Though it’s possible to purchase an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 for $299 (£299, AU$599), next-gen games are probably going to require more than that card’s available 6GBs of video ram. For a graphics card that could compete with the PS5 and Series X’s 4K abilities at 60 frames-per-second, one is going to have to buy the more powerful Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super with 8GBs of video ram and 11.15 TFLOPs. That’ll start at $699 (about £560, AU$990).
Memory: 16GB DDR4
(Image credit: Corsair)
The PS5 and Series X will make a jump from 8GBs (GDDR5) system RAM to 16GBs (GDDR6) this time around. Be mindful that consoles share RAM between CPU and graphics cards as opposed to PCs utilizing separate video ram for rendering. Probably the cheapest component to acquire, one can find 16GB of RAM online for less than $100 (£100, AU$140).
SSD: Adata XPG SX8200 1TB
(Image credit: Adata)
Next-gen consoles are leaving Hard Disc Drives alone for Solid-State-Drives which promises notably faster load-times. Around the initial announcement of the PS5, Sony used PS4 exclusive Marvel’s Spidermanto showcase those improvements. Loading times using a “low-speed” version of the PS5 development kit reduced a fast-travel screen load time from 15 seconds to 0.8 seconds. For the impressive Unreal Engine 5 demo, Epic Games recommended using the faster NVMe SSD. SSDs are so commonplace now in PC gaming that the average 1TB hard drive can be purchased for a little under $200.
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G5
(Image credit: EVGA)
In order to run the RTX 2080 Super, a power supply of at least 650W will be required. EVGA’s SuperNOVA 650 G5 costs $134 (£104, AU$191) and even comes with a ten year warranty as well.
Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 GAMING PRO CARBON WIFI Gaming Motherboard
(Image credit: MSI)
There are several things to consider when choosing a motherboard, including processor compatibility and audio capabilities alongside internal connectivity specs like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the amount of USB ports. The MSI MPG X570 Gaming Pro Carbon WIFI, which comes in at $250 (£219, AU$354) is a perfect example of how the best motherboards can compete with the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
Case: Cooler Master Silencio S600
(Image credit: Cooler Master)
A slick case can be just as attractive as anything from Microsoft and Sony if one knows where to look. For this rig, the Cooler Master Silencio S600 is recommended for its all-black styling that matches the futuristic design of the Xbox Series X. To keep everything running at optimal efficiency, there’s plenty of ventilation available and two Silencio fans for quieter operation. The Cooler Master Silencio S600 also comes with an SD card reader, two USB slots and audio jack through it’s $100 (£100, AU$140) price tag.
Developers of the infamous TrickBot banking trojan have accidentally coded in a feature that alerts infected users to its presence on their device.
Traditionally, TrickBot malware is distributed via phishing campaigns and operates stealthily on an infected machine, scraping credentials, stealing from cryptocurrency wallets and opening the door to secondary attacks.
It was also recently found to contain a mechanism that checks the victim’s screen resolution to determine whether it is running in a virtual machine, allowing operators to hinder the attempts of researchers to analyze the malware.
However, according to security researcher Vitali Kremez of Advanced Intel, the TrickBot creators are accidentally circulating a version that serves a warning message to users whose credentials have been stolen, thereby alerting them to the infection.
TrickBot malware
Kremez believes TrickBot’s “grabber” module is responsible for the alert, designed to scrape saved passwords and cookies from popular web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Edge.
When working as intended, the module allows TrickBot to stealthily lift login credentials and gain access to the victim’s online accounts - including social media, email, online retailers etc. - but in this instance accidentally reports the malicious activity to the victim.
“Warning - you see this message because the program named grabber gathered some information from your browser,” reads the pop-up alert.
“If you do not know what is happening it is the time to start be worrying (sic). Please, ask your system administrator for details.”
According to Kremez, the module is “coded in the same fashion” as the wider TrickBot malware, suggesting the same developers are responsible. The only explanation for this eccentricity, he claims, is that the creators forgot to remove the self-reporting functionality when a new test build went live.
Users served the error message are advised to disconnect from the internet and scan their machine using antivirus software. Once any malware has been removed, users should change all passwords for accounts logged into via the affected browser.
Check out our list of the best antivirus services available
When the design of the PS5 was finally unveiled, it’s fair to say it left fans split down the middle. Some people loved it, praising its futuristic look and sleek curved lines, while others hated it, comparing it to a Wi-Fi router or a poorly-made concept render.
One thing that is most divisive, however, is the console’s two-tone color scheme, which mirrors the DualSense controller’s white and black design. We’re used to seeing white special editions of Sony’s consoles, but the company has historically opted for black plastic, ever since the PlayStation 2 days. So will we see a black PS5?
Well, according to a leaked piece of marketing material from Sony, a black and red PS5 could be on the way. Shared by ResetEra user BarrBarr, the photo is apparently part of a Sony promotion for stores to try and incentivize staff to sell more Sony Xperia products.
(Image credit: BarrBarr via ResetEra)
While the picture clearly shows a black PS5 and DualSense controller with red led lighting instead of blue, there are a few tell tale signs that the image may have been manipulated in photoshop. For a start, a blue hue remains on the inside of the PS5’s distinctive ‘popped-collar’, and the rear side of the DualSense controller is clearly white.
Is a black and red PS5 likely, then? Honestly, the odds are unlikely, but we do know we’ll see different console designs in the future. PlayStation’s vice president of UX design Matt Maclauri said that players can “count on even more beautiful (and hopefully radical) special editions” in the future.
For now, though, if you don’t like the PS5 design, you’re out of luck until Sony reveals a new edition of its upcoming next-gen console.
