In the show today we will look at the announcement of a super fast removable storage card that is 5 times faster than microSD cards, also, what can you do to remove embarrassing searches on Google? And finally, we’ll take a brief look at five stories than made the headlines on Rumbles in the WND.

UFS – a super fast storage card

In the world today, speed is imperative to get things done. Sometimes we are so impatient that we just can’t wait a few seconds more for an app to open or a web page to load. If it is not fast enough, we often move on to something else.
I am sure many of us cannot tolerate the slow pace of many things. And to satisfy that crave for speed, technology continues to advance to cut the time spent waiting get to our digital destination.
A good example of this is the announcement from Samsung of a super fast removable storage card that could one day replace the slower micro-SD cards in our devices.
Samsung announced earlier this week the world's first removable UFS (Universal Flash Storage) memory card, offering storage capacity of 32, 64, 128, and 256 gigabytes while performing speeds that is FIVE TIMES FASTER THAN MICRO-SD CARDS.
So what this means is – if reading a 5 gigabyte full HD movie, it will take about 10 seconds, 10 seconds as compared to a standard microSD card which reads the same file in about 50 seconds. So with the UFS, you’re not only getting greater storage capacity but speeds up to 5 times greater than most micro-SD cards currently on the market.
What about write speeds, well this has also improved significantly, with rates of up to 170 MB/s. That's nearly double the performance of the very fastest microSDs like the SanDisk Extreme Pro card, which has write speeds of up to 100 MB/s, but and this is important to note, the UFS is seven or eight times faster than the current batch of cards used by non-professionals.
So why unleash so much power? Other than to satisfy our need for speed, of course, Samsung says all this power is necessary to keep up with the abundance of high-resolution footage being generated by devices from our smartphones to action cams, from drones to 360-degree cameras, robots, and even virtual reality headsets.
As you know, we have cameras that are now shooting 4K video, and with UFS cards this can act as fast as internal storage, with the ability to extract and write video without lagging. That is something micro-SD cards struggle with, especially in top-line cameras.
Some of you I’m sure, will be well acquainted with the headaches revolving around record limits, and card corruptions on Nikon and Canon DSLRs when combined with today’s microSD limitations.
The UFS standard is not something new, it has appeared as embedded memory in a few devices already like Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, but at this time there are no products on the market that support UFS as removable storage.
Samsung didn’t say when UFS card slots will be in devices, but one could imagine that it will take some time. Device makers will have to design UFS slots into products and chipmakers will have to make circuits and controllers to operate this new standard in removable storage.
The question that remains is, how successful will UFS be as storage media? The faster speed may give device makers a reason to put UFS slots over the universally used micro-SD. However, micro-SD cards today offer more storage, with capacities up to even 512GB.
Regarding design, the UFS card looks similar to a microSD card on the front and appears to have the same size but the PIN configuration on the back is not the same as the microSD card. So, definitely there needs to be some configuration by device makers.
This is something to keep an eye out for in the next line of Galaxy smartphones.

How to remove your embarrassing search history on Google

If you had to pick someone who really knows you the best? Who would that be or should I say what would it be?
Google probably knows you better than your closest friends and family. With every search you make or every video you watch, the search giant is quietly collecting information for a personalized profile it uses to serve you targeted ads.
So, just how much personal information does Google have on you? To answer that question in one word – everything! Yes, everything you searched for was collected by Google, from the mundane “how-tos”, to potentially embarrassing questions about health and life – have been saved by the search engine giant.
What would you pay to delete that information? Hundreds, probably thousands of dollars. Well, you don’t need to go that route, Google has recently unveiled a tool that allows you to see just how much dirt it has on you – and it even allows you to delete your most embarrassing searches.
The new tool, dubbed “My Activity,” will show you a chronological list of your activities on Google’s service – from your YouTube history, to your Google Map data– when you are logged into your Google account. It even allows you to search through your personal database to find specific queries – like that time you asked Google for a home remedy for an embarrassing itch you had.
So what kind of dirt does Google really have on you?
According to Google, it collects three main types of data when you use its service:
1. Things you do, including Google searches, websites you visit, videos you watch on YouTube, ads you click on and device information and location.
2. Things you create, including emails you send and receive using Gmail, photos and videos you upload to your Google account and documents you’ve uploaded to Google Drive.
3. Personal information, which includes anything you told Google about yourself when you signed up for an account, including your name, email address and password, birthday, gender and the country you live in.
So this is what Google has on file about you.
Now to delete that data, what do you need to do?
First go to myactivity.google.com (you will be asked to log into your Google account) and find the data point you’d like to delete. Once you’ve found it, click on the three dots at the top right hand side of the post and select “Delete.”
You can also delete items in bulk by selecting a time period, or deleting your history entirely. That’s it. It’s gone. Well, I’m still a little sceptical about it, knowing how data and storage work, I think there is a good chance that it is still housed somewhere. But for our peace of mind, this is the best way to go about removing those embarrassing searches and data, captured about our activities on the Internet.
Now, is there a way to stop Google from tracking all my data you may wonder? Well, actually yes, if you don’t want Google to track certain types of data moving forward, you can go to myaccount.google.com/activitycontrols to customize what Google remembers. For example, you can stop Google from saving your search activity on apps and in browsers, or stop Google from tracking your location history.
Of course, Google warns that if you turn off saved searches, you won’t benefit from the tech giant’s ability to customize your searches and deliver faster suggested searches. Well, is that more important than your privacy? In light of our first story on speed, I know it’s a hard choice, but the choice is speed versus privacy. For me privacy is more important than speed. What’s yours?

RumblesInTheWND

5) Passengers could soon be spared the hassle of having to remove their laptops and liquids from their carry-on luggage when going through airport security.

A new technology known as CT technology is currently being tested in the US and Britain that could slash the times travellers spend getting through TSA lines at major airports.

This new technology works the same way as CAT scanners in hospitals by taking detailed images of what is inside a passenger’s luggage. If successful, the CT technology could be deployed soon that will help cut back time spent in the dreaded security lines at airports.

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4) Do you like taking selfies? Well if you do, take note. Overindulging in selfies can result in 'selfie elbow', a new term to add to the list of tech injuries.

Currently there is only one reported case, but with the prevalence of selfies there may be many more undiagnosed cases in our midst.

This first case is of an American journalist Hoda Kotb, and no I didn’t say Hodoor,

Hoda Kotb is a popular TV anchor on NBC's Today Show and is known for her love of selfies. She recently complained of an achy elbow which turned out to be a pain caused by her constant selfie taking.

Doctors have seen many cases of tech related injuries, such as the 'Blackberry thumb', which is caused by the overuse of the smart phone and the 'iPad hand' is another manifestation of such overuse.

Selfie lovers can avoid such a predicament by switching the arms they use to snap their photos or use a selfie stick, or take photos the old-fashioned way - asking someone else to take the shot.

But if you do get 'selfie elbow', some painkillers, ice and some stretching should help alleviate the condition. Of course, the cure would be to stop taking so many selfies.

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3) Combining AI with a special MRI technique may help physicians predict who is more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease, according to a study published online in the journal Radiology. Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence that allows computer programs to learn when exposed to new data without being programmed.

The automated system was able to distinguish effectively among participants with Alzheimer’s disease. Using classifiers based on the automated machine learning training, the researchers were then able to predict the Alzheimer’s diagnosis or progression of single patients with a high degree of accuracy, ranging from 82 percent to 90 percent.

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2) Blackberry recently announced that it will no longer make the BlackBerry Classic. The handset was first launched in late 2014 as a replacement for the BlackBerry Bold.

This may be the end of the Classic handset but it isn't the end of physical keyboards for BlackBerry. The company still produces the Passport, which features a smaller physical keyboard to create more space for the phone’s touchscreen. There's also the Android-based BlackBerry Priv, which has a slide-out keyboard.

What is going away is BlackBerry’s iconic physical keyboard design—though the Priv's keyboard is its spiritual successor in some ways. The company said it is discontinuing the Classic to make way for new devices.

BlackBerry devices have been declining in usage ever since the introduction of the iPhone nearly ten years ago. The apparent end of BlackBerry’s long-popular keyboard is something of a milestone in the story of the modern smartphone. BlackBerry, meanwhile, hopes to sustain its sagging user base with Android phones.

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1) Google is reportedly working on two new smartwatches, according to a new report from Android Police. Such a move would mark yet another expansion of Google-made hardware.

The two smartwatches — one codenamed Angelfish, the other Swordfish — are said to place a heavy focus on the Google assistant artificial intelligence "bot" that headlined recently.

The watch design reportedly features three buttons. There's a circular crown like many other Android Wear devices, but Angelfish also has two other buttons, and it's not yet known what they do. The smaller, thinner Swordfish watch has a look that resembles the Pebble Time Round, according to Android Police, with much less bezel surrounding the circular display. It's got just a single button, and might ship without the LTE, GPS, and heart rate sensor included inside the higher-end model.

It's not clear exactly when Google plans to unveil its pair of smartwatches — if the rumor pans out. They could appear sometime this fall alongside new Nexus phones and the launch of Android Wear 2.0.