HyperX Fury RGB LED SSD 

Most PC cabinets don't put 2.5-inch SSDs on display — they're usually enclosed in metal cages or screwed onto the back of the motherboard baseplate where their wires won't get in the way of a nice view. Still, there are people who will buy an RGB LED SSD just for the novelty value, no matter what its performance is like. We're hoping that the HyperX Fury RGB SSD from Kingston that we're reviewing today isn't just about looks, but also delivers on performance.

HyperX Fury RGB specifications and features

Coming to the primary purpose of this SSD, you have a choice of 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB models. Kingston has used 3D TLC NAND flash, which is now the norm. The controller is the widely used though somewhat dated Marvell 88SS1074. The sequential read speed is rated at up to 550MBps which is near the limit of what the SATA standard itself can handle, but the rated sequential write speed is lower than expected at up to 480MBps. Kingston has not specified whether these figures apply to all capacity versions or whether they are the best case values for the product family as a whole.

Endurance in terms of total bytes written (TBW) is 120TB for the 240GB model; 240TB for the 480GB model; and 480TB for the 960GB model. These values are the amounts of data you should be able to write to your drive before it shows any sign of failure. The warranty period is three years, whereas other manufacturers typically offer five-year warranties.

Kingston says the HyperX Fury RGB's power consumption is just 0.2W at idle, and 2.5W at most in use. It isn't clear whether these figures account for the RGB LEDs, because they're in line with most normal SATA SSDs.

RIP, Google Plus

Google begins shutting down its failed Google+ social network

The day has officially come for Google to subtract Google Plus.

The move has been a long time coming. Last year, the search giant said it would shut down Google Plus after it found and fixed a security flaw that may've exposed the personal data of 500,000 users. On Tuesday, Google began shutting down pageson the platform.

Leave it to people to use other social media platforms -- namely, Twitter -- to share their reactions. 

"So long, @GooglePlus. We barely used ye," tweeted Killed by Google, which tracks the company's discontinued products. 

 Launched in 2011, Google+ was expected to be the company's answer to Facebook with a number of similar features. However, it didn't gain much traction over the years.

Google has officially started the process of shutting down and deleting all consumer accounts on its Google+ social network platform, bringing an end to the company’s attempt to directly compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. “The shutdown is underway as of this morning,” a Google spokesperson confirmed to The Verge by email on Tuesday.

Google+ is being phased out due to “low usage” and because it turned into something of a security liability for Google; the company has disclosed two significant data leaks that could have exposed information for tens of millions of Google+ users to outside developers. The first vulnerability, which was kept secret for months, prompted Google to decide it was time to close Google+ for good, and the second led to the company accelerating those shutdown plans by four months, meaning the service will meet its end in April instead of August.

In both cases, Google said there’s been no evidence that developers were aware of these bugs or took advantage of them. Access to Google+ APIs has already been cut off per Google’s timeline for the shutdown.

Google has acknowledged that Google+ failed to meet the company’s expectations for user growth and mainstream pickup. “While our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or developer adoption, and has seen limited user interaction with apps,” Google’s Ben Smith wrote in October. He then revealed a pretty damning stat for where the service stands today: “90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.”

But even if it never rose to anything that had a chance of challenging Facebook, the platform has been home to a small-but-loyal community of users through the years. I really like this piece by CNBC’s Jillian D’Onfro as a reflection on what stood out about Google+: people took to it for its topic-focused discussions, which helped conversations feel more substantial and constructive than the squabbling that is so often found on the public square that is Facebook or even Reddit. Google+ let you organize people into circles, which the company hoped would feel more true to the way we share things in day-to-day life.