Daily Tech News 25 January 2023

• If you needed another reason not to buy an M2 MacBook or Mac Mini, the performance of 512GB SSDs has been cut in half compared to the previous generation. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's the same thing they did previously to 256GB models: Cut down on the number of flash memory channels on the SSD to save costs, and cut the performance in half in the process. The entry level 2023 Mac Mini actually has worse disk performance than the 2018 model.
  
  On a real computer this wouldn't be a problem. For less than $100 you can buy a decent 1TB SSD and just swap it in. On a Mac, of course, you can't upgrade anything, ever, and the upgrades you pay for at time of purchase cost twice as much as they would anywhere else. (In the case of RAM, four times as much.)
  
  Also MacBooks lack the Four Essential Keys, but so do most otherwise good laptops so that's something of a moot point.
  
  
  
• Australia Day tomorrow, so I get to sleep in and maybe get a chance to fix some things if I'm not overtaken by kidney stones yet again.

• SK Hynix has announced 9.6GHz laptop RAM, which the company brands as LPDDR5T. (WCCFTech)
  
  That's fast. I don't think there's a chip out there that needs memory that fast. Even AMD's new Ryzen 7040 range with 12 RDNA3 graphics cores probably wouldn't need that much bandwidth.
  
  
  
• Intel is deliberately flooding the PC market with stuff forcing prices down. (WCCFTech)
  
  This isn't working on graphics cards since Intel's cards aren't hot sellers, and Intel doesn't make SSDs anymore (they sold that division to the same SK Hynix mentioned above), so this report is really talking about CPUs.
  
  This will likely be a good year to buy CPUs. Might eventually also be a good year to buy a graphics card, but certainly isn't right now.
  
  
  
• The Legion Bulletin of Mad Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward by ten seconds, leaving the world trembling on the brink of disaster at just ninety seconds to midnight. (NBC)
  
  Yeah, could you assholes stop that? Hard to have a New Year's party if it never strikes midnight.

  The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 to examine global security issues related to science and technology. Each year, the group consults with a board of sponsors to analyze the world's most pressing threats in order to determine where the Doomsday Clock's hands should be set.

  And somehow the answer is always "time to give us more money".
  
  
  
• This looks like the motherboard being used by that Storaxa NAS. (Liliputing)
  
  Some people are casting doubt on the Storaxa, pointing out that the N6005 CPU doesn't have enough PCIe lanes to run all the devices listed. Which, uh, appears to be true. The only way it could work is to run a PCIe switch off a cable plugged into the M.2 slot on the motherboard, which would leave the four M.2 storage slots running at half speed. That is, half the speed of one slot, spread over four slots.
  
  That's still faster than all four 2.5Gb Ethernet ports combined, though, so not the end of the world.
  
  And it also raises the question of where the Ryzen 5800U model is coming from. That has a lot more PCIe lanes, but requires an entirely new motherboard.
  
  So maybe this is a Kickstarter to take a wait-and-see approach on if you can't afford to burn $280.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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