Daily Tech News 5 February 2023

• The US Air Force shot down that errant balloon. (CNBC)
  
  But not until after Democrats spent several days accusing Republicans of racism for wanting to shoot down that errant balloon, and not until after that errant balloon had completed its spy mission and transferred all the data back to the servers at China's central spy agency, TikTok.
  
  Democrat lawmakers explained this move as turning the tables on the Chinese and extracting intelligence on China's technological capabilities.
  
  From a balloon.
  
  
  
• I mowed the lawn today. First time this year, since I basically spent January either sleeping all day because I couldn't sleep at night because the pain killers did nothing, or fuzzed out because the pain killers did do something. You don't realise how much that was dragging you down until you start to recover and remember that you don't normally sleep fourteen hours a day.
  
  Anyway, better, but need to scramble to recover from a month that simply disappeared.

• The 4TB Crucial P3 offers great value and not terrible performance at $250. (WCCFTech)
  
  That sale price is due to expire about - well, about now - but it always seems to be on sale at about that price and if it's not at Amazon right now just check Newegg and sites like that.
  
  It is a QLC DRAMless drive and that is not a good combination if you're using it as your system disk. If you have an existing system disk and just want lots of space at a good price for your game library, the P3 should do just fine.
  
  There's also a P3 Plus model that costs 25% more and runs 40% faster, which may or may not be a worthwhile tradeoff for you; it's still QLC flash and a DRAMless controller, so while it's fast it's not suitable for continuous writes, particularly continuous random writes.
  
  
  
• For your system drive you should avoid QLC and DRAMless models and go for a high-end drive from a reputable manufacturer like, uh, probably not Samsung's 990 Pro. (Puget Systems)
  
  Users have been complaining recently about the 990 Pro - Samsung's current top-of-the-line consumer SSD - burning through it's expected lifespan at a rate of a couple of percent per week. Samsung's response so far has pretty much been "you're holding it wrong".
  
  
  
• Working with a ten cent microcontroller. (Jay Carlson)
  
  Depending on which model you buy and how many, it could cost as much as seventy cents, but more importantly it actually doesn't suck.
  
  
  
• Unlike all the leading web frameworks. (Infrequently)
  
  The article discusses a form of market inversion where the lemons float to the top. It helpfully also lists less prominent but less sucky web frameworks.
  
  It's a scathing indictment of the leading web frameworks and since my experience has also been that they are one and all a collection of dumpster fires in a toxic waste factory, I'm inclined to take a look at what the author does recommend.
  
  
  
• We've got that darn Elon this ti- Well, fuck. (Ars Technica)
  
  Hilarity ensues in the comments as the article gets updated from the jury is considering the verdict in the Tesla shareholder lawsuit to the jury has returned a verdict of not guilty just a couple of hours later.
  
  The Ars commentariat has gone from being Musk acolytes to viewing him as Emmanuel Goldstein's evil twin without any stages in between.
  
  
  
• Wow, that's an impressively straight line for technological advances. (Serve the Home)
  
  Wait. You idiots plotted bandwidth against... Bandwidth?

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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