Daily Tech News 14 January 2025

• The USB Implementor's Foum - USB-IF - has done something that isn't stupid for the first time in years: Cancelled all those version names you can't remember. (PC World)
  
  Gone are USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 and USB4v2.
  
  Now it's just 5Gbps, 10Gbps, 20Gbps, 40Gbps, and 80Gbps. Bigger numbers are better.
  
  When looking at cables, they are rated with both a speed and a maximum power - either 60W or 240W. 60W runs at 20V and 3A, while 240W runs at 48V and 5A. You can always shift downwards, but running 5A over a 3A cable may not work out so well - or at all.
  

• This is a depressingly stupid article. (Quanta)
  
  Key question capturing the idiocy:

  Do the properties of quarks and gluons resonate with you as a nonbinary person?
  
  Yes, I think the simple fact that gluons carry multiple color charges means they are fundamentally nonbinary creatures.

  Can it get any dumber?
  
  Silly question. It can always get dumber.

  I am a physicist, but before that, I'm a person. If someone wants to just chat physics with me, you can't just get my physics, you also get the fact that I'm a trans person and hear about the environment I'm being asked to do my research in.

  That's okay. I don't want to chat about anything with you, ever.
  
  
  
• Why AWS CEO Matt Garman is willing to bet the platform's future on AI. (The Verge)
  
  Because AWS makes a profit whether AI is useful or not. Its customers pay when they use the service no matter how bad it is.
  
  
  
• With TikTok less than a week from being wiped from existence, here's a list of horrible garbage apps that deserve the same fate. (Tech Crunch)
  
  Not how they phrase it, but more accurate.
  
  
  
• The CEO of AI music company Suno says people don't like making music. (404 Media)
  
  Aliens. These people are aliens.
  
  
  
• Should you buy the new Western Digital SN7100 SSD? No. (Serve the Home)
  
  Because it is both slower and more expensive than Western Digital's own SN850X.
  
  Do buy the SN850X if it suits you, though. It's a good drive.
  
  
  
• Can you complete the Oregon Trail by sitting at the Snake River waiting 14,272 years for conditions to improve? Mostly, no. (Moral Recordings)
  
  It turns out that there is a bug in the game where if you are sitting waiting at the river, your food supply is reduced each day, but your party's health status is not recalculated, making you effectively immortal.
  
  Until you move, whereupon you die.
  
  And if you somehow avoid that (by, uh, cheating) and finish the game, it crashes because you are not supposed to take more than ten thousand years to complete the journey.
  
  But if you fix that too by allowing the game to display a two-byte year, then yes. But it's not the Oregon Trail anymore.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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