Daily Tech News 18 January 2025

• In a groundbreaking decision that will have lasting consequences for Chinese spyware apps, the Supreme Court said "yeah, whatever" and waved the TikTok divest-or-die law through the gate. (CNN)
  
  The law is due to go into effect tomorrow, but since the Biden Administration is currently busy looting the treasury and fleeing the country, will be left to Trump to enforce.

• The PCIe standards group has released a draft specification for PCIe 7.0, with the final document expected later this year. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  No, you can't get PCIe 6.0 yet, and yes, even PCIe 5.0 was only adopted by the newest generation of graphics cards which you also can't get yet, but this is aimed at servers and will trickle down to desktops... Probably a lot faster than you'd expect, given how quickly PCIe 5.0 motherboards showed up.
  
  Each generation of PCIe is twice as fast as the previous one, so this means 60GBps SSDs - or, on the other hand, being able to jam 16 of the current fastest SSDs onto a single PCIe card.
  
  
  
• Speaking of jamming things in the Sonnet Echo 13 is a Thunderbolt 5 dock that starts at $400 rather than $1400. (Notebook Check)
  
  You have to buy it bundled with an SSD - it comes with 1TB as standard - but the price is reasonable, the drive is probably user-replaceable, and it supports Thunderbolt 4 and Thunderbolt 3 (and presumably USB4, since it supports USB4 downstream.)
  
  It includes three downstream USB-C ports, four USB-A ports, SD and microSD slots, and 2.5Gb Ethernet. There are not dedicated video ports, but the downstream USB-C ports all support DisplayPort alt mode so you just need a matching cable.
  
  
  
• China is also looking to ban TikTok users after they swarmed like locusts to alternate Chinese spyware app RedNote. (Ars Technica)
  
  TikTok was banned in China for a reason. Now that it's getting banned everywhere, China is panicking because the same idiots they helped create are ruining everything for them as well.
  
  
  
• The FDIC is suing former executives of the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank because, like idiots, they invested the company's money in government bonds. (CNN)
  
  And who can trust the government?
  
  
  
• The 2TB SanDisk microSD card holds 2TB on a microSD card. (Serve the Home)
  
  Which you would kind of expect, and it delivers. And it's not particularly slow either.
  
  Costs around $200, but not everyone needs a 2TB microSD card and they have lots of smaller models.
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Office 365 plans in the US are getting bundled with Copilot and receiving the same 40% price hikes other countries have been enjoying but in the US there will also be "Classic" plans that don't have Copilot thrust upon you. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Though I couldn't immediately see pricing on the Classic plans. I'll have to look.
  
  Also, if you have a family plan, only the account owner gets the Copilot treatment. The other family members remain unscathed.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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