Daily Tech News 7 March 2026

• New NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has killed the Exploration Upper Stage project for the SLS and will be open to bids for a replacement that might actually exist some day. (Ars Technica)
  
  Development of the Exploration Upper Stage has been in progress since 2016, with the initial launch date set for 2021. It's five years behind schedule and with $3.5 billion spent so far - nearly ten times the initial estimate - is no close to reality.
  
  The lead contractor for the project was Boeing, for what it's worth.

• Lenovo's new ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 received a 10 out of 10 score for repairability on iFixit. (Liliputing)
  
  It comes in both Intel (Panther Lake) and AMD (Ryzen 400 series) models, and uses LPCAMM2 rather than soldered memory. The display, keyboard, and battery are easily swapped out, as are the memory and SSD. The Thunderbolt ports are modular - there's a little adaptor that connects the socket to a matching socket on the motherboard, so if you trip over the cable you break a $2 part rather than the entire $2000 laptop.
  
  A welcome change.
  
  
  
• Indie game Slay the Spire 2 has 393,000 players on Steam right now. (WCCFTech)
  
  That's a thousand times more than much-hyped TenCent-backed title High Guard, which received top billing at the Video Game Awards. (Which are, apparently, bigger than the Super Bowl, though I resolutely watch neither.)
  
  Video games are alive and well. The video game industry is dying of self-inflicted wounds. Latest heir to the Concord crown is expected to be Marathon, though it's been out for two days and isn't dead yet.
  
  
  
• AI startup Hayden AI is suing its former CEO over alleged instances of fraud and theft and pettifoggery and exaggerating on his resume. (Ars Technica)
  
  The mopery and dopery appears to go back a ways:

  According to Carson's LinkedIn profile, he completed a doctorate from Waseda University in Tokyo in 2007.

  "That is a lie," the complaint states. "Carson does not hold a PhD from Waseda or any other university. In 2007, he was not obtaining a PhD but was operating 'Splat Action Sports,' a paintball equipment business in a Florida strip mall."

  Did he use Cluely to get the job?
  
  

• Things are bad, but not that bad. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Yes, prices of 32GB memory kits did hit $4000 on Newegg, up almost tenfold in a single day.
  
  It only affected a couple of ranges of G.Skill memory - 27 products in all - including some bundles containing that specific memory. Affected prices should be back to the new normal now.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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