• I've been running Stardock's Start8 and Start10 since two days after I first installed Windows 8, and Fences nearly as long.  Lately I've also been running Multiplicity to share my keyboard and mouse (and clipboard) across machines and Groupy to group windows together.
  
  All work well and are recommended.  If you do have multiple PCs and need a solution like Multiplicity, I suggest picking up Object Desktop which is a license for all of Stardock's utility software for five systems.
  
  In theory it's an annual license; in practice the way it works is pretty generous.  Anything you install in the first year not only keeps right on working but keeps getting updated, as far as I can tell, indefinitely.
  
  
  
• The Corsair MP400: A zoom, followed by a splat.  (AnandTech)
  
  If you're looking for a cheap NVMe SSD, your choices are DRAMless TLC models or QLC models.  I don't think anyone makes DRAMless QLC drives for reasons that will become apparent in a moment.
  
  Both of these options work fine for reading data.  They typically have slower, cheaper controllers than high-end drives, but this is 2020 and a slow, cheap controller means speeds over a gigabyte per second.
  
  On writes, each design has its own problems.  DRAMless designs have inconsistent write latency, running just fine most of the time but occasionally spiking up into territory held by the fastest spinning disks.  QLC on the other hand depends on a large pseudo-SLC cache for write performance, and when that runs out, write speeds drop by as much as 95%.
  
  The upside is that if the drive is cheap you can buy a huge model with a ton of cache.  If you have a 4TB drive with 1TB of cache you're not likely to run out quickly.  Problem with the MP400 is the larger models cost as much per gigabyte as a high-end TLC drive.
  
  
  
• An 8TB MP400 gives you about 2TB of high-performance space - about 1.75GB per second - at a cost of $1500.
  
  The 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus gives you 2TB of high-performance space at $400.  (Serve the Home)
  
  High-performance in this case meaning 7GB per second reads, 4.6GB per second writes.  So if you need serious performance and don't want to fuss around with NVMe RAID, that price is not bad at all.
  
  
  
• The Hackboard 2 is a tiny Atom based single-board computer.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  At $99 with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage it's more expensive than the Raspberry Pi ($55 with 4GB RAM and no storage) but on the other hand it can run standard Linux distributions or even Windows.
  
  The Celeron N4020 is a low-end 6W dual-core part, but single-threaded performance is decent, about 60% of a Ryzen 1700, or 35% of a 5600X.
  
  
  
• Oracle is following Tesla and HPE and abandoning California for Texas.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Like ships leaving a sinking rat.
  
  
  
• The FDA has given emergency authorisation for the first Wuhan Bat Soup Death Plague vaccine.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  An independent review board unanimously recommended approval earlier this week, so the FDA only required several days and repeated kicking by the president to actually do their jobs.
  
  
  
• What's four orders of magnitude here and there?  (The Register)
  
  Well, when it's a cloud hosting bill, that means your free plan costs you $72,000 per day.
  
  
  
• A new species of whale has been discovered.  (The Vast)
  
  Whales notably being small and easy to miss.
  
  They took DNA samples to determine the new whales' place in the whale family tree, though they didn't discuss exactly how.
  
  
  
• Hey Rocky, watch me pull a Linux distro out of my hat!  (ZDNet)
  
  Rocky Linux is a new fork of CentOS, created by one of the founders of the CentOS project, and named in memory of another project founder.  In the first 48 hours, 650 contributors have signed up to work on it.
  
  
  
• Ryzen 5600X servers are starting to show up at hosting providers.  (Webhosting Talk)  Not many of the higher-end Ryzen 5000 models yet.
  
  The six core 5600X matches Intel's ten core W-1290 in both single and multi-threaded benchmarks.  (Passmark)
  
  
  
• Risu (of HololiveID) - who I've been watching because my regulars Coco, Haachama, and Pikamee are all on holiday at the moment - streams Minecraft with subtitles enabled, so that she  can keep the audio turned down but still know when a creeper is creeping up on her.  The subtitles are mostly descriptions of sound effects, and produce some curious combinations.

Posted by: normal at Sunday, December 13 2020 02:20 AM (obo9H)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, December 13 2020 02:22 AM (PiXy!)

Posted by: sahige4797 at Wednesday, August 09 2023 05:06 PM (VCj7i)

Posted by: at Tuesday, November 07 2023 01:06 AM (Plm+S)

Posted by: SimonWhitehead at Monday, November 27 2023 09:37 PM (GSyLA)

Posted by: SimonWhitehead at Sunday, January 14 2024 06:36 PM (QWmeB)

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