aggieNick02

Quarch (they make awesome power analysis/power injection equipment) did an investigation in to their office dishwasher's "Eco mode" a couple years ago. It was interesting: https://quarch.com/news/my-dishwashers-eco-mode-did-not-save...

The quick conclusion? "Quick Wash" uses less energy and water than "Eco Wash". "Intensive Wash" uses more energy than both.

We benchmarked three of the popular Optane NVMe SSDs about three years ago. There was a short window when they were on clearance and a popular choice as a cache SSD in TrueNAS.

https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/425127-benchmarking-op...

You can compare their benchmarks with the other almost 400 SSDs we've benchmarked. Most impressive is that three years later they are still the top random read QD1 performers, with no traditional flash SSD coming anywhere close:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/benchm...

They are amazing for how consistent and boring their performance is. Bit level access means no need for TRIM or garbage collection, performance doesn't degrade over time, latency is great, and random IO is not problematic.

Agreed... 5) is minor and just the result of saying "We're not going to bother trying to track if a file goes from having unsaved changes to not as a result of undo/redo - once a file gets marked as having unsaved changes, the only way to 'clear' that is to save the file again."

That option is much better than getting the undo/redo vs unsaved changes tracking wrong and allowing unsaved changes to be easily lost, like notepad does. :-P

The new notepad is a buggy embarrassment. When you disable the "Continue previous session" option you can very easily lose unsaved changes:

0) Set "When Notepad starts" option to "Start new session and discard unsaved changes"

1) New file

2) Type "abc" - note the "X" to close the file changes to a "O" (pretend that's a circle) to indicate unsaved changes

3) Save file - "O" changes back to "X"

4) Type "def" - "X" changes back to "O" because "def" is not on the file on disk

5) Undo, "def" disappears, "O" incorrectly remains...

6) Redo, "def" reappears, "O" incorrectly changes back to "X"

7) Close file. No prompt to save unsaved "def". Reopen file. "def" is gone

So many NVMe/SATA drives that are locked/frozen during boot, and it turns out this is because the drives are actually behaving incorrectly when "security operations" are blocked on the drive. When "security operations" are blocked, you should not be able to set a password on the drive, but should be able to format it. So that's bug 1.

Most modern motherboards, on boot, will block "security operations" on a drive where the security password is set to the default (because it hasn't been manually set by the end-user). They do this to prevent malware from being able to set a password on a drive that hasn't had its password set. (Malware could set the password and I believe configure the drive to effectively brick it.)

But many (probably most) motherboards fail to correctly block "security operations" on a suspend/resume. This is bug 2, and makes suspend/resume often an effective workaround for a drive with bug 1, as well as a theoretical opportunity for malware to easily inflict damage on all drives that support "security operations".

So one generally ends up stuck and unable to securely erase their drive when it has bug 1 and is installed on a motherboard without bug 2. In this case, you have to hope your motherboard has a feature in its BIOS to, on next boot, not block security operations. Otherwise you're stuck and need to find another motherboard if you want to sanitize your drive, or hope that a firmware update for your drive resolves bug 1.

The full details are in this comment on a Github issue from 2016: https://github.com/linux-nvme/nvme-cli/issues/84#issuecommen... . It was one of the most rewarding bugs I've had the fortune to get to the bottom of. We were extra motivated to fully understand it when we moved to a new SSD benchmarking test system that turned out to not have bug 2: https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/460000-an-ssd-that-can...

oof, :%s/their/there

It was not... it actually was, IIRC, a LabVIEW program with some tweaks here and there. The UI was basically a LabVIEW VI front panel with a LabVIEW 2D Picture Control. Most of the program logic and the compiler to the NXT was LabVIEW G code.

There was a lot of hype and momentum around Silverlight back in the day, until their wasn't. You got a cross-platform (Mac/Windows) WPF-like UI and C# programming environment, which was powerful.

I had the fortune to be involved developing the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 programming software. Under the hood, it was a small web browser shell (using Mono on Mac and WPF on Windows) around a Silverlight Out-of-Browser app. Anything beyond the permissions of the Silverlight app (e.g. bluetooth/USB comms) was an RPC from Silverlight to the shell.

After completing the Mac/Windows app, LEGO wanted to deliver a similar experience on iPad. There was no Silverlight there, and it was clear there never would be. But we were able to leverage Xamarin stuff to reuse most of the same codebase, just with an iOS UI on top.

I wonder if the same kind of thing is at play when I ask my Google Home Mini to play a song (on Spotify) and it plays a version by a cover band instead of the real thing, despite my stating the song and band name.

For example, I'll say: "OK Google, Play 'Hey Jude' by 'The Beatles'". Sometimes I'll get that song. But many others I'll get "Hey Jude" by a Beatles tribute band... I wouldn't be surprised if the version by the tribute band is cheaper to play.

Indeed! I just came back to post the exact same adjective after purchasing one as a Christmas gift for my teenage son. I think he'll love it, and I'm excited to get him such a cool present that he doesn't even know exists! (Though as spiffy as this is, there's a good chance that's not true by Christmas.)

Congrats on the launch and bravo on such a well-polished everything - product, UI, website, etc. Very impressive.

The one degree angle, while a little unusual, isn't what blows my mind. It's the disappearance after a small scroll. That's enough to make you think you were imagining things, might need to go to the eye doctor, etc...

What on earth is up with that? It's not just you. It happens in both Chrome and Firefox. After a very small amount of scroll it goes away?!?!

Agreed. Spent a couple minutes trying to figure out how I was reading it wrong for several of the categories - sometimes it is correct, but often it is not.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks. A legend or even sentence explaining that somewhere in the article would've been great.

The "Framework: Outsourced Software Development" image confuses me. What do the green/yellow/lavender circles represent in each 6x6 grid of circles?

My favorite FedEx facepalm was when they kept trying and failing to deliver a package to themselves...

They have an option to have your package held at a FedEx store. It's great for when the package requires signature and you're not able to wait at home all day for it.

Recently I used it. Unbeknownst to me, the FedEx store changed its physical location while the package was in transit, to a different strip mall across the highway. So for several days in a row, I was notified that FedEx attempted to deliver, but that the business was closed. Every call to customer service yielded understanding and sympathetic employees who had no idea how to fix the issue.

After about 5 days, something clicked, and my package showed up at the new FedEx location.

"Don't worry, though... Regardless of your browser choice, we'll still hijack 'alt+back_arrow' to show you supported browsers instead of navigating to the previous page."

That'll teach me to try to eat leftover bbq with my primary hand while using the other to browse HN over lunch.

I love iGPUs too, but they are great until they're not...

In my recent experience on an Intel z790/i7-14700K system, getting a signal during boot (e.g., when you want to go into BIOS) was not reliable (usually worked, but sometimes not). When connected to a portable 1280x720 monitor I use when setting up systems, parts of the BIOS screens were a garbled mess. Plugging in a discrete GPU fixed that.

I've also encountered weirdness on the same system where I couldn't disable secure boot until I booted from a discrete GPU (and then after that, on iGPU, I could enable/disable at will). Plus CSM is not an option when booting from certain Intel iGPUs: https://www.asus.com/me-en/support/FAQ/1045467/

Or even better, with AMD APUs 4 years ago, if you used a discrete Radeon GPU instead, you'd lose sound over HDMI: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/d5emmk/agesa_bug_no_so...

I remember trying Beyond Compare several years ago (after it was clear CompareIt! was abandon-ware) - it came close, but back then (for me at least) CompareIt! was a better experience. (It was also what I was already used to, to be fair.)

But I should probably take a look again and see how it compares now, because I can only imagine what vulnerabilities might lurk in CompareIt!'s stale PDF/Word/etc. viewers.

Almost any code movement/indentation changes seem to yield messy diffs in vimdiff, while CompareIt! (and others like Beyond Compare) could deal with huge movement and let you see what actually changed.

CompareIt! [1] - It's an ancient diff program last updated over a decade ago, but I've never found a diff program nearly as useful.

It is windows only, but it is fast, allows quickly setting manual anchor points (I miss this horribly when doing git diffs via vimdiff), and has converters for common file formats like doc and pdf (extracts the text and then does the diff).

I use it for both work and home. In addition to code diff, it's great for comparing things like PDFs of insurance renewals, to see what has changed.

It's the best $30 I've ever spent on software.

[1] https://www.grigsoft.com/wincmp3.htm