I wouldn’t even say that. Flash drives are good as temporary storage for copying/sharing files, or for stuff you need on hand (like a Linux boot stick), but I’d never include them as part of a backup system.

Cloud backups are alright from a privacy standpoint as long as you properly encrypt your data. Which also stops your cloud provider from suddenly terminating your account because you uploaded something they don’t like.

Depends a lot on the quality of the stick. I have some that have worked well for years, and had others that failed after just a few writes. You’ll probably be fine, but probably isn’t good enough for a critical backup.

As long as your data isn’t super important that’s okay. But if it is, keep in mind that the chance of your USB stick failing when you try to read all the data off it after your SSD fails is fairly high. USB sticks do not do well with long reads or writes and tend to overheat and kill themselves. I’d strongly recommend picking up a hard drive to use as a third backup; a new 2TB drive is maybe $60, and a refurbished one half that.

Let me get this straight… They deleted their only other copy of the files from their old drives immediately after uploading them to OneDrive? Microsoft has some fault here, but that is also an unbelievably stupid decision on the user’s part. It also sounds like they were planning to copy the files to a single new drive and immediately delete them from OneDrive, which is equally stupid. Are they allergic to having their files in multiple places or something?

It’s an awful situation to be in, but it could’ve been avoided by simply having a second copy of the data, which is pretty much the simplest backup system.

Ah yeah, for that definition of overheating you’re entirely right; I’m pretty sure all modern CPUs throttle before reaching dangerous temperatures. I was considering overheating as reaching the temperatures where it has to throttle, since that’s when you see the performance hit.

I’ve never seen a laptop that won’t overheat at full load and I’m not sure one even exists.

Laptops get a pass on overheating under load since they need to be compact, but your desktop should not be overheating even at full load. If it is, the only real solution is to upgrade its cooling system.

For the price of one 5090 you could build 2-3 midrange gaming PCs lol. It’s crazy that anyone would even consider buying it unless they’re rich or actually need it for something important.

Surely a M.2 to USB adapter would be better for that use case?

People have been cheating on their homework as long as homework has existed. AI is just the latest method to do so. It’s easier to cheat with than previous methods, but that’s been true for every new method of cheating.

That seems like it would violate the law of entropy by turning a high entropy state (water vapor mixed into the air) into a lower entropy state (water in liquid form), but I’m probably just missing something.

You don’t need JS at all if you get a bit creative with the CSS.

Might be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but I don’t really see a problem with brain implants. I wouldn’t put anything in my brain in a thousand years, but if someone’s willing to accept the risks, why not? They have the potential to significantly improve quality of life for many people.

I can’t imagine this would be effective at all. Assuming it uses GPS, big datacenters could simply spoof the GPS signal, and consumers could block the GPU from receiving the signal (a fully metal PC case is almost a Faraday cage already).

Never, but I think that’s alright seeing as I don’t have one.

Look at you fancy pants with special gloves; if you don’t spill a bit of your blood along with the fish’s you’re doing it wrong. :P

Thanks for your guesses, everyone! The final dry weight turned out to be 817g.

Unfortunately you weren’t the closest (ended up being 817g and some people undercut you) but I will give you the award for most sensible calculation.

Congrats, you got it, ended up being 817g. I think the real winners are the people who actually did the calculations though. :)