Tag: portable
The 5 best portable speakers of 2022
Walmart Lists a 30TB Portable SSD for Just $39. It’s a Scam
Scammer gets two 512MB Flash drives. Or 1 gigabyte, or whatever. They then add hacked firmware that makes it misreport its size… when you go to WRITE a big file, hacked firmware simply writes all new data on top of old data, while keeping directory (with false info) intact.
Ars Technica goes over the details:
On the inside, this “SSD” looks like two small-capacity microSD cards hot glued to a USB 2.0-capable board. This board’s firmware has been modified so that each of these cards reports its capacity as “15.0TB” to the operating system, for a total of 30TB, even though the actual capacity of the cards is much lower…. It preserves the directory structure of whatever you’re copying, but when it’s “copying” your data, it just keeps writing and rewriting over the tiny microSD cards.
Everything will look fine until you go to access a file, only to find that the data isn’t there.
Replies to Ray Redacted’s thread are full of alternate versions of this scam, including multiple iterations of the hot-glued microSD version and at least one that hid a USB thumb drive inside a larger enclosure. Fake USB storage devices are neither new nor rare, though this one makes spectacularly egregious claims about its price-per-gigabyte. When it comes to buying storage online, common-sense advice is best: stick to name brands, buy from trustworthy sellers…. and know that if a deal seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Grab a 15.6-in portable OLED monitor for $200 at Amazon US
Portable monitors are pretty awesome – they’re an easy way to get a dual screen setup going on a laptop, and also work well to expand the Steam Deck’s rather modest screen into something a little more co-op friendly. Of course, they also work for desktop computers too – and are much more portable and space-saving than an average actual desktop monitor.
You can even get OLED models now – and a coupon code on Amazon US brings one model down from Innocn from $350 to $200 when you tick the ‘coupon’ box on the product page. That’s quite a bargain for a 15.6-in portable screen of this calibre.
Portable Power Stations
Meta’s Flailing Portal Repurposed As a Wireless Portable Monitor
At a time when webcams are integrated into many laptops, and USB webcams are easier to find again, many consumers don’t need a display dedicated primarily to web calls. But an extra monitor? That’s more widely appealing. With the addition of Duet Display, Portal owners have further reason to think about their Portal when they’re not on a video call. Meta also gave all Portals with a touchscreen — namely, the Portal Go, Portal Plus, Portal, and Portal Mini — a Meta Portal Companion app for macOS. The app enables screen sharing during video calls and provides quick access to video call features, like mute and link sharing in Zoom, Workplace, and BlueJeans.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Our favourite portable SSD is down to £77 at Amazon
The Crucial X8 is our favourite portable SSD, thanks to its compact protective frame, convenient USB-A or USB-C connection and excellent performance. It’s capable of transfer speeds up to 1050MB/s, minimising the time it takes to copy files to and from the drive, and offers low enough access times that you can easily run games from it too. It normally costs around £85, but today it’s dropped to a historic low price of £77 – a great value for a portable NVMe SSD offering this level of performance.