Best of Hardware — February 2026

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    Article
    Avatar of jeffgeerlingJeff Geerling·15w

    The first good Raspberry Pi Laptop

    The Argon40 ONE UP is a modular laptop built around the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, allowing easy hardware upgrades by swapping the CM5. Priced at $400 for the shell or $550 with an 8GB CM5 and NVMe SSD, it features solid build quality with aluminum construction, decent speakers, a 14" 1920x1200 display, and 7.5 hours of battery life. However, it lacks proper laptop features like sleep mode and native battery management, requiring Python scripts for basic functionality. At around $600 for a complete setup due to recent Pi price increases, it struggles to compete with similarly priced Intel or AMD laptops that offer better performance and native OS support. While the hardware is well-designed and achieves right-to-repair goals similar to Framework laptops, the value proposition is weak in the current market.

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    Article
    Avatar of arstechnicaArs Technica·14w

    Microsoft’s new 10,000-year data storage medium: glass

    Microsoft Research has published in Nature the results of Project Silica, a working glass-based archival storage system capable of storing data at over 1 Gigabit per cubic millimeter. The approach uses femtosecond lasers—emitting pulses lasting 10⁻¹⁵ seconds at millions per second—to etch data into small glass slabs. Glass is highlighted as an ideal archival medium due to its thermal and chemical stability, resistance to moisture and electromagnetic interference, and its passive nature (no energy needed when idle). The project addresses long-standing challenges in archival storage around density, longevity, and write speed.

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    Article
    Avatar of theregisterThe Register·15w

    New hire fixed a problem so fast, their boss soon quit

    A new network admin at a university in the late 1990s solved a persistent Novell NetWare server problem within minutes by checking log files, discovering memory errors that senior admins had overlooked for weeks. The issue, which caused frequent lockups and required escalation to vendors, was resolved when replacement memory was flown in overnight. The lead admin who had failed to find the logs resigned a month later to become a yoga instructor.

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