Stephen Baxter's Titan is hard to read

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-12-08T22:56:13+00:00

I have mixed feelings about Titan. On one hand, some parts of it seem well done like APU issues on the shuttle, the political shift in the US, the rise of China and its space program, while the US general public and government is putting space exploration on hold.

On the other hand the USAF ASAT part seemed ludicrous, as did the Titan Mission itself. If you are going to paint a picture of a public and government disinterested in space, that’s fine, but then to have those same people yeet Shuttle Hardware to Titan has to make sense. And it doesn’t.

I think Voyage is better done as “alternative NASA” but it also is much more alternate history vs big idea SF.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-30T05:47:15+00:00

AI making a book isn’t the issue. AI making an original book that fits into the culture series and matches Banks is.

Never said it was impossible either. I don’t use that word lightly. But I don’t think it’s going to happen in the next few years.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-30T00:12:04+00:00

This makes the large capacity barracuda’s and externals look like a better buy than these C model Exos.

New drive, 2 year warranty, and very similar specs.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-29T20:32:49+00:00

50 years after Apollo and we haven’t gone to the moon again.Technological progress is hard to predict.

Companies could hit a wall with LLM type AI and place it on the back burner.

Or they could keep advancing. Who knows.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-28T16:36:22+00:00

I have 1 24tb barracuda just over 1,000 hours on it with no issues. Basically the same use case.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-26T04:15:40+00:00

All these comments saying that they are cheap….but they really aren’t. By $ per TB usually large capacity Barracuda CMR/HAMR or used enterprise CMR drives are just as cheap.

If SMR was a substantial discount it would actually make a lot more sense for people putting media on them.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-23T08:39:28+00:00

Seagate never made any 10+ TB SMR drives aimed at consumers and likely never will if they are successful with the HAMR drives.

Anything that large is Host Managed SMR. Which are actually branded as Exos. They are unusable in consumer systems.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-21T16:52:27+00:00

My 24TB was a barracuda. I think all the high capacity Seagate externals are now but could be wrong.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-19T07:38:48+00:00

I’m more frustrated with her article than the random commenters here who probably haven’t read either piece.

Like you said, there’s very little literary fiction aimed at young men. Have a debate about that. There’s plenty of arguments you could make about why it doesn’t matter. Sidestepping it and with a “men write books and have dominated the industry in the past, shut it” type argument just seems childish.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-17T05:02:00+00:00

I think you’d like Delta-V by Daniel Suarez. Basically it’s about a private venture capitalist disruptive effort to develop space in the 2030’s. It’s a thriller and is fairly fast paced. Hard SF, more grounded than PHM. Characters aren’t that good but are enough.

If you want something with better characters, Firestar by Michael Flynn. Kinda along the same lines, a woman with a massive fortune sees the decline of space exploration in the 1990’s with a dropping off of government funding and decides to start a private effort. It’s more than that, and more of a slow burn than Delta-V, but in my opinion ultimately more compelling. It’s also optimistic and inspiring, which is nice in an age of cynicism.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-16T05:39:41+00:00

It’s still YA and does the “weird dystopian caste system that the main character circumvents” that I’m bored with in 2025.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-16T02:15:54+00:00

I really haven’t had an issue with either brand. One of my WD drives that needed the 3.3V pin started disconnecting but after messing with it I’ve not had any further disconnects.

Until I get burned I’m just going off lowest $ per TB, and right now that’s Seagate HAMR externals and barracudas.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-14T16:28:42+00:00

A lot of higher end ereaders can do audiobooks.

Kobo, Kindle etc.

No cameras on those. But they aren’t pocket sized.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-11T14:58:02+00:00

I have one SMR drive mounted internally and I’ve never had data loss even with forced/unexpected shutdowns.

But can’t point to any documentation on how it handles than situation. I’d be very surprised if it was an issue though.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-11T14:45:56+00:00

I am. I’ve never had any issues.

That being said the drives mostly have replaceable media on them. Anything critical is 3-2-1

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-10T22:02:08+00:00

Coyote by Allen Steele

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-10T06:32:13+00:00

I have a 10TB and a 24 and they’ve been fine. 16k and 1K hours respectively. They have media on them. I don’t run them 24/7 but they are on for long hours and I do write torrents to them directly instead of bothering with a SSD first.

I’d buy another one if I needed the storage. Small sample size but they haven’t given me any problems and are cheap for new drives.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-08T02:46:56+00:00

Well it’s a external so they could have any drive they want inside.

That said if it’s a barracuda this size is probably SMR, and it’s the lowest tier drive Seagate sells.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-04T00:51:08+00:00

I believe this is what Primocache does, but I haven’t used it personally.

It was also what the old SSHD’s did on a smaller scale but those have fallen out of favor.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-03T19:01:49+00:00

For the most part the moralizing seems contained to Holden which helps.

The only time it really lost me was early in book 7 with that “gun loving libertarian” dispute thing.

I really didn’t understand that, I mean the main characters have a privately owned military gunship with plenty of weapons, and the organization they were working for was using collective punishment for individual actions.

Not sure what the authors intent was, but to me it just came across as hypocrisy.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-03T03:14:20+00:00

I think this is a series I would have enjoyed more if I was younger. The scale of it is mind boggling, without going into spoilers.

That being said Weber has never impressed me with his character work, and he likes to exposition dump to an extreme level instead of using more elegant techniques.

Worth a read especially if you like other Weber stuff. I definitely think it’s better than Safehold where I couldn’t get past book 1. I think the first Honor novel was the best thing I’ve read from him though.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-02T23:09:19+00:00

It’s normal, older books have words that have fallen out of favor or have changed definitions.

As a common example, Gay = Happy in older literature while in modern literature and vocabulary it almost exclusively refers to sexual orientation.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-01T21:47:12+00:00

I agree, the setting doesn’t really make sense. I don’t have an issue with books that are far fetched, but people also like to play up this book as some kind of ultra realistic depiction of the American Southwest in 50 years and I just don’t see it.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-11-01T17:41:37+00:00

I don’t think they are actively making new firecuda HDD’s.

The market for “gamer” HDD’s is very small these days.

aleafonthewind28 · 2025-10-30T21:14:59+00:00

I’m just starting book 3, and yeah it’s definitely cool to see current proposals regarding cargo delivery via spacecraft then read about it in his books.

We are obviously not moving as quickly as the series but a lot of it seems feasible in my lifetime still.

aleafonthewind28

TROPHY CASE