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External hard drives are great for all sorts of things, but sometimes you get a bum drive. Doing a secure erase of the drive gives it a stress test before you put it into service.

Over at TidBITS, they have a variety of suggestions for maintaining hard drives, but this one’s easy: do a secure erase on it before you use it. This writes data to the entire drive and verifies that it can read and write data on every sector. If it survives the secure erase, then it’s good for holding data. Check out this guide for details on doing a secure erase.

The Care and Feeding of External Hard Drives | TidBITS

Photo by Karen.

via Lifehacker
Test a New External Hard Drive by Doing a Secure Erase

Some like their chocolate chip cookies soft and chewy. Others prefer it a little crispier. No matter what your cookie preference is, a simple adjustment in ingredients will help you bake your perfect batch of chocolate chip cookies.

OZY took insights from several science-focused food experts (UCLA Science and Food teacher Kendra Nyberg, cookbook author Tessa Arias, Serious Eats, and cookie videos) to come up with rules of thumb for making different kinds of cookies.

For example, if you want a crispy cookie with a soft center, use 1/4 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. Want it more cakey? Use more baking soda to puff the cookies up.

Hit up the link below for more cookie variations.

The Science Behind Baking the Most Delicious Cookie Ever | OZY

Photo by Handle the Heat.

via Lifehacker
Bake the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies by Knowing What to Tweak

Rather Be Shopping, the site that brought us a handy retailer price codes cheatsheet and also informed us of retailers’ price matching policies, is back with more money saving tips. They’ve rounded up the days of the week stores like CVS and the Gap tend to put their goods on sale.

Go shopping on those days and you’ll have first dibs on the clearance items. We’ve covered Target’s markdown schedule before, but Rather Be Shopping’s Kyle James tells us when to shop at CVS, the Gap, Joann Fabrics, Kohl’s, Macy’s, Old Navy, Ross, and TJ Maxx.

Armed with this knowledge and the best days of the week to buy specific products, you could potentially save a whole lot more when you shop.

It looks like most of the stores mark down their stuff early in the week, but head to the link below for the fine details.

What Day to Shop? 11 Insider Tips on Store Markdowns | Rather Be Shopping

via Lifehacker
The Best Days to Shop at Major Retailers

By Jason Rantanen Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International (2014) Download opinion here: Alice v CLS This morning the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Alice, unanimously finding all claims invalid under Section 101.  Justice Thomas wrote the opinion for the Court.  It begins: The question presented is whether these claims are patent […]
via Patently-O » Patent
Alice v. CLS Bank: Claims Invalid Under Section 101

via Dilbert
Dilbert 2014-06-19

As a father of four, I keep all firearms and ammo locked up 24/7 — the only time there’s an exception is when my concealed carry gun is on me or in transit to the range. Often, I hear people say that they don’t have a safe because they don’t have the physical space, or[…..]
via AllOutdoor.com
Stack-On In-Wall Hidden Storage

One is pleasantly functional; the other continues devolving during a journey of pain.
via Ars Technica
The Ars NAS distribution shootout: FreeNAS vs NAS4Free

There is no doubt that Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the most looked-forward to movies this year, and here’s another trailer to make us anticipate Marvel’s movie even more. Take a close look at this trailer as it reveals more scenes that should blow our socks off come screening day. Guardians of the […]
via ForeverGeek
New Guardians of the Galaxy Trailer Is Out!

According to the Pierre Sprey, co-designer of the F-16, the F35 is a turkey. Inherently, a terrible airplane. An airplane built for a dumb idea. A kludge that will fail time and time again. Just impossibly hopeless. And judging from the bajillion times the F-35 fleet has been grounded, well, he’s probably not wrong. It’s a trillion dollar failure. Watch Sprey eviscerate the F-35 in the video below.

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via Gizmodo
The designer of the F-16 explains why the F-35 is such a crappy plane