The 20 most read stories of 2024 on Ars Technica

Raspberry Pi 5 in its official case.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

We read about Andrew’s experience with a few sub-$200 desktop PCs, but this story is what started it all. The spec sheet looked promising enough with support for two 4K displays running at 60Hz and room for an internal PCIe SSD, but the experience wasn’t what he’d hoped for.

Andrew’s time using the Raspberry Pi 5 as his daily driver started out disappointing, but once he reset his expectations, he ended up pleasantly surprised by the experience.

If you’re looking for the cheapest mini-desktop possible, you’ll want to look elsewhere, but if you want to see how far Arm Linux has come, read Andrew’s article.

The STS-51-B mission begins with the launch of Challenger from Pad 39A in April 1985.

Credit: NASA

Being strapped into a small space and thundered into space aboard a giant rocket must be an incredibly stressful experience. But sometimes the stress doesn’t end with a successful launch. We don’t often get to peek behind the curtains and catch a glimpse of an astronaut’s mental state, so when we do, it’s jarring.

“Hey, if you don’t give me a chance to fix my instrument, I’m not going back,” said astronaut Taylor Wang during a space shuttle mission in 1985. The first Chinese-born person in space, Wang was on his way to an experiment on the behavior of liquid droplets in microgravity. When it didn’t work at first, Wang asked for permission to debug it and make repairs. When Mission Control denied his request, he uttered the terrifying phrase.

Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has been lifted to be placed atop an Atlas V rocket for its first manned launch.

Credit: United Launch Alliance

Not only has there been a lot of Boeing on this top 20 list, there has been a lot of Boeing in the news all year. And most of that news has been bad.

Eric Berger delves deep into the development of the Starliner, outlining the problems and setbacks that plagued its development, and attempts to answer the big question of how a company like Boeing, which had been at the pinnacle of manned spaceflight for decades, came so far behind the competition. that didn’t even exist 20 years ago?

Thank you for making Ars a daily read during 2024. May you and those you love have a happy and safe holiday.