Everything new enough to use DDR5 has the DRAM controller embedded in the CPU, so we'd be talking about something more than just new motherboards.

I spent about 3 weeks trying to get 4x64GB DDR5 6400 working on an AM5 workstation. I never got it to run for more than about six hours at anything faster than 4200MHz, no matter how much I fiddled with timings and voltages.

Hilariously, that spare 128GB RAM kit is worth like $2000 right now.

Consumer DDR5 platforms have a hard time using more than a pair of DDR5 modules at any but the slowest timing and currently don't support DIMMs larger than 64GB. Workstation and Server Platforms can already support more RAM than that, but if you're buying a new enough Threadripper, Epyc, Xeon or Ampere platform to handle DDR5, you're almost certainly buying it with rDIMMs in the first place.

Check back in five or six years. I'm kind of serious. I just pulled my oldest 7.6TB u.2s at the end of a three year service term, drives I thought were unimaginably huge when I deployed them. When I checked them, I found that they had around 70% estimated wear life remaining, which seems pretty good for drives that were in use constantly for so long. The replacement drives were 15TB each, and I expect that in another three years, I'll be ready to fork over for the 30TB ones.

I'm thinking this is pretty typical for drive deployment life cycles.

28GB/s under conditions that will never be met for more than a few seconds at a time given most enterprise workloads isn't nearly as interesting as getting 200k IOPS+ sustained random reads for arbitrary lengths of time, and that's something that's theoretically possible even on PCIe gen 3, albeit not on any drives that currently exist.

Technically, all DDR5 has data protection for single-bit errors on-chip. It's not the same thing as big-boy registered DIMMs, but I don't think you're going to get the whole world of people who buy Acer whatevers from Walmart to go along with yet ANOTHER reason to make RAM more expensive.

Aside from that, there isn't currently much justification for looking at Intel on consumer platforms. Having integrated Xe cores is nifty for video editors, but just like gamers, they're probably going to spend cash on an nVidia card anyway. AMD doesn't really offer anything on the extreme low-end like an N150, but if you're buying that far down the food chain, you probably aren't looking at rDIMMs, either. If you're looking at pure power efficiency, Qualcomm does pretty well unless you're a gamer.

I get most of my drives by being the only local customer for my server colo. I'm the only person who comes and goes with any regularity, and I've gotten to know the on-site ops well enough that they give me a chance to buy anything juicy from the abandoned/nonpayment hardware as they pull it out and evaluate it. I have gotten CRAZY stuff that way and I highly recommend it.

That being said, I haven't seen any deals for larger than 20TB drives either, but I would like to point out that both Seagate and WD high capacity external drives are generally going to be SATA versions of the same enterprise drives they normally sell. Sometimes, they don't even bother to rebadge them. I don't have any as large as 30TB but they last bunch of 28TB Seagates were a mix of re-badged (often with another sticker underneath) Barracuda and Exos drives. I got them on sale from Best Buy for I think $330 each. Are they as good as the Ironwolf whatever ones that cost twice as much and come with five years of data recovery? Probably not. Since I just wanted those particular drives for my off-site Plex server, I think I'm OK with that. Neither Seagate nor WD are selling extremely high capacity SMR drives, so everything you get works great with ZFS and you can shuck them out of the external enclosures and stick them on your SATA or SAS controller as you see fit.

It's a bit of a moot point. Systems that aren't receiving general OS updates wouldn't receive updated bootloaders anyhow. So they wouldn't need the updated certificates that allow for bootloaders signed after June 2026.

It gets a bit tautological, but only systems that are getting updates need updates.

I think because most people incorrectly assume it's an acronym and not the guys name that invented it.

I modify my installation ISO to remove the most egregious matters and use an autounattend.xml to make sure the installation is as I wish it to be. I have sysprep images that are appropriate for things I deal with professionally and my generic installation ISO works well enough to handle one-off installs that I can use the same single file for at least anything up to a Ryzen HX370/Zen5 or 15th-gen Intel.

Schneegan's AutoUnattend generator is extremely helpful in this regard. I've recently found Winhance, which is useful for maintaining a steady configuration on Windows system AND for customizing Windows ISOs. Something else that is very helpful is knowing that it's very easy to make Windows Home SKUs install and run the Group Policy editor, which makes keeping any Windows system in order much less complicated.

How long did that take? I'm not sure. I've been doing it since Windows 2000, so either 40 minutes or 26 years.

Why shouldn't the phone be secure by default

It lacks an appropriate number of ports and doesn't support DisplayPort.

USB DisplayPort alt mode says hello. Every rear USB-C port on the Mac Mini is also a DisplayPort. Just as it is on all of Apple's laptops.

Thunderbolt is a garbage, proprietary Apple standard.

Thunderbolt is an Intel standard. And in the case of Thunderbolt 4, it's just an additional set of feature requirements over base USB4, where those features are optional. In other words, TB4 is a superset of USB4.

Have you even looked in Settings? There's a "Leave Bixby" button on my S25. I've never accidentally invoked either Bixby or Google Assistant on mine but you can probably remap things like the long press on home or the double click on the side button that often tell your devices to open whichever assistant you have.

I have Bixby turned off completely, my double click side button is set to open Google Wallet and I have circle to search turned off under Settings > Display > Navigation Bar. These settings seem to be sticky between devices; I've never seen Bixby on my Tab S9+ or my last few Samsung phones.

Apple's ecosystem seems to be focused on preventing users from doing what they want with the powerful general purpose hardware they sell. Android users can at least take steps to mitigate how much access advertising systems have on their devices, even to the point that they can use their devices entirely without a Google account. There's no way to get a fully functional third party browser on iOS and iOS users who refuse to sign in to Apple have no way of obtaining any software for their devices.

Tell me again who has half an ecosystem.

Agreed, really.

I do make use of the SoC on my costly S-series Samsung; it makes an excellent video recorder and monitor while I primarily shoot photos on my Canon mirrorless camera. But Apple brings nothing but restrictions to the table, even to the point that their devices can't be used for arbitrary file storage and don't allow third party web browsers. There's nothing they're doing that's worth dealing with the lock-in from having one.

Not sure what you're on about there. Samsung has offered seven years of updates on its mobile devices since 2022 and Google Pixels have had a similarly long support window for the last couple years as well.

I find iOS unacceptable. I'd stop using mobile devices entirely if it were the only available option.