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.

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.

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.

Windows 365 Subs were just raised at the beginning of the year, from $99 MSRP for a family plan, up to $139. It's still possible to buy the $99 plan but you have to very carefully navigate to find the option that doesn't include Copilot AI bullshit.

Cool Story, Bro time:

My domestic partner is very pretty and the dbag who runs the nearest Tesla dealership was trying really, really hard to get with her. He let her borrow his dealership's loaner Model S Plaid for a week as part of his "That Guy" package.

We thought we'd have some fun since it's supposed to be this super cool sports car. It turned out to have a governor on it that limited acceleration and top speed to something any Honda Odyssey owner would find comfortable.

I'm not sure whether it was that guy's doing or is that's something directly from Tesla itself but we both thought it was hilarious.

Samsung makes three tablet lines: the A, which is a value product that isn't bad for around $200; The S6 Lite, which is a specific mid-tier offering that is updated less than annually and has its own model specs per release. There's also the full-fat Tab S line, which are premium tablets.

I have an S6 Lite from 2020, a Tab S8 and an S9+. The S8 has a fairly normal 10" screen and is actually my favorite of the bunch; I find the 12" screen on the S9+ too big since I mostly want a reading device rather than a watching or playing device. I use the S9+ as a portable monitor and video capture device for my camera when I'm shooting photos with models. It's big and bright enough to see even in outdoors in broad daylight. All three of them have reasonable Qualcomm SoCs and big-boy amounts of RAM. All three of them have an SD card slot for big-boy storage. Newer Tab S series tablets are also water resistant, if you're someone who might use such a device in the bath or near a pool.

Not everybody wants to buy a premium Android tablet and I'll admit I don't pay full price for them either, but they're superb hardware, and I have no problem recommending the S6 Lite or the comparable Lenovo M11 for general use. Those aren't waterproof and they don't have high end SoCs, but they have nice screens, work well in their intended ecosystem and they aren't saddled with a sub-par mobile OS like Apple or Amazon hardware.

Yes, I know it's possible to add the Play Framework to a FireOS device. The problem is that you have to fight to keep it that way since Amazon updates will eventually reset your settings. As far as I know, there's no cure for the limitations of iOS, which is why I'd never bother with an iPad.

I found Sonder because I was desperate to book a weeklong stay in Manhattan that didn't cost $2k and wasn't in some bedbug infested nightmare in Times Square. I was essentially checking every short term rental on Google Maps when I ran across it.

Once I got in their system, I found rentals everyplace I wanted to go. Getting a very cheap flight and a Sonder apartment has been my recipe for an interesting long weekend every few months ever since.