Wait, they do? Why would they do that?

price-per-unit-compute is really high

Well yeah, they’re optimized for storage. And if you’re starting from nothing, you’re going to need storage.

Synology is your budget home cloud, and it’s just good enough to handle basic cloud tasks and small-scale service hosting. If you grow out of it, you leave the Synology NAS for purely data storage, and add another box for heavier compute.

TrueNAS, on the other hand, is usually overkill for a home NAS setup because it’s designed for small-ish business use-cases, so it has a lot more CPU and RAM than you’d need when you only have a handful of users in a home setting. So it can probably handle any CPU workload you throw at it, within reason. It probably wouldn’t make a great compiling cluster, but it would do really well hosting things like NextCloud. If you’re looking for transcoding, you need to check the hardware and drivers on FreeBSD (maybe it’s not an issue, but it’s good to check first).

Do they have some kind of VPN or TURN system?

How would the router help with that? If you’re behind CGNAT, you’ll need something external regardless. If you’re not behind CGNAT, pretty much any router on the planet can do port fowarding, and many can handle a network-wide VPN if that’s what you’re after.

I’m behind CGNAT and I have a VPS that hosts my VPN and routes all traffic using HAProxy over the VPN to my internal devices, and my internal devices maintain a persistent connection to the VPN. It sounds complicated, but it’s really just two config files that I’d be happy to share if anyone is stuck. I do have a Mikrotik router, but it’s not needed for any of this, I only use it for static DNS routes so I don’t hit the WAN when accessing my services by their domain names (and VLAN for ZeroTrust shenanigans, but again, not needed at all). If I didn’t have that option, I could always just host a DNS server right on my NAS and do the same thing (any router can set the DNS server over DHCP).

How beefy? Multiple CPU?

No, I’m not that productive. I just want it to run builds of my Rust projects, and those can take some time. So 6-8 recent-ish cores is plenty. Right now I’m using a Ryzen 1700, and once I upgrade my PC, I’ll move my Ryzen 5600 to it. I want my builds to finish somewhat quickly without interfering with other services on the machine (e.g. if I’m running a build while we’re watching a movie, I don’t want the movie to stutter).

If my project grows (i.e. I get outside contributors), I’ll need higher specs.

And yeah, my preference for a single box is storage space. My NAS sits on my desk, and I’d really rather not get a rack setup. More machines means higher power and more space. I do have a couple of Raspberry Pis around for specific use-cases (e.g. one on my TV for RetroPie), but I’d really rather not have a handful of PCs running 24/7. Electricity is pretty cheap where I live, but even then, I’d rather not waste power just because I can get a good deal on servers. My single box uses something like 40-50W, and once I upgrade to my 5600, idle draw will drop another 10-20W (I have a 20-30W floor due to the drives).

Ew, I guess that’s another reason to never live in NJ…

I think the opposite is true. Stock values factor in expected future earnings, so if the market seems to be shifting, the stock price will generally drop before the disappointing earnings report comes in.

Isn’t that basically just a commercial NAS? Go buy a Synology NAS, or get fancy w/ TrueNAS. You don’t need an entry-level enterprise-grade router at all, you can just plug the NAS in anywhere and you’re golden. You can usually install a few services like Plex/Jellyfin or HomeAssistant alongside the data storage if you like.

If that’s not going to work for you, you probably have a good idea of what will work for you. For me, a tiny x86 server isn’t going to cut it, because I want a beefier CPU to run CI/CD for my programming projects, so a beefier, modern CPU is quite valuable. That’s totally overkill if all you want is a simple streaming setup with 1-2 transcoded streams.

So I think there are two main markets here:

1. just give me something that works - these will flock to pre-configured solutions, like Synology or TrueNAS
2. I want something specific - they’ll DIY components together to build their own custom solution

The only other group I can think of is the group that can’t afford 1 and doesn’t know enough to do 2, but I really don’t think that’s a particularly big group, and they’d be better off reusing something they already have instead of getting some off-the-shelf solution.

I could absolutely be wrong here, that’s just my $0.02.

Sort of? It borrows a lot of the high speed protocol bits from Thunderbolt 3, but I think it does DP a little differently (at least it supports different DP standards than TB3). So it’s closely related, but not necessarily the same thing.

Good idea! I don’t need it very often (like maybe once/year?), but I’ll keep it in mind the next time I start looking for my USB drives again.

That has nothing to do with phones and everything to do with readability. It turns out, people have trouble reading overly long lines of text, so website developers tend to limit text to a certain width. It’s also a little bit of carryover to pre-responsive design when websites had to work well on 800x600 desktop screens, as well as 1080p screens, but that hasn’t really been a thing for many years now.

I like the second answer here:

I agree with the user Jared Farrish: it’s to make the content more readable. If a paragraph spans the entire width of the browser window, it can be taxing on the eye to move from the end of one line to the start of the next line if the paragraph takes up many pixels in width. Many websites tend to limit the width of the page for this reason. In addition, some Web sites use media queries to change the font size if the user’s browser window width is very large.

“Universal” merely means devices with different capabilities can use the same interface. So you can use mice and keyboards (very low bandwidth needs) on the same port as a data hungry drive. That was the major innovation when USB took over for PS/2, parallel port, etc.

Manufacturers can still use low-end components on the client devices, the requirement would merely be that the ports in host devices and cables would meet some minimum specs to be able to meet USB certification. Instead of having a wide variety of possible configurations, force host devices into smaller niches so the marketing is clearer to customers. Devices would still negotiate voltages, data rates, etc as they do now, the only change would be forcing implementations into buckets.

I’d probably just use a basket then, and buy less.

Yeah, I’d just not shop there. I never have change with me, and I’m not bringing change just because the store requires it. It might not be the first trip or the third, but over time, I’d shop there less and less because convenience matters.

Why not just 3D print a few more?

I’ll also go fetch a couple on the way if I see some hanging out. It’s not because I’m trying to make the cart wrangler’s job easier, but because it’s not orderly and it bothers me. I have to consciously limit myself or I’d end up patrolling the whole lot.

Wow, what kind of dystopia do you live in? In my town, they’re just happy you went to their store, and I presume cracking down on what little shoplifting there is would drive away more business than it saves.

But is creating those jobs actually something we want? How much does someone get paid for collecting carts? How much does that increase prices for basic necessities? Do we have a labor surplus such that any job is a good job?

The answer to all of those is “no.” I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather keep my office job than go collect carts, so I put my cart away so the person would would have that job can get a better job.

To be fair, I’m married and frequently misunderstand my SO, and it doesn’t help that they have a different native language. For example, when they say, “we’re out of X,” I take that as informative, not a request to go get more X. But sometimes I catch on, like this morning (WFH today) when they said, “are you busy?” (or similar) and I correctly interpreted that as “I want sex.” You win some and you lose some; sometimes I’m in the dog house, and other times I’m pounding out a quickie in the middle of the day.

I used to try to politely decline, now I just wave and say I’m not interested. If they try to change the script, “I’m not selling anything,” I just repeat myself and they get the hint. I used to feel bad, but then I realized it saves them and me some time, so I’m probably doing them a favor.

It certainly doesn’t, but it’s understandable for users to expect that paying a premium at a place like BestBuy should result in getting a better product that picking up something on Amazon.

I generally do my research, but in this case, I needed it in a pinch to flash a Linux ISO to get my computer up and running because I couldn’t find any of my other ones. I expected to get ripped off, so I’m not too mad about it, but I was surprised at how crappy it was since I figured USB drives are largely a solved problem.

And this is why I largely avoid BestBuy and steer others from it, stuff costs more (though they do match if you ask), and they tend to carry crappy accessories and peripherals. It’s basically Walmart quality crap priced higher than better products at Microcenter, all because customers either don’t know better or don’t have any other retail options.

MP3 players and later

Sure, and I had a handful that used mini-USB instead of micro-USB, and they were completely fine. It’s easy to quickly look at the plug and orient it the right way, whereas with micro-USB, it’s a fair bit harder.

I don’t think I ever had a mini-USB device wear out the port. Then again, I didn’t have a ton of them, so maybe it’s more common.

Regardless, USB-C feels like an over-engineered solution to a few small problems. The ability to use it in any orientation is nice I guess, but I still have similar problems that I had w/ micro-USB, with cables wearing out over time. I’d rather we optimize for easier to swap ports (i.e. something like the Framework laptop’s changeable ports).

It also makes me sad. But I guess someone needs to fill out the bottom 50% that are below your “average” person’s intelligence.