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).

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.

“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.

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).

Yeah, not trying to argue with you or anything, it’s just a pretty big disappointment for me. I really want to be able to do privacy-friendly transactions, and I guess I wish someone like Proton or Mozilla would that up.

Something like a Proton Wallet could be really cool if I could add a few different payment options (e.g. XMR, BTC, credit, debit, bank transfer), and then pick the one I want at checkout based on what the vendor supports. They could add this to a phone app and get tap-to-pay working, which would really lower the barrier to people using crypto. It would then be backed by Proton’s privacy and security (e.g. stored on encrypted Proton Drive, no logging, etc).

I probably still wouldn’t use it because I don’t trust any single entity with all of my data, but if it appeals to the mass market, then I benefit as well.

So yeah, I guess I’m just frustrated and disappointed.

1. This seems to only work between Proton accounts, so I doubt many would actually do that. And it seems they’re using the regular BTC network, not Lightning, so fees are going to be huge ($1.60 from their screenshots). Monero solves this way better since there’s no way to see someone else’s balance with their address, and transactions are pretty cheap (a few cents). Their solution doesn’t actually add privacy, it just obfuscates transactions a bit. Lightning does a much better job w/ privacy (it’s private until you close the channel) and costs (transactions are way cheaper and way faster than regular BTC), and it would be the ideal solution to this problem since it still uses BTC.
2. Sure, but aunty is highly unlikely to be using Proton, much less Bitcoin. It’s a service for enthusiasts. Support is absolutely important though, I just don’t think aunty is likely to be sending crypto over Proton.

I still don’t really see who this is for. The requirements to actually using it productively is that your contacts need to also have Proton. If most of your contacts use Proton, that means you’re probably running a business or something and thus don’t need to send BTC to eachother.

Focusing on regular users makes way more sense than focusing on these niche use-cases. Make it so I can easily use cryptocurrencies for online payments. Integration with Proton Pass makes way more sense than integrating with email.

Right, which is why it’s so important to define tiers.

For example:

1. basic support (cheap) - gen 2 speeds, charging at 5v 500ma, etc; for peripherals and whatnot
2. high speed (fast enough) - 5gbps speeds, charging at 5v 500ma, etc; USB drives, regular laptop/desktop ports, etc
3. fast charging (general purpose) - 5gbps data transfer, fast charging up to 45W (or maybe a little lower) at various voltages; phones, special laptop/desktop ports
4. specialized PD - gen 2 speeds (faster is optional), fast charging up to 240W at various voltages
5. specialized data - 40gbps data transfer, charging at 5v 500ma (faster is optional), display out

You’d use the same cable for 1-3, and specialized cables for 4 and 5, and those cables would have special markings on the connector. Ports for 3-5 would have unique markings as well. Cables and ports can go beyond those specs if they want.

Just because you can break things into separate groups doesn’t mean you should. The goal here shouldn’t be to make things easier for manufacturers, but to make things easier for users.

Eh, USB4 is basically what USB 3.3 would’ve been, but with fresh branding. I expect it to have the same naming issues after a few updates…

Exactly. If Proton does anything with cryptocurrency, it should use one of the privacy coins, and Monero is probably the best option here. Here’s how I would’ve rolled it out:

1. accept Monero w/ a discount directly as payment for Proton - I might have picked Proton over Tuta for this
2. add Monero payments to Proton Pass
3. integrate 2 into existing products (e.g. send money to trusted contact, pool money for events in calendar, etc)
4. add other cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin and ETH) and payment networks (e.g. Lightning)

But no, they instead did:

1. accept Bitcoin as payment for Proton
2. release Bitcoin wallet
3. ??

At least it’s non-custodial, but that raises more questions because if it’s non-custodial, I presumably already have another wallet anyway. The wallet doesn’t add anything directly useful.

Honestly, I didn’t really have an issue with USB type A ports. They worked fine, and it was only a minor inconvenience to orient them the right way. I cared far more about capabilities of the port (speed, power delivery, etc) than I did about the actual port.

That said, micro-USB sucks in every way. The awkward “is this the right way?” thing is way worse than with USB-A, it’s not meaningfully smaller than mini-USB, the port is incredibly hard to clean (and it always gets dirty), and the connector seems to break all the time. I would’ve been totally fine with moving everything to mini-USB instead. The connector was less flimsy without being that much bigger, and it had room for more wires.

I do like USB-C though, I’m just not sure the added complexity is worth it.

Same with my keyboard, and I appreciate the compatibility. If it doesn’t need anything faster than 2.0 speeds, there’s no reason to include more expensive parts.

Mine is worse, it says it can do way more than 20Mbps, but once the buffer is exhausted, it hangs frequently. And this isn’t some random POS from AliExpress, I bought it retail at BestBuy.

And that’s the real issue with the USB spec, almost everything is optional. This would be fine if cables were largely interchangeable, but they’re not.

What they should have are a handful of very well-defined tiers. Cables should maybe have three (basic, mid-range, high end), and ports can have a couple more.

But will that be better or worse than USB 3.3 gen 2 extra super speed?

Oh sure. Personally, I would just break the rule and drop the transmit power on my router, banking on them not bothering to enforce it. They’ll most likely give a warning first, especially since the dorm rep said it would be fine. I have broken plenty of dorm rules, yet never got as much as an email because I made sure my rule-breaking didn’t bother other people so nobody reported it.

A lot of times, those rules are in place because someone ruined things for everyone and they added it so they have something to point to. If you don’t cause problems with others, it shouldn’t be an issue.

“Bubbles” are typically defined by stock/commodities prices. The 2000 dotcom bubble was defined by investor losses, the 2008 housing bubble was defined by housing price drops, etc. So an AI “bubble” will be quantified by stock prices of AI-related companies, like Nvidia.

I think the stock price will be at least partially supported by spending by the big tech companies trying to keep AI relevant. So I expect less of a “pop” and more of a gradual deflation.