DACs will usually be even (slightly) lower power per port, and slightly lower latency[1] (we’re fighting over microseconds here!), with excellent durability. The tradeoff is for passive DACs you’re limited on range, cost is often higher, and they may need to be encoded for your interfaces. Moreover, the range is very limited.

Fiber (the cable) is immune to electrical noise, can run long distances, advances in wave division multiplexing extends the life of the fiber by changing what’s the fiber connects to. The downside is you pay slightly in latency for media interface changes (the electrical-to-optical conversions), the limits of bend radius of the cable to not break the cable or reduce bandwidth, and the relative complexity of field terminations compared to twisted pair. I’ve 25+ years experience with fiber, and trust me, it’s great.

————

Outside of cost, both crush twisted pair like an ant. The power consumption per port is also far lower. However, this is only going to matter if you focus on limiting power consumption (not for cost, on principle), have very high-bandwidth applications where latency matters (I do!), and/or just want field experience with things other than twisted pair.

I use DAC and fiber for some things as I try to get every scrap of capability out of my hardware. For example, I have VERY low power (silent or near silent) hardware where I can push 5GB (so ~40Gbps) / sec storage. Not just sending it over the wire, but actually committing it to disk without buffering in RAM. So I have the capability of “PCIe 3.0/4.0 x4 NVMe” speeds across the network… from the (mostly silent) storage server, to anything else that can send or ingest the data that fast. Despite the storage server having very little flash (a few TB vs 100TB+ disk). That’s harder to do with twisted pair, or at least the power consumption of the network connectivity itself starts to add up for a few virtualization cluster nodes.

———-

Generally, “DAC in the rack, fiber to out back” is a reasonable approach. Though “fiber-only” works if you want to limit complexity!

[1] Fiber and DAC tend to trade places on latency every generation or so. It’s a very close race, but they crush twisted pair.

My high-end HEDT would now be +$2300 to build mostly due to memory and SSD pricing. 96GB of memory going from $430 -> $1800 is wild. One community member literally wouldn’t be able to buy their Mac Mini configuration anymore, plus the self-upgrade SSD would be price hiked.

Where I blanche most is my storage server running TrueNAS. Built it 3.5 years ago, future-proofing in mind. Strong SSD cache layer, plus two spare HDDs as spares. It wasn’t cheap then, but I think between disks, storage, ECC memory, etc. it’s +$7000 now to rebuild it again, +$9000-$10000 on last generation hardware.

They definitely do. I recommend GP check out PICO-8 which has some VERY real games on it like the original Celeste (by its original creators), Cattle Crisis, POOM, Combo Pool, Into Ruins, Dank Tomb, UFO Swamp Odyssey, Porklike, and much more. Most of which you can play on Itch.io for free in your browser.

I’ve been having a blast making a “real” and very full-featured PICO-8 game to serve as a “market fit” prototype — if a PICO-8 game on Itch gets meaningful attention, I’ve “found the fun” and therefore I should make “the full version” (non-PICO-8) for Steam, etc.

Video here (fun watch!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6_qbe26m9E

-- -----

Though I'll summarize what she played that was released on August 4th, 2025, of what she chose to buy:

* "The Last Mage" was a game produced very cheaply by apparently a lone gal (the videographer found the dev diary) that was a fan of K-pop, levered heavily on existing assets, to produce a campy idea as best she could.

* "You Suck at Football" levered existing "viral game" ideas like "Only Up". Very much someone's early attempts.

* "Velocity Racing 1000" was a racing game that appeared like someone's early attempts. Very wonky controls and physics.

* "Potato Cop" is a simple action game in an deliberately "amateur style", likely produced very quickly and cheaply. She had fun with it though.

* "Escape from Amazonia" is an horror game with a quirky plot premise that did elicit some actual screams. Again, produced very quickly and cheaply, but she had some fun with it.

* "Descent" was a horror game with some genuine attempts on the presentation side, and again elicited some screams. Some clear effort there. Someone was on to something with this one, and it's a shame they didn't refine it further.

* "Agu" is a crude, early access, challenging platformer. This won't go anywhere, but the videographer made the best of it and had some fun with the sheer difficulty of overcoming the physics.

* "Bee Simulator: The Hive" had some FANTASTIC presentation and assets. Localized for 14 languages. Great voiceover. Somewhat educational. It's apparently a re-release of a previous game which is why it has poor reviews. Some quirks and bugs, but some might really enjoy it.

-- -----

So are you really "competing" with 50 other games if you put out something extremely high quality and polished? No. You might be competing with 5... at most. If you put out a genuine banger and took the time to market it in advance, you should get noticed.

Steam's algorithms clearly are doing a good job and ensuring most of this stuff isn't getting much visibility outside of release. Though it's there to find if you deliberately look to unearth all of it.

Ferrari had only adopted radial tires in racing a decade earlier. I'm curious as to what deal they got with Goodyear at the time, as radial tires (including high performance versions) were already long ubiquitous in the United States by the time that commercial came out, which I believe was actually after the end of the 308's production run.

An oven thermometer is another one I’ll recommend, as the temperature the oven claims it’s at is a function of where the sensors are. It’s not uncommon for it to be consistently off by 5-6%, which can really matter if you want the best results. Again, about $7 can solve that one too.

------

So I had many of the same concerns regarding Windows 11's nonsense when it came out, but I sat down, learned how to clean it up, and put a Creative Commons open source guide for others to follow. I knew many other reluctant friends who are senior devs at prolific companies in the tech space, and with my guide they seem to have no real remaining complaints.

It covers both the initial installation, as well as all my post-install recommendations. It eliminates I believe all the tracking, adware, suggestions, Cortana, feeding the Bing/ChatGPT machine, telemetry, etc. Absolutely nothing breaks. No need for a Microsoft account. It should be straightforward and to-the-click/keystroke.

https://github.com/GoofGarage/Win11Clean

If there’s any bugbears, please create an issue. I’ll be responding to them every few weeks, and I try to update the release every 3 months.

It absolutely does work if you disable UAC via Group Policy, but disabling UAC in my opinion is much a step too far as that loosens security in too many areas and would greatly increase Windows 11's attack surface.

I'll open an issue to investigate trying to identify the Group Policy setting to change to specifically re-enable this behavior without disabling UAC. Be advised that it'll be a few weeks as I'll be waiting until the January patch to drop (should be January 9th, 2024) for me to test prior to the January 2024 update to the guide.

I don’t disagree that it shouldn’t be necessary, though thankfully it’s a one time cost.

It covers both the initial installation, as well as all my post-install recommendations. It eliminates I believe all the tracking, adware, suggestions, Cortana, feeding the Bing/ChatGPT machine, telemetry, etc. Absolutely nothing breaks. No need for a Microsoft account. It should be straightforward and to-the-click/keystroke.

https://github.com/GoofGarage/Win11Clean

If there’s any bugbears, create an issue. I’ll be responding to them every few weeks, and I try to update the release every 3 months.

Heck, I’ve used Debian since Debian 1.0.

Most of my home infrastructure is Linux and BSD. I’ve used MacOS very heavily since 2004. I used to daily-drive VMS on both VAXes and Alpha. I still miss parts of Solaris. Amber was the better terminal color.

I do have to use Windows quite a bit in a professional environment - even if simply as a window manager - so when I had to create environments for myself, I made sure it wasn’t ever a hindrance. Moreover, I’ve had people ask to make it easy for them. Historically I distributed guides as a one-off to friends and colleagues, but yesterday finally released it for everyone to take advantage of.

https://github.com/GoofGarage/Win11Clean

I went with just text, point-and-click directions initially so people can at least intuit how they’d reverse any changes. I may consider making a scripted solution in the future, but no promises ;)

The majority of things can be done via the Settings app. Some are Local Group Policy settings. There’s a few PowerShell commands to remove pre-installed packages. There’s only 2 or 3 registry tweaks.

If there’s any bugbears, create an issue. I’ll be responding to them every few weeks.