ArtikBanana

Was it before AM4 by any chance?

Yeah, from what I've seen they weren't great before and have switched things up in recent years.
But I haven't had any personal experience with their boards.

Specifically motherboards or in general?
~~I've heard a lot of good things about Asrock motherboards. And they're also about the only ones without some recent controversy (for AMD CPUs).~~

In general, I can personally vouch for Noctua.
They sent me a free mounting kit for my then 7 year old CPU cooler when I switched it over to a new PC. I've had it for 12 years now.

Edit: Never mind, looks like also Asrock aren't too great.

Oh. Didn't consider that

1k

Might want to check out Bigscreen Beyond VR and Shiftall Megane X.
The Bigscreen one is already out and looks like a nice upgrade over the Valve Index.

Just be aware that for a period of time the MX 500 had many reports of high failure rate. Not sure if it was due to a change of components or firmware.
Example post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/whr5ek/crucial_mx500_historically_good_recent_batches/
An article (In Portuguese).
And another post about it.

Personally I use Newmaxx's site and spreadsheet which has more indepth information about the SSDs like their controllers and NAND type - https://borecraft.com/
You can also check their subreddit for some reviews and such.
That and some stats from Backblaze and general reviews.
And I use price trackers to make sure I'm getting a good price.

I don't like going by specific brands, because they all have some less ideal models and some of them tend to change some of the components after a while.

Ah I forgot it depends on the country.
In Canada for example, it's legal to copy a borrowed CD.

I can also buy a CD and if I live with family members / roomates, share it and let them play it whenever they want without them paying for it.
Or let people copy it.

I understand the feeling.
But when someone buys music from you and then puts it in house parties for tens of other people, those people are also listening to your music without paying.

And a lot of people these days will never pay for a specific artist's music.
They'll use a streaming service like Spotify, which barely pays anything to small artists (especially when free users listen to the music, and not premium users).
But I can use Spotify for free, listen to small artists' music, share it with other people, and it will be considered legal and "ok".

And personally, whatever I pirate, I wouldn't have bought in the first place without being able to try it. So it isn't a lost sale.

Tailscale funnel lets you expose services to the internet without opening any ports.

There's also the option of inviting your friends to your Tailscale network and limiting them to specific services. But they'll have to install it on their devices.