Just make sure, that you don’t buy anything with unbroken DRM. If you ever lose access, you can just get it back from the pirates.

Physical mediums aren’t gone - they are just all HDD and SSD now.
I switched from CDs to HDDs two decades ago. HDDs are still great as physical long-term storage.
Your digital is just HDDs and SSDs in someone else’s computers.

Yeah, “Don’t trust Wikipedia” always has been like “don’t trust books” because it literally is at least on par and even references sources. We literally can’t do original research on everything ourselves and even just verifying the sources is infeasible for most topics because it’s not just a list but a forest of deep-rooted trees. It takes decades to learn to know what’s real and what’s just a commonly believed lie. Sometimes someone proves the empirically validated assumptions of the past wrong, and then we get new tech like GPS… That said: Don’t trust AI. It’s not as good as the humans filling Wikipedia - yet.

This is learned behavior though. It’s not obvious. I learned it from my parents. He obviously didn’t.

It is pretty rude to leave out the co-author. He knows best how much work the cat did.

Optical audio is somewhat an abandoned standard. The copper port is as good. And professionals use external devices connected to USB and synced in their digital audio workstation software now.
USB-C gets somewhat more frequent now. But USB-A is the mechanically superior standard for sort-of fixed installation (like on the back of a PC). And if you have a USB-C device, chances are, you also have an adapter already.
Thunderbolt is pretty niche. It’s more a mac thing. It’s nice to have - but 99.9% of the users don’t have any matching devices and routing those PCIe lanes to a PCIe slot is better.
It is somewhat a hot take - I know. But if you really use the 2.5 G Ethernet, you probably want 10 G anyway. So just go for a board with that or add it via PCIe card.

For stereo, TOSLINK is fine. But so is the copper port right next to it. I removed it because it’s basically unused fluff for more than 99.9% of all users. I used that port (on a dedicated sound card) once to connect a DTS 5.1 active speaker system (marketed at gamers like me) back in the 00s. It doesn’t really have enough bandwidth for 5.1. But I’m no audiophile, so it was fine. Thing is: Just plugging in the copper cables works as well and provides the full bandwidth.\

And motherboard-integrated DACs are pretty good now. Even audiophiles can’t hear the improvement in stereo in blind tests (they probably can hear copper sounding better in 5.1 though).
It’s basically the Betamax of audio connection standards. Technically better, but market adoption is negligible.

Actually:

The on-board video ports are for emergencies when your actual GPU isn’t working. One of each type is plenty.
That 2.5 Gb Ethernet isn’t giving me any actual benefits in practice as no other component in the network supports it anyway. If you need more speed, go all the way to 10 Gb.
No one really has toslink equipment anymore and the optical standard on that connector is shit anyway. You literally get better audio from the analog ports.
Get rid of the fancy special USB ports as well as the legacy low-speed ports. Just give only the normal super-speed ports which always work well without odd hardware quirks or driver issues. And 4 are actually plenty. I connect at least one hub anyway.
Also don’t waste precious PCIe lanes for useless bling like six SATA ports, multiple NICs, or Wireless. Just route the unused PCIe lanes to the PCIe slots. Maybe I want to add an AI accelerator later.

It actually is. Just joining a conversation exclusively to say that you don’t care isn’t.

That’s just what total democracy looks like. Completely normal. In Germany, some political parties (left and right) are also banned to make sure they can’t ever be elected.

It’s like Brexit with the exception, that most citizen of the core country of The Great US Empire don’t really profit from the absurd benefits that come with being the defacto ruler of the world. They never got full state healthcare anyway. They never got a real social security net. All the profits were hoovered up by the military industrial complex and the Epstein billionaire club anyway. For the majority of the people, losing the world leader status might actually be a neutral change. They can’t lose what they never had.