I use rsync and SFTP to transfer files to a remote server and NFS over the LAN.

I have HTTPS and SSH accessible on the internet but only over IPv6. Anything else I access over an SSH tunnel or VPN.

Do any of those cheap Chinese computers ever get any firmware or bios updates?

You could connect an ESP32 to the power and reset switches through opto-isolators or relays. You will have to do a little bit of programming, but you can host a website on the ESP32 that will allow you to operate the switches remotely.

If you want to get a bit fancier, you could connect the UART on the ESP32 to a serial port on the server through a TTL to RS-232 level converter and have a remote serial terminal embedded in the web page too. That won’t do much good if the server is completely locked up though.

That depends on how much load it’s under. Idle power will probably be around 50 watts. Fully loaded, it will be several hundred.

You got a nice gaming computer, but it will be expensive to run 24/7 for use as a server.

Hardware decode for AV1 is only available on fairly recent devices. Software decoding is not likely to work for high quality 4K video.

I’m starting to see a lot of 3:2 displays now. They are not quite fullscreen, but they are a lot better for reading documents than 16:9.

The 16GB version is around $160 US with a 256GB eMMC module and case.

There’s the Orange Pi 5 Plus if you want something really energy efficient. It has 16GB of RAM, an 8 core CPU, dual 2.5G ethernet, and it can use an M.2 2280 SSD. It looks like there’s going to be a 32GB version, but it’s not available yet.

What’s a good, reputable source for those cheap 8TB drives?

If you wind a 2 or 3 layer pancake coil the size of the platter out of 12 or 14AWG magnet wire and dump a couple kJ through it from a capacitor bank, the platter will launch into the air. Don’t try it indoors unless you want a platter embedded in the ceiling.

That wouldn’t surprise me. I’m sure they don’t want people using youtube their own private video archive. Storage isn’t free after all. If they didn’t want people to set videos to private, they would have removed the option though. Just don’t expect the videos to stay there forever.

Another option is to make the youtube video private. Then you have the option to only share it with specific people. If it’s unlisted, then anyone with the link can view it.

Hosting on a VPS will get expensive. 4K video takes up a lot of space. If you want adjustable quality, then you will need to store multiple copies of the video at various resolutions and bitrates. A cheap VPS won’t have a GPU to do real time transcoding.

When the ads come from the same domain as the content, which is the case with youtube, you can’t block them with any DNS based ad blocker.

That is strange that they would have size limit for the SSD. Maybe it only supports single sided M.2 drives, but if that’s the case, they should have just said it.

Power consumption is the main issue. If it’s an old, power hungry desktop and you live somewhere with expensive electricity, it can be quite costly to run. If you have an energy efficient desktop or have cheap power then it will be fine. Just make sure it has a good quality power supply if it’s going to run 24/7.

The .stream domains renew at almost twice the cost of a .com after the first year. Most of the cheap domains renew at a much higher price.

The one thing DD won’t overwrite is bad sectors. If the disk has any reallocated sectors, the data in the original sectors may still be there.
If there are reallocated sectors, then the disk is reaching the end of it’s life and is not worth reusing anyways.

I would still consider an 8 year old CPU to be fairly recent considering performance has only increased a couple percent per generation.
12 bit video is uncommon, so support for it is not really needed. Intel Skylake or newer will work for 8 bit H.265.
If you have any video in 10 bit H.265, you will need a Kaby Lake or newer CPU in order to decode it in hardware. Software H.265 decoding will limit it to 1 or 2 streams depending on the CPU and video quality.

For real time transcoding, you will need a PC with a newer CPU that supports hardware H.265 encoding.