Junk also tend to accumulate in rivers and lakes. Once it’s in there it’s out of sight, out of mind - and even if you know it’s there it is often difficult to remove.

When it finally gets cleaned up by bringing in the magnet or a barge to dredge it up or whatever, you’re seeing years if not decades of stuff that’s getting pulled out all at once.

It certainly could. That’s the gamble you’re taking.

I usually replace drives after 5 years if they are doing anything I consider important. So those drives to me would have 1-2 years left in them. Of course, I have seen a good number of drives I have repurposed to things less important still manage to rack up impressive numbers of hours.

DuckDuckGo is not Bing, though they get most of their results from Bing so they end up pretty similar.

And yes, I would say it’s better. Not that Bing is particularly good and their search results have also taken a nosedive. But they are still way better than the garbage results I get out of Google.