Hasn't it been this way since, well, forever? I seem to recall these headlines in the 90s and 00s too, but somehow the defense budget grows every year...

They're great for low strength, dedicated platforms instead of using something with more muscle like a NUC, also where a VM or container can't be used.

Primarily the external postgresql db for my k3s cluster.

Gotcha. I figured I'd try the RPI this time around since I had such a terrible time with Odroid's C1 (or C2? It's been 6+ years).

I'm not tied to the RPI at all, but ameridroid seems to be out of stock of everything low cost and low power with a decent amount of RAM (eg 4GB+).

Yeah I think that was another huge complain I had when I started out with an off brand SBC (Odroid C1). I think you had to do stage things to get a kernel to work and to be honest, my days of compiling kernels went out with the 90s. I remember reading years ago that the RPi had kernel integration with mainline oses like Ubuntu, so I wanted to give that a try as a dedicated key store machine and some other stuff.

I've got two clusters of nucs currently so they aren't exactly foreign to me. Just wanted to find something cheaper and lighter to do some dedicated db work on. Sounds like I'll just get another i5 NUC off eBay.

Over heard of it but haven't seen them. The other piece I was looking for was CMs for the Trying Pi that I got. It's been sitting in a box ever since I got it because .... no compute modules anywhere.