Most (US) companies don’t consider the US government to be a significant risk to their business, partly because they’re already subject to it.
They also commonly believe that Microsoft can secure these keys more effectively than they could do so in-house. And they’re probably right.
Now, it’s an entirely different story for any companies not subject to US law.
The biggest problem with DDR3 is that the last (consumer) boards/CPUs that could use it are really, REALLY old. 5th-gen Intel or AM3 AMD. Which means you’re looking at a full decade old, at the newest. These boards also probably can’t do more than 32GB.
Now, I suppose if you only need 32GB RAM and a CPU that’s pathetic by modern standards, then this is a viable path. But that’s going to be a very small group of people.
I’ve seen it, too. No idea what’s behind it, but it tries to download a .ts file.
There is a ratio, which may be a new experience if you’ve only used public trackers. It’s not really a big deal if you have some patience, though.
TL (as do most ratio trackers) gives you bonus points for your time seeding, even if you have done nothing more than make it available. You don’t have to upload even a single byte unless someone wants it, and you’ll still get points. These points can be used to buy upload credit.
If you simply keep seeding everything you download, and buy credits as needed, you’ll quickly have more ratio than you could ever hope to burn. No need to spend money or anything.
As for limited content, it’s a general tracker. You probably have niche interests, so you would be better suited on a more specific tracker. I’ve almost never had issues finding anything mainstream, although quality can be a crapshoot. That’s the main reason I usually use other trackers.
Opentrackers.org posts open signups. TorrentLeech is at least as good as the public ones, and it has open signups a few times per year.
Otherwise, you can apply/interview for RED and a few others, work your way up through the ranks, and use the invite forums. This is how you get to the really big and really good trackers. But it’s also a lot of time and effort, which most people don’t want to do.
You might get lucky on the open signups. Every top-tier tracker was once a tiny site with no users. If you join and contribute, they could be the next big thing, and you joined with minimal effort.
This is basically the exact scenario that led me to detail that I was only talking about consumer gear. Server gear is a very different beast, with a variety of tradeoffs that I didn’t want to get into. For instance, I’m assuming you can only use Registered RAM.