I imagine lots of possible reasons.

Text-only format emphasises placing value on the news itself, not on attention-getting images.

Simple format plays well with RSS feeds.

Extreme plain design allows you to stealthily read it at work without it being obvious you aren’t working (less important today than it was in 2007)

Intentionally bucking modern design trends fits well with the demographic of the readership, who are tinkerers and nerd-types.

Keeping the design the same after all this time has become a matter of tradition and pride.

There’s no need to change something that isn’t broken.

No.

My personal rule is that I do not consume any media where I have to see or hear adverts.

When I’m in someone else’s car that’s an exception and they can listen to whatever they want, it’s their car. But if I’m driving? Absolutely not.

Thanks for the correction.

Regardless, an impartial third party does it, and that’s the key part in making you less likely to be scammed.

Yes it will.

When you sell your house “normally” through a real estate company it is the real-estate company who acts as an intermediary in the transaction. They collect money from the buyer, then pay you, and the transaction completes.

The real estate agent takes a cut for their services, but there is less potential for fraud than if the buyer sends you money direct. The real estate company has a vested interest in making sure the sale goes through properly, because they won’t get their cut otherwise.

And if you could afford private legal counsel you wouldn’t be considering selling to this kind of scummy service in the first place.

They know exactly who their “customers” are.

There’s nowhere convenient. As you correctly identified, AI has pushed the price of drives through the roof.

Your only real chance is to find a one-off on auction sites from someone who hasn’t noticed what’s going on or what the current market is asking for drives.

You might still be able to find bargains in charity stuff or on Marketplace sites etc but these are unlikely to be sufficient capacity for NAS builds unless you get super lucky.