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Financial Services
JP Morgan Chase and Nasdaq represent my most demanding client work to date. For JP Morgan Chase, I wrote consumer-facing financial articles covering topics including seller financing, home repair, life insurance, and fixed-income securities — content that required both precision and accessibility for a general audience. For Nasdaq, I completed two distinct projects: product marketing copy for services including Boardvantage and Nasdaq IR Insight, and substantive editorial work on a series of regulatory articles covering EMIR Refit, Basel III, and ISO 20022, prepared for integration into Nasdaq’s website following an acquisition. As this work has not been published publicly, I’m unable to link to it directly — but I’m happy to send samples on request.
Horizon Technology
Horizon Technology is a hard drive reseller and ITAD (IT asset disposal) specialist. As the primary writer for their blog, I pitch and write the majority of content — deep dives into storage technology, industry trends, and data management practices. Over time this work has built the site’s domain authority from essentially zero and pushed it to the top of organic search rankings across a range of competitive topics in the ITAD vertical.
Highlights
SSD vs. HDD TCO: The Key Variables That Define Costs
Data storage TCO isn’t as simple as SSD vs. HDD. From power to workload specifics, here’s a look at the key variables which define costs.
Hybrid Storage Architecture for AI
Hybrid storage architectures intelligently combine SSDs and HDDs to handle the multi-stage data pipelines found in AI workflows.
HDD Bandwidth Bombshell Keeps Spinning Media In Play
A bandwidth boost would keep HDD relevant for the foreseeable future. Can OEMs keep costs low while using the boost to stay competitive?
A Guide to JBOD
JBOD is a simple and flexible storage architecture. Use cases include everything from mission-critical tasks to storing surveillance footage.
The Outlook for DNA Data Storage
In the relentless race for data, what’s driving the growing interest in DNA data storage as an alternative media for long-term use?
How HAMR Drives Increase Areal Density
HAMR drives will let manufacturers increase areal density in time to harness an upcoming wave of data. If the price is right, this will secure a place for HDD in hyperscale data centers for a long time to come.
Hard Drive Capacity and The Road to 50TB
Despite a drop in HDD unit shipments, nearline sales are holding up, and manufacturers have ambitious plans to ramp up hard drive capacity.
Tech Journalism
The Hard Drive Shortage and Factory Recertified Drives
As HDD prices rise, factory recertified drives are an opportunity for consumers to procure affordable hardware in times of shortage.
HDD Long-Term Agreements: The Rise of the Build-to-Order Supply Chain
HDD sales have shifted from a commodity model to a build-to-order model involving long-term agreements between OEMs and hyperscalers.
HDD Long-Term Agreements: The Rise of the Build-to-Order Supply Chain
HDD Remains Dominant Storage Technology
Despite the rise of flash, HDD retains a commanding share of enterprise storage. Here’s why spinning media isn’t going anywhere.
The Circular Drive Initiative’s Push For Sustainable Data Storage
The Circular Drive Initiative (CDI) embraces circularity principles to promote sustainable data storage, reduce e-waste, and promote reuse.
The Circular Drive Initiative’s Push For Sustainable Data Storage
Reuse It Or Lose It: HDD Reuse and the Circularity Gap
A recent study of over 117,000 data storage drives revealed a massive circularity gap between potentially and actually reused HDDs and SSDs.
New Trends in Hard Drive Recycling
With techniques for disassembly, component recovery, and hard drive recycling, used HDDs can be a source of value rather than e-waste.
Explainers
A Guide to Composable Infrastructure
By scaling compute and storage separately, composable infrastructure aims for increased data center flexibility at lower cost.
How Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) Drives Up Data Center Capacity
How is shingled magnetic recording (SMR) helping the HDD manufacturers drive up storage capacity in the data center?
How Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) Drives Up Data Center Capacity
Hard Drive Platters: Innovation in Rotation
Nothing is more integral to an HDD than the hard drive platters. Innovation in disk design helps pack more data on spinning media.
Call To Arms: A Guide to Hard Drive Actuator Assemblies
A hard drive actuator aligns the read/write heads on disks with exceptional accuracy and speed. But designing actuators isn’t easy.
A Guide To Drive Rewritability
Drive rewritability matters more for some workloads than others. Understanding how endurance is measured can help you choose storage devices.
SMART Attributes For Predicting HDD Failure
HDDs are able to capture data about their own performance. These “SMART attributes” can then be used to predict and manage hard drive failure.
Article Series: IEEE
A four-part series on IEEE 2883, a data sanitization standard. The series opens with an overview of the standard, then covers each of its three sanitization categories in turn: Clear, Purge, and Destruct.
Clear sanitization techniques remove data from all addressable locations while leaving the storage device in a reusable state.
Data purging is a way to securely sanitize drives while avoiding e-waste. The new IEEE 2883 standards set out strict compliance criteria.
Responsible drive destruction requires a balanced, conscientious approach that considers both environmental sustainability and data security.
CMC Editorial
CMC Editorial is the content agency where I serve as Lead Writer. These pieces, written for our in-house blog, reflect my thinking on writing, research, and communication.
10 Ways That Humanities Advance Content
What does writing b2b content and studying Ancient Greek have in common? Maybe more than you’d think.
Does ChatGPT Understand What It Writes?
It’s one thing to list out tasks that ChatGPT is good at. It’s another to understand why AI text generators have the limitations they do. To answer that, we need to ask something a bit more abstract: does ChatGPT understand what it writes?
No, it doesn’t. Here’s why it matters.
Using Jargon: When, Where, and Why
At its best, jargon can make thoughts clearer and more specific. However, jargon has its drawbacks. Like so much else in content creation, the key is to know your audience and strategize accordingly.
Why Writing is Thinking
In writing, we communicate ideas to others, but we also make them more clear to ourselves. To think clearly, you need to express thoughts clearly.
Academic Work
Before moving into content marketing, I completed a PhD in philosophy at the University of St Andrews, specializing in the history and philosophy of logic. My research required close reading of dense technical material, constructing and evaluating complex arguments, and writing with precision for a specialist audience — habits that transfer directly to the kind of rigorous, research-driven content I produce today. My dissertation and one published journal article are linked below for anyone who wants to dig in.
Strictures on an Exhibition: Frege on his Primitive Laws
A published article on Gottlob Frege (late-19th century German philosopher and mathematician) on formal logic. You can find it here.
Frege’s case for the logicality of his basic laws
My dissertation on how philosopher Gottlob Frege went about determining whether or not laws in formal systems were purely logical. You can find a link to it here.
Dr. Alexander Yates 