The ravens are looking a bit sluggish. Tell Malcolm they need new batteries.
Thursday, April 02
Another Good Thing For A Change
About three years ago, we closed our Sydney office at my day job, since half the staff already worked from home and the rest wanted to.
All the business equipment got packed away into storage so that we could move out on time, with the plan to sort it all out later.
Recently it seems someone asked "What is this storage unit we're paying for every month?" and so everything had to get moved out again.
They were planning to just dump the computers, and I pointed out that we couldn't do that since they might still contain confidential information. Since the storage unit is about 20 minutes from my house, the plan was quickly modified to dumping the computers... On my doorstep.
Which just happened. Five old PCs (they sold off all the nice Apple equipment), four external disk drives... And four Synology units containing a total of 96TB of disk.
Assuming I need to cannibalize one for spare parts and configure the other three in RAID-6, that will give me 54TB of available storage. Which should keep me in anime for a few weeks.
Update: Just realised that with my new internet connection (100/40, no download cap), these Synology boxes, and the 1TB cloud server I'm using for daily backups, I can cancel our main archive server. It's a nice server and reasonably priced for what it is, but the Australian dollar is in the toilet right now and I need to save money where I can if I want to bag one of those 3960X servers for mee.nu.
About three years ago, we closed our Sydney office at my day job, since half the staff already worked from home and the rest wanted to.
All the business equipment got packed away into storage so that we could move out on time, with the plan to sort it all out later.
Recently it seems someone asked "What is this storage unit we're paying for every month?" and so everything had to get moved out again.
They were planning to just dump the computers, and I pointed out that we couldn't do that since they might still contain confidential information. Since the storage unit is about 20 minutes from my house, the plan was quickly modified to dumping the computers... On my doorstep.
Which just happened. Five old PCs (they sold off all the nice Apple equipment), four external disk drives... And four Synology units containing a total of 96TB of disk.
Assuming I need to cannibalize one for spare parts and configure the other three in RAID-6, that will give me 54TB of available storage. Which should keep me in anime for a few weeks.
Update: Just realised that with my new internet connection (100/40, no download cap), these Synology boxes, and the 1TB cloud server I'm using for daily backups, I can cancel our main archive server. It's a nice server and reasonably priced for what it is, but the Australian dollar is in the toilet right now and I need to save money where I can if I want to bag one of those 3960X servers for mee.nu.
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Tuesday, March 31
I Still Aten't Dead
Three product launches, a conference (we have our own conference now), and a huge server migration meant that for the past two months I've been chasing fixed deadlines with rapidly varying requirements.
Three product launches, a conference (we have our own conference now), and a huge server migration meant that for the past two months I've been chasing fixed deadlines with rapidly varying requirements.
I have emerged. Not necessarily emerged entirely victorious, but certainly emerged.
It looks like we might be moving operations mostly out of the cloud and onto a cluster of Threadripper 3960X servers with an aggregate 6 million IOPS. Using ZFS and LXC everything will get snapshotted and backed up to AWS (and in some cases, replicated live) so that if it all drops dead somehow we can spin it back up the same day.
Need to read up on LXD clustering, like, right now.
Not installing Kubernetes, thanks. Will probably have Docker running inside LXC though.
It looks like we might be moving operations mostly out of the cloud and onto a cluster of Threadripper 3960X servers with an aggregate 6 million IOPS. Using ZFS and LXC everything will get snapshotted and backed up to AWS (and in some cases, replicated live) so that if it all drops dead somehow we can spin it back up the same day.
Need to read up on LXD clustering, like, right now.
Not installing Kubernetes, thanks. Will probably have Docker running inside LXC though.
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Friday, February 28
Daily News Stuff 28 February 2020
Pulse Coded Packet Switched Digital Headache Edition
Pulse Coded Packet Switched Digital Headache Edition
Tech News
- A look at the results of AMD's 2016 Chinese joint venture. (AnandTech)
The results are basically slightly broken versions of first-generation Ryzen and Epyc CPUs, with roughly identical integer performance, half or less of the floating-point performance, and encryption that you can be sure is 100% broken.
- If leaked benchmarks are anything to go by Intel's upcoming i7-10700KF is slightly slower than the Ryzen 3800X - but uses twice the power. (Tom's Hardware)
We know the 9900K is a terrible power hog, and Intel have pushed clock speeds even higher with their 10th Generation chips, so we rate this one plausible.
- The Raspberry Pi 4 now starts at 2GB for $35. (Tom's Hardware)
It replaces the 1GB model at that price. The 1GB model is still available if you're using it in embedded systems, but hobbyists now get twice the memory for the same price.
Also, that bug with USB-C power delivery got fixed at some point, so unless you somehow get a unit that's been sitting on the shelf for months, you should be safe.
- In terms of number of new mobile apps added in 2019 Google's Play Store is fourth and Apple App Store is fifth. (ZDNet)
Far in the lead is ApkGK which seems to have every Android app in existence and many that are not, which I have never heard of before, and which I would trust about as far as an elephant could jump on the surface of a neutron star.
- Corona-chan has scuttled Facebook's F8 conference. (The Verge)
Good work, CC!
It remains to be seen what will happen with upcoming events such as Computex and, um, the Olympic Games.
- The Chang'e rover says that the Moon has more
cheesedirt than previously thought. (New York Times)
130 feet deep in places. A Fall of Moondust, anyone?
Disclaimer: That's the Moon. Accept no substitutes particularly if they're only a couple of yards wide and don't plan to hang around. (USA Today)
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Saturday, December 21
Holiday! Celebrate!
I have three weeks off starting today.
My air conditioner is busted but apart from tomorrow (well, today now, it's well past midnight) the next week's weather is expected to be pretty mild.
I'll be working on the new system again. I started back in on it a couple of weeks ago to make sure I was ready to dive in right away. My dev system has 100k users and 3.5 million posts in it right now for performance testing.
I have three weeks off starting today.
My air conditioner is busted but apart from tomorrow (well, today now, it's well past midnight) the next week's weather is expected to be pretty mild.
I'll be working on the new system again. I started back in on it a couple of weeks ago to make sure I was ready to dive in right away. My dev system has 100k users and 3.5 million posts in it right now for performance testing.
The back-end is complete and passes the test suite, and I've settled on the front end design. I'll be posting the first previews in a few days.
I'm tempted to call it Minx 1.1.7, since it's a top-down rewrite that shares no code or even database definitions with 1.1.6.
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Friday, April 05
Tradesman Hours
Me: Yes, next Friday is fine. I'll be working from home all day.
Me: Yes, next Friday is fine. I'll be working from home all day.
Them: Great, we've scheduled you for 6:49 AM.
Me: ...
Also, Google Hangouts is still garbage. Crystal is good but there's no Jetbrains IDE for it, just a third-party plugin without much support. Virtualisation and containerisation are festering piles of garbage. And after it looked like we swerved at the last moment and headed for Brave New World, it turns out that 1984 is well and truly back on the cards.
Orwell wasn't a prophet, he just paid attention.
Orwell wasn't a prophet, he just paid attention.
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Saturday, March 09
Mundania and Trivia
So I blew out my back, apparently during the strenuous exercise of washing the dishes. I can't currently sit at my desk at all, so I'm giving kneeling a try. Not looking promising so far.
Daily News Stuff will likely appear in abridged form for a few days...
So I blew out my back, apparently during the strenuous exercise of washing the dishes. I can't currently sit at my desk at all, so I'm giving kneeling a try. Not looking promising so far.
Daily News Stuff will likely appear in abridged form for a few days...
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Saturday, January 26
Australia Day Musical Interlude
more...
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Sunday, September 16
Don't Spend It All At Once - Oh
The money from that domain sale didn't last long. Two notebooks, an external disk drive (those 8TB LaCie drives are really cheap now), a new ADSL/VDSL modem/router (since my router is old and my model is older), a bunch of cables (USB-C cables are bloody expensive) and other minor bits, and that new desk chair I'd been promising myself.
The money from that domain sale didn't last long. Two notebooks, an external disk drive (those 8TB LaCie drives are really cheap now), a new ADSL/VDSL modem/router (since my router is old and my model is older), a bunch of cables (USB-C cables are bloody expensive) and other minor bits, and that new desk chair I'd been promising myself.
And I think a week's worth of groceries got paid along the way because the money was sitting in my PayPal account at the time.
Well, it was nice while it lasted. Anyone want to buy idiotpedia.com? No, I think I let that one lapse. Never mind.
Status Update
- NBN: We'll get back to you in a year. Maybe.
- Domain sale: Unpaid. Paid. Spent.
- Laptop: Out of stock. In stock. Out of stock. ETA Wednesday.
- Shiny wonderful all-singing server: Obtained! Currently testing RAID-6 RAID-10 RAID-5 RAIDZ. Currently configuring for production with LXD 3.4 and RAIDZ1.
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Monday, July 16
Freezing
Literally. Zero degrees C overnight in my part of Sydney, and -3 in the western suburbs. Not something that would fret those who live in temperate climes, but Sydney is subtropical; it hardly ever actually freezes here.
Literally. Zero degrees C overnight in my part of Sydney, and -3 in the western suburbs. Not something that would fret those who live in temperate climes, but Sydney is subtropical; it hardly ever actually freezes here.
Brrrr.
Update: Official low at the closest government weather station was 1.4C last night, and a rather brisk -4C out in Richmond.
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Saturday, March 24
Where Was I?
At my day job we've done our San Francisco and New York launch events (and both went very well), and that just leaves London this week. This is the first weekend in a month when I haven't had to work.
At my day job we've done our San Francisco and New York launch events (and both went very well), and that just leaves London this week. This is the first weekend in a month when I haven't had to work.
I was doing something about a new social network, as I recall.
....
Nope, gone now. Well I'm sure if it was important I'll remember it.
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