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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 28th, 2023

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  • You’re saying that data centers are replacing batteries constantly…just imagine the labor costs on that (and the down time), not even considering the material cost.

    I’m the tech doing the battery replacements. The big boy UPSes are typically a 3-5 year replacement cycle. Something like this:

    (I just picked the last one on my phone so not a great picture, they’re about the size of a small refrigerator)

    On rack mount and desktop style UPSes 18-36 months isn’t unreasonable. Some of the smaller UPSes, like APC 750s, go through batteries even faster. My personal theory is that they just get and stay too hot.

    There is typically zero downtime while servicing any of them, every critical system has redundant power supply and battery replacements usually don’t interrupt power output anyway. It would take multiple failures to cause any sort of significant downtime, and if it would, we just do them during scheduled downtime.


  • I’ve had exactly two dishwashers completely stop functioning in my entire life. Both were GE post Haier and within the last 6 years. Also had a Haier made GE microwave completely fail.

    I replaced the microwave (and the matching stove) with Samsung and haven’t had one bit of trouble with either.

    I thought I had just gotten a lemon, but three separate failures within a couple of years has really soured my opinion of them. I was a lot more worried about the Samsung appliances I bought, but they’ve been a dream.

    Note: I am not recommending Samsung appliances, at all. I got an amazing deal and fully expected them to fail shortly after the warranty was up. I’ve had to repair several of my friends and family’s washers, dryers, and refrigerators. Samsung’s poor reputation is well earned, I just got lucky


  • I code on my iPad quite a bit, and my kids use theirs for art almost exclusively. File sync isn’t really an issue with Nextcloud/icloud/syncthing/onedrive.

    Also not much of an issue with screen size. I have a 12.9” and it’s only slightly smaller than my primary laptop’s screen(thinkpad x1 carbon gen 10). If I didn’t have to use a console cable to configure stuff all the time, I could stop carrying the laptop entirely.

    For reference, I do dev-ops and network engineering for a large MSP.


  • Ah yes, the smug European that has no idea that macaroni and cheese originated in Italy in the 14th century, was extremely popular in England from the 18th century, and was introduced to the US via France.

    And yes, it’s cheese. Probably cheddar. You start with a bechamel and incorporate cheese to make a mornay sauce. Combine the sauce with the pasta and serve.


  • Well, it just says they’re including it with Game Pass. So you have the option of not actually purchasing the game for $70 (every year!) but you still get to play. There’s a lot of good games for both Xbox and PC so it’s a decent value proposition for a lot of people.

    I don’t buy AAA games, so it’s kind of nice to have the option to play some of them without a big upfront investment. The real stars are the smaller and indie games.

    It’s not for everyone, but for the cost of a Netflix subscription I can play a shitload of games on my PC and my kids get a huge library on the console.




  • They’ll have to get a new SAS controller unless the RAID controller has an HBA mode. Running ZFS under a RAID controller is the best way to lose all of your data.

    ZFS is wonderful but it takes quite a bit of planning and specialized knowledge to implement properly. Your fear of a failed RAID controller is a bit much, too. I’ve had to deal with a single controller failure in 30 years of IT (and I’ve done warranty work for all of the major OEMs in corporate IT for most of those 30 years)