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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • There is the legal concept of Mens Rea which has to do with the mental state of the person committing the act. And I think that applies in this case. Archeology has generally been about learning and providing knowledge of previous cultures. While the methods, mindset and actions of 18th and early 19th century treasure hunters left a lot to be desired, some of them did make some reasonable attempt at documenting their finds and preserving the context to provide that knowledge. Modern archeologists go to painstaking lengths to properly document finds and preserve as much knowledge as possible from finds. Grave robbers do none of this. Their motivations generally revolve around personal gain and they will destroy any context and knowledge in their attempt to make money.

    Consider your own reading on the Valley of the Kings. Where did all of the information we have on the Pharaohs in those tombs come from? It’s from the work of the archeologists documenting everything found in those tombs. While there is certainly an argument for leaving things in the same state they were found in, that also means that the artifacts will continue to deteriorate and any further knowledge which might be gleaned from them will be lost. Sending artifacts to a museum isn’t all about putting them in cases for people to gawk at. It also means that actions are taken to preserve those artifacts and maintain them for observation and study in the future. Sometimes this does cause damage. Again, 18th and early 19th century preservation was often just as, if not more damaging than leaving those artifacts in-sutu. But again, the intention was to preserve, not enrich.

    So, that’s how I would draw the line, based on the reason and methods used for the removal of grave goods. Is it done with the intention for the furtherance of knoweldge of previous cultures? Or, is it just done to enrich someone? And is the work being done using the current understanding and methods to best capture and preserve that knowledge for future generations?





  • I’ve been using Proxmox professionally for years now, and not once did i have s problem i could not fix myself.

    And how many of the environments you have left behind became an unmanageable mess when the company couldn’t hire someone with your skillset? One of the downsides to this sort of DIY infrastructure is that it creates a major dependency on a specific skillset. That isn’t always bad, but it does create a risk which business continuity planning must take into account. This is why things like OpenShift or even VMWare tend to exist (and be expensive). If your wunderkind admin leaves for greener pastures, your infrastructure isn’t at risk if you cannot hire another one. The major, paid for, options tend to have support you can reach out to and you are more likely to find admins who can maintain them. It sucks, because it means that the big products stay big, because they are big. But, the reality of a business is that continuity in the face of staff turnover is worth the licensing costs.

    This line, from the OP’s post, is kind of telling as to why many businesses choose not to run Proxmox in production:

    It is just KVM libvirt/qemu and corosync along with some other stuff like ZFS.

    Sure, none of those technologies are magic; but, when one of them decides to fuck off for the day, if your admin isn’t really knowledgeable about all of them and how they interact, the business is looking at serious downtime. Hell, my current employer is facing this right now with a Graylog infrastructure. Someone set it up, and it worked quite well, a lot of years ago. That person left the company and no one else had the knowledge, skills or time to maintain it. Now that my team (Security) is actually asking questions about the logs its supposed to provide, we realize that the neglect is causing problems and no one knows what to do with it. Our solution? Ya, we’re moving all of that logging into Splunk. And boy howdy is that going to cost a lot. But, it means that we actually have the logs we need, when we need them (Security tends to be pissy about that sort of thing). And we’re not reliant on always having someone with Graylog knowledge. Sure, we always need someone with Splunk knowledge. But, that’s a much easier ask. Splunk admins are much more common and probably cheaper. We’re also a large enough customer that we have a dedicated rep from Splunk whom we can email with a “halp, it fell over and we can’t get it up” and have Splunk engineers on the line in short order. That alone is worth the cost.

    It’s not that I don’t think that Proxmox or Open Source Software (OSS) has a place in an enterprise environment. One of my current projects is all about Linux on the desktop (IT is so not getting the test laptop back. It’s mine now, this is what I’m going to use for work.). But, using OSS often carries special risks which the business needs to take into account. And when faced with those risks, the RoI may just not be there for using OSS. Because, when the numbers get run, having software which can be maintained by those Windows admins who are “used to click their way though things” might just be cheaper in the long run.

    So ya, I agree with the OP. Proxmox is a cool option. And for some businesses, it will make financial sense to take on the risks of running a special snowflake infrastructure for VMs. But, for a lot of businesses, the risks of being very reliant on that one person who “not once [had a] problem i could not fix myself”, just isn’t going to be worth taking.






  • Widespread IPv6 adoption is right there with the year of the Linux desktop. It’s a good idea, it’s always Coming Soon™ and it’s probably never going to actually happen. People are stubborn and thanks to things like NAT and CGNAT, the main reason to switch is gone. Sure, address exhaustion may still happen. And not having to fiddle with things like NAT (and fuck CGNAT) would be nice. But, until the cost of keeping IPv4 far outweighs the cost of everything running IPv6 (despite nearly everything doing it now), IPv4 will just keep shambling on, like a zombie in a bad horror flick.



  • One idea to always go back to is:

    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

    • Carl Sagan

    This can be tough to evaluate sometimes, but it’s a good general idea.

    Does the claim sit outside the natural world as currently understood by scientific theory?
    If yes, then there’s going to need to be a lot of evidence. If not, the level of evidence is lower.

    Does the claim involve a low probability event?
    If yes, then more evidence is needed of that event.

    Does the claimant have a stake in the claim?
    For example, does the person get money, fame or other stuff by getting people to believe the claim? If so, more evidence should be required.

    What type of evidence would you expect to see, if the claim were correct?
    When things exist, they tend to leave evidence of their existence. Bones, ruins, written records, etc. If someone says something exists, or used to exist, but they should have archeological/anthropological evidence to back it up.

    Sure, it’s always going to be a bit subjective as to what requires proof. And for a lot of low stakes things, there’s no point in going after it. If someone claims to be from Pitcairn, then what’s the point of questioning it? Just say, “huh, cool” and move on. If someone is trying to convince you that an historical figure existed, and that should effect how you see the world, maybe ask for as bit more evidence.




  • I took up indoor rock climbing a couple years ago, partly because I have a similarly sedentary job and hate most forms of exercise. I can certainly understand the draw. I go 2-3 times a week and have stuck with it for so long because it forces me to get out of my head, but also doesn’t require dealing with strangers as much. It’s just a clam, focused activity which also happens to work my body.

    Unfortunately, as a hobby, rock climbing is going to work your hands and arms. I would say that, as I have gotten better, I do a better job of using body position to prevent having to hang by my hands. But, just the other day, my foot slipped and I was hanging on by my fingertips for a couple seconds. And harder climbs may require you to engage your hands more. Though again, body position and technique counts for a lot.

    Best advice I can give is: talk to your doctor. They will know more about how your condition will be affected by climbing and what your options are. Certainly more than random idiots on the other side of the internet.





  • What do you do to feel like you’re part of everyone else and in a way cope with some of the pressures of life around you?

    I stopped giving a fuck about everyone else. I do what makes me, my wife or my kids happy. The rest of the world can go stuff a sock in it. Sure, I like to keep up on news and politics and will go read related sites when I have time and energy. I also listen to several podcasts and follow several Youtube channels. But, those are all things I do because I want to do them. If I’m not feeling like doing one of those things, I don’t. I also work and so have to keep up on the aspects of life related to that; but, I don’t pretend to be interested in things just to make coworkers happy. I am employed to do a job, they are employed to do a job. Sometimes we do a job together and I focus on the work at hand. And yes, I do socialize a bit with my coworkers as we have some shared hobbies and interests. But, if they start going off about basketball, I let them say their peace and then move on. It’s not my cup of tea and I feel no need to engage with it.

    One of the most important secrets to life is learning to set boundaries. Don’t let other peoples’ wants become your needs. Be who you are because it’s who you want to be. If other people can’t deal with that, then they can go put their problems somewhere uncomfortable for them.


  • There may also be a (very weak) reason around bounds checking and avoiding buffer overflows. By rejecting anything longer that 20 characters, the developer can be sure that there will be nothing longer sent to the back end code. While they should still be doing bounds checking in the rest of the code, if the team making the UI is not the same as the team making the back end code, the UI team may see it as a reasonable restriction to prevent a screw up, further down the stack, from being exploited. Again, it’s a very weak argument, but I can see such an argument being made in a large organization with lots of teams who don’t talk to each other. Or worse yet, different contractors standing up the front end and back end.