There are really two reasons ECC is a “must-have” for me.

• I’ve had some variant of a “homelab” for probably 15 years, maybe more. For a long time, I was plagued with crashes, random errors, etc. Once I stopped using consumer-grade parts and switched over to actual server hardware, these problems went away completely. I can actually use my homelab as the core of my home network instead of just something fun to play with. Some of this improvement is probably due to better power supplies, storage, server CPUs, etc, but ECC memory could very well play a part. This is just anecdotal, though.
• ECC memory has saved me before. One of the memory modules in my NAS went bad; ECC detected the error, corrected it, and TrueNAS sent me an alert. Since most of the RAM in my NAS is used for a ZFS cache, this likely would have caused data loss had I been using non-error-corrected memory. Because I had ECC, I was able to shut down the server, pull the bad module, and start it back up with maybe 10 minutes of downtime as the worst result of the failed module.

I don’t care about ECC in my desktop PCs, but for anything “mission-critical,” which is basically everything in my server rack, I don’t feel safe without it. Pfsense is probably the most critical service, so whatever machine is running it had better have ECC.

I switched from bare-metal to a VM for largely the same reason you did. I was running Pfsense on an old-ish Supermicro server, and it was pushing my UPS too close to its power limit. It’s crazy to me that yours only pulled 40 watts, though; I think I saved about 150-175W by switching it to a VM. My entire rack contains a NAS, a Proxmox server, a few switches, and a couple of other miscellaneous things. Total power draw is about 600-650W, and jumps over 700W under a heavy load (file transfers, video encoding, etc). I still don’t like the idea of having Pfsense on a VM, though; I’d really like to be able to make changes to my Proxmox server without dropping connectivity to the entire property. My UPS tops out at 800W, though, so if I do switch back to bare-metal, I only have realistically 50-75W to spare.

Social media companies, adult websites, whatever, can try to find ways to block children from accessing their content, but kids will always find a way around it.

It’s the parents’ responsibility to control their children. I’ve said 1000 times, children don’t need access to smartphones and tablets. A desktop PC or laptop with strict parental controls is adequate enough for school work, learning about technology, and some basic entertainment.

When a child is old enough to work and pay for a smartphone themselves, then they’re old enough to have a smartphone. A prepaid flip phone with basic voice and SMS is more than enough for a 15-year-old.

I have a few services running on Proxmox that I’d like to switch over to bare metal. Pfsense for one. No need for an entire 1U server, but running on a dedicated machine would be great.

Every mini PC I find is always lacking in some regard. ECC memory is non-negotiable, as is an SFP+ port or the ability to add a low-profile PCIe NIC, and I’m done buying off-brand Chinese crop on Amazon.

If someone with a good reputation makes a reasonably-priced mini PC with ECC memory and at least some way to accept a 10Gb DAC, I’ll probably buy two.

This is kind of a shit article. Most of these are just old hardware that eventually had modern improvements, not “trends.”

A “trend” is cold cathode black lights inside the case, not a silly naming scheme for CPU revisions.

I think I’m misunderstanding how LDAP works. It’s probably obvious, but I’ve never used it.

If my switch is expecting a username and password for login, how does it go from expecting a web login to “the LDAP server recognizes this person, and they have permissions to access network devices, so I’ll let them in.”?

Also, to be clear, I’m referring to the process of logging in and configuring the switch itself, not L2 switching or L3 routing.

Like several people here, I’ve also been interested in setting up an SSO solution for my home network, but I’m struggling to understand how it would actually work.

Lets say I set up an LDAP server. I log into my PC, and now my PC “knows” my identity from the LDAP server. Then I navigate to the web UI for one of my network switches. How does SSO work in this case? The way I see it, there are two possible solutions.

• The switch has some built-in authentication mechanism that can authenticate with the LDAP server or something like Keycloak. I don’t see how this would work as it relies upon every single device on the network supporting a particular authentication mechanism.
• I log into and authenticate with an HTTP forwarding server that then supplies the username/password to the switch. This seems clunky but could be reasonably secure as long as the username/password is sufficiently complex.

I generally understand how SSO works within a curated ecosystem like a Windows-based corporate network that uses primarily Microsoft software for everything. I have various Linux systems, Windows, a bunch of random software that needs authentication, and probably 10 different brands of networking equipment. What’s the solution here?

I’m a big fan of ZFS, and I use it extensively. For a single hard drive, though, wouldn’t ext4 and a few NFS shares make a lot more sense?

I really wish there was a viable alternative for physical backups. Blu-ray just doesn’t have enough storage space, tape is expensive, and hard drives need to be periodically read.

I’ve read about holographic WORM media, but I just don’t think there’s enough consumer demand for the hardware and media to ever be as affordable as blu-ray.

Once upon a time, I could back up all my important data to a stack of DVD-Rs. How am I supposed to back up a 100TB NAS, though? The “best” alternative is to build a second NAS for backup, but that’s approaching tape drive levels of cost.

I sort of understand still selling CF cards. They were used in high end photo and video equipment until not too long ago, and they have storage space comparable with smaller SD cards and USB drives. Plenty of equipment using CF is still perfectly good and still worth using.

I’ve never heard of a zip card. If you mean the old zip disks (I think the largest was 250MB or so), I can’t imagine any reason someone would ever use one of these. Even new, zip drives were notoriously unreliable and not all that widespread. I had one, and I rarely used it in favor of CD-R or RW.

In clocks like this, the “set time” is often irrelevant. It’s more important to know exactly how much time has passed since the last time the clock was “checked.” If you’re running a radio transmitter at 6ghz, that’s 6 billion cycles per second. If you synch your transmitter to your clock once per second, it had better be accurate to the billionth of a second.

I haven’t tried W11 LTSC. Even if you cut out the bloat, I just can’t stand the interface. Hopefully 12 is better, but I’m not hopeful.

I switched all of my Windows systems over to Windows 10 LTSC a few months ago, and it’s been a game-changer. I still get security updates, but no advertisements, bloat, or new “features.” I believe it’s supported until 2032.

After that, I’ll probably switch my remaining systems over to Linux, but until then, it’s not half bad.

It’s certainly possible (and probably even likely) that you’re correct. Most of the people I’ve spoken to about that are somewhat tech-inclined and probably much more likely to be using an adblocker than the average person.

So many years of ad-free media has just ruined me on ad-supported content. I sat down in front of a public TV tuned to a cable channel the other day, and it was absolutely unwatchable.

The problem I have always had with cable TV, and now with streaming, is the advertisements. I understand why free services inject ads into their video stream; they have to make a profit somehow. I don’t like it, and I’ll block the ads, but I understand it.

Having experience what ad-free entertainment is like, be it from Netflix years ago, renting movies online, or Youtube with Adblock, I will never pay for a service that’s going to show me ads. Either make the service free and cash in on ad revenue or sell the service for an appropriate price that you can afford not to show ads. Sticking to the old model of “pay for cable TV and watch commercials” is never going to work, be it cable or streaming. I don’t think I’m in the minority here, either; I’ve heard this sentiment from plenty of others.

In the US at least, most equipment (unless you get into high-and datacenter stuff) runs on 120V. We also use 240V power, but a 240V connection is actually two 120V phases 180-degrees out of sync. The main feed coming into your home is 240V, so your breaker panel splits the circuits evenly between the two phases. Running dual-phase power to a server rack is as simple as just running two 120V circuits from the panel.

My rack only receives a single 120V circuit, but it’s backed up by a dual-conversion UPS and a generator on a transfer switch. That was enough for me. For redundancy, though, dual phases, each with its own UPS, and dual-PSU servers are hard ro beat.

Is Creative Cloud a requirement for using Adobe products these days? Surely someone can just save data locally instead. Media files (especially raw video) can be enormous.

Microsoft knows that the addition of adds to Windows, Recall, data mining, etc are not suicide. As far as tech news goes, Lemmy really exists in an echo chamber. The vast majority of us at least have some interest in technology. For the majority of the population, though, this isn’t true. The typical person sees a computer as a tool to be used for other things. They’re not reading articles about the latest release of Windows, new CPU technology, the latest GPU, etc. They’re using their computer, and when it’s time for an upgrade, they buy whatever suits their needs.

If I was to ask any of my family, or most of my coworkers, about any of the latest “controversies” surrounding Microsoft, they would have no idea what I was talking about. Microsoft obviously thinks that the added profits gained by monetizing their customers will offset the loss of 1% of their users that switch to Linux. They’re probably right, too.

I like Windows, personally (well, Windows 10 at least). My unofficial rule has always been if it needs a GUI, then it runs Windows, otherwise, it runs Linux as a headless machine. Once Windows 10 is no longer a viable option, my unofficial rule will be “it runs Linux.” Most people will not make this switch.

I will never buy a Tesla. I’m not normally one to pay attention to brands, but Elon Musk has tainted the brand to such a degree, that I’m disgusted at the idea of being associated with it.

That being said, the company still makes some decent technology. From what I understand, the motors, motor controllers, and battery packs are fairly decent pieces of kit. There seems to be some kind of disconnect between their engineering teams, though, because the cars themselves are so bad. I’ve seen internal panels fall off, interior components break at the slightest touch, misaligned body panels, and any number of other fit-and-finish issues. Not to mention, every single one is hideous. Make them look like an EV or make them look like a luxury car, not some half-assed abomination between the two.

I have to wonder why there’s such a disconnect within the company. It feels akin to building a Ferrari drivetrain and installing it in a Kia.

I will resort to ChatGPT for coding help every so often. I’m a fairly experienced programmer, so my questions usually tend to be somewhat complex. I’ve found that’s it’s extremely useful for those problems that fall into the category of “I could solve this myself in 2 hours, or I could ask AI to solve it for me in seconds.” Usually, I’ll get a working solution, but almost every single time, it’s not a good solution. It provides a great starting-off point to write my own code.

Some of the issues I’ve found (speaking as a C++ developer) are: Variables not declared “const,” extremely inefficient use of data structures, ignoring modern language features, ignoring parallelism, using an improper data type, etc.

ChatGPT is great for generating ideas, but it’s going to be a while before it can actually replace a human developer. Producing code that works isn’t hard; producing code that’s good requires experience.

This is a good thing, but it’s hardly unique. Any advanced manufacturing facility will have remote access to their equipment in case an operator needs reconfigure it, transfer data, or in this case if they’re invaded by Lesser Taiwan.