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posted by NCommander on Monday December 05 2022, @08:37AM   Printer-friendly
Hey folks,

Well, it's been a bit of time since the last time I posted, and well, I had to think a fair bit on the comments I received. It's become very clear that while I'm still willing to at least help in technical matters, the effort to reforge SN is much higher than I expected. In addition, given the, shall we say, lukewarm response I got to my posts and journal entries, well, I'm clearly not the right person for the job.

I think at this point, it's time to figure out who is going to lead SN going forward. After my de facto stepping down in 2020, the site has, for want of a better word, been a bit listless. At the moment, no one on staff really has the cycles to take that position on. A few people have expressed interest in the position, and I've talked with Matt, who is co-owner of the site about this. By and large, whoever fills the seat will have to figure out what, if anything, needs to change in regards to moderation policy, content, and more.

If you're interested in potentially fulfilling the role, drop me an email at michael -at- casadevall.pro, with the subject of "SN Project Leader", and include the following:

  • Who you are
  • What you want to do with the site
  • How you intend to do it
  • Why do you want to get involved

I'll leave this call for candidates open until December 14th, at which point Matt and I will go through, and figure out our short list, I'll talk to editors, and solicit more comments from the community. I'm hoping to announce a successor in early January, and formalize the transition sometime in February, which will be the site's 9th anniversary.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 07 2022, @10:38AM (7 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday December 07 2022, @10:38AM (#1281508)

    Yeah, I think that would fail miserably until the original SN either died or did a redirect.

    It would be possible to run a bot to mirror the comments too, but I can't even keep my Weather Underground station link up at what I would call acceptable uptime ratio for SN...

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
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  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday December 07 2022, @05:23PM (6 children)

    by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday December 07 2022, @05:23PM (#1281563) Homepage

    Likely so. I expect most of us are =here= because we prefer =here=, for whatever reasons may be. We've all got our rocking chairs on the porch, and we ain't movin'. :)

    So what's the issue with your WU station? just went and looked, had no idea they'd become such a complicated Thing. Back in my day, you had a couple basic instruments and a yellow pad and a pencil...

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 07 2022, @05:48PM (5 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday December 07 2022, @05:48PM (#1281567)

      Yeah, so, the cheap / easy solution involves hooking the indoor display to a Windoze box via USB. I got that setup in a VirtualBox on our living room multimedia PC (Ubuntu host) and when the power flickers, the PC reboots, then I have to kick off the VM manually... I could automate loading of the VM, but for some reason Windoze won't auto-log me in anymore since its last update, so I would have to go into the VM and login anyway, then there's update roulette where you never know if you'll be able to do all that in 30 seconds or have to wait 3 to 23 minutes for the update to finish before you can finally log in. Given all that, and some nagging trust issues around having all this running in the first place, after a power fail I just manually kick it off when I have the time.

      Once it's up, it appears on the Wundermap: https://www.wunderground.com/wundermap [wunderground.com] and they keep a little better history than the Acurite cloud service does - plus, I can check my weather vs the surrounding neighborhood with the single wundermap interface. The history is fun for passing hurricanes and such... at least until the power fails.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday December 07 2022, @06:33PM (4 children)

        by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday December 07 2022, @06:33PM (#1281580) Homepage

        " when the power flickers, the PC reboots"

        Oy. Get the poor thing a UPS. That flickering is hard on the components, aside from being annoying when you have to restart stuff.

        Here in the Northern Wastes, the power flickers a lot, but all my PCs are on UPSs, so they never notice. This'un hasn't even had a restart in going-on 14 months. (Also too old to do the update roulette... but last time the Win11 netbookish-thing did an update, it downloaded a whole new monkey... and I'm not sure I want to know what Fedora is doing back there....)

        [puts on weather freak hat, goes off, looks at WU map]

        Wow, some of these people need to get the weather station away from their house, or out of the sun... I have some really strange microclimates right in my own yard (like, pouring rain out front while dry out back), but I guarantee you it is not 35F at the top of the hill when it's 11F at the bottom and was 0F last night... there's one over on the Jefferson River that was reading 30F all winter, when just up the road I was at -40. Turned out I could see the weather station from streetview, and it was RIGHT NEXT TO the river, which does not freeze over.... ooops!

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 07 2022, @07:25PM (3 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday December 07 2022, @07:25PM (#1281591)

          >Get the poor thing a UPS.

          I have had the thought a few times, but since about 1993 I have had at least a dozen UPSs, several of which never experienced a flicker or blackout to serve their purpose before the battery died (which isn't a bad thing). Maybe three of those I tried battery replacements on, with just about universal frustrating / disappointing results - high cost of the compatible battery, high effort to find it (relative to purchase of a new UPS), and maybe psychological but it seemed that the replacement batteries almost universally didn't last as long as the originals. They do make nice portable power supplies to run an electric drill or similar in places too far from an outlet for practical extension cords... I would have pulled the trigger on a new UPS for this arrangement if I had found a reasonably priced LiFePO4 based unit, but so far I haven't. We've been in this house for 9 years, the first 4 years had no power flicker issues, then there were hurricanes in rapid succession, and lately we've been getting a flicker a month or so, I had a similar experience at my first house in Miami.

          >That flickering is hard on the components

          What really kills (Intel NUCs) is dust-packing in the cooling fans. A lot like the UPS battery replacement, cleaning the fan is a lot of effort and they seem to re-pack with new dust after a clean about 10x faster than when new. This is the 3rd i5 NUC in the media center role, first was already 4+ years old when transplanted here, second died in a massive lightning strike (that a UPS would not likely have helped: strike traveled in on the cable connection, literally shattered the insides of the cable modem, took out just about everything wired to the network. Yes, surge protectors on ALL wired network connections now...) Every time I consider a new NUC I try to talk myself into a fanless model, but it's a hard sell at the price ratio... Did pick up a fanless Celeron N5105 (10W) mini PC recently for about $220, it's no 3D gaming machine, but it plays HD video just fine (as does a RaspPi Zero 2 W for $15 & about 2W), it's a bit sluggish as compared with the i5, not quite ready to be the main media center PC, but unlike a RaspPi it does have enough oomph to drive a (now available @ $150 & down) 2TB USB external SSD, so I _finally_ have my main file backups in a separate location (on the Celeron) from the primary 2TB drive, which is over 10 years old spinning platters and survived that lightning strike.

          > I have some really strange microclimates right in my own yard

          Yeah, mine is on a pole about 3' above the garage's shingle roof, barely peeking over the crown for sort-of clear wind readings (still can't read wind very well due to surrounding trees...) My temps run lower when cold and higher when hot than most of my neighbors. It does measure rainfall, and that varies a lot by location microclimates around here, which shows on the Wundermap too.

          Around me, when they're reporting, most of the stations report fairly consistent temperatures (+/- 5F or less), you can actually see cold fronts pushing through & similar. Location scattering is of course random, but there's generally less than a mile between stations near me.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday December 07 2022, @08:03PM (2 children)

            by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday December 07 2022, @08:03PM (#1281597) Homepage

            Or why I don't buy expensive UPSs, but rather the $100 CyberPower from Costco (and each one will easily support several PCs). They reliably last about two years, they do the job, and the battery can be replaced, but it's about the same to just get another (often they die just inside the 2-year warranty, and Costco replaces 'em for free). ESR says the problem is nowadays they all overcharge the battery, which prematurely ages it; he has a project going toward a UPS that is better behaved. I can tell you in the old days, before however-it's-now-regulated charging, the batteries lasted ten years or more. But now I consider it a consumable. :(

            When I lived out in the desert... my nearest neighbor (quarter mile or so) had a lightning strike on the transformer pole in front of his house, and it rebounded as far as my house (I was very end of the line). It smoked the surge unit plugged into the wall, and killed the UPS plugged into the surge unit (you can do that, but NEVER do it the other way round), but the PCs attached to the UPS survived unscathed.

            Hadn't thought to use a UPS as a portable power source for corded equipment, thanks for the idea! Now, to find a mule to lug the durn heavy things...

            I haven't had my hands on an Intel NUC but they look like nice units. My PCs tend to be more like Johnny Cash's car...

            --
            And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 07 2022, @08:28PM (1 child)

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday December 07 2022, @08:28PM (#1281600)

              >they die just inside the 2-year warranty, and Costco replaces 'em for free

              That's the deal, however... We had a Costco membership in Miami, then in Houston, then there was no Costco in Gainesville FL so we got a Sams' Club membership - then they started jacking up the annual fee to the point that we really weren't saving money anymore unless we crammed ourselves with more product from there than we really wanted, so we let it drop - probably 12 years ago now. We're pretty heavy Amazon users now, which saves all kinds of travel _and_ provides an ample supply of cardboard to burn... but it's not a great way to purchase products with big chunks of lead in them.

              >a UPS that is better behaved.

              That's what I was hoping for... more like a 5 year or longer service life on LiFePO4 cells. That and a smaller form factor, space is a little limited around the HTPC.

              >lightning strike

              Our "big one" shattered the tallest oak in the yard, guessing 70' tall. Threw 8' to 12' long splinters 40-60' across the yard, one hit the garage and knocked a hole in the hardi-plank siding. It smoked a GFCI outlet in the garage which I replaced almost immediately. It also took out the neighbors' cable TV box. We're both on about an acre, houses about 50' from the struck tree. Then, about 3 days later, a similarly huge strike hit something in the neighbor's backyard, took out the new GFCI I had just installed and the neighbors' new cable TV box. No strikes around us for 2 years since (or 7+ years before) then.

              I became a NUC addict shortly after they came out, around 2010 I guess. They are powerful enough and the form factor is the killer feature. I have two on my desk for work right now, but could easily add two more if needed for any reason. Some people get a large format "powerful" desktop and then load it with a bunch of VMs, I normally only need 3 - maybe 4 - machines at a time and I find it a whole lot easier to _not_ deal with the VM headaches (most of the time) and just stack NUCs as needed - 4 NUCs take less space than most desktop machines, VNC is a great way to access desktop OSs in the stack, and whatever you're interacting with the most can get the physical KVM hookup.

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
              • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday December 07 2022, @11:27PM

                by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday December 07 2022, @11:27PM (#1281624) Homepage

                Sam's Club is now $45/year for a two-card business membership. I don't do their whatever-they-call-it where you get rebates, because I don't buy enough there to justify it. I do at Costco, tho (you know you've spent too much too often when the store manager literally chases you around with the form for the Executive membership). I lived out in the sticks so long that buying everything in bulk is just how it is, cuz every trip is a PITA. We have both clubs in Billings and nowadays a shorter drive, so I'm thoroughly spoiled. :)

                The strike on my neighbor's pole split it down to the transformer and started a fire just above that... looked very strange, wish I'd gone back and got the camera. Had the oversized poles along there due to being a fire department trunk and the wind taking 'em out (every ten years regardless), so it was fairly impressive. Your tree was goin' for a good one too! Holy mackerel.

                I have space for however many PCs, but yeah, VM is not usually worth the bother, I just stack up PCs and KVMs. Only VM I run regularly is WinXP on the everyday linux box, because it won't reliably play nice with the network, so I use XP to schlep files. I did eye those NUCs with some envy, tho... just from the sheer number you could pile up. :D

                --
                And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.