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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • There is at least ONE exception in the US: Firstnet. They primarily use AT&T’s towers, but they have some additional resources that other carriers don’t have - they have additional towers and entire network bands that other carriers don’t have access to. This allows us to still have coverage in natural disasters or network congestion times. In addition, if there’s a natural disaster that knocks out coverage, they have satellite-based trucks that stage DURING the disaster, then come online as soon as it’s over.

    A few years ago, I had to ride out hurricane Ida in New Orleans (long story). The western eyewall passed directly over the house we were in, and the primary trunk lines coming into the city got destroyed by a cable tower that collapsed into the Mississippi. The next morning I had cell phone coverage when none of the other carriers had come back online yet. We didn’t even have power, but my phone worked perfectly.

    You have to be a first responder to join - you have to be added by your department’s communications coordinator.





  • I’ve been wanting to learn blender for the same reason. Complicated models are an absolutely bitch to work with in parasolid modeling engines.

    However, for simple designs, parasolid modeling is spectacular for designing models for printing. Fusion360 has a free tier for hobbyists (they hide it and you have to go hunting to find it, but it exists), and I’ve done most of my designs there.

    I’ve also used tinkercad for really simple edits. I’ve heard great things about solidworks, but it’s expensive af, even for a hobbyist account.



  • How would it not have? You got an office or field offices?

    “Bring your computer by and plug it in over there.” And flag it for reimage. Yeah. It’s gonna be slow, since you have 200 of the damn things running at once, but you really want to go and manually touch every computer in your org?

    The damn thing’s even boot looping, so you don’t even have to reboot it.

    I’m sure the user saved all their data in one drive like they were supposed to, right?

    I get it, it’s not a 100% fix rate. And it’s a bit of a callous answer to their data. And I don’t even know if the project is still being maintained.

    But the post I replied to was lamenting the lack of an option to remotely fix unbootable machines. This was an option to remotely fix nonbootable machines. No need to be a jerk about it.

    But to actually answer your question and be transparent, I’ve been doing Linux devops for 10 years now. I haven’t touched a windows server since the days of the gymbros. I DID say it’s been a decade.


  • A decade ago I worked for a regional chain of gyms with locations in 4 states.

    I was in TN. When a system would go down in SC or NC, we originally had three options:

    1. (The most common) have them put it in a box and ship it to me.
    2. I go there and fix it (rare)
    3. I walk them through fixing it over the phone (fuck my life)

    I got sick of this. So I researched options and found an open source software solution called FOG. I ran a server in our office and had little optiplex 160s running a software client that I shipped to each club. Then each machine at each club was configured to PXE boot from the fog client.

    The server contained images of every machine we commonly used. I could tell FOG which locations used which models, and it would keep the images cached on the client machines.

    If everything was okay, it would chain the boot to the os on the machine. But I could flag a machine for reimage and at next boot, the machine would check in with the local FOG client via PXE and get a complete reimage from premade images on the fog server.

    The corporate office was physically connected to one of the clubs, so I trialed the software at our adjacent club, and when it worked great, I rolled it out company wide. It was a massive success.

    So yes, I could completely reimage a computer from hundreds of miles away by clicking a few checkboxes on my computer. Since it ran in PXE, the condition of the os didn’t matter at all. It never loaded the os when it was flagged for reimage. It would even join the computer to the domain and set up that locations printers and everything. All I had to tell the low-tech gymbro sales guy on the phone to do was reboot it.

    This was free software. It saved us thousands in shipping fees alone. And brought our time to fix down from days to minutes.

    There ARE options out there.



  • That’s not what a conspiracy is. A conspiracy is a bunch of people working together in secret to do something illegal. A conspiracy theory is when you put a bunch of seemingly random or unrelated facts together and they give the impression of a conspiracy causing something to happen.

    You can’t just say “dogs can smell the color blue” and call it a conspiracy theory.

    You need to have something to back it up. Even if it’s not hard proof, there needs to be a string of coincidences or suspicious actions or something.

    So what makes you think Andrew Tate is an illuminatus? That’s where the meat of a good conspiracy theory is - form your answer to “why do you think that?”






  • I…. Uh….

    This makes way more sense than any other crackpot 911 theory I’ve ever heard.

    What if was less a structural weakness than actual demolition charges built into the superstructure of the building that few knew about that could be used in just such an event?

    Different materials burn at different temperatures, and a raging inferno near the top wouldn’t affect structural members near the bottom, so a fire might not be guaranteed to trigger the weakness, but charges could be placed to guarantee the outcome if the worst happened.

    Would explain SO much of the “evidence” that 911 conspiracy theorists talk about - the smell of chordite, the flashes in the windows, the clean collapse, that whole “the decision was made to ‘pull’ [building 7]” but no way they could have placed charges that quickly in that situation thing…

    Then, this begs the question - What other structures might be similarly equipped?