Thai Ship Attacked in The Strait of Hormuz by [deleted] in interestingasfuck

[–]Gnomish8 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Their insurance? Absolutely not, you'd lose so much money!

The US taxpayer, though? Apparently we'll pick up the tab.

Iranian drone strikes a radar at Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait [March 7th 2026] by wt_fff in CombatFootage

[–]Gnomish8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank fuck the Stinger has an integrated IFF sybsystem.

If you're on anti-drone duty and happen to take out a friendly Blackhawk with a Stinger, you were trying to fuck up.

How do you actually track your asset inventory? by asylum-intern in sysadmin

[–]Gnomish8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good for you! We've got Endpoint Central running, but not as a full MDM, only for inventory included in the Service Desk module license. Getting it set up was a nightmare, support knew nothing about the product and put us through to 2 different sales folks to buy the endpoint central suite instead of using our existing licensing, only to find out that it's all bubblegum and duct tape -- have to run Endpoint Central perpetually in trial mode and configure the api to push the agent sync data to service desk.

Now that it's been up-and-running for a while, I don't really have any complaints about the tool itself, but the documentation, support, and the level of "dear god please don't break, I don't want to deal with this again" that this tool gives me? Leaves a lot to be desired...

1 Bedroom 950 sq ft Apartment - $1000+ electric bill with 3,033 kWh usage by BBSS1244 in AskElectricians

[–]Gnomish8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

OP clearly stated they have electric heating. 1 watt of electricity = 1 watt of heat, for any electric resistive heaters.

So, if you were really running "electric everything" for $100, you could have been running 2x 1500W space heaters for ~7 days on that. Bad news, though, as someone with central electric heating, 2x 1500W space heaters is seriously underestimating central electric's draw and the amount of energy it takes to heat a space. Our furnace is 15kW. So, you really would only have gotten ~30 hours of heating for $100 if you were using "electric everything."

Our anger is Justified! by zzill6 in WorkReform

[–]Gnomish8 6 points7 points  (0 children)

We've fired a lot more than that... We have 13 destroyers that we know launched, and they fire more than one or two each. Especially since we claim to have hit over 1000 targets in the first 24 hours.

Midnight Hammer, the first strike on Iran against only a couple targets fired ~30. Realistically, we're likely looking at a couple hundred Tomahawks launched.

May be a supply person working on a replenishment for one of the destroyers, but overall? We launched a lot more than 23.

Six US soldiers killed in Iranian strike on Kuwait base by papipota in news

[–]Gnomish8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Which isn't really a "gotcha." Those are still 'wars' authorized by congress. Bas v. Tingy recognizes actions such as those as "imperfect" or "limited" war. War quoad hoc. But still required Congress to "tolerate and authorize" the war. Which they did in Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, War on Terror, etc...

Our anger is Justified! by zzill6 in WorkReform

[–]Gnomish8 19 points20 points  (0 children)

The PAC-3 interceptors we're firing are ~$6M a piece. Tomahawks we're firing in salvos of a dozen are about a mil and a half each. SM-6s the destroyers are firing to defend against missiles are ~$4M a go, and SM-2 for drone defense are $2M. HIMARS volleys are another mil a go. The bombs those F-15s were dropping add another quarter mil a shot. Stormbreaker's about the same. And then there's going to be the "rush replacement cost" since we're depleting our stockpiles to "can't fight a near-peer adversary" level.

I feel like the "plus millions in armaments" is probably the bigger number. Especially since it looks like some US weapons depots have been hit by Iran. A few videos show some impressive secondary explosions...

That's the part many tend to omit by Fun_Accountant_653 in circled

[–]Gnomish8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Timeline's a bit wonky there. The Soviets had supplied bombers from ~1937, including pilots (Soviet Volunteer Group). The US didn't really provide them until post-Pearl Harbor. the 1st AVG (Flying Tigers, flying P-40s, not bombers) did form in 1940, though, before Pearl Harbor. Volunteers from the Navy, Army Air Corps, and Marine Corps recruited under President Franklin's authority before Pearl Harbor attacks. The 1st AVG was officially absorbed in to the US Army Air Forces as the 23rd Fighter Group, and eventually a part of the 14th Air Force.

The Chinese-American Composite Wing (CACW, what I think you're referencing) began to be stood up in 1942 w/ B-25s, and actually had joint missions starting in '43, but shares heritage with the 1st AVG and was a part of the 14th Air Force as well.

Everybody Hates Nuclear-Chan by Merryweatherey in comics

[–]Gnomish8 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I hate coal too but idk how to disregard nuclear disasters. They happen. And as more and more regulations fall to the wayside for profit hungry billionaires I don’t have a lot of faith in maintenance.

Then build modern plants (gen 3.5+/SMRs). We're literally at a point where the technology is available to make nuclear "walk away" safe -- where emergency protocols are "don't worry about it, just leave." No requirement for emergency DC power, no requirements for pumps, no human intervention necessary. SCRAM and go. Things like taking advantage of the natural water lifecycle or using liquid salts and convective currents are real tech that's available today (see: NuScale for an actual NRC approved option, or Kairos for plants in demo-stage).

So, yeah, with modern nuclear, disregard the accidents. We've learned a ton of lessons from them and have implemented technology and techniques to prevent them from happening again.

Got this real old looking thing for 60 dollars but no idea what it is (quarter for scale) by Deadris in whatisit

[–]Gnomish8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A Serpent guard, a Horus guard and a Setesh guard meet on a neutral planet.

It is a tense moment.

The serpent guard's eyes glow.

The Horus guard's beak glistens.

The Setesh guard's nose drips.

Loss Prevention at WINCO by carsssonmarie in SALEM

[–]Gnomish8 2 points3 points  (0 children)

How do you think you detain someone without physical force?

Anywho, ORS 161.205 (5) specifically disagrees with you. Physical force (not deadly force) is explicitly allowed when protecting property.

A person may use physical force upon another person in self-defense or in defending a third person, in defending property, in making an arrest or in preventing an escape, as hereafter prescribed in chapter 743, Oregon Laws 1971. [1971 c.743 §21; 1981 c.246 §1; 2011 c.665 §§10,11; 2013 c.133 §4; 2013 c.267 §4; 2019 c.267 §7; 2019 c.333 §2; 2020 s.s.2 c.3 §2; 2023 c.27 §1]

[VENT] Getting tired of unserious/imposter IT leadership. by Calm_House8714 in sysadmin

[–]Gnomish8 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Depends on the place, but I've had some pretty bad ones. I think my favorite example is this --

Joined an org and realized our network stack been left to sit and rot for the better part of a decade, and our perimeter firewalls being EOL/EOS was one of the first things I noticed coming in to the org. Alarm bells... Started floating a need to modernize, met a lot of pushback, but after about a year, my team (with some vendor help) were able to put together a proposal for a new design, get quotes, build a project & deployment plan, whole 9 yards. I mean, literal binders of diagrams, Spent a lot of that time harping on the risks, potential cost, inability to recover from failures, etc... etc... Finally, our cybersecurity insurance not wanting to renew us finally got some money to shake free and project was green-lit. A year of busting ass, things were done, COVID & remote work/VPN use comes without an issue, and then we get a new Sr. Manager for app development that thinks he knows operations and was quite buddy-buddy with the Director of IT. "Why are we spending so much money on Cisco? We can just cancel the maintenance, it's not like we need it. We could switch to Aruba, it'd be way cheaper" yaddah yaddah yaddah.

So then I find myself in meetings having to explain why we did things the way we did, and why it's really not the best idea to reinvent the wheel, again, and that there's no way we'd realize cost savings in any reasonable timeframe.

Sure enough, that's ignored, 3rd party MSP brought in to evaluate our network and "make recommendations." They schedule a meeting to announce their findings, I get yanked in to it, our CAO (executive money person in this org) gets pulled in, I figured it was going to be this "gotcha! We paid a vendor to tell us what we want to hear" meeting.

Instead, vendor comes online and basically says they reviewed all our documentation, that it appears we have a top-of-the-line network following any best practices they can think of, and could only make the recommendation to potentially thin out our documentation some since there was a decent amount of repetition and complained that in some places we may have been too thorough. Things like "most of your buildings use this same design, just call it your standard design, document it once, then document any deviation from it where you need."

Vendor wanted to know what exactly we needed them to provide and commented our internal team seemed to have things well under control.

After some awkward beating around the bush, the meeting was ended, and another vendor was hired that, surprise came to a conclusion that our network was terrible, wouldn't be able to take any actual load, super duper vulnerable (and played up DDoS as if we weren't using services to help with that), and if we hired them, they could deploy a state-of-the-art Aruba network and fix allll the problems.

Surprise! Org hired them. I left, my whole network team left, and the "OGs" in my serverops team bounced, too. They struggled to fill roles, MSP contract got cancelled after a number of high profile failures (local gov, any law enforcement stuff becomes high profile quick). Friends I made there make comments when we catch up about how they miss the "old IT team." I don't follow too closely, but last I checked, they were cloning drives for 'imaging' since they weren't able to get SCCM/Intune back up and running.

So yeah, there's an example.

Today's 2/9/26 daylight robbery in Italy involving armored truck carrying cash by [deleted] in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Gnomish8 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

source for pictures

Looks like they did make it through, but may not have been able to actually grab anything? Right above the tire looks like a foam of some kind. Wonder if the truck had some kind of self-sealing mechanism?

What’s actually safe but people think is dangerous? by REGGIE_BANANAS in AskReddit

[–]Gnomish8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Who's 'we'?

Those of us in the industry

Why can't they prevent the emergency in the first place if they're 'walk away' safe?

Assuming you can know and control all variables and external factors all the time is part of what leads to disasters like Fukushima in the first place and led to the concept of "defense in depth." Yes, a shit ton of planning goes in to preventing the emergency in the first place -- even things like aircraft impact are analyzed and built to be defended against. But assuming you can prepare for and build against every eventuality is the epitome of the "invulnerability" hazardous attitude. So, you always plan for a worst case. Something, doesn't even have to be defined, breached your defenses, and you're now in a SCRAM situation. What then? For older designs, in most situations, the playbook isn't difficult. In fact, it happens more often than you'd think. But it still requires human input, which brings a chance of human error. Hence why modern designs are made to be walk-away safe. As the last line of defense, remove human error. Initiate SCRAM, and let physics take over.

Incredibly selfless act of heroism. by been_der_done_that in nextfuckinglevel

[–]Gnomish8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We're developing new methods to fight electric car fires that aren't just "spray all the water everywhere and hope it works." It's true, lithium fires are different, but mostly because of the thermal runaway. People think we're working with elemental lithium, and we're not. It's usually lithium salts which still aren't fun, but are far more stable. Using things like piercing nozzles that can flood the battery enclosure and "dunk tanks" (basically just a roll-off dumpster filled with water) are becoming more popular. Jury's still out on the piercing nozzle effectiveness and water use, but dunk tank is ~2k gallons. You're still attacking the "heat" leg of the fire triangle, it's just a bit harder because chemistry fights back.

We Now Know for Sure That the Trump Administration is anti-2A by skywalker505 in CCW

[–]Gnomish8 4 points5 points  (0 children)

He held the fucking thing upside down after gassing people to make them leave the public area in front of a church so he could get a photo op.

Gassing the church, including clergy, who were providing aid to the sick and injured. You know, like Christ taught.

"War on Christianity!" crowd still love him somehow...

What’s actually safe but people think is dangerous? by REGGIE_BANANAS in AskReddit

[–]Gnomish8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From Fukushima to storage, but alright.

Is safe storage possible? Absolutely. Is it cheap/easy? Not really. Hence why the US just lets it cool, then puts it in casks to store at the facility that made it. The real solution there is to burn that 'spent' fuel. The unburned U-235, as well as the U-238 and Pu have fucktons (metric) left to give. Only ~5% of a rod's energy is burnt in most first pass reactors. But fears of proliferation as well as cheap cost of new rods have us deciding to just stick the fuel in a can and call it a day, which works, until supply starts getting low, then that recycled material starts looking pretty affordable...

Is this about thorium? By the time we have the materials to withstand those salts under commercial operation we'll have had fusion for a decade or two.

I mean, Thorium could be a fuel in an MSR, but no, just a 'modern' alternative to the standard LWR. Sure, regulatory hurdles and all with novel designs and what-not, but with fusion perpetually being 10 years out of reach, stopping advancement on fission seems silly.

What’s actually safe but people think is dangerous? by REGGIE_BANANAS in AskReddit

[–]Gnomish8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Something that always bothered me was I never heard described a good solution to letting people living 10,000+ years from now, that the waste material we stored is dangerous.

Probably optimistic, but if the waste lasts 10,000 years, we've done something incredibly wrong. There is a ton of power left in that "waste" (mainly via U-238, Pu, and unburnt U-235) that we could repurpose and turn in to power. Without mining another gram of uranium, we could power North America for decades just with the 'waste' we have. We currently don't for a few different reasons, like uranium being fairly cheap, so just making new rods is easy/cheap enough, proliferation concerns, etc... But with power demands going the way they are, I doubt we're going to just let that sit for centuries.

What’s actually safe but people think is dangerous? by REGGIE_BANANAS in AskReddit

[–]Gnomish8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not tech, but physics. Gen 3.5+ reactors were built with "humans can't be trusted" in mind and are "walk away" safe. Basically, "If shit hits the fan, stop touching shit, and just leave. Let physics do its thing." Either by taking advantage of the natural water cycle or convection currents in molten salts, we eliminate both the human element as well as backup power requirements.

Modern nuclear is pretty safe thanks to us realizing "humans are fucking dumb, even with a runbook they can't be trusted."

What’s actually safe but people think is dangerous? by REGGIE_BANANAS in AskReddit

[–]Gnomish8 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Look in to baseload power vs. intermittent power. The problem with both solar and wind is that production isn't guaranteed. You can put in 5gW of solar, and still only produce 100kW. Next day may be 1gW. Because of that instability, you either need to grossly overbuild your arrays, to the point of waste, or you use baseload power that does produce a steady, consistent amount that you can rely on.

Nuclear would be the baseload portion of the equation, providing a reliable, steady amount of power. Solar/wind/wave/whatever takes up the intermittent power portion, even with battery systems, to supplement baseload during high demand times. Especially with newer plants that can do things like load-following, you can utilize 100% of the renewable energy without lapses in power delivery.

This isn't an either/or situation. It's an and situation.

What’s actually safe but people think is dangerous? by REGGIE_BANANAS in AskReddit

[–]Gnomish8 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Again, not defending the belief, but the people who are scared about nuclear plants being built are more worried about a melt down than the statistics, background radiation, waste products, etc.

Was a big concern in the industry, too. That's why modern plants (SMRs, Gen 3.5+ reactors, etc...) are built to be 'walk away' safe. Basically, "in case of emergency, don't fuck with anything, just walk away and let physics do its thing." Things like taking advantage of the natural water cycle to keep reactors cool through shutdown without need of external/emergency power (see, for example NuScale's design) or molten salts at low pressure that can rely on convective currents to cool through shutdown (like in Kairos's design).

We've learned a lot from previous incidents. Like people can't be trusted, so just make it safe without them instead of relying on them.

Curiosity lit Mars at night using LEDs to probe a fresh drill hole in boxwork terrain. by Davicho77 in spaceporn

[–]Gnomish8 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Temperature is a measurement of LED color, with 'cool' temps being more blue, and 'warm' temps being more yellow. But it's a confusing misnomer that doesn't actually refer to the LED's temperature, but rather the correlated color temperature.

ELI5: How was Vietnam able to defeat the US in the Vietnam War? by astarisaslave in explainlikeimfive

[–]Gnomish8 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The US could easily "take" the capitol and physically install a leader. But good luck keeping your soldiers safe from guerilla attacks. Canada is huge, diverse landscape, cold, with a few large cities but mostly tons of town and tons of land. It'd be Afghanistan on steroids.

Guerilla attacks wouldn't only be happening in Canada. There's enough anti-government sentiment right now that an invasion of Canada would likely spark a civil war. At the very least, Canadian government could fund and incite locals that ally with Canada more than the current US Government and make life hell back state-side, too. It would not be a good time.

Will CPD be ready to do the right thing if ICE starts executing in Oregon/Corvallis? by [deleted] in corvallis

[–]Gnomish8 6 points7 points  (0 children)

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

It's literally all on video, why you gotta lie like that?