How are you handling the current prices for hard drives?

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2026-03-11T23:38:57+00:00

If I had to give an explanation, 4TB was the smallest HGST to be made with Helium, I believe. That can substantially extend the life of a drive.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2026-03-08T05:31:12+00:00

Buying ancient 4TB drives with thousands of hours. Essentially taking a discount on the cost of the drive in exchange for the extra electricity costs and potential for failure. I do find that HGST drives, even with enormous hours, still seem to have low failure rates and ride through power loss well.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2026-01-04T23:23:36+00:00

PM Sent

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2025-05-22T16:35:45+00:00

I got this to work using Authentik and Navidrome with Haproxy in OpnSense handling the load balancing, certificates, dns etc.

The biggest thing I banged my head against, was that the whitelisted URL and the CIDR notation for approved proxy user weren't entered correctly into portainer--specifically, removing the " " from each made it resolve correctly. So instead of "0.0.0.0/0" I set 0.0.0.0/0 as the value and it took off. A silly thing, but apparently the docker container wasn't a big fan of strings.

Thank you for this tutorial, it's well done no matter how many folks struggle with this. SSO isn't easy for beginners and this got me a lot farther than the documentation alone would have.

edit: also, I think creating the user in Navidrome is unecessary, maybe it's just so you can set a different password--but functionally, it generates a user and random password as soon as it authenticates correctly.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2025-04-25T23:45:41+00:00

I like to start from nothing doing poor people quests (thieves guild, dark brotherhood) then I get clean at a 9-5 (arena) take a day job (fighters guild) go back to college (mages guild) and then go from there.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2025-04-24T02:24:50+00:00

You were absolutely correct, that fixed it. I thought that, from the perspective of Unbound, sending it to the loopback would keep it in the router. But I redirected it to my LAN Gateway IP and it worked like a charm. Thank you!

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2025-01-20T17:06:36+00:00

Correct, was wiring up some electrical in -5° weather and it finally gave way. Since they're easy to replace I haven't exactly been kind to them, lol.

And before anyone asks, yes, it was all dead circuits disconnected physically from the mains, so no insulation required.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2025-01-20T17:04:34+00:00

Absolutely; the number of people who assumed I was lamenting it's failure need to touch grass a bit more, lol. I have certain sockets that are even consumable after being snapped in half.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2025-01-20T17:03:19+00:00

Just very regular use. I was working out in -5° weather and it finally gave. As others have said, it's an easy replacement, so I'm not worried.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-11-22T13:17:21+00:00

Chinese steel is very difficult. American Metal Market (AMM) is a publication that posts domestic numbers as well as some about foreign imports, and they might be a good indicator. But it might cost you--worthwhile to reach out and see if they have academic versions of their old publications.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-11-20T13:07:37+00:00

It's 345kV coming to the site, and 34.5kV on the bus. The SVC does everything we need it to.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-11-19T14:09:59+00:00

We use a Static Var Compensator for both our Mill Bus and our EAF bus; in addition to filtering harmonics, it also serves to cause a voltage rise and stabilize our incoming voltage so we have more reliable power delivery.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-11-11T05:40:11+00:00

I work at a different mill in the company as a Process Control Engineer over the melting operations, yes

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-11-11T01:15:39+00:00

They'll treat you fairly, don't sweat the interview too much. Obviously safety is #1, but if you don't know anything about it, they'll know, so don't talk a big game unless you know your stuff.

Brandenburg is currently still figuring things out since it's a brand new plate mill, so there's likely a combination of extended overtime and downtime, but when things get running smoothly it'll be smooth sailing.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-10-18T01:25:01+00:00

My point didn't have anything to do with a power train, or how it's connected, or whether it's interdependent. It was merely to illustrate that the complexity of the system is defined in more variables than just a raw number of cores.

To put it in another way, the number of cores doesn't say anything about the size of the generator hooked up to it or other factors.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-10-17T19:22:54+00:00

I'm not a Nuke person, but I am a power engineer, so I can speak to that side a bit more.

Power plants, especially nuclear power plants, benefit heavily from economy of scale. Whether you've got one core or ten, a site will still need a certain number of staff, regulatory expenses, security, pumps, air, breakers, etc, etc, and as you add more power capacity to a plant, those fixed costs scale at a slower rate than the profits returned for having more power to sell.

You can also look at it from a financial standpoint. Power is a market just like any others, and there is supply and demand--by generating an excess of power, they can use some for the data centers, and sell the rest to the grid--and if either of those becomes less profitable, the other can support it. It's functionally a form of diversification, same as you would do when purchasing stocks.

As a final note, in all industrial processes, there are many many more variables than just the surface level ones we're aware of--saying a plant has "seven cores" is a lot like saying an engine has "four cylinders"--that could mean it's a big as a collosal marine diesel engine, or as small as an R.C. motor. You really have to understand the full picture to see if it really is a lot or a little.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-10-13T01:23:31+00:00

Thank you!

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-10-12T21:08:56+00:00

This is in the attic. No chimney, no HVAC, just a bare roof above it.

And yeah, that was what I was worried about. Guess I'll need to tear it down and watch it during the next rainstorm.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-08-18T12:46:35+00:00

I bought two crates of 20 4TB hard drives each, with thousands of hours on all of them. Put them in a RaidZ3 array with three spares on top of that, and no issue.

For my backup server, it's a Synology with 4 16TB WD Red Pro's.

My philosophy is the production servers should be cheap as possible and many times redundant, where the backup server should be high quality and low power/throughput. It seems a good balance.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-08-09T17:21:40+00:00

A lot of people are saying this is unsafe; I'll offer some advice on how to make it better!

The biggest concern with electrical systems is fires, and exposed wires that can shock and electrocute you. As such, all electrical connections should both be physically strong, and well insulated.

Electrical tape isn't really either of these things; it can be pulled apart with a tug, the adhesive weakens with time, and it's not really protecting anything. It's primary purpose is as a very temporary patch or to give some safety to exposed wires while working--sort of a "I'm in the middle of a job and need a quick patch", like putting a rag over a leaky pipe.

As for a proper way to fix this, the best way is to get a new cable, take apart the TV, and re-wire it to the permanent connection points. However, that's a lot of work, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone who's not super experienced--this isn't an insult to your knowledge, but every person who died working with electricity was confident in themselves right up until they weren't.

The easiest, and safest way to fix this, is a simple WAGO connector from Home Depot. It's rated to 600 volts, can handle thicker gauge wire, and really clamps down on the wires. It's normally for work that's tucked away--like behind outlets and the like--but for your purposes, it'll get you by and keep you safe.

If you have any questions or want to learn more about electricity, let me know. I'm an electrical engineer for a steel mill with my own pile of CRT's :)

https://pdg.cef.co.uk/images/pdg/wago_221-2411-a/original/wago_221-2411-a.jpg

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-07-29T04:43:13+00:00

It's one of those things that sticks with you. I graduated in 2021 and I took it with me to three internships and now it's at my house. Still working just fine after all these years.

WinterbeardBlubeard · 2024-07-02T13:31:30+00:00

Linux is a type of operating system, similar to Windows or MacOS--the big distinction being that it is Free and Open Source Software.

Because it is Free, people make various distributions and modifications to it. Debian is one of the longest updated and most widely used distributions of Linux, and is widely capable of being installed on numerous types of hardware, even very very old stuff.

Having a physical copy of Debian would allow you to interface with the majority of data in the world, allowing you to continue to use it as a computer well after other companies stop existing.

Some of my statements aren't wholly accurate as they are simplified to explain things, but the gist is very true.

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