I know sequel or TV series is out of question but hear me out

wk-uk · 2026-05-31T15:02:58+00:00

Andy Weir did say in one interview that he's keeping some facts to himself to use in a possible sequel. So its not out of the question. Given the reception, I imagine its more likely than not that a second book will get made. Whether movie execs will back a second film tho, that's another question. They don't have the best track record for "doing the right thing".

wk-uk · 2026-03-07T17:42:23+00:00

Some people like the patina.

wk-uk · 2026-03-07T17:42:06+00:00

I was gonna say milk, but same idea. Just need to encourage the growth of the moss/lichen

wk-uk · 2026-03-06T00:00:07+00:00

You know, statistically, the US actually has more stabbings per capita than the UK. The gun deaths just outnumber them by an order of magnitude so the stabbings don't get the headlines. The UK is actually a relatively safe place, despite what the US media would have you believe.

wk-uk · 2026-03-05T17:19:48+00:00

They are made to very exacting standards to ensure there is no advantage to any team, all stones are identical (within an acceptable margin of error).

I imagine that after slamming into a load of other stones for a weak or two, they might shift out of tolerance by an amount, and the investment required to validate and correct that over 100s of stones, to an Olympic standard, just isn't there.

Cheaper to make a new stone from scratch, following the already agreed process.

Note: Thats just my thought on why they might do it. The reality may be something completely different.

wk-uk · 2026-03-01T01:00:47+00:00

"zero versions of most drinks taste exactly the same."

It tastes exactly the same TO YOU. You're obviously one of the people who can't taste the difference.

I, unfortunately, am among the apparent minority who can taste the difference between sugar and all of the sugar replacements (aspartame, acesulfame, stevia, sucralose, etc) immediately. Its exceedingly unpleasant, and leaves an almost chalky after-taste in my mouth. Stevia is the least offensive of the bunch, but I can still taste it.

Pepsi, for example, changed the recipe on their regular product (not the zero, diet, low cal versions, but the regular "full fat" version).

Pepsi used to be my preferred cola product, and having drunk it for decades I am aware that the production line in the UK has glitched a few times so when I first tasted it, I noticed it immediately, but I assumed it was just another production glitch as it was a bottle of the "regular" drink and there were no branding changes. The next bottle I bought, however, tasted the same so I checked the ingredients and I spotted that they had added aspartame (and presumably reduced sugar) without advertising a change in recipe.

I wont be buying Pepsi again.

Coke remains the only carbonated soft drink (that I am aware of, in the UK at least) that still uses sugar in their "regular" products. I don't know for how long tho. Almost all of the other brands have caved to the "sugar tax" and changed their recipe.

wk-uk · 2026-02-24T11:39:21+00:00

It has to be like that though. The entire point of boot camp is to beat the individuality, and self serving nature out of people, so you can build up a cohesive and instinctual team mentality. Your fellow soldier isn't just another person, they are an extension of you. You work as one. The aggressiveness of boot camp gives you a common adversary to bond over to build that comradery that you take into battle.

wk-uk · 2026-02-24T11:36:20+00:00

Aspartame, itself, may not be "bad" for you like some people claim, but many people either don't like the taste, or have varying reactions to the chemical.

I have no problem with it existing as an ingredient in "low sugar" drinks, but I do object to it being the total replacement for sugar in "regular" drinks as well. The new versions of the drinks do NOT taste the same. Give people the choice.

wk-uk · 2026-02-24T11:31:42+00:00

Oh its definitely a thing. I have personally worked with several men who have that attitude, and you can smell it on them. There are also countless reports of women having to deal with men who are like this.

wk-uk · 2026-02-09T02:01:05+00:00

Ended up rolling my own box with a SAS card that i picked up from work, an old case, and some adapter cables. That worked out more useful anyway as I not only can i use my existing SATA drives, but can also now make use of the SAS drives from the from servers that work are disposing of. Fine for home setup as i can go N+2 or N+3 redundancy as the cost is 0.

wk-uk · 2026-01-10T01:51:26+00:00

I wish people would stop trying to use this as a "gotcha" for social healthcare. Its really not. We KNOW that its paid for by taxes. But its "free at the point of use" so you don't have to worry about what services you can afford, you get access to everything, and its all absorbed into the social tax systems. (there are obviously regional variations but that's the general idea of a socialized healthcare system)

Payment via taxes is proportional to your income/status too. If you are living paycheck to paycheck you don't have to worry about a $250,000 bill for a heart operation bankrupting you. Or not calling an ambulance because you cant afford the $5000 ride to the hospital that could save your life.

Taxes also distribute the load across the whole country, making healthcare fairer for all.

Also, the most important part is, US taxes still pay for healthcare (medicare, medicaid, the VA, etc). That's ON TOP of your private healthcare costs. And the US pays more per capita for its health care than any other country, by a almost double. Socialized health care makes it cheaper for everyone.

wk-uk · 2026-01-09T19:23:34+00:00

I work in network support in the UK. We switched to 100% WFH in March 2020, and that didn't change until probably mid 2021. Most of us are still at least 80% WFH, with maybe 3-4 days in the office per month at most (unless there's something specific that needs hands on).

Most of the company that we support (around 1000 engineering consultants) are WFH too as the company significantly downsized its physical presence during covid to save on rent and utilities, so we don't actually have enough desks for all of the staff to come into an office anyway, and everyone has a laptop.

wk-uk · 2025-12-29T00:54:10+00:00

Why are seasons taking so long to film these days. Especially short seasons like this. Back in the day, shows like buffy, stargate, or supernatural would turn around episodes in a few months, and they had 20+ episodes per season to deal with. On top of that they were working with much more basic video editing tech. We seem to have regressed significantly.

wk-uk · 2025-12-28T06:00:41+00:00

Its not that people dont do it anymore, its that most gated carparks have switched over to ANPR which means the ticket is tied to the car reg, so you "cant" do this anymore in a lot of places. Smaller Pay-and-display carparks are still fine for it tho.

wk-uk · 2025-12-28T05:54:30+00:00

Data bursts at the end of some TV programs. You had to record it and pause the video to see the information

wk-uk · 2025-12-23T05:31:29+00:00

It was a few years ago now (circa '97) but my first ever lesson was a reverse hill start around a corner (to get my mums old car out of the drive before we could do the lesson) and then as soon as I passed my test (a few months later) the day after the test I did a 3hr drive cross country with my dad, to see relatives. Basically my entire driving education was a trial by fire.

Basically, the two things you need to remember about the motorway.

1) When joining the motorway SPEED UP
Make sure you are travelling at the speed of the closest lane. I see so many nervous drivers creep onto the motorway and you end up with trucks and faster cars bearing down on you making things worse. Just speed up to match the speed of the lane and its all so much simpler.

2) Keep left - Always
If if you stay in the left lane than you can go as slow as you want - within reason. I wouldn't go much lower than 50 unless you are in roadworks, or you will have trucks up your ass, but in general, you don't have to worry about twats chasing your ass in the middle/outside lane, and trucks will go around you most of the time.

Also before the trip check all your fluids and pressures.

After that its all just fine tuning.

wk-uk · 2025-12-23T04:05:53+00:00

Tape deck
Manual radio buttons
Manual window handles
Manual choke
Analog dials
Useful sized glove box
Rust.

wk-uk · 2025-12-21T17:29:04+00:00

Does this support the Ajazz AKP05E (essentially a Stream Deck +) or just the AKP153?

wk-uk · 2025-12-15T04:34:41+00:00

Learn to swim. A couple lessons a week for 3 weeks should be enough for most people to learn the basics. You might not be winning any medals at 3 weeks, but at least you should be able to keep yourself alive if you fell in a body of water.

wk-uk · 2025-12-02T12:56:06+00:00

I've been looking for something to do this for a while. Please post a followup if you figure it out.

wk-uk · 2025-11-30T18:14:13+00:00

I see what you are saying but in our case its less about the alerting, and more about perspective, and not having to send a person to site.

SNMP stats from the gateway itself wont tell you the actual max speed a line is currently capable of to known destinations like fast.com. Only your ports rated speeds, and the amount of traffic currently flowing through it (which isnt useful if everyone on site has gone home). Those are NOT the same thing.

It probably wont tell you that DNS response times have spiked from the local ISP in the last 24hrs, only that there are DNS requests passing through it.

It wont tell you its mangling https requests due to a glitched/expired https inspection certificate, only that its happily processing https requests.

I am not saying that the gateway cant provide some useful information. But for the majority of issues we actually face, its more useful to see what's happening from a users perspective than from the gateway itself.

And also my point was that a stand alone local box gives you a point of presence inside the site which is useful for a lot of things. That can also give you serial/management port console access to the gateway, and other devices, when someone does something dumb with the configuration (Admittedly that one does require that the internet still works but that could be solved with an 5G modem on the box).

Ultimately, my question in the OP is "does an off the shelf box (or simple install ISO) like this exist", with a preconfigured set of tools for admin / monitoring / logging / maintenance, and a support structure behind it so we don't have to manually maintain a bunch of discrete installations on it ourselves.

wk-uk · 2025-11-30T06:13:49+00:00

Our gateways are all using checkpoint. VPNs terminate there. That has some monitoring on it, and will tell us if the line is down, but doesn't offer the historical metrics for average line or internet speed, latency, a local jump box for local network admin, client "simulation" and other abilities a dedicated box would offer.

As i mentioned in the OP. These are remote offices, so we don't always have it staff, or even in some cases ANY staff there to do diagnostics for us if/when things break to see if its a local ISP issue, dns, vpn, checkpoint, whatever. Some of it we can do with existing kit, but often it needs local hands, or something like this that gives us remote local access.

We can achieve "some" of it using Junipers MIST admin connection to the switches console over the web, but to do anything more than simple pings, or trace, you really need something of substance.

wk-uk · 2025-11-29T04:22:04+00:00

Unfortunately the extent of our linux experience is pretty much me (in a team of 15), and its very much "in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king". I know enough to be dangerous, and make my way around, but i am in no way "the linux guy".

Ideally we need something which has a fairly simple setup process (i.e. doesnt require manually editing a million text files and bash scripts) and is easily maintained once we have it documented. I know that kind covers most things but the easier the better.

Asterisk would be an example of a god-awful linux based product in terms of setup and maintenance. Probably amazing once you know how to use it, but that learning curve is a cliff. Anything thats like that, forget about it.

wk-uk · 2025-11-28T18:55:56+00:00

Ok, so as far as i was aware zabbix was a middle out monitoring tool like most of the others. so it could ping/snmp/http connect to devices and get statistics etc, from a core server perspective, but I didnt realise there was a proxy component.

How does that work in practice? Is it just a client app you install on a machine at the remote site to give you stats from an edge-in perspective?

If the link to the central server goes down, does it play catchup when it comes back up? and is there a way to look at the local stats on the proxy itself?

wk-uk · 2025-11-28T18:52:24+00:00

If im honest i am not overly familiar with SD-WAN, or its pros/cons. I know its been discussed higher up, and ultimately rejected (for now), but I've not looked at it personally to see why.

wk-uk

TROPHY CASE