Dear Admins...

I figured I'd stop being off-topic in the "Dear Users" thread, and make my own thread about the point of view from the other side. (If any mod wants to move my messages from "Dear Users" here, it would probably make sense.)

So anyway, let's get the stories started. I'm not making any of this up.


So at this point I'm on the supplier portal dev team for a company which shall remain nameless, because let's not name and shame. Just our backend services are being the backbone of literally two dozen application dealing with everything from buying screws to invoices to sharing technical documents, transferring that stuff to other systems like SAP, and so on. We have a couple of terrabytes of everything those apps wanted to save, ranging from again technical documents and invoices, to one smart guy (*cough*my brother*cough*) who figured out that if they can save any document here and has to write one module to save documents here anyway, he's even saving all emails to and from the suppliers on our server. Well, fair enough, it IS business data.

So, you know, the kind of system that's kinda important to not lose the data or have downtime.

So at one point, after half a decade of it and the aforementioned terabytes of data, a couple of us and our boss are having a meeting with the server admins about our backups. The topic is basically that the nightly backups of all that are pretty much stuffing the Ethernet connection for several hours, by sheer amount of data transferred.

NB, these weren't the two cockwombles from the MQ server. They seemed like people you can have a friendly talk with.

And here comes the facepalm...

At one point the boss asks, basically, so how long would it take to restore that (i.e. how long would the whole bloody portal be down), if just a day's worth of files takes hours to go through the Ethernet port.

The answer is: at this point probably something like six months or so.

Huh? Why?

Well, they've only done incremental backups since day one, for literally half a decade, no full backups in between, so someone would have to load literally about 2000 tapes one by one to restore it all.

We're trying to be polite, but my boss tries to inquire WHY.

Literal answer (well, translated from German): "You only signed that you want it backed up, not that you want to also be able to restore it. Next time be more specific."

I still wonder what they thought was even the point of making backups, if restoring from them is a separate point, not included by default.

Large Hadron Collider Finds Evidence of 3 Never-Before-Seen Particles

It's only just been switched on and already it's doing groundbreaking science!

Large Hadron Collider Finds Evidence of 3 Never-Before-Seen Particles

Quote:

Physicists say they've found evidence in data from Europe's Large Hadron Collider for three never-before-seen combinations of quarks, just as the world's largest particle-smasher is beginning a new round of high-energy experiments. The three exotic types of particles – which include two four-quark combinations, known as tetraquarks, plus a five-quark unit called a pentaquark – are totally consistent with the Standard Model, the decades-old theory that describes the structure of atoms. In contrast, scientists hope that the LHC's current run will turn up evidence of physics that goes beyond the Standard Model to explain the nature of mysterious phenomena such as dark matter. Such evidence could point to new arrays of subatomic particles, or even extra dimensions in our Universe. The LHC had been shut down for three years to upgrade its systems to handle unprecedented energy levels. That shutdown ended in April, and since then, scientists and engineers at the CERN research center on the French-Swiss border have been getting ready for today's resumption of scientific operations. ... The LHCb team analyzed the decays of negatively charged B mesons and saw evidence for the existence of a pentaquark consisting of a charm quark and a charm antiquark, plus an up, down and strange quark. It's the first pentaquark known to include a strange quark. The two newly identified tetraquarks include a "doubly electrically charged" combination of four quarks: a charm quark, a strange antiquark, an up quark, and a down antiquark. That tetraquark was spotted in combination with its neutral counterpart, which has a charm quark, a strange antiquark, an up antiquark, and a down quark. CERN says this is the first time a pair of tetraquarks has been observed together. Some theoretical models visualize exotic hadrons as single units of tightly bound quarks. Others see them as pairs of standard hadrons that are loosely bound together, similar to the way that atoms are bound together to form molecules. "Only time and more studies of exotic hadrons will tell if these particles are one, the other or both," CERN says.

We Get Older, Computers Get Faster

Quantum Processor Completes 9,000 Years of Work in 36 Microseconds (twistedsifter.com)

Quote:

Researchers in Toronto used a photonic quantum computer chip to solve a sampling problem that went way beyond the fastest computers and algorithms. The paper the researchers published says that the Borealis quantum chip took only 36 microseconds to solve a problem that would take supercomputers and algorithms 9,000 years to figure out.

I find this mind-boggling, though some would argue it's not a real advance if it doesn't improve porn.

[Split Thread] Akron police shoot unarmed man 60 times

This one in Akron will probably warrant a thread on its own. My first info on it was the released bodycam footage. It looked pretty standard until the end, when (already verified) eight police officers shot an unarmed man at least 60 times. I thought the chief said "16 times" even though I'd heard the footage. I mean, it's like that demonstration scene in Robocop that was total overkill -- I even went "Holy ******" when I saw it.

Usually I can (and do) speculate on what may have happened, due to initial flimsy reports or possible flat-out lying, but I can't even imaging what kind of scenario would warrant that kind of firepower response. The family's calling for peaceful protest but I think this one will inevitably escalate.

That Time In 1870 When The Father Of Biogeography Took Up A Bet Against Flat Earthers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOd0...pticSalamander

"One in Four UK Pensioners is a Millionaire" claims Adam Smith Inst.

A director of Adam Smith Institute is arguing that because one in four UK pensioners is a millionaire, the provision of free bus passes and other benefits should be subject to revision.

Quote:

Eamonn Butler @eamonnbutler One in four pensioners is a millionaire, but we’re still giving them free bus passes, lower national insurance tax rates and other benefits. Oh, and triple locking their state pension payments. Where is the justice in that? 11:28 AM · Jul 1, 2022

https://twitter.com/eamonnbutler/sta...QPKSr65ecw8fHg

This seems to be based on an estimate of lived in property value and also is based on 'household' rather than individual persons. As the value of a property is not realised until it is sold vacated, it is obvious that the elderly persons living in it will need to use some of this capital to buy somewhere to live elsewhere, at the same inflated prices, this seems to me to be lying by statistics.

As Adam Smith was a well known economist who argued that economics should be based on free market forces, this topic thus belongs in the politics section, as the Adams Smith Institute is to do with influencing political policy.

Edinburgh is further west than Bristol shock

A person who says he was once leader of Year 8 Geography Bee says he is shocked to discover Edinburgh is further west than Bristol.

As an ex from the West Midlands once, to my astonishment, informed me that Glasgow was further west (4.25 W) than Birmingham (1.25) I was less impressed than others on his tweet.

Quote:

Myles Smith @mylessmith33 Someone recently informed me that Edinburgh is farther west than Bristol. My confidence in my knowledge of UK geography may never recover 2:01 PM · Jul 1, 2022·Twitter Web App 738 Retweets 300 Quote Tweets 10.5K Likes

https://twitter.com/mylessmith33/sta...QPKSr65ecw8fHg

I was even aware that Newcastle was only the half way point when travelling from southern England towards Aberdeen, my son having graduated from Durham and then moving onto Edinburgh.

As the topic moves on to size of country, people in the twitter thread are amazed that Scotland is bigger than England. One map that stands out is how were one to fit Europe into North America, Ireland and the UK are somewhere to the west of Canada, with Portugal being at California and Turkey at New York, based on latitudes. (See attached thumbnail.)

So what weird and wonderful things have YOU discovered geographically?

My contribution is that for many years I fondly believed that Uppsala in Sweden was in the far north, way above Stockholm. Imagine my surprise to realise it was actually further south than Turku, Finland. (59° 51' 30.83" N versus 60° 27' 16.2360'' N). As someone who spends a lot of time looking at maps this was an eye-opening disabuse of an erroneous notion.

The illusions come from the fact the UK is depicting in graphics as standing upright, when in fact it leans to the East. Ditto Sweden. On looking at a 'true size' webpage, I was shocked at just how skinny Sweden really is. The other surprising thing is, that whilst Sweden (our rivals!) looks thinner than Finland, it is actually larger in size.

Attached Images

FWpcqt7WYAAyZLv.jpg (73.5 KB)