t312227

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hello,

zip-drives where great - at least compared to what other possibilities where around these days:

overall, zip-drives where not that expensive, especially the medias.

but they died every now& then ...

so it was more or less only a possibility to transfer data, not so much to archive it! this was what cd-r and later dvd-r where there for :)

imho. the "real" problem where often the drives themselfs, they where available with various interfaces, the most common was (!) parallel / "printer-port" / centronics (!) .. veeery slow.

the "best" ones had scsi =?> fast etc. but you needed an scsi-controller with an external connector for that

if i remember it correctly, there where even IDE/PATA-drives available - but i think only internal ones - and later usb-variants (also slow) ...

btw. what where the alternative in the late 1990ties!?

* syquests

great drives, especially the 5.25 inch variants, but they where already "dated" by then. and the 3.5 inch variants where pretty expensive and had reliability-issues ...

additionally: lots of people mistook the 3,5 inch variants for floppy-disk-drives and ruined early models by inserting floppies into them =?> the later got some mechanical protection against that!

* (old) harddisks

my "medium of choice" where old hdds, which i plugged into the machines between which i wanted to transfer data ...

by far the "best" option, but also the most "technical" one ;)

just my 0.02€

hello,

as always: imho (!)

but google/gmail is pretty open about why they deny your emails - idk ... mail authentication =?> dkim/spf/... or similar technical details etc.

interestingly i have more "problems" with the other "big" (free)mail providers like yahoo or gmx, which are often not so "open" about why they reject your mail ... even google is pretty happy with my setup :))

just my 0.02€

hello,

yes ... especially if you want to execute quantum-circuits which use a lot of qubits.

why!? one approach of the simulation of quantum-computers rely on the so called "state vector" of the machine, and its memory-usage grows exponentially.

for example qiskit AER

* https://qiskit.github.io/qiskit-aer/stubs/qiskit_aer.Stateve...

just as an example:

for 32 qubits, the simulator needs 64 GB RAM

=?> double the RAM for each additional qubit

so: for 36 qubits, the simulator needs 1 TB RAM

:)

so it gets pretty "costly" to do simulations rather quickly ...

just my 0.02€

hello,

as always: imho (!)

i've used the ibm quantum platform together with python/qiskit during my last project - which was something like: simulate quantum-networks on "real" quantum-computers...

ibm's support, introductions / documentation anbd usability of the platform is really great.

idk ... not comparable / much better than most of the quantum-computing hardware startups i know / looked at. of course, its easy if you have "deep pockets" like ibm does ... ;))

ok, back to the quantum platform:

it had a free-tier on the "old" quantum-platform - until july 2025: 10 minutes of compute on a set of machines - back then up to 127 qubits - per month ... no identification necessary / just an email-address.

sadly this "very generous" free-tier was killed of during the transition to the all new "quantum cloud platform" during spring/summer 2025 ...

and it really works like a charm :)

just my 0.02€

software-developer ~ devops-/cloud-engineer ~ linux system-engineer

location: innsbruck, austria (CEST / UTC +2)

remote: yes (experienced in working remotely)

willing to relocate: no, but occasional / regular visits "on-site" are possible

technologies: java, spring-boot, camunda, openapi/swagger, pl(pg)sql, linux, AWS/GCP, docker, kubernetes, bash, php, python, django, rest-framework, qiskit, quantum-computing, prometheus, CI/CD, agile processes (scrum & kanban), jira/confluence etc.etc...

resume/cv: drop me an e-mail, please

e-mail: hireme at schuetz dot in

web: https://schuetz.in

i'm a veteran technology professional (25+ years) with experience in a variety of software-development, system-architecture, systems-administration, service-reliability-engineering and devops-/cloud-engineering (container / kubernetes) roles.

hello,

as always: imho (!)

yes please, remove the crazy US of A from NATO already.

maybe then we are able to concentrate on 2 essential things here in europe:

* defend our countries

and they are not defended in west-asia or anywhere else on the planet where the USA decides to "causally" bomb yet another country with no meaningful aim or even grasp of the reality of the "problem" at hand.

* build weapons for the use of defense

not "weapons" which are only there to enrich their producers like in the USA.

remember: NATO was meant to defend against the soviet-union.

it dissolved in 1991, case closed.

since then NATO is more or a less just a "tupper-ware" party like sales-channel for overpriced crap from the USAs MIC.

just my 0.02€

ps. and always remember frank zappa, who said in 1981 (!) something like:

us-american politics is the entertainment-division of the MIC.

hello,

ah ... another clear case of AGI *) ...

*) ads generated income

just my 0.02€

hello,

about 20 or 25 years ago i used whatever old hardware i could find in someones cellar or a junkyard together with 2 NICs and a floppy-disk drive / FDD based linux-distribution ...

it outgrew its original media - FDD - and is still active, as a router-focused distribution:

* https://www.fli4l.de/

just my 0.02€

hello,

as always: imho (!)

tar is great, and well kown - but not particularly for "incremental backups over the net" ...

this is what rsync is/was for.

idk ... whatever the problem is with rsync, but apparently thats none of my business ;))

you could use, and which usage is very similar to rsync:

rclone

* https://rclone.org/

intro

* https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/4x-faster-network-fil...

and additionally its also faster than rsync ...

just my 0.02€

idk, but when i see the abbreviation "AGI" i associate it with "ads generated income" ...

every other interpretation is hollowed out / reduced to "marketing speak" by now ;)

hello,

idk ... so ARM itself is now jumping on the AGI *) "train"... !?

how will they do this!? during system-bootup / splash-screens during execution of whatever we will run on these SOCs ... ;)

*) ads generated income

bruhahaha ... ;^)

just my 0.02€

or - as an alternative to <esc> + ".":

for the last argument

* <alt> + "."

if you want the -<n>th argument:

* <alt> + "_" # n times :=)

* <alt> + "."

cheers a..z

hello,

as always: imho. (!)

idk the exact procedure which will apply to enter the birth-date on such a system, but if other comments are correct: just enter what you want!

there will be no real possibility to tie this to anything "legal" / to "enforce" any "official" check of lets say your passport or other governmental id.

and if in my personal opinion (!) the pretty crazy guy behind the systemd-project tries to introduce/enforce such a thing ...

then i think it'll be time to either fork the project or look at systemd-free linux distributions like devuan ~ a systemd-free fork of debian :)

* https://devuan.org

just my 0.02€

hello,

i'm always a fan of 1-JAN-1970

[eg. the "birth" of UNIX-like OSes unix-timestamp eg. "0" ;]

or

date -d @0

cheers a..z

software-developer ~ devops-/cloud-engineer ~ linux system-engineer

location: innsbruck, austria (CET / UTC +1)

remote: yes (experienced in working remotely)

willing to relocate: no, but occasional / regular visits "on-site" are possible

technologies: java, spring-boot, camunda, openapi/swagger, pl(pg)sql, linux, AWS/GCP, docker, kubernetes, bash, php, python, django, rest-framework, qiskit, quantum-computing, prometheus, CI/CD, agile processes (scrum & kanban), jira/confluence etc.etc...

resume/cv: drop me an e-mail, please

e-mail: hireme at schuetz dot in

web: https://schuetz.in

i'm a veteran technology professional (25+ years) with experience in a variety of software-development, system-architecture, systems-administration, service-reliability-engineering and devops-/cloud-engineering (container / kubernetes) roles.

i'm a highly motivated self-learner, an excellent problem solver and i can help you to resolve your technical obstacles.

surprised pikachu face ... what did we expect!? ;)

hello,

as always: imho (!)

the usa will "bomb bomb bomb bomb iran" for a few weeks - as they wanted since 1979:

more details to the song

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Iran

1. a few weeks in they will run out of ordnance to drop

2. they will declare victory and leave

3. iran wins by not being beaten

i think 2 things are possible but very unlikely - eg. small single digit per cent probability:

* successful regime change

* a really long war - like in afghanistan or irak (~ 10 or up to 20 years)

just my 0.02€

yes ... i thought this is included in the expression "as a service" :)

it doesn't matter how you slice & dice it, the "service" is to have someone - be it business or be it a person - who is responsible for running this service ... you get an SLA and according to the conditions you are able to work with the entity which provides the service ...

hello,

as always: imho (!)

idk:

as a business, if the "main focus" of your business is related to email =?> self-host.

but if this not your core business: why in the world would you even think about self-hosting!?

pay someone "as a service" / for your "peace of mind" and be done with that.

as a private person:

if you are interested in learning a lot about the internet and especially e-mail: do self-host ;)

if not: pay someone a few bucks a month and do stuff that matters to you ;)

just my 0.02€

hello,

am i the only one who gets an error!?

404 There isn't a GitHub Pages site here.

archived version

* https://archive.ph/D4EYW

cheers!

you are right, i left this detail out ... but it went somewhat together with the amiga & the lightwave-software :))

yes, you are right ... its been a few years :))

hello,

as always: imho. (!)

ah ... babylon 5 :))

this was one of the best scifi shows back in the mid 1990ties.

it introduced a lot things which we take for granted today ... together with startrek "deep space nine" which roughly aired during the same time:

* telling a "story arch" over multiple seasons

* 2 parallel story-lines within episodes

* causally show people doing "every-day" life things, like going to the toilet - you may laugh, but 30+ years ago, for example in various startrek spinoffs - tng, ds9, voyager - nobody went to the toilet ... ever!!

don't get me wrong, i'm a big fan of startrek too ;))

* despite their budget decent CGI for the time

if i remember it correctly: they used a software called "lightroom", which ran on the amiga hardware-platform at first, for later seasons they moved to PC hardware...

just if you wonder about the quality of the CGI ... this was some 680x0 computer running at something like 16 or 32 MHz (!) with a few MB (!) of memory.

not a scifi "blockbuster" utilizing multimillion us$ SGI clusters like ILM productions of the era did!

absolutely recommended:

"the lurker's guide to babylon 5"

* http://midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html

just my 0.02€

hello,

as always: imho (!)

recognize that software-engineering is not about writing / vibing code but to solve (!) problems.

nobody cares if the code which solves a problem is generated / copied / written ... as long as it was legally obtained ... ;))

anyway: code is liability, every line of code which was not written to solve a problem keeps future maintenance-costs low(er) ...

additionally especially for non-trivial problem-solutions - read: projects -, its essential to have maintainable code. which means, code that is ...

* easy to understand ~ new developers

* easy to extend ~ new features

* easy to sustain ~ update dependencies, update the underlying runtime-environment etc.

especially if it solves a complex problem for a company, the code may be used for years or even decades =?> keep that in mind!

just my 0.02€

hello,

as always: imho. (!)

btw. thanks for the downvote.

its for sure better to kill your own infrastructure because of some AI crawlers - buhuuuu ... bad bots!! - than to solve your problem with a stupid simple but effective solution.

just as an idea: if i had to host public repositories i would think about how to disable costly operations - searches etc. - for anonymous access ... like github did.

just my 0.02€

hello,

as always: imho. (!)

idk ... i just put a http basic-auth in front of my gitweb instance years ago.

if i really ever want to put git-repositories into the open web again i either push them to some portal - github, gitlab, ... - or start thinking about how to solve this ;))

just my 0.02€

hello,

i discovered fela anikulapo kutis music back in the 2nd half of the 1980ties - still a big fan!! :)

cheers,

a..z

hello,

as always: imho. (!)

we already had this topic before, an example for another good article regarding physical arguments against this idea would be:

"Datacenters in space are a terrible, horrible, no good idea" ~ late 2025

* https://taranis.ie/datacenters-in-space-are-a-terrible-horri...

TL;DR: It's not going to work.

idk ... maybe elon has something else in mind with this merger!?

cheers,

a..z

hello,

as always: imho (!)

we are in a capitalistic economy: companies don't have "souls", they make profit.

tim cook did what nearly every large company in the 1990ties did: move your production to china.

why? mainly 2 reasons

* cheap production

* the back than still developing large chinese market

=?> more profit.

and he got rewarded and later promoted for this ...

just my 0.02€