rekabis

The hardware to read the tapes are calibrated to the maximum size they are configured to accept. So when you hit up eBay, you will need to know the maximum amount of data you will need, and either the size of the largest tape drive to hold all that - if you are not getting a machine with an auto-loader - or the maximum number of drives that the machine’s autoloader can take, so you can size the tapes properly for the data.

Say you need to back up 25Tb. You are unlikely to ever need more backup than that. So you either look for a machine that takes 25Tb tapes, or you get a machine that can take max. 5Tb tapes, but has an autoloader that can hold at least 4 additional tapes (in addition to the one in the drive) such that all five will automagically cycle through the backup process. That way, all 25Tb will be backed up in either case without your direct and immediate involvement, all you have to do is rotate the tapes off-site after the backups are done, and slot the next ones in for the next backup run.

Obviously, incremental backups are a no-go, as backups are stored off-site. So it’s an all-or-nothing process. And as such, this is usually done both on your entire primary data set (for fast total-disaster restores) once in a while, with a different set of tapes focusing on your local/on-site warm backups and backing up only the atomic/incremental locally-stored backups for the day/week/month.

As much as I think that he was too old for the position… JFC. If the Dems don’t nominate Kamala Harris as his replacement, the entire Democratic nomination will be filled with so much infighting that they will lose the faith of their electorate and the next election.

If only more Dems were left-of-centre such that Bernie was a viable option. Unfortunately almost all of them are right-lite.

It sounds like your healing will never be done until that eternal sleep takes you. My condolences.

Keep an eye on that brain injury. Here’s hoping you missed a bullet with that as well. AIUI, severe shocks like that prematurely age the brain by 20-50 years, making it look like Swiss cheese towards the end. But judging from the quality of your prose (which is excellent), it seems that you aren’t very far down that path just yet. Good luck.

Yeah. As much as I love to be accurate and pedantic, even I don’t touch this subject with a dirty barge pole.

If you want longevity and shelf stability, tape drives are the way to go. You can get them in very large capacities, even into the hundreds of TB.

Their benefit is that they have no internal motorized components, they are a lot like VHS videocassettes - two spools with tape. This makes them very shelf-stable, unlike hard drives which can have their spindles seize up over time.

They also have absolutely epic data densities. You could store on one tape the contents of dozens of the largest hard drives currently available.

Their downside is that you need highly specialized hardware to read and record them. And this makes the hardware quite expensive.

So why don’t we use tape drives to store data? Because they store said data linearly - great for writing once, terrible for finding or updating said data - and because they are slow. You want to get to a file 20Tb in? Enjoy scrolling past every single byte up until that point.

But for cold backups, there ain’t nothing better.

Missiles require an inordinate amount of thrust for their weight to remain airborne, due to the lack of large(ish) wings. Because the aircraft is already moving forward at high speed, the missile would lose considerable altitude (if fired backwards) before it would acquire sufficient velocity on it’s own again.

IIRC there have been missiles that could be targeted against aircraft behind the one launching the missiles. They would lock the missile against the pursuing aircraft, fire it forward, and the missile would arc around to go after the other aircraft.

Now bullets on the other hand, can come in supersonic versions. Unless the aircraft is moving at Mach speeds (and you always slow down to dogfight in order to make turns survivable), a supersonic bullet fired backwards will have sufficient speed in that direction to reach the other aircraft without too much aiming difficulties.

Beyond bullets: AFAIK there have been experiments in launching chaff (metal filings) such that it gets ingested into the pursuing aircraft’s engines, causing damage that way. But from what I recall there was too much of a risk of other aircraft in the vicinity and below that engagement also getting caught in the falling chaff. Still good for enemy aircraft, not so much for your own teammates.

We’ve decarbonised a decent chunk of the world’s energy profile

Unfortunately, things like AI continue to fuel our hunger for power, preventing fossil fuels from being phased out… and as such, CO2 production continues to accelerate uncontrollably.

Yes, atmospheric CO2 production continues to accelerate. It hasn’t even begun to slow down, much less reach a steady state or reverse.

And this is excluding the feedback loops (arctic permafrost, methyl hydrates, etc.) that are now beginning to cook off in nature.

We are still solidly on the “business as usual” path towards civilizational collapse by some point in the 2050s, and functional extinction by some point between 2100 and 2200.

Wow. There is A LOT to unpack, there.

I’d go with the one you are most comfortable in addressing.

every bit of business logic was implemented in Stored Procedures and Triggers on a MSSQL database.

Provided the SP’s are managed in a CVS and pushed to the DB via migrations (similar to Entity Framework), this is simply laborious to the devs. Provided the business rules are simple to express in SQL, this can actually be more performant than doing it in code (although it rarely ever is that simple).

There were no frontend code either on the server, users have some ActiveX controls installed locally that accessed the DB.

This is the actual WTF for me.

Considering the aims of Project 2025, this may end up being illegal within the next four years.

Best to pass this info on to any pre-menopausal women that you know of out there. Having tubes tied still allows eggs to be harvested, it just prevents the sperm from reaching said egg outside of a test tube.

For some reason I cannot fathom for the life of me.

Tell me you are not a man without saying you are not a man.

Any male of our species that has passed through the 12-18yo stage of life will at least understand that humour, even if they have matured beyond it.

I roll my own eyes at shit like that, and would never employ it myself. But I can’t roll my eyes without even a tiny 12yo grin, even though it’s been four decades since I was that age.

He was a rabid trumper

Their “alternative facts”, which are entirely fact-free, are the new “truth”.