Archive.org goes offline due to... power outage

[winnielinnie]

Maybe someone tripped over an electrical cable?

Not sure why, but these types of events always make me chuckle. It reminds you of your own fragility.

They'll probably be back very soon. (I hope this doesn't have implications for any existing archived webpages.)

 

[winnielinnie]

 

[Ericloewe]

Yes. Nothing actually exists unless it exists in triplicate. As a bonus, this conveniently splits the difference between radical empiricism (three copies means three times the likelihood of the radical empiricist perceiving the thing's existence) and whatever Descartes was smoking (backups are the difference between cogitas, ergo es and cogitaras, ergo fueras and the daemon was just Beastie reminding him to do his backups).

 

[Jailer]

Yes. Nothing actually exists unless it exists in triplicate. As a bonus, this conveniently splits the difference between radical empiricism (three copies means three times the likelihood of the radical empiricism perceiving the thing's existence) and whatever Descartes was smoking (backups are the difference between cogitas, ergo es and cogitaras, ergo fueras and the daemon was just Beastie reminding him to do his backups).

Wuuuttt????

 

[winnielinnie]

Wuuuttt????

Unlike you, I'm not some simple plebe. I understood everything @Ericloewe so eloquently explained.

(Please don't ask me what it means.)

 

[asap2go]

View attachment 73163

Maybe someone tripped over an electrical cable?

Not sure why, but these types of events always make me chuckle. It reminds you of your own fragility.

They'll probably be back very soon. (I hope this doesn't have implications for any existing archived webpages.)

I had the chance to visit a datacenter at my former employer.
They had redundant datacenters in the city, each with spinning rust ups + generators.
Literally steel drums weighing tens of tons spinning at > 3600rpm.
When power would cut out an electric generator would use the kinetic energy to bridge the time it took the diesel generators to ramp up.
Crazy stuff to look at.
Due to Germany's increasingly unstable energy infrastructure they told us that they had an ever increasing amount of "power events" and the rigorous testing of the backup systems was absolutely crucial.

Which reminds me that I should test restoring my data backups...

 

[Constantin]

I lived for a year in a dorm where the power would cut 4-5 times a night due to overloaded circuit. Despite numerous student protests, B&G had done nothing to fix this obvious issue… until I happened on the local fire inspector, completely by chance in our neighborhood, gave him a tour, and wrote a letter to the deans with his assessment.

Point not being that the home was unsafe but rather that should something tragic happen, that the deans would not be able to claim that the university didn’t know. The problem was fixed in a week. But I did lose a PSU in the process. Good power is essential!

I now protect everything really important with a Brick wall power protector and then a quality APC UPS. The brick wall takes care of spikes, the APC deals with brownouts and blackouts.

IIRC, the local airport maintains three redundant generators just for the tower/essentials that run 24/7 and the net is the backup. Excess power helps power the rest of the airport.

A datacenter some colleagues consulted on contained a flywheel, two or three molten salt fuel cells and the usual set of suspects re diesel generators. 99.999999%+ expected uptime. I expect that as society moves to more DG and less centralized control of the net that power conditioning will become more and more important.

 

[winnielinnie]

They had redundant datacenters in the city, each with spinning rust ups + generators.

Spinning rust, as in the HDDs themselves?

The way I read it, you mean that the spinning motion of the HDDs was used as kinetic energy long enough for the generators to power on? (But wouldn't that basically mean all the HDDs would temporarily power off?)

 

[asap2go]

Spinning rust, as in the HDDs themselves?

The way I read it, you mean that the spinning motion of the HDDs was used as kinetic energy long enough for the generators to power on? (But wouldn't that basically mean all the HDDs would temporarily power off?)

Ah, I did phrase that a little misleading.
What I meant are huge metal flywheels.
Not the HDDs themselves.

Like these from Eaton:

https://www.eaton.com/us/en-us/catalog/backup-power-ups-surge-it-power-distribution/flywheel-solutions.html#tab-2

Just a lot more powerful.

They hold up better over time than battery powered solutions, but the initial cost is much higher.
So sadly not a feasible solution for home users.

 

[winnielinnie]

Ah, I did phrase that a little misleading.
What I meant are huge metal flywheels.
Not the HDDs themselves.

Oh now that's cool!

(The term "spinning rust" usually refers to HDDs, so I was wondering how they could rig up something like that. )

 

[asap2go]

Oh now that's cool!

(The term "spinning rust" usually refers to HDDs, so I was wondering how they could rig up something like that. )

Now you said it....
I can already see the feature request for zfs.

 

[winnielinnie]

I can already see the feature request for zfs.

 

[somethingweird]

Must not happen.. how else am I going to by pass the corporate firewall - to view my favorite webpages. (thank god for wayback!)

 

[asap2go]

Must not happen.. how else am I going to by pass the corporate firewall - to view my favorite webpages. (thank god for wayback!)

Host a webpage via AWS and use secure DNS requests to encapsulate your communication.
So basically you communicate via requesting arbitrary sub-domains from your server e.g. googleForCuteKittens.myDomain.com and the IP addresses it sends back contain are the actual data in ip-address encoding.
Slow but works.
And noone has the guts to block AWS.
There are libraries for this - that are definitely not used for malware - on github.

 

[winnielinnie]

(thank god for wayback!)

Except when they intentionally exclude websites. I have an ambivalent view towards the people who run the service.

Parts of internet history are lost forever because of arbitrarily removing and excluding archives.

For example, the abandoned Flash animation cartoon series from 2001 titled "Ninjai: The Little Ninja" has all but been memory-holed. (They won't even let you visit the archived website, regardless of the cartoon videos! Whom does that really benefit? I don't want to cuss, but I have unkind words for such people.) This was a part of internet history. A quaint corner of the online world during the maturation of Flash animations. If it hadn't been for some stranger uploading the cartoon to a peer-to-peer network, it may have been gone for good.

(Someone did upload it to the Wayback library, but it was deleted. Someone uploaded it again, in a different format, and it might soon be deleted if it gets flagged.)

Let's just say, my NAS and backups are a safe home for some nearly-extinct gems of the internet.

 

[somethingweird]

Host a webpage via AWS and use secure DNS requests to encapsulate your communication.

I'm too lazy to setup a proxy server - just easier for me if someone else set it up. (doesn't point finger back to me) - not my problem if corporate firewall didn't block it (I don't belong to IT)

 

[victort]

Host a webpage via AWS and use secure DNS requests to encapsulate your communication.
So basically you communicate via requesting arbitrary sub-domains from your server e.g. googleForCuteKittens.myDomain.com and the IP addresses it sends back contain are the actual data in ip-address encoding.
Slow but works.
And noone has the guts to block AWS.
There are libraries for this - that are definitely not used for malware - on github.

No one blocks it huh?
I do.

 

[somethingweird]

@winnielinnie - never like flash .. I'm really a text-based browser guy.

 

[Davvo]

I'm too lazy to setup a proxy server - just easier for me if someone else set it up. (doesn't point finger back to me) - not my problem if corporate firewall didn't block it (I don't belong to IT)

The ancient forbidden art of dumping others a steaming pile of crap.

Nevermind the cost, a flywheel UPS is loud as heck (near 70 dB at 1m)!