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ティージェーグレェ

@Wen Yeah, the sub-field of system & network administration more colloquially referred to as "DR" (Disaster Recovery) is pretty deeply tied into such "mitigating strategies" but they are far from fool proof.

My first employer after I graduated from University circa 1999-2001, we had a 10kW backup generator that we would routinely wheel out & test as part of outage preparations, because the building's (which was a bank which also had an old got.net data center in it) 600kW back up diesel generator wasn't automatic & there was enough lag we might have to use the 10kW generator as a stop gap.

My employer circa 2002-2006, bought their HQ building for a song from a failed start up that was planning to do hardware fabrication before the dot-bomb era wiped them out.

The entire building: was on battery back up (with a room full of batteries, which were tested & maintained semiannually), it also had a 600kW diesel generator, which would automatically power on within 10 seconds of an outage & would self-test every week. It was also: on a hospital (our neighbor) "grid". In the event of power failures: emergency services such as hospitals are the last to be powered down & the first to be powered up.

However, that employer had 20+ branches spread across 5 counties. One of the locations: the largest granite quarry West of the Mississippi, with the world's largest wheeled excavator. It got power *directly* from the Moss Landing station, so if Moss Landing ever did maintenance, Aromas was offline, because they were direct fed, no grid resiliency. ;-/

Circa 2007-2014, with @bifrosty2k's network wizardry, my employer survived a fiber cut which wiped out AT&T in SF & other transit providers such as Global Crossing, while we were still up & online & passing traffic without a hiccup.

But: not many ever get to those levels of disaster recovery planning. It costs real money & requires a lot of lessons learned the hard way, not taught in schools.

@Alienated53 @luis_in_brief @chu

1 Oct 2023 at 2:31 | Wall-to-wall | Open on rap.social
4 comments
Mike D

@teajaygrey @Wen @bifrosty2k @Alienated53 @luis_in_brief @chu
No background is in IT so I'm familiar with DR. Doing it properly requires commitments of time and money from the people up top.

1 Oct 2023 at 2:39 | Open on sfba.social
ティージェーグレェ

@Wen @bifrosty2k @Alienated53 @luis_in_brief @chu

Similarly, for those doing hardware design, supply chain issues can be a real problem. JIT paradigms, break down entirely.

For example, anyone who pays attention to @bunnie's Precursor project, will have observed: this was done in the same time frame as the pandemic.

I preordered 2 Precursors. Both arrived, when expected, no issues.

In the same time frame, I also preordered a HiFive SiFive Unmatched. I never received it. Crowd Supply did not even issue me a refund, until last year.

Also in the same time frame, Planet Computers announced their "Astro Slide 5G" via IndieGoGo. Last time I received an update from that project (which was months ago) they had maybe only shipped units to about half the people who backed it, and were at odds with their ODM.

I mean, it doesn't surprise me that bunnie mitigated around the failures of the industry with which he is intimately familiar. His blog updates, even before the Precursor project, reflect how astute he is. His 2019 BlueHat talk on Supply Chain Security, is one of the only public presentations of its kind: youtube.com/watch?v=RqQhWitJ1A

His book, The Hardware Hacker, speaks to the realities and economics of supply chain pitfalls. Few other people even seem to be paying attention to such challenges, let alone sharing their knowledge publicly instead, treating them as "trade secrets".

Albeit I'm biased. I took a class in hardware hacking from bunnie at ToorCon in 2006. One thing that stood out when another student asked him: "what if someone clones your design and undercuts you?"

His response (paraphrasing): "If someone can do what I do, and bring it to market for less than what I can? I will use them as my supplier!"

Flawless logic there, most would be too tied to their ego & "ownership" to sit well with that type of adversarial economic fabricator. He clearly cares about security beyond price points into tractable methodologies which end users can verify themselves.

@Wen @bifrosty2k @Alienated53 @luis_in_brief @chu

Similarly, for those doing hardware design, supply chain issues can be a real problem. JIT paradigms, break down entirely.

For example, anyone who pays attention to @bunnie's Precursor project, will have observed: this was done in the same time frame as the pandemic.

1 Oct 2023 at 2:44 | Open on rap.social
Hal Pomeranz

@teajaygrey @Wen @bifrosty2k @Alienated53 @luis_in_brief @chu And even all of your contingencies fail if you can’t get more diesel to refill your generator’s tank. And that’s what’s going to happen if the rest of the world is suffering a sustained interruption. Oh, and how are you feeding your staff if the grocery stores are out of food and/or the water supply is interrupted?

Also you’re out of luck if people with guns decide to come take your nice digs away from you. That’s what full societal collapse looks like.

@teajaygrey @Wen @bifrosty2k @Alienated53 @luis_in_brief @chu And even all of your contingencies fail if you can’t get more diesel to refill your generator’s tank. And that’s what’s going to happen if the rest of the world is suffering a sustained interruption. Oh, and how are you feeding your staff if the grocery stores are out of food and/or the water supply is interrupted?

1 Oct 2023 at 4:15 | Open on infosec.exchange
ティージェーグレェ

@hal_pomeranz Yeah, one of the things that upsets me is the false promise of biodiesel.

In theory: hey, you can grow your own fuel supply!

In practice, I have never found a biodiesel vendor which does such things.

The promises of "your fuel won't come from an unethical war waged overseas" doesn't bear fruit when the "local" biodiesel vendors continue to charge a premium, even HIGHER than petro-diesel. So, as petro-diesel rates go up, biodiesel rates go up EVEN HIGHER, because greed and profiteering even for the "hippies" I guess?

It's exasperating.

I guess it's still local; there are still wins for sure, but a lot of warfare is economic in nature, not just environmental.

@Wen @bifrosty2k @Alienated53 @luis_in_brief @chu

@hal_pomeranz Yeah, one of the things that upsets me is the false promise of biodiesel.

In theory: hey, you can grow your own fuel supply!

In practice, I have never found a biodiesel vendor which does such things.

The promises of "your fuel won't come from an unethical war waged overseas" doesn't bear fruit when the "local" biodiesel vendors continue to charge a premium, even HIGHER than petro-diesel. So, as petro-diesel rates go up, biodiesel rates go up EVEN HIGHER, because greed and profiteering...

1 Oct 2023 at 4:58 | Open on rap.social
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