BeyondMachines 
True definition of critical infrastructure
cynical melomaniac 
@beyondmachines1 "Touch and die" that about sums it
John Francis 🇨🇦🦫🍁💪⬆️@cynical_melomaniac @beyondmachines1 I prefer to retrieve death by slowly drizzling coffee into a stack of loose power supplies
DemonHouser@beyondmachines1 a temporary fix will become a permanent solution.
Grumpy Old Techie 🕊️@beyondmachines1 @DemonHouser I've seen way too many faulty sensors bridged in Industrial plants to stop false alarms and never replaced. Out of sight out of mind.
Alerta! Alerta!@DemonHouser @beyondmachines1 Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution!
Cenobyte 
@beyondmachines1 I have one of these but the lid can be closed
@cenobyte so it's no longer a temporary solution?
@beyondmachines1 Nope being run as a research and dev server. Sagemath and a znc and a couple of other things
Evelyn Estelle@beyondmachines1 Don't worry. As a software engineer, I can confidently say that the code that runs on them looks the same, it's just not as obvious.
@dragonfi as long as the code runs, it's fine!
MafaldaOut of curiosity the 3rd image, Técnico Lisboa, is the Lisbon School of Engineering. They probably made it themselves.
Cats report that it is not up to modern infrastructure standards due to the lack of a cardboard box.
xchangeee@beyondmachines1 I bet all those patch cables could hold the switch and the cardboard box is not actually needed
FoolishOwl@xchange @beyondmachines1 You will certainly not regret putting 30 to 40 pounds of strain on your patch cables.
@foolishowl @xchange this should be fine...
Geoff 🏴@beyondmachines1 The term is "Snowflake Server".
Joe's Computer Museum@beyondmachines1 I once had to power a voicemail server with a bench power supply because it would take too long to get the proper supply for it. This seems rather normal to me. :D
Sören@beyondmachines1 @nivrig we have a Mac like that in a server closet. Exact same case design even, I think. It acts as a build host.
Frederik Seiffert@chucker Until the day when the battery expands from being continuously charged and you buy a Mac mini. @beyondmachines1 @nivrig
kajer :notverified:@beyondmachines1 i have done one of those things.
@kajer You still have ways to go then :)
Tristan
@Tristan let the one who hasn't dropped a database in production cast the first stone!
S T E L L A R 
@beyondmachines1 the first one... damn... even me as a total linux noob i managed to disable lid behavior when making a server out of a laptop
@Stellar Yes. But: "this is temporary", just make it work.
🎸 POSS 🏁@beyondmachines1 who leaked pics of my infra??? lol
@beyondmachines1 hey, at least i migrated 60TB of data today bc i moved the rack by a centimeter
@Crimekillz@⚧.fm Achievement unlocked!
Xenotar
Anonomouse13@PicardTips
This should be illegal.
Michael Baudis@beyondmachines1 Can be improved by stabilizing the lid with a (full) cup.
@mbaudis coffee, uknown days old.
Jeff@beyondmachines1 protip: make sure the internal speaker is connected, so that when you have a stack of these possibly hidden under another stack of papers and you need to find the physical hardware corresponding to what you can ssh into, you can make it beep. Or talk ("say" is pretty handy)
@evilotto spoken like a true veteran
RunawayDanish@beyondmachines1 The mysterious box with a USB that glows coming out of it is how we kept our home surveillance system functional. I had donated a 16gb flash drive from highschool that looked like it'd been through at least one war, it was quite the sight.
vollkorn (DECT 5676/"korn")@beyondmachines1 I like the last one: 'Touch and Die'. Security by threat of life.
@vollkorn depending on what will fail if it's touched and how much time one will need to work to recover the failed components, death threats may be warranted 🤷
@beyondmachines1 Or it may just be a description of what will happen. For example, when it's critical infrastructure of an airplane you're on.
@vollkorn i'm imagining a Boeing 737 Max with a RPi somewhere in the avionics marked "Do not touch"
@beyondmachines1 I'm afraid something to the same effect ist considered normal in other areas.
@vollkorn looking at the series of unfortunate events that befell Boeing, it seems that it was (at least for a time) considered normal there as well...
Karsten@beyondmachines1 this brings back memories... Once we dampened a fiber connection by twisting it around a pen because wrong transceivers and we needed to interface single and multi mode. It worked, and I can't tell you how long it did. We stuck a P-touch label saying "don't remove" to it 😸
@jwz
@jwz
The Glass Bing@beyondmachines1 why do some people use Mac as a server?
@BingsPingsDings The unibody Macs were/are extremely well built and had all the necessary ports, so they do run ad-infinitum (until the battery gets bloated).
On top of that, there's a good number of those in storage at companies as they get cycled out of use as workstations.
Put in Debian (they ran Intel CPUs), and you have a PoC server on the cheap. As a temporary solution.
And we all know that the most permanent thing is the temporary solution.
ocdtrekkie@beyondmachines1 My favorite server rack is the server I have on top of two out of service desktop PCs. Obviously putting the server straight on the ground is a bad idea in case of flooding. :D
@ocdtrekkie because two aluminium PC cases and frames are rated not to buckle under the weight of a full rack...
@beyondmachines1 You don't need a structural rating to hold a 2U server. People mount them to IKEA end tables...
Michael Vilain@beyondmachines1 Someone proudly displayed their new server rack sitting on their bare basement floor in my feed. I pointed out that water damage or vermin could damage it. They told me to leave them alone, so I unfollowed him.
Some people don't listen when told their bragworthy pride and joy may have issues.
@mvilain @beyondmachines1 I visited a client once to train up their only tech guy. He proudly showed me the servers. In a rack at least, but located in a shower cubicle. Oh well, I guess cooling wasn’t a problem.
skabLooks fine to me.
Except for the Touch or Die one, with the PSUs stacked so that the fans are all blocked.
Lee Hauser@beyondmachines1 Worked for a small manufacturer. We ran several servers and other infrastructure on a single rack, in a literal closet. Everything ran fine, until in the middle of a Puget Sound summer, the air conditioner died.
The A/C unit faced out onto the warehouse floor. We took the dead A/C out, opened the "server room" door, and used fans to blow air from the warehouse through the server room and out into the hall. For three days. Didn't have a single crash.
When the tape backup unit died a few months later, I rotated three USB hard drives for backup. We were still doing that when I left a few months later.
Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉@beyondmachines1 I don't know where this image came from, but I have it saved for these moments.