Trainguyrom

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I just accepted a job with a small MSP starting early next year. I kept a close ear out during the interview for signs of the classic MSP hell stuff that would chew through techs but it does look like I got a good one (small 8 or so man shop) but check in in about 3 months and we'll see how I'm feeling haha

My longer term plan is to use this as a stepping stone to then move onto being in-house then figuring out my exit strategy before burnout takes me, which I'm thinking I'll either be aiming to move into IT management or possibly moving into a business analytics or cloud administration type role. Technical sales probably wouldn't be too bad either.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Especially with how normal memory tiering is nowadays, especially in the datacenter (Intel's bread and butter) now that you can stick a box of memory on a CXL network and put the memory from your last gen servers you just retired into said box for a third or fourth tier of memory before swapping. And the fun not tiered memory stuff the CXL enables. Really CXL just enables so much cool stuff that it's going to be incredible once that starts hitting small single row datacenters

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

The main reason Intel can’t compete is the fact CUDA is both proprietary and the industry standard

Funnily enough this is actually changing because of the AI boom. Would-be buyers can't get Nvidia AI cards so they're buying AMD and Intel and reworking their stacks as needed. It helps that there's also translation layers available now too which translate CUDA and other otherwise vebdor-specific stuff to the open protocols supported by Intel and AMD

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

He’s not wrong that GPUs in the desktop space are going away because SoCs are inevitably going to be the future. This isn’t because the market has demanded it or some sort of conspiracy, but literally we can’t get faster without chips getting smaller and closer together.

While I agree with you on a technical level, I read it as Pat Gelsinger intends to stop development of discrete graphics cards after Battlemage, which is disappointing but not surprising. Intel's GPUs while incredibly impressive simply have an uphill battle for desktop users and particularly gamers to ensure every game a user wishes to run can generally run without compatibility problems.

Ideally Intel would keep their GPU department going because they have a fighting chance at holding a significant market share now that they're past the hardest hurdles, but they're in a hard spot financially so I can't be surprised if they're forced to divest from discrete GPUs entirely

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

Seriously putting a couple gigs of on-package graphics memory would completely change the game, especially if it does some intelligent caching and uses RAM for additional memory as needed.

I want to see what happens if Intel or AMD seriously let a generation rip with on package graphics memory for the iGPU. The only real drawback I could see is if the power/thermal budget just isn't sufficient and it ends up with wonky performance (which I have seen on an overly thin and light laptop I have in my personal fleet. It's got a Ryzen 2600 by memory that's horribly thermally limited and because of that it leaves so much performance on the table)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

To be fair, the arm SOCs on phones use BigLittle cores, where it will enable/disable cores on the fly and move software around so it's either running on the Big high performance cores or the Little low power cores based on power budget needs at that second. So effectively not all of those 6+ cores would be available and in use at the same time on phones

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I have to disagree. When I tried out a VR headset at a con I spent 2 hours with the headset on in Space Pirate Training Simulator thinking it had only been 20 minutes. This was the $250 Meta Quest 2 while I had a heavy backpack on my back because I didn't have anyone with me to leave my bag with. I was trying to be conscious with not taking too much time with the headset so others could have a chance and figured about 15-20 minutes would be appropriate but apparently I was completely in the zone!

I can count on one hand how many times I've had that much of a time traveling game experience, so I'd say VR is a pretty dang cool experience and once hardware costs come down (or headsets become more ubiquitous) it'll probably be a pretty big market for gamers, much like how consoles are now

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I meant it in reference to the Hitler-wannabe. I don't expect him to be able to be capable of going full fascist but I'd much prefer to start over in another country than to try to avoid the Fourth Reich's camps if he somehow manages to go full fascist

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Whenever I hear a running hit and miss engine it brings a smile to my face, similar with small stationary steam engines. There's a club in Baraboo WI that does a big meetup once a year where there's just tons of early tractors and stationary engines powered by all sorts of different types of combustion with all sorts of creative new engine designs that stopped being viable around the time of the first world war. I haven't been able to go most years but it's really incredible to see so many wonky engines wirring and popping and hissing and clanking around, all while struggling to reach the performance of a present day lawnmower (and not a good one at that)

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 week ago (9 children)

They have a slim chance if they keep subsidizing VR headsets to hold a and luceative chunk of the VR market when that actually takes off. VR is genuinely cool enough that enough people will get hooked once they experience a headset on their face with a VR experience that jives with them

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

In my late night brain-to-keyboard dumping I forgot to specify it would be for a couple of years that I'd want to live somewhere like Puerto Rico or Alaska so that I can have that experience under my belt. It's a thought that's danced around my brain for a while as a "what if"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

In short, money. My career is taking off and I might be in a difficult place to match my current income in the EU for example. When I've looked at listings for jobs similar to and a step above where I'm at and adjusted the income for the exchange rate it would be half or even less than I could expect to make in the States. It's not a good place to live if you're poor, but it's a great place to live if you're in the upper-middle class which my current career trajectory might well put us into by the end of the decade.

If there's a sudden boom in prison construction in the next few years I'll reconsider of course

 

I placed a low bid on an auction for 25 Elitedesk 800 G1s on a government auction and unexpectedly won (ultimately paying less than $20 per computer)

In the long run I plan on selling 15 or so of them to friends and family for cheap, and I'll probably have 4 with Proxmox, 3 for a lab cluster and 1 for the always-on home server and keep a few for spares and random desktops around the house where I could use one.

But while I have all 25 of them what crazy clustering software/configurations should I run? Any fun benchmarks I should know about that I could run for the lolz?

Edit to add:

Specs based on the auction listing and looking computer models:

  • 4th gen i5s (probably i5-4560s or similar)
  • 8GB of DDR3 RAM
  • 256GB SSDs
  • Windows 10 Pro (no mention of licenses, so that remains to be seen)
  • Looks like 3 PCIe Slots (2 1x and 2 16x physically, presumably half-height)

Possible projects I plan on doing:

  • Proxmox cluster
  • Baremetal Kubernetes cluster
  • Harvester HCI cluster (which has the benefit of also being a Rancher cluster)
  • Automated Windows Image creation, deployment and testing
  • Pentesting lab
  • Multi-site enterprise network setup and maintenance
  • Linpack benchmark then compare to previous TOP500 lists
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