Traditional commercial social networks:
"My milkshake is better than yours!"

Fediverse:
"I'll teach you how to make a milkshake, and you keep the milk."

#SocialMedia #Fediverse #OpenSource #OwnYourData

A few days ago, a client’s data center "vanished" overnight. My monitoring showed that all devices were unreachable. Not even the ISP routers responded, so I assumed a sudden connectivity drop. The strange part? Not even via 4G.

I then suspected a power failure, but the UPS should have sent an alert.

The office was closed for the holidays, but I contacted the IT manager anyway. He was home sick with a serious family issue, but he got moving.

To make a long story short: the company deals in gold and precious metals. They have an underground bunker with two-meter thick walls. They were targeted by a professional gang. They used a tactic seen in similar hits: they identify the main power line, tamper with it at night, and send a massive voltage spike through it.

The goal is to fry all alarm and surveillance systems. Even if battery-backed, they rarely survive a surge like that. Thieves count on the fact that during holidays, owners are away and fried systems can't send alerts. Monitoring companies often have reduced staff and might not notice the "silence" immediately.

That is exactly what happened here. But there is a "but": they didn't account for my Uptime Kuma instance monitoring their MikroTik router, installed just weeks ago. Since it is an external check, it flagged the lack of response from all IPs without needing an internal alert to be triggered from the inside.

The team rushed to the site and found the mess. Luckily, they found an emergency electrical crew to bypass the damage and restore the cameras and alarms. They swapped the fried server UPS with a spare and everything came back up.

The police warned that the chances of the crew returning the next night to "finish" the job were high, though seeing the systems back online would likely make them move on. They also warned that thieves sometimes break in just to destroy servers to wipe any video evidence.

Nothing happened in the end. But in the meantime, I had to sync all their data off-site (thankfully they have dual 1Gbps FTTH), set up an emergency cluster, and ensure everything was redundant.

Never rely only on internal monitoring. Never.

#IT #SysAdmin #HorrorStories #ITHorrorStories #Monitoring

@nprofile1q... @nprofile1q... Qui vedo, nell'ordine:
- i gatti dei vicini attaccati alle finestre (ma non vogliono rientrare)
- la strada ghiacciata e anziani che smadonnano perché devono andare al bar ma l'auto pattina
- nebbia "congelantesi" (termine che ogni tanto leggo in giro) che limita la visibilità
- Il termometro che segna -3.8 ancora adesso

Stamattina, salvo imprevisti, me ne sto comodo a lavorare da casa, con la mia (vecchia, non)bella (ma comoda e calda) tuta di pile

Evergreen

#OpenBSD #RunBSD #Linux #Jokes

A friendly reminder:

By supporting BSD Cafe, you're not just contributing to a platform: you're nurturing a vibrant community. Your generosity helps us sustain and enhance our services, ensuring that BSD enthusiasts worldwide have a welcoming and supportive home.

You can use either Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/bsdcafe
or
Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/bsdcafe

Over the past few months, some people have asked if it would be possible to donate to BSD Cafe using crypto. As an experiment, we’ve opened a Monero wallet to see how it goes. I'm currently using these funds to pay for a VPN, which helps us test service performance across CDN nodes all around the world.

If you would like to make a donation in Monero, the address is: 82ZTWAe5njHMng5g4c1x3hDs1X552q9yobiJtsbo8R3mcUzx3gBfqxciqZ3kkjZ8reMnFEN9nRvw4467eoknsFmbFe9DJm7

Thank you!

#BSDCafe #BSDCafeDonations

The Virtue of Finished Things

An email asking if my software was abandoned made me realize how the ideal of completeness has disappeared from our lives. In an era of mandatory updates and disposable goods, I reflect on the value of boring software - the kind that is finished, reliable, and simply does its job.

https://my-notes.dragas.net/2026/01/06/the-virtue-of-finished-things/

#MyNotes #World #Reflections #IT #Life #Blogging

Dear Big Tech, I get it. You’ve invested massive amounts in your 'AI' (basically keeping the money in a closed loop and patting yourselves on the back).
I get that you needed to 'invent' something new to break the product stagnation.
I understand all of that.

But *please*, stop forcing it on us everywhere.

AI should be an option, not an imposition.Those who want to use it know exactly where to find it.

For everything else, we just don't care. I want to go back to being a user and a customer, not your product.

#IT #AI #BigTech

Today, I lived through one of those (not only IT) horror stories. It's not over yet, but it’s definitely going to end up in a blog post. It's one of those situations where the 'horror' has already happened or is still going to happen, but this time, I'm the one handling the rescue. I couldn't prevent the disaster itself, but I managed to save the data.
What-a-day!

#IT #SysAdmin #HorrorStories #SaveTheData #OwnYourData

This photo nearly 13 years old. I loved this place, every day and every season had a different shape, colour, mood.
This is the winter sunset, silent and relaxing.
It has been, for a long time, my resting place

#Photography #SilentSunday #NaturePhotography #Winter #Sunset #SunsetPhotography #Relax #Silence #Peace

@nprofile1q... stay safe!

Oh, I just found a video of the last time I used Windows. Well, the man doesn't look like me, but still...

#Humorism #IT #Windows

A few days ago, I made a post announcing that I'd opened a Monero wallet for BSD Cafe. I don't know much about crypto, but someone actually sent some Monero!

I used it to get a one-month VPN subscription, which is helping me test the geolocated resolutions for media.bsd.cafe and experiment with various optimizations.

#BSDCafe