FYI: The writer works for a AI-based security company and,well,seems to fit in there.

Funny enough I came here to tell a similar story: We were surprised by upcoming bad weather with the possibility of a thunderstorm in the alps somewhat - we saw it coming, but underestimated the speed. (That was before Smartphones btw, so no weather app).

There is a Y junction on that trail. One leads to a serviced hut (which we hate, the people operating it were assholes) and towards the “wrong” valley. It’s shorter but yeah…the wrong direction.

The other way leads through a small section of a fixed rope/via ferrata section but straight towards our cars. We thought we would have enough time.

Around 5min after entering the route (which goes further up far beyond where we enter) we find out it takes longer than anticipated and it’s a proper alpine thunderstorm. Which is coming fast now. Well, if you haven’t seen a proper thunderstorm in the mountains - they are something else. Due to the higher pressure gradients, the interference with the terrain,etc. they are absolutely terrifiying. And deadly. If the lighting doesn’t get you the cold will (I literally saw temperature drops of 27 degrees in 20 minutes). And it that doesn’t get you the stones will.

Well. Slight panic set in,but we can handle. Not our first rodeo. Until our hair started to “levitate” a bit under the helmets, on the arms,etc. And then the steel wires started to “sing”. Kind of like a Theremin.

This when we knew we were fucked. Going back up? Means exposing us more. Down the wires? Likely going to electrocute us.

So we decided to get down directly. Stupidest decision I ever was part of in the mountains. because we didn’t really know the terrain below us,but it’s around 180m to the ground and then around 500m of mountain pasturr before the forest starts. Our logic was that the risk from the steel wire is higher than the risk of being forced to weather out in the rock wall. What would have happened if we didn’t find a good intermediate stand at one point I don’t know. (None has a 180m rope with one…so you need to find a lot of intermediate stands to secure yourself. This is normally done upwards,not downards. At least we had two ropes which makes things much easier. )

We send the girl that was with us down first (as she was the lightest and the best climber). And actually made it down surprisingly quick. But fuck…that could have gone wrong. When we were basically at the bottom a lighting hit a section just above were we would have been. Pelting a section a bit to the left of us with football sized stones.

There is a scene in rick and Morty where thex are crying in their car how close the last adventure was - it was basically us in the car, we all were shaking for a day.

Have you had a look at AgentDVR recently?

Depends.

My main job it would be interesting. I mainly plan for organisations how to handle disasters. Not necessarily IT disasters but actual one - what happens if your hospital is on fire, your airline has hundreds of people stranded somewhere (yeah, we had a bad time recently), your muncipial water supply goes bad, the Russians actually come,etc.

If AI can do that on a level it replaces my staff and me…well…good for everyone else,because right now it’s a underdeveloped and rarely looked upon issue.

In my side job I am still working in my original trade as a critical care paramedic. Until AI can fully replace one there it will take a long time (but we see a lof of actually beneficial developments that makes the job insanely more easy and capable) and I am very likely retired by then. What is far more likely is that societies won’t be able to pay for proper healthcare anymore…and that would be “not replaced” technically, I guess.

While it’s a ressource hog look into xwiki. It is well suited for what you want to do and afaik there I came around a basic asset management plugin once.

So does homebox and basically ever OSS software mentioned here. BTW: Got some source for that?

Depending on what your exact needs are,but Snipe-IT is surprisingly decent for a Home Asset Management System, even though it is mainly geared towards IT stuff.

“I am very sure my husband has no heart attack. I am a homeopathic and this is clearly not a heart attack. You don’t know what you are doing.”

I am a paramedic for 24 years, a critical care paramedic for 16. The husband had such a “myocardial infarction out of the book”-ECG it almost looked twice. He literally almost coded on us twice. And this lady walzes in (funny enough: They were in the process of separating) and after 60 sec. decides she knows what’s up.

Homeopathy therapists here have no formal training. Just a state exam that makes sure they don’t kill someone too often.

The husband barely made it,personally I think mostly out of spite for her. Had a cardiac arrest twice while in the cathlab,but survived without neurological issues.

It’s really really rare that I am out of words and don’t have a comeback. But that woman in that moment?

(For the medical folks: Massive STEMI accross 3 leads, massive contractility issue visible on POCUS, later on become pressure dependended, had VF arrest during PCI, needed an impella for two weeks)

Yeah. The thing is: For a moment you forget that. I saw one for real. Planned big ass explosion. I knew beforehand and was specifically there for it and invited by the goverment agency doing it.

But for a very short moment you forget that and your brain goes full on monkey mode.

I drive: KIA EV6.

What I wish for? A better KIA EV6. I love my EV6, it’s a marvellous car,much more fun than the Audis, BMWs, etc. I drove before. But yet there is room for improvents.

Tbh, at the moment the maintainer seems to be have gotten the message - or at least tries to make it seem so. I would give him the benefit of doubt at this stage, at least for a while now.

Without Synapse migration it’s sadly still hard for longer established servers to migrate/impossible.

Very happy with a KIA EV6.

No longer valid. A shitton of companies are UG by now - I operate one myself. It is very rarely an issue,even back when it’s been just an UG we used.

They don’t need a GmbH, a UG would do it for less starting capital, BUT a joint stock company does not protect you from Scheinselbstständigkeit per se.

It’s a proper clusterfuck.

Read up on Scheinselbstständigkeit. Then talk to a tax advisor that is knowledgeable in that topic.

Only once you fully understood the implications you can proceed - and by understanding I mean realizing how utterly hard the law makes it for regular freelancers. And don’t get me wrong, but if you are unable to understand that topic due to language skills don’t do it. Not because it’s not possible to understand the legal situation through translating apps - but more because you will get a LOT of paperwork you must understand precisly because one wrong word will ruin you and cost your customers thousands. And which is often required to be send back within days. (Looking at you, DRV)

That being said classical admin work freelancing unlike actual consulting is almost impossible to do under the current laws.

Welcome to Germany/Austria,etc.

Xwiki is missing.

For me after a similar search it is the current winner. Even though it has it’d downsides. We came from Confluence and tested a LOT of systems. My spreadsheet of systems we considered has around 120 rows by now. (Not all pure wikis as we also moved away from jira and considered going down a “put the wiki into the servicedesk” route)

Pro:

• It is well tested in a enterprise enviromentand mighty

• It has all the features I personally found important for a company wiki, e.g. approval, versioning, templates, collaboration, integration api,etc.

• It is fairly easy to extend it yourself

• It is easy to host subwikis within the same installation with a self defined grade of independence - which is great for customer facing things,large projects with externals,etc.

• The development community is big and enterprise focus and release cycles are good. (Not like a certain .js) There is very little chance it will stall suddenly as the wiki has been adopted by a lot of large companies which seem to support it.

• It’s truely free,no “pay to get custom fields” bullshit.

• It’s truely self hosted.

• it can be hosted system side, if you are not into docker.

Contra:

• It is written in bloody Java

• (even though this sentence is redundant with the one above) It is a resource hog

• The look and feel is a bit outdated unless you customise it yourself. Then it is reasonably good.But there are basically no paid templates,etc.

• Paid support is only available through third parties it seems.

• It can be, well, slow to update…like physically slow. It is not hard to update,not at all…press a few buttons…but sometimes it takes ages.

We kind of selfhost almost everything - while we operate a small server ourselves, the main burden is on a dedicated server setup. Basically a FreeIPA+Authentik+OpenCloud Stack as a base,with Redmine, Kimai, Zammad, Matrix, Jitsi and a few more apps. (Moodle, Seed DMS, Netbox, Zabbix, OPNsense, Vaultwarden, Forgejo, Ansible). Additionally we use a fair share of software remotely via RDP.

Backups are done onsite and to three different offsites, including cold storage backups.

As we all work fully remote this setup is also fairly adaptable and the switch to a (almost fully) Linux shop went far better than expected - my staff is fairly content with their setup (afaik).

The only thing I refuse to selfhost are email and VoIP.

Still mediocre compared to OPN/pfsense, IPfire, VyOs,etc.