7 ms·

Good lord, 6 years? I've had some managed switches with nearly 2 years uptime but 6 is just asinine. I assume it was on a UPS? If so, how did the battery health

Good lord, 6 years? I've had some managed switches with nearly 2 years uptime but 6 is just asinine. I assume it was on a UPS? If so, how did the battery healthy stay usable? Or was the electrical grid there just super dependable?

daneel_w 6y ago
The computer used to sit behind a diminutive UPS, though I don't think it was ever fully discharged; off the top of my head I can only recall two brief power outages here in the last 20 years.
mkl 6y ago
Six years without a power cut doesn't seem too surprising. Was "asinine" the word you meant there? It doesn't make sense to me in context.
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  > Six years without a power cut doesn't seem too surprising. It depends where you live and / or you might not notice them if they happen at night. Even in France which is supposed to be a first world country I experience a couple power cuts every month (twice at night this week-end, it killed my tile generation and corrupted my filesystem on my OSM server). I probably should invest in a UPS instead of complaining on HN !
  - fian 6y ago
    It also depends on the status of your local grid/substation. My university was on the same local distribution as a nearby hospital. The hospital had special status for receiving power, for obvious reasons. So in the 10 odd years I spent doing undergrad and post grad studies there was only ever 1 brief power outage during a thunderstorm. Meanwhile nearby suburbs probably averaged 2 power outages per year, typically for a few hours at most.
  - mkl 6y ago
    Wow, I thought power in France would be great. I'm in NZ, and I'm sure I've gone six years without a power cut. I have a PC that's always on (no UPS), so I'd definitely notice.
    - wyoh 6y ago
      The power in France is great, I never heard anyone have so many cuts. The only cuts I encountered is from falling trees due to lots of wind the winter. Otherwise I can count the number of cuts on two hands for the past twenty years.
    - flukus 6y ago
      On the other side of the Tasman they're pretty common due to summer storms. In Queensland having candles ready when we sat down for dinner was an almost daily occurrence some months, the PC and just about everything else would be turned off and unplugged by then. The best nights were when the power went early and we had an emergency Barbecue. Over the years it got more reliable but I'm not sure if that was universal or just my specific area getting a lot more built up.
      - abiogenesis 6y ago
        I'm in Queensland and haven't experienced any power cuts in the last 5+ years.
  - swimik 6y ago
    A couple a month seems way too much to me. I know for sure my last one here in southern Germany was more than 5 years ago. The only one that I actually remember experiencing during daytime was in my childhood, more than 20 years ago.
    - m4rtink 6y ago
      Here in Czech Republic it is also very infregvebt to have aby non-planned power cuts.
      - TomMarius 6y ago
        At our home we had one, in 2004.
      - rozab 6y ago
        I'm intrigued by these typos. q to g, u to v, n to b. Are you using a handwriting recognition system, by any chance?
        m4rtink 6y ago
        Just typing too fast on the default keyboard of Sailfish OS running Xperia X. :)
  - iagovar 6y ago
    That's too much. I live in Spain and the last power cut was maybe last summer. It's probably less than once a year on average. Maybe way less, but i'm not sure.
  - ajuc 6y ago
    I don't remember a power cut since I moved to my flat in a big city 11 years ago. I would most likely notice because I run my server almost 24/7. Every month sounds very bad, even when I lived in a countryside in the least wealthy EU province (Lubelskie, Poland) it was never this bad. Maybe once a year (and usually with a warning that it will happen).
  - alibert 6y ago
    Every month is not normal at all. You should check with Enedis. I live in France and my power cuts are less than 10 in +20 years. Had +5 years of uninterrupted power at my previous place and at the current flat I live, it's currently at +1,5 years.
    - hilbertseries 6y ago
      Conversely, I live in SoCal and every month is very normal.
      - vondur 6y ago
        The only power outages I have here in Socal have been scheduled, and they replaced several poles and cabling. Out for like 8 hours.
    - gambiting 6y ago
      Yeah that doesn't sound right at all. I live in UK, we have maybe 1-2 power cuts a year max. And I have equipment running 24/7 so I'm sure I'd know.
    - ido 6y ago
      Maybe they happen when I didn't notice them but in 15 years of living in Austria & then Germany I think the number of power-cuts I experienced would be countable on the fingers of one hand.
  - Macha 6y ago
    I grew up in a small city in Ireland and power cuts were a couple of times a year thing. I now live in Dublin and I've had one in 6 years.
    - rusk 6y ago
      The only one I can remember in recent times - say the last 10 years or so - is when they did “something” out at the Facebook datacenter in clonsilla ...
  - toast0 6y ago
    Yeah, twice in the same weekend is the trigger condition to go ahead and buy a small UPS (or several, depending on how your computers are arranged). Be sure to get one that communicates, usually via USB-HID, so your computer(s) can shut off cleanly if the outage is long.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Until the relatively recent planned power outages because of fire risk, here in Northern California (an hour north of SF) it was once every year or two. If I had to guess, I would think it's wildly variable based on location and the factors of that location. A more remote community with one main power line through forested area might experience power loss more often, and a larger city with higher density probably has its own problems with load spikes which may cause problems. Maybe a suburb or medium sized city with semi-recent infrastructure is actually the sweet spot for power reliability?
    - Baeocystin 6y ago
      Here in Gilroy (southern end of the Bay Area) we get one or two outages a month during the summer. Unless it's a planned rolling blackout due to heat, they're usually only a few minutes in length, at least. The Costco-special UPSes I use (CyberPower 1350VA units) have all proven adequate for keeping my work/compute infrastructure online. I've got solar, though, and a house battery is very much on the list once my budget allows it. I don't see local system stability getting better any time soon, and likely worse now that PG&E has more leeway to shut down power during wind/heat events and the like.
  - ngcc_hk 6y ago
    The power is very reliable until I install a solar panel and feed to the grid. Every time a thunder storm I have to worried as it would happen. Got 2 ups in the house until they reroute the power arrangement in the house so isolate the solar with the household main (by doing something about the fuse sensitivity level). No thunderstorm for sometimes. Still awaiting. Power is a funny thing for computer guys.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - zwaps 6y ago
    I have lived six years at my current location in Germany and have not had a power cut, except for a burned fuse in my apartment.
  - mad182 6y ago
    Power cuts every month doesn't seem very normal to me. I had a home server running for a few years without UPS, and at one point it had over 2 years of uptime.
- GordonS 6y ago
  Not the OP, but I assume asinine was meant to be "insane", but got messed by predictive text.
- rytill 6y ago
  "Six years is just stupid" doesn't make sense?
  - stronglikedan 6y ago
    Not in that context, no.
- 2143 6y ago
  Hello from a developing country I envy all of you. Where I live, short (usually less than 5 minutes) power outages are common throughout the day. Half a dozen such cuts every single day. And everytime after a cut and the power comes back, there was a 60 second delay for the internet to reconnect, and about 20 seconds more for VPN to reconnect. Annoying especially when working in teams. It is unusual not to have a power outage during a 24 hour period. Here's my current setup to stay ahead of the game: * Solar panels, with automatic switching between the mains and solar when either of them goes down * Voltage stabilizers * Surge protectors On top of all that I'm currently contemplating getting a UPS for my computer specifically, because there was this one time when the solar failed and it couldn't switch to mains because it was a power outage. One thing I miss from my student days in the US is always-on electricity. During my 3 year period there, there was only 1 power outage, and that lasted less than a minute.
Kiro 6y ago
Where do you live? I don't think I've had a power outage in like 20 years. (Yes, I know it happens on a daily basis in some countries.)
- el-salvador 6y ago
  Third world country here... I live in a block with a bad circuit, and we have brief <5min outages at least once a week. I dont like it because it makes my microwave's clock unusable. Neighbours one block away don't have that many outages.

daneel_w 6y ago

The computer used to sit behind a diminutive UPS, though I don't think it was ever fully discharged; off the top of my head I can only recall two brief power outages here in the last 20 years.

mkl 6y ago

Six years without a power cut doesn't seem too surprising. Was "asinine" the word you meant there? It doesn't make sense to me in context.

jmnicolas 6y ago
> Six years without a power cut doesn't seem too surprising. It depends where you live and / or you might not notice them if they happen at night. Even in France which is supposed to be a first world country I experience a couple power cuts every month (twice at night this week-end, it killed my tile generation and corrupted my filesystem on my OSM server). I probably should invest in a UPS instead of complaining on HN !
- fian 6y ago
  It also depends on the status of your local grid/substation. My university was on the same local distribution as a nearby hospital. The hospital had special status for receiving power, for obvious reasons. So in the 10 odd years I spent doing undergrad and post grad studies there was only ever 1 brief power outage during a thunderstorm. Meanwhile nearby suburbs probably averaged 2 power outages per year, typically for a few hours at most.
- mkl 6y ago
  Wow, I thought power in France would be great. I'm in NZ, and I'm sure I've gone six years without a power cut. I have a PC that's always on (no UPS), so I'd definitely notice.
  - wyoh 6y ago
    The power in France is great, I never heard anyone have so many cuts. The only cuts I encountered is from falling trees due to lots of wind the winter. Otherwise I can count the number of cuts on two hands for the past twenty years.
  - flukus 6y ago
    On the other side of the Tasman they're pretty common due to summer storms. In Queensland having candles ready when we sat down for dinner was an almost daily occurrence some months, the PC and just about everything else would be turned off and unplugged by then. The best nights were when the power went early and we had an emergency Barbecue. Over the years it got more reliable but I'm not sure if that was universal or just my specific area getting a lot more built up.
    - abiogenesis 6y ago
      I'm in Queensland and haven't experienced any power cuts in the last 5+ years.
- swimik 6y ago
  A couple a month seems way too much to me. I know for sure my last one here in southern Germany was more than 5 years ago. The only one that I actually remember experiencing during daytime was in my childhood, more than 20 years ago.
  - m4rtink 6y ago
    Here in Czech Republic it is also very infregvebt to have aby non-planned power cuts.
    - TomMarius 6y ago
      At our home we had one, in 2004.
    - rozab 6y ago
      I'm intrigued by these typos. q to g, u to v, n to b. Are you using a handwriting recognition system, by any chance?
      - m4rtink 6y ago
        Just typing too fast on the default keyboard of Sailfish OS running Xperia X. :)
- iagovar 6y ago
  That's too much. I live in Spain and the last power cut was maybe last summer. It's probably less than once a year on average. Maybe way less, but i'm not sure.
- ajuc 6y ago
  I don't remember a power cut since I moved to my flat in a big city 11 years ago. I would most likely notice because I run my server almost 24/7. Every month sounds very bad, even when I lived in a countryside in the least wealthy EU province (Lubelskie, Poland) it was never this bad. Maybe once a year (and usually with a warning that it will happen).
- alibert 6y ago
  Every month is not normal at all. You should check with Enedis. I live in France and my power cuts are less than 10 in +20 years. Had +5 years of uninterrupted power at my previous place and at the current flat I live, it's currently at +1,5 years.
  - hilbertseries 6y ago
    Conversely, I live in SoCal and every month is very normal.
    - vondur 6y ago
      The only power outages I have here in Socal have been scheduled, and they replaced several poles and cabling. Out for like 8 hours.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    Yeah that doesn't sound right at all. I live in UK, we have maybe 1-2 power cuts a year max. And I have equipment running 24/7 so I'm sure I'd know.
  - ido 6y ago
    Maybe they happen when I didn't notice them but in 15 years of living in Austria & then Germany I think the number of power-cuts I experienced would be countable on the fingers of one hand.
- Macha 6y ago
  I grew up in a small city in Ireland and power cuts were a couple of times a year thing. I now live in Dublin and I've had one in 6 years.
  - rusk 6y ago
    The only one I can remember in recent times - say the last 10 years or so - is when they did “something” out at the Facebook datacenter in clonsilla ...
- toast0 6y ago
  Yeah, twice in the same weekend is the trigger condition to go ahead and buy a small UPS (or several, depending on how your computers are arranged). Be sure to get one that communicates, usually via USB-HID, so your computer(s) can shut off cleanly if the outage is long.
- kbenson 6y ago
  Until the relatively recent planned power outages because of fire risk, here in Northern California (an hour north of SF) it was once every year or two. If I had to guess, I would think it's wildly variable based on location and the factors of that location. A more remote community with one main power line through forested area might experience power loss more often, and a larger city with higher density probably has its own problems with load spikes which may cause problems. Maybe a suburb or medium sized city with semi-recent infrastructure is actually the sweet spot for power reliability?
  - Baeocystin 6y ago
    Here in Gilroy (southern end of the Bay Area) we get one or two outages a month during the summer. Unless it's a planned rolling blackout due to heat, they're usually only a few minutes in length, at least. The Costco-special UPSes I use (CyberPower 1350VA units) have all proven adequate for keeping my work/compute infrastructure online. I've got solar, though, and a house battery is very much on the list once my budget allows it. I don't see local system stability getting better any time soon, and likely worse now that PG&E has more leeway to shut down power during wind/heat events and the like.
- ngcc_hk 6y ago
  The power is very reliable until I install a solar panel and feed to the grid. Every time a thunder storm I have to worried as it would happen. Got 2 ups in the house until they reroute the power arrangement in the house so isolate the solar with the household main (by doing something about the fuse sensitivity level). No thunderstorm for sometimes. Still awaiting. Power is a funny thing for computer guys.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- zwaps 6y ago
  I have lived six years at my current location in Germany and have not had a power cut, except for a burned fuse in my apartment.
- mad182 6y ago
  Power cuts every month doesn't seem very normal to me. I had a home server running for a few years without UPS, and at one point it had over 2 years of uptime.
GordonS 6y ago
Not the OP, but I assume asinine was meant to be "insane", but got messed by predictive text.
rytill 6y ago
"Six years is just stupid" doesn't make sense?
- stronglikedan 6y ago
  Not in that context, no.
2143 6y ago
Hello from a developing country I envy all of you. Where I live, short (usually less than 5 minutes) power outages are common throughout the day. Half a dozen such cuts every single day. And everytime after a cut and the power comes back, there was a 60 second delay for the internet to reconnect, and about 20 seconds more for VPN to reconnect. Annoying especially when working in teams. It is unusual not to have a power outage during a 24 hour period. Here's my current setup to stay ahead of the game: * Solar panels, with automatic switching between the mains and solar when either of them goes down * Voltage stabilizers * Surge protectors On top of all that I'm currently contemplating getting a UPS for my computer specifically, because there was this one time when the solar failed and it couldn't switch to mains because it was a power outage. One thing I miss from my student days in the US is always-on electricity. During my 3 year period there, there was only 1 power outage, and that lasted less than a minute.

Kiro 6y ago

Where do you live? I don't think I've had a power outage in like 20 years. (Yes, I know it happens on a daily basis in some countries.)

el-salvador 6y ago
Third world country here... I live in a block with a bad circuit, and we have brief <5min outages at least once a week. I dont like it because it makes my microwave's clock unusable. Neighbours one block away don't have that many outages.