4 ms·

Fascinating reminder from the future where streets be littered with tech junk from forgotten eras... Just take a look at wires in arbitrary mega-polic, fantasti

by larodi 3y ago

Fascinating reminder from the future where streets be littered with tech junk from forgotten eras... Just take a look at wires in arbitrary mega-polic, fantastic. I'm in the process of collecting pictures of routers and other net equipment hanging in obnoxious manner in the most unexpected places. Some of it even powered.

lostlogin 3y ago
> Some of it even powered. Old redundant stuff powered on in network cupboards and server rooms must be a fairly common occurrence. Shared spaces are perfect for it.
- larodi 3y ago
  Well I’m really talking about boxes hanging like crazy on the outside of a buildings still having a green light on. I presume most of these have been patched directly into the electric net skipping all kinds of metered use. The amount of wires you can find in some cities in India is also mind blowing… not because they are there, but because we’ve only been like less than 50-70 years into wiring stuff.
aembleton 3y ago
I heard that when the cleared out the old BBC Television Centre there was masses of cabling that nobody had used for decades. As new tech arrived; new systems were put in place but the old cables remained. Probably a fair bit of copper in there.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  Costs more labor to pull it out than you'd get for it as scrap. At least if you're using union-scale electricians as your labor. But maybe even at minimum wage.
ddingus 3y ago
Once, when moving an office we were taking the network down and found this cable, lit on the switch, but all machines accounted for. Of course we followed it... and it led to an SGI personal Iris! It was hosting a small FTP drop used by a former employee and a few select customers who needed it for some reason. I don't know. Logged in using the 'lp' account, which was a standard IRIX security hole strangely tolerated by many due to it being a great way to get guest access to the machine to tinker around. In our case, we just wanted to run 'top', 'ps -something', and of course 'uptime', which was something north of 5 years, lol. Was in the very back of one of those hole in the wall network wiring points. It being dark and noisy was just perfect cover for a dirty machine and monitor, keyboard and mouse. The monitor was scary, but working. Keyboard and mouse mostly the same.
- larodi 3y ago
  You must be joking !!! But stories like this can be on the pages of some newskool cyberpunk story perhaps. Fascinating times seeing it all come to live…
  - ddingus 3y ago
    No joke. That really happened. Was really cool to see such an old and distinguished box doing its thing.

by larodi 3y ago

lostlogin 3y ago

> Some of it even powered. Old redundant stuff powered on in network cupboards and server rooms must be a fairly common occurrence. Shared spaces are perfect for it.

larodi 3y ago
Well I’m really talking about boxes hanging like crazy on the outside of a buildings still having a green light on. I presume most of these have been patched directly into the electric net skipping all kinds of metered use. The amount of wires you can find in some cities in India is also mind blowing… not because they are there, but because we’ve only been like less than 50-70 years into wiring stuff.

aembleton 3y ago

I heard that when the cleared out the old BBC Television Centre there was masses of cabling that nobody had used for decades. As new tech arrived; new systems were put in place but the old cables remained. Probably a fair bit of copper in there.

SoftTalker 3y ago
Costs more labor to pull it out than you'd get for it as scrap. At least if you're using union-scale electricians as your labor. But maybe even at minimum wage.

ddingus 3y ago

Once, when moving an office we were taking the network down and found this cable, lit on the switch, but all machines accounted for. Of course we followed it... and it led to an SGI personal Iris! It was hosting a small FTP drop used by a former employee and a few select customers who needed it for some reason. I don't know. Logged in using the 'lp' account, which was a standard IRIX security hole strangely tolerated by many due to it being a great way to get guest access to the machine to tinker around. In our case, we just wanted to run 'top', 'ps -something', and of course 'uptime', which was something north of 5 years, lol. Was in the very back of one of those hole in the wall network wiring points. It being dark and noisy was just perfect cover for a dirty machine and monitor, keyboard and mouse. The monitor was scary, but working. Keyboard and mouse mostly the same.

larodi 3y ago
You must be joking !!! But stories like this can be on the pages of some newskool cyberpunk story perhaps. Fascinating times seeing it all come to live…
- ddingus 3y ago
  No joke. That really happened. Was really cool to see such an old and distinguished box doing its thing.