Spectrum service down

[TomK]

It's 2020, all your big data should be in the cloud (public or private) and all your management should be done asynchronously via automation and containers. If you're trying to transfer big data to your home workstation or griping about latency to a remote command line you are doing it wrong, grandpa!

@TomK - If the internet is this important to you, why not utilize a RDP connection to a desktop computer in your company office? Then you login to it and are doing the work, there, instead of locally on your computer at home. There are plenty of solutions.

I have a VPN connection but not a VNC one thanks to UH, so right now, that isn't an option and that still requires a decent internet service. In fact, I was on a VPN connection when Spectrum went down. I referred to this earlier in the thread. You obviously forgot.

[kalakoa]

not a VNC one thanks to UH

1. UH can't support staff working remotely during a pandemic?
2. Individual failure to provision adequate bandwidth (reliability, capacity) is the fault of UH?
3. Don't worry, there's a vaccine, everything will be back to normal soon, just be patient?

I was really hoping for better outcomes, because we probably get more pandemics after this.

[randomq]

UH doesn't allow VNC? Or RDP? They will all work over a VPN connection. For that matter you can hide VNC inside an ssh connection inside the VPN. Or use a reverse ssh tunnel (autossh, using key auth) out of UH to your primary and backup connections, and run whatever you want over that. Your rogue VNC server can even be set to compress aggressively to save bandwidth (and use solid color backgrounds etc).

Most fun, though, would be a wireless/laser link from the observatories to your house. I wonder how high you'd have to go for a clear shot.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

a wireless/laser link from the observatories to your house. 

I believe Joni Mitchell addressed this problem on her album “Clouds:”

So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way

[terracore]

"Don't worry, there's a vaccine, everything will be back to normal soon, just be patient?"

The two vaccines available now are mRNA vaccines that don't contain any portion of the virus and are only tested to prevent the symptoms of the disease. Unlike with traditional vaccines, vaccinated individuals can still spread the disease, similar to how HIV positive people can spread the disease while not being sick themselves.

So all the masks, social distancing, etc, will have to continue until a "traditional" vaccine is rolled out. The soonest contender looks to be early next year.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/vaccines/blo...-and-masks

"In the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine trials, COVID-19 vaccines are primarily being tested to determine whether they prevent a person from getting sick, from having a prolonged illness, or hospitalization. Importantly, these clinical trials are not focused on whether a vaccine prevents someone from getting the virus at all. In other words, a COVID-19 vaccine may benefit the individual who gets vaccinated, but the virus may still invade the body and it’s possible – if not likely – that a vaccinated person can still spread the virus to others. This is a critical distinction that has received little attention."

"COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give instructions for our cells to make a harmless piece of what is called the “spike protein.” The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are given in the upper arm muscle. Once the instructions (mRNA) are inside the muscle cells, the cells use them to make the protein piece. After the protein piece is made, the cell breaks down the instructions and gets rid of them." ( https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nco.../mrna.html )

So take your vaccine... don't worry, they aren't injecting you with a virus, they are only injecting you with "instructions". You should feel safer already!

Also noteworthy, the available vaccines can only be given to people 16 and older.

[TomK]

UH doesn't allow VNC? Or RDP? They will all work over a VPN connection. For that matter you can hide VNC inside an ssh connection inside the VPN. Or use a reverse ssh tunnel (autossh, using key auth) out of UH to your primary and backup connections, and run whatever you want over that.  Your rogue VNC server can even be set to compress aggressively to save bandwidth (and use solid color backgrounds etc).

Most fun, though, would be a wireless/laser link from the observatories to your house. I wonder how high you'd have to go for a clear shot.

Let me try to clear this up. UKIRT has just transferred to being operated by the IfA (UH). At this time, I have VPN access but not VNC despite being promised I would have that access weeks ago. VPN means I can login to a secure system, VNC means I can set up a remote display of my computer at work. Since I have yet to have a work computer at UH, and for whatever reason, it seems difficult for UH to give me VNC access to the computers controlling the telescope and our operations.

However, I can still access the systems via the EAO (East Asian Observatory) which is where we ran UKIRT for the last few years. However, that is about to go away.

It is quite a change. For 24 years I worked with competent people, but now, due to Federal interference forcing this change, especially in the last couple of years, the telescope and its systems cannot be run remotely unless you go into the office, and yet we're told to work from home. This is a big downside of having the UH take over telescope operations. They do not know how to do it.

[kalakoa]

it seems difficult for UH to give me VNC access

Perhaps UH could hire some competent IT people? They might even be able to hire locally.

[TomK]

Fine, you go ahead and whine about that. In the meantime I'll deal with the hand I'm given.

[kalakoa]

I'll rephrase: perhaps an impacted stakeholder should raise concerns about the inadequate support which prevents them from performing their job duties. This would be a better outcome than waiting around for the astronomy program to fail.

[TomK]

And if an interested stakeholder caused the inadequate support to happen, what next?