Dran

Also, the first five digits were the same between the two numbers. Meta is guilty, but they’re guilty of grifting, not of giving a rogue AI access to some shadow database of personal details… yet? Lol

99% of the waiting time in my case is either waiting for file copies or waiting on SAP programs to run.

I wish I had low hanging fruit like that to go after.

I copy the install media locally. Although there is probably a noticable performance hot to running my main VM disk over the network.

Building a fully functional SAP system just takes that long in raw install time when your process also includes a sufficiently large system copy, and your hardware isn’t bleeding-edge.

It’s a massive application stack

I wrote and maintain a zero-to-working SAP HANA/S4 installer in pure bash.

It takes a redhat compatible from base install to a working, production-ready SAP system in about 5 hours.

It’s like ~9,000 lines of bash

happy to help!

An example of this:

Bitcoin mining started on cpus, then moved to gpus, and now exists on dedicated asics.

A $200 GPU vs a $200 ASIC, the ASIC is going to be a faster sha256 calculator

A $2000 GPU vs a $200 ASIC, the GPU is going to be a faster sha256 calculator

A $200 GPU from today vs a $200 ASIC from 10 years ago vs a $200 CPU from today?.. You get the idea.

There’s no way to know without specific details which will be faster. You could be running software encryption on a raspberry pi from 5 years ago or the drive could be running an encryption ASIC from 10 years ago, etc

The short answer is that: all other things being equal, it will always be faster and cheaper to do things dedicated in hardware. Comparing one implementation to another, however, is always going to be an “it depends”

I am also curious

It’s almost certainly related to cloud-init, (the canonical tool for handling deployment automation) or Ubuntu pro. They’re pre installed as a convenience to paid users of those services, that’s the (IMHO, quite reasonable) model they use to fund the distro. I would expect that some or all of that traffic would disappear if you disable/remove those two services.

https://cloud-init.io/

https://ubuntu.com/pro

I think that holds true in this case… but I’ll be damned if the ltt screwdriver isn’t the best hand tool I’ve ever owned.

RE: backups, I’d recommend altering your workflow. Instead of taking an image of a box, automate the creation of that box. Create a bash script that takes a base OS, and installs everything you use fresh. Then have it apply configuration files where appropriate, and lastly figure out which applications really need backup blobs to work properly (thunderbird, for example). Once you have that, your backups become just the data itself. Photos, documents, etc. Everything else is effectively ephemeral because it can be reproduced through automation.

Takes a lot less space, is a lot more portable. And much better in scenarios where something in your OS is broken or you get a new computer and want to replicate your setup.

There’s nothing magic about Soylent for weight loss. It’s a simple equation of calories in and calories out. The advantages that Soylent offered me was convenience for counting said calories, convenience for meal prep, and being reasonably certain my body was getting a decent distribution of micronutrients

Yes, 375 -> 250

I did ~1.5 years of only Soylent, then transitioned into 2/3 meals per day being Soylent, which I’ve done for the last ~6-7yrs.

I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been, but it does require discipline, exercise and attention like anything else. Calories are calories and if you consume more than you burn, you’ll poop a lot and gain weight. If you drink at a significant deficit (my 1.5years was at 1200kcal/day) you will poop once or twice a week and it will take a few months of your body getting used to it for it to be more than liquid.

As others have said though, it’s a deceptively dehydrating liquid. You absolutely still need to drink water, and your water intake will largely dictate how much you pee.