@jaredbusch said in Company Benefits:

@travisdh1 said in Company Benefits:

@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:

@wrx7m said in Company Benefits:

@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:

@tim_g said in Company Benefits:

@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:

Bonuses aren't even a real thing to the IRS, it's literally just part of your pay. At least that's how it has always been where I have gotten bonuses. It's just a paycheck with a larger amount in it that normal, the IRS doesn't have a "this is a bonus" checkbox to even know that it is a bonus to be taxed differently. At the end of the year, your bonus is just part of your pay, it can't be taxed differently because there is nowhere for it to show up.

Yeah I get that, it's all just "income", and you get taxed on it all just the same at the end of the year. And if they take too much, you get more back.

I'm talking about what you get in your pocket then and there.

While I'm all for not giving the IRS an interest-free loan! It helps offset dealing with estimated tax payments (horay, extra quarterly payments!)

Even if you owe them money at the end of the year, at least you had some interest while you had it.

Except that I'll owe them penalties.

The problem is if you underpay, then you owe them interest (it's up to 4%, so not a huge deal honestly as you can beat that with a decent portfolio but it's something to think about).

https://proconnect.intuit.com/proseries/articles/federal-irs-underpayment-interest-rates/

Did you really just quote an Intuit article? That alone should tell you that you've completely misunderstood something. They do not charge interest till you are actively late on a payment.

Seriously? Are you just being stupid for no reason? The URL matters not because tax law doesn't change no matter what site you read about it on.

Besides do you know another clean link with a straightforward table showing the information?

This is how little I trust anything coming from Intuit, yes, seriously.

@matteo-nunziati I agree.

Like I mentioned before, just seems a waste of time to me. That's all.

@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:

@wrx7m said in Company Benefits:

@john-nicholson said in Company Benefits:

@tim_g said in Company Benefits:

@scottalanmiller said in Company Benefits:

Bonuses aren't even a real thing to the IRS, it's literally just part of your pay. At least that's how it has always been where I have gotten bonuses. It's just a paycheck with a larger amount in it that normal, the IRS doesn't have a "this is a bonus" checkbox to even know that it is a bonus to be taxed differently. At the end of the year, your bonus is just part of your pay, it can't be taxed differently because there is nowhere for it to show up.

Yeah I get that, it's all just "income", and you get taxed on it all just the same at the end of the year. And if they take too much, you get more back.

I'm talking about what you get in your pocket then and there.

While I'm all for not giving the IRS an interest-free loan! It helps offset dealing with estimated tax payments (horay, extra quarterly payments!)

Even if you owe them money at the end of the year, at least you had some interest while you had it.

Except that I'll owe them penalties.

The problem is if you underpay, then you owe them interest (it's up to 4%, so not a huge deal honestly as you can beat that with a decent portfolio but it's something to think about).

https://proconnect.intuit.com/proseries/articles/federal-irs-underpayment-interest-rates/

Did you really just quote an Intuit article? That alone should tell you that you've completely misunderstood something. They do not charge interest till you are actively late on a payment.

@jaredbusch said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@hobbit666 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

EdgeRouter 24/48 (ES-24-LITE)

These are switches.

Great, Ubiquiti is making switches it calls EdgeRouters now? Yuck.

@quixoticjeremy said in Feature Request - Spiceworks ticket history import:

Yep, I'm here taking some notes, might be time to raise the priority on this request. Definitely not the first time this has been requested. Let me think this over in the morning.

Back around 4.5, they were using nosql for the database. If they still are, I bet that file wouldn't be to hard to parse. I'd offer to take a look myself, but I don't have an install available, and I'm not going to pay for a server license just for that.

@obsolesce said in VPN vs SDP?:

@travisdh1 said in VPN vs SDP?:

@gjacobse said in VPN vs SDP?:

Because - a LinkedIN advert is where you want to learn from - but taking a referenced technology FROM there and doing your search and learn.

This advert implied that SDP is the next thing to replace a VPN - Oh-kay what is it. What is an SDP and why would I want to investigate it.

---

SDP: Software Defined Perimiter
Software Defined Perimeter (SDP), also called a "Black Cloud", is an approach to computer security which evolved from the work done at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) under the Global Information Grid (GIG) Black Core Network initiative around 2007.[1] Software-defined perimeter (SDP) framework was developed by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) to control access to resources based on identity. Connectivity in a Software Defined Perimeter is based on a need-to-know model, in which device posture and identity are verified before access to application infrastructure is granted.[2] Application infrastructure is effectively “black” (a DoD term meaning the infrastructure cannot be detected), without visible DNS information or IP addresses.[dubious – discuss] The inventors of these systems claim that a Software Defined Perimeter mitigates the most common network-based attacks, including: server scanning, denial of service, SQL injection, operating system and application vulnerability exploits, man-in-the-middle, pass-the-hash, pass-the-ticket, and other attacks by unauthorized users.[3]

Time to get some popcorn and read a little..

So they came up with a new term for what @scottalanmiller has been talking about for YEARS?

I don't remember him talking about it in 2007/2008 when it became prominent as I understand.

I wouldn't call it prominent yet. In halfway competent companies, yes. But those are quite rare.

@dbeato said in Miscellaneous Tech News:

https://www.businessinsider.com/confluent-community-license-created-after-amazon-web-services-starts-selling-kafka-2018-12

Paywall

@mlnews said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

YouTube creating kids' app curated by humans.

Yeah, because that's never had major issues before. Wonder how long till the blue stuff makes it's way in?

@stacksofplates What the what?

1. Install Fedora
2. sudo dnf install -y kubernetes
3. `systemctl enable --now podman1

That's all it takes.

@mlnews said in LibreOffice 5.3 Has Released:

Emoji insertion is a cool feature.

So much good stuff, till there. Just what I really didn't need, more emoji options. Not that I can see well enough to know what the current set actually is

@scottalanmiller said in Weekend Plans:

Chilling this weekend. Just found out, traveling to Qatar with @QuixoticJeremy next weekend.

Ah, I see how it is. @QuixoticJeremy is in training to bounce around the world like @scottalanmiller and family.

@mmicha said in Remote Access & HIPPA:

I manage a few different locations for my organization. I was looking to setup (Mesh Central) or purchase a service like Splashtop to access systems remotely easier.

However, one location I support deals with medical records for children and so I am thinking I need something HIPPA compliant. I don't know a lot about that, but from what I read as long as the connection is encrypted you are compliant.

Does anyone else use Mesh Central in a setting like this? It is certainly a lot cheaper to host a $5 server and run it vs the expense of a tool like Splashtop.

Thanks!

@mmicha said in Remote Access & HIPPA:

I manage a few different locations for my organization. I was looking to setup (Mesh Central) or purchase a service like Splashtop to access systems remotely easier.

However, one location I support deals with medical records for children and so I am thinking I need something HIPPA compliant. I don't know a lot about that, but from what I read as long as the connection is encrypted you are compliant.

Does anyone else use Mesh Central in a setting like this? It is certainly a lot cheaper to host a $5 server and run it vs the expense of a tool like Splashtop.

Thanks!

https is encryption. Just disable port 80 access or use a standard redirect from 80 to 443. Use certbot to provide your security keys, and call it done.

@momurda said in Non-IT News Thread:

@scottalanmiller Of course he did. In other news, renewables account for 19+% of energy production in the US now, despite the efforts of dumbasses all over the country.

I'll just leave this here.

Like many things in nature, a balance must be struck. Where that balance currently lies is more than a little scary, quite frankly.

@Dashrender said in Performance of Intel Xeon Scalable 6146 versus E5-2667 v4 in the real world...:

@marcinozga said in Performance of Intel Xeon Scalable 6146 versus E5-2667 v4 in the real world...:

He want's to compare core to core performance, nothing wrong with that. Newer CPUs should yield better performance, especially at same or very close clock speeds. That's not the case for him.

What's changed? He said the clock speed is the same, he said the RAM is faster and the Infiniband is faster. If RAM speed and infiniband don't affect it - then why would you expect it to be faster? Of course, the OP said he believed that RAM does affect it.. so he might gain something from the faster RAM... so I agree, in general, they should be the same, if not a tick faster, but definitely not slower.

Not necessarily. There is obviously something that is hampering performance on the new CPU. What that could be I really don't have time to burn in reading through the datasheets for the CPUs. Could be cache, could be memory bus issues with memory access having to take a longer path than what is optimal (I got to deal with that issue when working with SGI systems back in the day. They actually had special tools to tell the kernel which memory banks to prefer for which CPU.)

@s.hackleman said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

I disabled all notifications on my phone trimmed about 60% of my Friend list.. now I don't mind it as much.

I don't have anything Facebook related on my phones anymore. Had some horrible experiences with their apps completely draining the battery.

@marcinozga said in Performance of Intel Xeon Scalable 6146 versus E5-2667 v4 in the real world...:

@flomer said in Performance of Intel Xeon Scalable 6146 versus E5-2667 v4 in the real world...:

If I have set something up the wrong way I would be delighted if someone can point this out for me. How can I check if something is wrong? All three systems run the Rocks cluster distribution (CentOS with extras), #1 version 6.1, #2 version 6.2 and #3 version 7.0.

I don't have any experience with HPC, but based on the above it seems that linux kernel version might be the issue. Centos 6 comes with 2.6.32 kernel, and 7 with 3.10. Either test all 3 clusters on same kernel line, or do some research if there was any performance drop between kernel versions above.

Managing cores above a certain number becomes difficult. Linus himself used to complain that managing more than around 16 cores required an entire core just for the scheduler. They've improved things a bit, but high numbers of cores will always require more work to manage right.

Running in an HPC environment, you'll also have to pay attention to things like program size (does it fit into L1/L2 cache), dataset size (does it fit into either L3 or available RAM).

I'd suspect that even with the faster RAM, getting data in and out of each core could be slowing things down. Many more cores and only slightly faster RAM would be one choke point to investigate.

This is really one of the oddball use cases where servers are running, but not in a virtualized environment. That's what most server hardware is designed around these days. You could have any number of performance choke points.

@Breffni-Potter said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@travisdh1 said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@Breffni-Potter said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@travisdh1 said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@Breffni-Potter said in No Facebook - 30 Days. Go:

@dafyre said

I have a few friends and family members that I use facebook to actually communicate with, lol.

Why Facebook Why not any other tool.

Because it's the only way they all communicate

So you'd be the family exile if you stopped using the 1 digital tool out of many to communicate?

Yep. I tend to only look at Facebook two days a week, and then mostly to keep up with friends and family that don't communicate other ways.

So if you emailed/texted/called, none of them would reply?

Phones are evil, I wouldn't have one if I didn't have to operate in modern society.

Emailed, they probably would, but around half of them don't even have an internet connection.

Edit: Some of them without internet connections do post things from the library/school.

@JaredBusch said in Managing Fedora 30 with SMB share for 100 users:

@travisdh1 said in Managing Fedora 30 with SMB share for 100 users:

@JaredBusch Do you still want centralized management for users and security groups? A number of options are available of course, but as to which one would be best to use, that's the sticky bit.

I know Synology has a module that will handle authentication. Not sure if other NAS vendors have the same sort of thing available.

They have a Synology with empty bays.

But eh, not sure I like that idea.

Sounds like you should just forget about even managing all that then.

@JasGot said in ZentriOS??? What could it be?:

Well, that was easy! I received an e-mail a minute later from my JuiceBox, saying it was offline. JusiceBox is the Class 2 Charging Station for our car.

Great, IOT plugged directly into our vehicles. Talk about upping the anti for security!

@scottalanmiller said in AV - should companies keep buying it?:

And third party AV in the real world seems to cause more issues than it solves.

This is really what it boils down to. Adding 3rd party security software to a system has to open more holes in the underlying operating system, for itself at the bare minimum. Instead of providing additional security, they increase the attack surface. Just the opposite of what your trying to do.

That's not to say they are never worth while. A centralized dashboard to manage all the computers can be well worth the cost.