Logbook

The War on Cars, CDK Global edition

CDK Global runs a software-as-a-service platform that car dealers use to run their back offices. Their system has been down since mid June 2024 after a ransomware attack attributed to the BlackSuit ransomware gang.

The impact of this outage has been widespread across the auto industry, as CDK Global is one of only a small number of vendors servicing this back office business function. About 15,000 dealers are affected. News reports have dealers resorting to pen and paper to complete deals.

The Detroit Free Press reports that "The result has J.D. Power and GlobalData forecasting that U.S. retail sales in June across all automakers will be about 5.4% lower than they were in June 2023." The paper does note that they expect this decrease in sales to only be temporary, as the sales lost in June are expected to close in July.

https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2024/06/27/new-car-sales-june-cdk-cyberattack-dealer-software/74229483007/

maintaining continuity in the face of disappearing data

If you have a chat system that deletes its history regularly, and if you want to maintain some long-term memory that outlasts the history purge, and if you don't have blogs or wiki or any other sort of public place to put things;

then you put together a regularly posted document and resend it at intervals, perhaps in FAQ format, so that people on the channel see it repeatedly even if they are new to it.

source: Usenet News, from before most nodes were also on the Internet.

Framework laptop with a RISC-V main board

File under "interesting, but not likely to purchase in this go-around".

Framework makes nice, modular laptops. They are modular enough that you can swap out the main board, keep everything else, and keep on trucking. That's a good thing. Upgrades become a component swap rather than a complete new system.

DeepComputing has announced a RISC-V main board for the Framework Laptop 13, based around the StarFive JH7110 SOC. The good news is that you should have a fully functional laptop when you're done installing it. The bad news is that this SOC is roughly Raspberry Pi 3 performance, and is based on an earlier version of the RISC-V spec. (But if you wanted laptop performance you'd put in one of the perfectly serviceable AMD or Intel main boards.)

No word on pricing and availability just yet.

https://deepcomputing.io/a-risc-v-world-first-independently-developed-risc-v-mainboard-for-a-framework-laptop-from-deepcomputing/

It will be good for the RISC-V ecosystem when some people try to start to use this as a "daily driver". If you are careful about your software choices, and prefer simple monochrome text to lots of fancy graphics, you'll probably be happier. The Framework design is a good match for a development environment, but four slow cores are not going to run all of the compile and test cycles you might want.

Ten years of not needing Kubernetes in the home lab

I'm happy that Kubernetes has made it to 10 years old, but I'm also happy that my homelab has not yet presented itself with any Kubernetes-shaped projects.

Mostly the home stuff has been Raspberry Pi shaped objects attached to radios and antennas, which means the technology of choice has been systemd if it comes to dealing with something slightly complicated. Usually the machines are small enough that they are doing one task competently, so there's no need for scheduling. And typically they are running code that runs and runs for days and weeks without leaking memory, so there's not much of a need for an orchestrator to kill out-of-memory conditions and move workloads around.

I mean mostly the little computers with little radios run for months just doing their thing without any fuss or interruption or out-of-memory conditions or anything, and if I do happen to get a power glitch (thanks DTE) most of the time they just reboot and go on their merry way.

I try to attend to them at least every year or two when I need to consider whether to swap out an SD card for a brand new operating system, or more frequently if I'm using some particular software that's moving faster than normal.

900 mile status report

The e-bike that I bought last August just hit the 900 mile mark. I rode it to Dixboro today, about 45 minutes there by the short route, and an hour back via downtown.

Some notes so that I remember them the next time I hit a milestone.

There are no fenders on this bike, and no easy cheap way to add them. This means when I go out and the roads are even a little wet that I will get wet. I'm not really fond of that.

The trip computer says that I average about 11.5 miles per hour, and the top assisted speed is 20 mph. That means I'm approaching 80 hours of riding. When you put it that way it doesn't seem like so much?

It's a 7-speed gearing, but the top (7th) gear will shift by itself if I put too much torque on the pedal. It's easiest just to keep it in 6th gear most of the time. The gear spacing is not great - I could use an even higher gear to pedal on the flats.

I have not been able to source a second battery for it, though I did find a second charger for it. When the battery inevitably gives up as batteries tend to do over time it doesn't look good for the longevity of the bike.

There are nicer bikes I'm sure, but I'm determined to run this one at least as long as it takes to make the cost per mile reasonable, and also long enough to gather some Opinions about what I might want for the next bike. Fortunately it was cheap and I am already under the $1/mile range.

I'm looking forward to the library's Summer Reading Game because it will prompt some more bike rides going to branches to collect codes.