Nine PBS’ 50TB Data Disaster: How 70 Years of TV History Got Trapped in the Cloud

Nine PBS in St. Louis has found itself dealing with a nightmare scenario for anyone responsible for long-term data storage: the data apparently still exists, but the organization can't access it. The public television station is fighting to recover more than 50 terabytes of archival material representing roughly 70 years of programming and regional history. The archive includes coverage of major events such as the Great Flood of 1993, the COVID-19 pandemic and the history of East St. Louis. The problem began when Nine PBS's cloud-storage provider, Open Source Storage (OSS), apparently ceased operations and stopped responding to the station. (link)

How to Configure Port Mirroring on a Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch Using a Simple Trick

Port mirroring is one of those networking features that sounds simple in theory but can be maddening to actually locate on a Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch. If you've ever opened the modern web GUI looking for a mirroring option and come up empty, you're not imagining things — the feature is tucked away behind the "Legacy Interface" toggle rather than sitting in the main dashboard where you'd expect it. Once you know to make that 'switch', configuring a mirrored port takes just a couple of minutes, but without that knowledge you can spend a frustrating amount of time clicking through menus that simply don't have what you need.

Connected to Wi-Fi But No Internet? How a Simple Cable Inspection and Link Test Solved the Mystery

One of the most common complaints network technicians hear is, "I can connect to the Wi-Fi, but I don't have internet access." While it's tempting to immediately start checking DHCP, DNS, VLANs, or wireless controller settings, the fastest path to the solution often begins with something much simpler: a careful physical inspection. In this troubleshooting video, I demonstrate why following a structured methodology is so important and how taking a few extra minutes to examine the hardware can save hours of unnecessary investigation.

Network Troubleshooting Quickstart

Whether you're dealing with a dropped WiFi connection, a switch that won't pass traffic, or a router that seems fine but isn't, knowing where to start is half the battle. In this fast-paced 90-second breakdown, I walk you through some ideas, layer-by-layer troubleshooting method — avoid guesswork, rebooting everything or blindly repacing equipment and hoping for the best. From the physical cable all the way up to DNS resolution, this video gives you a repeatable framework you can apply every single time your network goes down.

Your Smartphone vs. a 1985 Supercomputer: How a Cray-2 Loses to the Phone in Your Pocket

In 1985, the Cray-2 was the fastest computer on Earth — a liquid-cooled, room-sized beast that cost as much as a small hospital and hummed away at a blistering 1.9 GFLOPS. Fast forward to 2026, and the iPhone 16 Pro in your back pocket casually clears 2,000+ GFLOPS of FP32 compute. That's not a typo — your phone is roughly 1,000 times faster than what NASA and top research labs once fought over allocation time for. The Galaxy S25 Ultra pushes even further, hitting 2,500–3,500+ GFLOPS, making it up to 1,800 times faster than Seymour Cray's masterpiece. The supercomputer that once simulated nuclear tests and weather patterns for entire governments now loses a flat-out compute race to a device you use to scroll memes at breakfast.