New batch of AstroPis relieve Ed and Izzy of duty on board the International Space Station A new batch of AstroPi computers are up and running on board the International Space Station (ISS), set-up by ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer. The units were shown off in September 2021 and launched aboard a SpaceX Dragon 2 freighter atop a Falcon 9 rocket in December. They are to replace the existing AstroPi units "Ed" and " …
Ahh Auditors.
We have a PC on one of our AV racks that is old enough that it only supports XP. As such, it's not allowed on our network. However, as it is wired in to the AV rack, it's not really practical for us to the remove the machine, as it would cause significant problems with other equipment in the rack. Problems that don't occur if it's in the rack, but disconnected from the mains. (it was used to stream the output of the AV rack, and has custom connections to the other equipment).
We haven't replaced the PC, partly for the above reason (it has custom hardware inside for the AV connections, and is in a custom case to accommodate the connections), and partly because the rest of the equipment in the rack also needs replacing, and we don't have the budget to do that ATM.
The upshot of all this is that it means that every couple of years, I have to send a photo of the asset tag to our auditors when they, yet again, demand proof it's still there. We are given a list of equipment to check that is supposed to be random, but they ask to see it every time.
Back in the day a prof friend of mine used to equip his underfunded arts dept with computers.
He would trawl the dumpsters of Physics/Engineering depts and look for new computer workstation boxes. He would then offer to take their old computers and "store" them
This was in the US and a state university getting NSF / NASA / DoE grants and buying kit on a mixture of them could never get rid of anything without doing the sort of paperwork you would get in a Terry Gilliam film. So the basements, and stairwells were full of decades-old 19 rack electronics that we couldn't dump.
I worked for a bank where we were getting rid of a load of old equipment.
For legal reasons we couldn't just give them away, so they were all put in an office together and staff were informed they could make an offer for anything they required.
Our job as IT staff was to ensure that the offers were suitable ("no, lower, no, try again, keep going").
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