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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • You would do well to go read up on the 1990 AT&T long distance network collapse. A single line of changed code, rolled out months earlier, ultimately triggered what you might call these days a DDoS attack that took down all 114 long distance telephone switches in their global network. Over 50 million long distance calls were blocked in the 9 hours it took them to identify the cause and roll out a fix.

    AT&T prided itself on the thoroughness of their testing & rollout strategy for any code changes. The bug that took them down was both timing-dependent and load-dependent, making it extremely difficult to test for, and required fairly specific real world conditions to trigger. That’s how it went unnoticed for months before it triggered.













  • The article doesn’t make it clear (it could be better written) but my guess is that the card was actually found intact in the wreckage that they recovered back when the sub went down.

    The various documentaries by Netflix, Nat Geo, etc. only came out a few months ago as the USCG investigation wrapped up. Those revealed new details, like that they had recovered personal belongings from the pockets of one or two of the victims. I don’t think those details were publicly known (or at least reported on) until the documentaries came out. This is likely just a similar case of more evidence coming to light.


  • My wife has a dog boarding business, and a good number of the dogs have air tags attached to their collars. Most of the owners geofence around our home/boarding facility so that we don’t get constantly nagged by them. But when we drive one of these dogs somewhere (usually to walk/exercise them on a hiking trail etc) we often get alerts on our iPhones about unrecognized air tags that have been nearby us for a prolonged time. It will include a map showing our track and where/when the air tag was detected each time along the way.

    So while I don’t use them personally I’ve seen that they do indeed work quite well. Maybe next time I travel I’ll get one for my luggage.