SSG: Spy/Spec-Ops Group discussion

Well actually --they fairly swiftly --identified the culprit. Not a hacker or hacking group ...at least 'not this time'.

Just 'Crowdstrike', another faceless tech-securityvendor like 'Cloudflare' and so many other similar vendors in today's tech landscape.

Apparently it all began approx 4 am Fri 07/19. Affecting the world of banking, broadcasting, telecommunications, healthcare, and countless millions of lives and businesses worldwide.

Just one little updated driver file, somehow infected with plague, transmitted around the globe in seconds.

The question is: should this be business as usual? Should the world be teetering-tottering all the time like this, always poised on the brink of disaster? Why?

All the jackdaws, mynahs, and toucans caw in our ears daily, about 'progress' and 'convenience' and 'saving money' and 'saving time' and 'nextgen'.

Malarkey.

Feliks wrote: "Well actually --they fairly swiftly --identified the culprit. Not a hacker or hacking group ...at least 'not this time'.

Just 'Crowdstrike', another faceless tech-securityvendor like 'Cloudflare'..."

Gm Felix.
Love your comment. So... how would rate this one bf I pick it up?

Ty ty, Stacy.

The thing which irks me about this massive glitch is that it is so unnecessary. It screams, 'lack of testing'. My unit works with gov't tech vendors and the rule we live by is take-your-time-and-test-thoroughly. Also: we never make a move without a plan to back-out-the-change immediately if necess. And furthermore, we records the details on every tiniest little thing we ever do. No operating via 'folklore'.

So for a company as big as Crowdstrike to blunder this badly...apparently NOT following these precepts ...well, it's like the Boeing saga. Ridic!

Now, are you referring to Crichton's bookcover I happened to choose for this discussion? Well if so --then --no, I can't recommend it. It was just the first title which came to mind which seemed apt.

A much more on-point read would be the classic
'Fail-Safe', which was adapted into the terrifying well-known movie by Sidney Lumet. Lumet's movies are always so extraordinarily competent and well-done. He had a knack with adaptations.

Or, (sticking with aeronatical engineering) perhaps 'No Highway in the Sky' by Britain's Nevil Shute.

In the years between the release of 1969's 'The Forbin Project' --the classic SF film dir by Joseph Sargent --and the rise of small personal computers, you used to hear techhies scoff at the giant size of the supercomputers depicted in the film.

At the time, they were right. Circuit-boards did shrink down to the size of a fingernail. But the smugness and conceit was short-lived.

But these days, millions of home PCs (and also smartphones, etc etc etc) in American homes are exhausting our power grid.

So it's still a 'zero-sum' game. Everything must be paid for sooner or later.

We now see massive "data centers", (larger than the the two behemoths portrayed in 'Forbin'), sucking up energy faster than the country can produce it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...

These data centers are the Earth's version of the enormous facilities built by the Krell race ('Forbidden Planet', 1958). They handle all the shopping transactions we do on Amazon.

There's no free lunch.

Don't forget those huge, stupid 'Bitcoin' data centers which go on day and night, making enough noise because of their cooling systems to keep you from sleeping, and which do nothing but calculate the 'best' opportunities to invest in bitcoins for greedy people.

It's absurd. I wouldn't resent giant computer complexes so much if they were actually advancing some positive, worthwhile societal aim. Making life better, solving problems of hunger or world health.

But all these massive server-farms apparently do is bolster our mindless leisure-culture. Server-farms support movie-animation, and Facebook, and Reddit, and Youtube and all our other personal garbage.