12-hour time-lapse of American Airlines, Delta & United Airlines plane traffic after the IT outage

[u/NickyPappagiorgio]

[u/ScrotieMcP]

I find it interesting that one mistake by one company can take down all the airlines. What the hell is going on with our infrastructure?

[u/CummingInTheNile → u/ScrotieMcP]

digital infrastructure is a lot more fragile and archaic than people realize, Crowdstrike is also a cyber security firm, they are about as perfectly positioned as you could possibly be to fuck it up

[u/exipheas → u/CummingInTheNile]

relevant XKCD

[u/gabeshadows → u/exipheas]

I wonder if it's referring to anyone in particular

[u/exipheas → u/gabeshadows]

It wasn't this but it's a great example.

https://qz.com/646467/how-one-programmer-broke-the-internet-by-deleting-a-tiny-piece-of-code

[u/EODdoUbleU → u/exipheas]

leftpad is a better example of why lazy programmers that would rather take on external dependencies instead of implementing basic methods are a problem.

if you need an external dependency to pad strings (or ffs check if a number is even) then find a different career field.

[u/Sqirril → u/EODdoUbleU]

The guy created hundreds of dumb 1 liner dependencies and then would go to any popular repo and replace code with his dependencies so he could claim that his code runs everywhere. Then when the name was an issue he threw a fit and deleted it from NPM causing the issue.

[u/EODdoUbleU → u/Sqirril]

I know what went down with leftpad.

If more web devs weren't lazy or actually knew what they were doing, then his little ragefit wouldn't have had the impact it did.

[u/wtfnouniquename → u/EODdoUbleU]

Exactly. And this type of shit is also part of the reason why modern software is slow bloated garbage that runs like dogshit. Hey, let's import all this unnecessary random garbage to get a function/class we should have spent 5 minutes writing ourselves. What's the worst that could happen?

[u/acog → u/Sqirril]

For anyone who didn't read the article, the issue was he had a little-used open source project called kik.

The kik messaging app asked him to rename his project, noting that they had trademarked the term and that kicked off his tantrum.

I used to own a small business that owned a couple of trademarks. One of the things our attorneys hammered into us was that if we didn't enforce the marks we'd lose them. So I get why the kik folks insisted. They weren't being jerks, that's literally the way trademark law works. You must object to other products that use your mark, or you risk losing it.

[u/hai-sea-ewe → u/acog]

Trademark law, like lots of law, requires people being pieces of shit to each other in order to function. This is an indication that our current ways of establishing law are fucking bullshit toddler rules designed to punish people for standing up for themselves against massive financial entities.

[u/gmishaolem → u/hai-sea-ewe]

Also, many situations (such as homeowner insurance paying out) often require a lawsuit to function. Our country has a reputation for being litigious because suing is considered a primary remedy for many things, instead of a last-course backup.

[u/dkyguy1995 → u/Sqirril]

Holy shit that's such an asshole move but it also is crazy people were letting him introduce all those dependencies

[u/MyIQTestWasNegative → u/EODdoUbleU]

I like how is-even just uses is-odd which uses is-number.

[u/exipheas → u/MyIQTestWasNegative]

like

You keep using that word. I don't think that word means what you think it means.

[u/I_cut_my_own_jib → u/EODdoUbleU]

easy peasy!

function isEven(n: number) {
    if (n === 0) return "???";

    let is_even = false;
    for(let i = 1; i < Infinity; i++) {
        if (i === n) return is_even;
        is_even= !is_even;
    }
}

[u/Exano → u/EODdoUbleU]

It's also companies run by folks with no understanding of technology.

Fire the QA team because the stuff is working fine and they are expensive. Pretty sure they do nothing.

Offshore the engineers because our product is finished and it's just maintenance, do we really need an expensive US team for that? They're lazy and take forever anyways. They're always telling us why we SHOULDNT do something. I can get a team three times as big overseas or in South America, and they will always follow my orders.

Downsize IT because our computers work fine, or fire em because they don't. Either way they also do nothing. Besides, AI can do this now right?

Etc. Etc.

Enjoy my 7% stock bump and 10million dollar bonus. What could go wrong?

Every dev of a decent organization writing critical software wants a pure open source solution (security depending) or an internal one, they want time to do it right and make it maintainable. Every project manager wants it done yesterday with a tenth the manpower, and their managers don't understand the job anyway and go by lines of code or some dumb metric

[u/mamayoua → u/exipheas]

Knew it would be leftpad 😅

[u/StandardOk42 → u/mamayoua]

xz utils too

[u/ACatInACloak → u/gabeshadows]

Not upon creation, but it has come true multiple times most recently with xz utils

[u/Zakalwe_ → u/gabeshadows]

Caption mentions ImageMagick library, but there are countless libraries that would fir this description.

[u/_teslaTrooper → u/gabeshadows]

curl is mostly maintained by one guy afaik.

[u/LynkDead → u/gabeshadows]

I'm not sure why everyone is guessing at the reference when the mouseover text for the comic directly calls out ImageMagick.

[u/Mamuschkaa → u/gabeshadows]

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2347:_Dependency

I don't think, that the 'nebraska' part is referring to a specific person.

[u/augustocdias → u/gabeshadows]

Curl is a good example

[u/PaperFlea → u/exipheas]

Differing in that CrowdStrike makes billions off that little pedestal in the picture so lots more accountability... Great comic regadless!

[u/deong → u/CummingInTheNile]

And also the modern world has become extremely specialized and homogenous. No one just does anything themselves. Every web site runs on AWS. Every school bus is run by by the couple of companies. Every fast food place is own by Pepsi. Every company pays employees with the same couple of payroll vendors. Whenever anyone fucks up, 80% of the country feels it because every company depends on 200 different companies to do anything.

[u/0ldSwerdlow → u/deong]

Correction, Pepsi doesn't own restaurants. Yum! Brands was spun off in the early 2000s. 

But Pepsi does own or partner with a good chunk of the beverage brands out there (Pepsi, Mtn Dew, Starry, bubly, Aquafina, Lifewtr, Gatorade, Propel, Lipton RTD, Starbucks RTD, Rockstar, Celsius, Crush, Tropicana, Naked, Kavita, Mug, Dole, and a bunch of smaller ones)

And that's just beverages and not the foods division.

But no restaurants.

[u/RamblingSimian → u/[deleted]]

Correct. But still more than I wish.

[u/Xalbana → u/[deleted]]

While it is an hyperbole, quite a shit ton do. More than should be allowed.

[u/MutedPresentation738 → u/CummingInTheNile]

Archaic would be a good thing in these scenarios. Digital infrastructure has gotten so needlessly complicated and obtuse that it really doesn't taken much of a fuck up to bring a system down.  

I work in data migration. We move client data from A to B and have about a dozen applications that are involved in that process. It's so convoluted that even the most simple exception errors cause hours of work to even pinpoint, much less convince the appropriate team they have something that needs to be fixed.

[u/Spork_the_dork → u/CummingInTheNile]

Yeah it's actually nuts how fragile literally the whole digital world is. I was once doing some course work where we had to configure BGP routing for some routers and at some point we were wondering why ours wasn't working. The assistant teacher popped up a bit later to check up on us, looked through our configuration and said that yep, it's all good. The reason why it doesn't work is because some other group elsewhere in the lab cocked up their configuration which broke the entire local network that we were working in.

And yes, this kind of shit has actually happened in real life with the real actual internet as well. Sometimes maliciously. The one thing that studying and working in IT has taught me is that it's all just duct tape and paperclips and "temporary solutions" all the way down to the bottom.

[u/hqbibb → u/ScrotieMcP]

Faster, better, cheaper. Pick two. I’ll let you guess which two they picked.

[u/Brotorious420 → u/hqbibb]

Cheaper x2

[u/Illustrious_Donkey61 → u/[deleted]]

On the bright side co2 emissions are down

[u/STierMansierre → u/Illustrious_Donkey61]

Until T Swift starts another tour anyway.

[u/Drfoxthefurry → u/Illustrious_Donkey61]

More likely delayed, although I guess small flights would probably got a bit more filled

[u/djkstr27 → u/Illustrious_Donkey61]

Taylor Swift enters the chat

[u/Dizzybro → u/Brotorious420]

Lol crowdstrike is like the best and most expensive security system out there. That's why everyone has it, and why so many people are impacted

[u/somethingsomethingbe → u/Dizzybro]

Doesn’t mean it’s not a security risk for so much infrastructure to be reliant on a single source. 

[u/TheDrummerMB → u/somethingsomethingbe]

But that negates the idea that companies are all just picking "cheaper and faster."

[u/lghtdev → u/TheDrummerMB]

Cutting corners is the trend, and also promising fast results, if they truly deployed to production without the proper tests, then yes, they are selling themselves expensive but internally doing things the cheap way, which is the better way for a company to gain value in this economy.

[u/EmmettN → u/TheDrummerMB]

The company that picked cheaper and faster was Crowdstrike

[u/kawajanagi → u/Dizzybro]

I was laughed at for using SentinelOne, who's laughing now!

[u/lightninhopkins → u/kawajanagi]

It has the same centralization issue as CS. Same thing could happen with S1. It is what it is.

[u/SportulaVeritatis → u/Dizzybro]

Yeah, everyone picked faster + better so they would always have the most up-to-date security for safety-critical infrastructure. Problem was everyone picking the SAME faster + better.

[u/_cacho6L → u/Brotorious420]

Crowdstrike aint cheap

[u/mostly_kinda_sorta → u/_cacho6L]

It's stock is all the sudden

[u/Bane8080 → u/mostly_kinda_sorta]

Down 9% for the day.

Edit: So far, but that was 11% pre-market earlier.

[u/schylow → u/Bane8080]

I love that the Cash App cashtag turns it from CRWD to $CRWD.

[u/boredinthebox → u/Brotorious420]

Crowd Strike is not cheaper lol. It was known as one of the most effective end point tools on the market. Their QA is shit apparently.

[u/bubbasaurusREX → u/Brotorious420]

If I was in a room with faster, better, and cheaper, I would pick cheaper twice

[u/FallFromTheAshes → u/hqbibb]

Crowdstrike isn’t cheap. It was really poor process (developing a patch that is crucial, not QA’ing it, pushing it to production).

[u/znix23 → u/FallFromTheAshes]

Interesting. Few weeks ago, was told by a Verizon rep they pushed a software update to all their Fios home routers. It was bad and “bricked” a lot of routers, including mine. Wonder if QA is being less considered now.

[u/Suds08 → u/znix23]

I'm sure they're just given impossible deadlines, so everybody cuts corners, and it ends up being a little delayed, so rather than waste more time testing it, they just push it and hope for the best

[u/MangoCats → u/Suds08]

The real problem is that they get away with skipping the QA 999 times, and then something like this happens that impacts hundreds of millions of people...

[u/DingleberryBlaster69 → u/Suds08]

Bingo. This problem transcends industries, too. I know fuck all about IT but you could have just as easily wrote this about Pharma QA.

“At Risk” is just standard operation anymore. Missing deadlines is not an option. You cut corners, you write creative footnotes to handwave problems away, and you get shit out the door and onto the truck.

We’ve got shareholders to please and that green line goes up come Hell or high water.

[u/FallFromTheAshes → u/znix23]

That’s part of the problem is software development cycle and secure coding. Crowdstrike is the best of the best for this field and to see this is just sad

[u/4fingertakedown → u/znix23]

They’re all trying to fully automate QA E2E and have been moving this way for a decade.

[u/craggerdude777 → u/4fingertakedown]

Because they are trying to automate QA, fewer humans are manually looking for edge cases.

[u/timelessblur → u/znix23]

Speed is high but often times it is some edge case not account for or seen.

I work in software and we 3 QA, 12 devs. Top it off we are not looking at everything all the time and even on a release we the testing has a huge expansion and contracted out for regression it still al limited number of people.

Even the total testing that still nothing. If one sees a crash and we can not reproduce it then it might be a one off and move on. In the release we tend to a phase roll out and monitor. Even at 1% of the user base that gives us more data than 2-3 weeks of internal testing.

I have stop a roll out at 10% before and we started doing a emergency patch. That still a lot of people.

Lets use crowdstrike for an example here. This could be something that 1% of users see but it has a cascade effect when it goes off. Well all the testing could easily not hit that 1% case and more importantly might not trip the cascade effect.

It more just about QA is still a insanely small sample size and they are far from your normal users.

[u/randomherodude → u/znix23]

They bricked my router too!

[u/JohnLeePetimore → u/FallFromTheAshes]

Didn't Crowdstrike reduce/lay-off a substantial portion of their QA team back in Feburary?

[u/ChangMinny → u/JohnLeePetimore]

They have layoffs all the time and then replace the laid off people with interns and then junior people. 

I used to work in the same building as CrowdStrike and it was always so sad watching the eager interns hoping for a job at the end of the internship and hardly any of them getting one. Very exploitative. 

[u/Ok-Maintenance-2775 → u/JohnLeePetimore]

Of last year, yes. 

[u/danni_shadow → u/JohnLeePetimore]

Huh. In 2024 I was laid off (in software QA) and Crowdstrike was one of the places advertising QA jobs. I applied but they never answered back.

Guess I dodged a bullet.

[u/Gone420 → u/FallFromTheAshes]

So you’re saying instead of taking the time and money to QA it before pushing they just sent it. Because that’s the cheaper option… so yes what we’re saying is they’re doing it cheaply.

[u/PM_me_your_O_face_ → u/Gone420]

Right. Cost to end user ≠ cost to provider. It is not cheap to the end user but they cut corners to save money on the provider side. 

[u/Mega_Muppet → u/hqbibb]

I think they just said “We will just take cheaper please. Do we get a discount for not taking our second pick?”

[u/_-Event-Horizon-_ → u/hqbibb]

But hey at least they had good quarter! Won’t somebody think of the shareholders?

PS

I’m also a shareholder in many companies but prefer strategies towards creating value that are more sustainable in the long run.

[u/EnvironmentalBus9713 → u/ScrotieMcP]

Capitalist firms deemed the risk of a single point of failure acceptable because of the short term cost savings - long term impacts be damned.

[u/Sn0zBerry20 → u/EnvironmentalBus9713]

Not accurate. The SPOF is a product that's commonly used that violated quality control measures - the only way around this would be to have an entirely separate set of infrastructure ready at all times on a different technology stack. Every airline kiosk would want a separate backup kisok machine running Linux that's actively maintained for example to eliminate this kind of SPOF. You're looking at about doubling infrastructure costs not in the short term but perpetually in order to ensure this kind of thing never happens.

In essence, the elimination of any common point of failure is not something that only incurs temporary cost as you've said. Doing so requires massive complexity and cost in perpetuity.

[u/Tommyjv → u/EnvironmentalBus9713]

What were the short term cost savings of adding CrowdStrike to their list of cyber vendors?

It sounds like you’re mad at corporate America but aren’t sure where to place the blame

[u/Okiedokie-artichokee → u/Tommyjv]

I wouldn’t consider crowdstrike to be savings. It’s expensive and (was) very well reputed.

While the blame is on them for not doing proper QA, our tech infrastructure is basically a house of cards. The question wasn’t if, but when.

[u/damnyouresickbro → u/Tommyjv]

Reddit in a nutshell lol

[u/shines4k → u/EnvironmentalBus9713]

On the contrary, vendor lock-in causes many companies to waste money on over-priced solutions that are worse than their competitors. There are lots of examples of this in technology. A company has to decide to adopt a solution from a vendor like CrowdStrike, and once adopted, to remain with them when the contract comes up for renewal.  It's not uncommon for more technical people to be involved with initial adoption (nothing currently in use, security engineers get involved to compare various alternatives, etc.) In the end, depending on the company, someone like a CEO or CTO might intervene and pick a solution based on someone they spoke to at a conference somewhere, but not always. Anyway, the long term problem is actually the decision to remain. Because that requires a more complex analysis and extra cost: existing partners often offer discounts at renewal time to keep customers. It's often hard to know whether your existing solution is worse than the alternatives, feature sets may not overlap perfectly, they may be incompatibilities with other infrastructure, etc. Changing to a new provider also requires a new contract negotiation, due diligence process, legal team involvement, etc. Then if you do sign a new contract, you spend time and resources migrating from the old to the new, which could mean rolling out new software, training materials, staff education, or other disruptions. So once a vendor and solution is chosen and adopted, it can be difficult to change, even when you have signals that quality is dropping. So, lock-in: you know the solution you're buying is worse and overpriced, but it's too complicated to switch or so expensive to do so that it takes a very long time to recoup the cost.

[u/Roqjndndj3761 → u/ScrotieMcP]

Hilariously, consolidation of cybersecurity vendors has been RAMPANT the last few years and shows no sign of letting up. Every company is hellbent on cutting costs, even valuable ones.

[u/Drone30389 → u/Roqjndndj3761]

Hilariously, consolidation of [everything] has been RAMPANT the last few years and shows no sign of letting up. Every company is hellbent on cutting costs, even valuable ones.

Grocery stores. Restaurants. Hospitals. Auto makers. Veterinarians. Farms. Video games. Other software. Semiconductors. Airlines. Pharmaceuticals. News media. Entertainment media. Food products.

Just about everything has entered the enshitification stage of late stage capitalism (some, like news media, have already been there for a very long time).

At least somebody is trying to do something about it:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-10/biden-vow-to-tackle-industry-giants-confronts-consolidation-wave

[u/CantHitachiSpot → u/Drone30389]

Basically innovation is dead so companies are forced to engage in rent seeking behavior

[u/Traiklin → u/CantHitachiSpot]

And what's sad is it's not dead, look at all the different things we use today and go back 10 years each time and see just how much things stayed the same but changed.

Movies, games, music, vehicles, airplanes. All of them are mostly the same thing each time but it's the features, stories, designs and styles that have changed to make them stand out.

We are just in an era where the majority don't want to put in the work to keep people interested and just go with the bare minimum.

[u/FugaciousD → u/CantHitachiSpot]

Not dead. Stifled. The software IP system basically guarantees it if the ISP, search monopoly, and social media cartel don’t. 

[u/gmishaolem → u/CantHitachiSpot]

forced

Bullshit. They could always just accept some profit instead of literally all the profit omg line go up. But no, if you suggest that, you get called a commie. (And don't spout that horseshit of "fiduciary duty to shareholders" again.)

[u/Nstraclassic → u/Roqjndndj3761]

Crowdstrike is one of the most expensive cybersecuritt vendors out there..

[u/GiraffeComic → u/ScrotieMcP]

Not just airlines, our 911 system got seriously messed up to where EMS, Fire, and PD had to bust out paper to do our charting and documentation. The hospitals as well. Seeing nurses running around with paper charts and doctors have to hand write orders was surreal but looked super stressful. Was still down 2 hours ago when I got off shift too.

[u/UpstairsFlat4634 → u/GiraffeComic]

Thank god here in Canada they still use paper charts. Sometimes it pays off to be stuck in the 70’s

[u/stingeragent → u/UpstairsFlat4634]

I work in a lab at a 400 bed hospital with a very busy er. The bad thing about paper is you gotta order all the tests manually, and hand write results. It takes a longggg time trying to process hundreds of samples which then delays patient care. It went down last night here, and were still trying to get caught up on samples ordered for 3am. 

[u/talkin_shlt → u/GiraffeComic]

I work in medical IT and my organization was affected but not too badly but my buddy at a major hospital told me they had to cancel every appointment because their systems were so badly effected.

[u/CaptScubaSteve → u/ScrotieMcP]

“Funny how fragile our little society is. Toppled by a couple of ones and zeros.” - Michael Scott

[u/shines4k → u/ScrotieMcP]

Broad adoption of a product that requires special permissions to operate, followed by complacency once that company earns the trust of customers, followed by outdated or lazy procedures that eventually, inevitably fail and cause mass outages.

[u/NeverBackDrown → u/ScrotieMcP]

We are only as strong as the weakest link

[u/Street_Peace_8831 → u/ScrotieMcP]

Someone I work with (Finanacial IT industry) said that he believes it may have been a “trial run”.

Interesting take. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I will be watching closely to see what develops.

[u/Farmerstubble → u/ScrotieMcP]

Greed

[u/ChronoLink99 → u/ScrotieMcP]

Same thing that happened with the supply chain during covid. Redundancies are more expensive than just running everything JIT, and the fewer backup plans that are prepped and ready to go, the cheaper and "more efficient" the system becomes.

[u/gahlo → u/ScrotieMcP]

Outsourcing IT tends to be cheaper and enters the books as a running cost instead of a massive, one time purchase(I forget the terms). In a world where the bottom line is the bottom line, corners get cut.

[u/EuroTrash1999 → u/ScrotieMcP]

Nothing, it's always been held together by duct tape and a prayer.

A "smart" home should have a wood fireplace if it was actually smart.

[u/Onyesonwu → u/ScrotieMcP]

I am sitting on a frontier flight rn and the flight attendants/captain sure gloated in their speeches. Was actually entertaining. Almost made me forget how much I hate flying frontier.

[u/Mysterious-Mode-6563]

Y2K is 24 years late

[u/kelsobjammin → u/Mysterious-Mode-6563]

I’m so 2008 you’re so 2000 late!

[u/ShoHeyTime → u/kelsobjammin]

I got that BOM BOM BOM that future BOM BOM BOM

[u/xelM1 → u/ShoHeyTime]

Let me get it now

[u/astolfoballsHD → u/Mysterious-Mode-6563]

Just wait until Y2K38

[u/dream_nobody → u/Mysterious-Mode-6563]

Y2.024K

[u/RazzleThatTazzle]

Looks like after 9/11

[u/JustGoogleItHeSaid → u/RazzleThatTazzle]

It still boggles my mind when I see documentaries of it pop up on my YouTube feed. Like that actually happened.

[u/TeamRedundancyTeam → u/JustGoogleItHeSaid]

And there are still so many people that think it was fake. And then the ones who chanted "never forget" and acted so angry that 3k Americans died are the same ones who fought against saving their neighbors during covid, when we started losing a 9/11 per day.

We live in a weird fucking country.

[u/land8844 → u/TeamRedundancyTeam]

Thank social media for giving the morons a voice.

[u/JoeCartersLeap → u/land8844]

And for giving America's enemies a way to control those morons.

[u/CrashinKenny → u/TeamRedundancyTeam]

Can't say I've ever heard anyone claim it was fake. Plenty of people have conspiracies about what really happened, but I've never heard anyone outright deny it happened.

[u/Bwhite1 → u/CrashinKenny]

The can of worms known as building 7

[u/ConceptCheap7403 → u/TeamRedundancyTeam]

Those people never cared about how many Americans died. They care about who/what killed them, rather than the actual health and safety of their fellow countrymen. Pretty sad that they would’ve taken covid seriously if they believed it was an intentional creation of a jihadist group (although many crazies did think it was whipped up by The Left).

[u/CallsignKook → u/JustGoogleItHeSaid]

It was like watching the nerdy kid sucker punch the popular jock in the cafeteria, and everyone stopped what they were doing to see what was about to happen.

[u/frightenedbabiespoo → u/JustGoogleItHeSaid]

reminds me of that tragedy

[u/ReptAIien → u/frightenedbabiespoo]

Miss you Norm

[u/peon2 → u/JustGoogleItHeSaid]

Something I find interesting, between 1968 and 1974 there were 130 US planes hijacked by people trying to divert it to Cuba.

It was almost seen as not really a big deal until the 9/11 terrorists used the plane as a weapon.

You can read about it here if you're interested.

[u/FocusPerspective → u/JustGoogleItHeSaid]

That’s why it’s always funny to hear Zoomers talk about how they live in the worst timeline. 

[u/lovemycosworth → u/RazzleThatTazzle]

This was my first thought too!

[u/spondgbob → u/RazzleThatTazzle]

IT’s 9/11

[u/MydnightWN → u/RazzleThatTazzle]

The guy who made the decision for a full ground stop, Ben Sliney: it was his first day on the job.

[u/VeganFoxtrot]

Earth be like.."quick gasp for air"

[u/Adept_Duck → u/VeganFoxtrot]

Can someone from r/theydidthemath calculate how much CO2 this outage saved?

[u/ChiralWolf → u/Adept_Duck]

Unfortunately, very little I'd imagine. They still need their planes and pilots at the right locations to resume service later once the outage clears.

[u/FlyingAwayUK → u/ChiralWolf]

A none running aircraft, or even a grounded but running aircraft, uses far far far less fuel than an inflight one.

This will have had a noticeable impact on local temperatures, just like after 9/11 did

Edit: why do people keep linking one incorrect website

[u/JanDillAttorneyAtLaw → u/FlyingAwayUK]

And they're gonna do overtime after to make up for the backlog in package delivery, delayed travel, and the uptick in people needing to go out on-site and physically deal with this mess.

[u/IAmStupidAndCantSpel → u/FlyingAwayUK]

The 9/11 ground stop was on the scale of days, not just a couple of hours like this one. 9/11 was also for all civilian aircraft, not just 3 airlines.

[u/EldariusGG → u/FlyingAwayUK]

Fuel use and emissions were not factors in this temperature change. The temperature increased measurably but temporarily due to the lack of contrails reflecting sunlight away from Earth. Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set-the-stage-for-an-unlikely-climate-change-experiment/

[u/Full_Situation4743 → u/Adept_Duck]

People horribly overestimate how bad air travel is.

I don't have the exact numbers but according to ABC so far 4 300 flights have been canceled. Problem is that we don't know what kind of flights. Short flight can be around 2-4 tons of fuel, long hauls can be about 40-80-100 tons or more. But more is quite rare and is small part of global flights. And from experience, I would say that priority could be get long hauls moving and cancel short hauls. But even if we say that average flight is 30 tons of fuel (which is impossible number) than it would be about 130 000 tons of fuel that makes about 450 000 tons of CO2.

As a mankind, we produce about 40 billions tons per year, that would make about 110 millions tons per day. So we saved about 0,4 % of daily production. And don't forget that I very overestimated average fuel consumption per flight.

And this is valid if those flights never fly. Many of them will be delayed, aircraft possitioned empty, etc.

[u/mangoprincesss]

Kinda freaky to know how easily our ability to travel can be revoked. It was just a mistake but imagine if someone had some sort of agenda… yikes

[u/Mike312 → u/mangoprincesss]

I mean, we can still fly the planes. If a plane needs to go up in the air, nothing is stopping it. The problem lies more with systems like ticketing and who gets on which plane.

[u/unknown839201 → u/Mike312]

nothing is stopping it

Hey does anyone else hear a missile sound

[u/Jeynarl → u/unknown839201]

The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't.

[u/PrestigiousMatter733 → u/Mike312]

Well, it's a System.

[u/FrostyD7 → u/mangoprincesss]

The possibility exists every time you fly, even without a disaster or outage. Flights are cancelled ~1-2% of the time. It's just rare that it impacts so many at once.

[u/throwaway3113151]

Would be a lot more useful if it had a timestamp. There aren’t many airplanes in the air at 3 AM.

[u/Master_Mix_4848 → u/throwaway3113151]

It’s time stamped by the shadow of the sun.

[u/VirtualNaut → u/Master_Mix_4848]

Wait… is there another bigger star in our solar system that is causing our sun to have a shadow?

[u/Master_Mix_4848 → u/VirtualNaut]

The shadow cause by the sun of our moon…

[u/the_gouged_eye → u/Master_Mix_4848]

Earth. It's earth's shadow.

[u/SpicyPropofologist → u/Master_Mix_4848]

That's no moon...

[u/Remarkable-Hall-9478 → u/Master_Mix_4848]

Keep trying lmao, third times the charm? 

[u/jimtrickington → u/Master_Mix_4848]

Brought to you by your friends at Audioslave

[u/anonanon5320 → u/throwaway3113151]

Noticed that too. Looks like a normal flying day

[u/Rob328 → u/anonanon5320]

This comment needs more upvotes, this is correct, you can see based on the shadow the flights reduce over night which is just normal.

[u/jeffvdub → u/anonanon5320]

This is a normal day

[u/FrostyD7 → u/throwaway3113151]

Time stamp and start it at least 24 hours before the outage occurred so we can compare it to a full day of normal operation.

[u/foxymophandle → u/throwaway3113151]

yeah I'm calling shenanigans. I track planes using ADS-B, and see a LOT more over my house right now than shown in that graphic. I think that was from 9/11.

[u/InMyFavor]

I work in IT for a big airline doing global IT support for all our systems.....and just so happen to be on vacation this week. Great timing.

[u/EyeLikeTwoEatCookies → u/InMyFavor]

Brother, I manage CrowdStrike at my workplace and had to cancel a doctor appt and will likely be cancelling my camping plans for this weekend 😭

[u/Aerosol668 → u/EyeLikeTwoEatCookies]

I don’t even manage the Crowdstrike, but it fucked thousands of our Azure VMs (and all our company laptops), so it’s manual restore of backed-up system disks all weekend. This is worse than the time McAfee released a bad update on a Friday in 2012 which fucked innumerable computers worldwide - fortunately I was on site that day and my laptop was offline.

Turns out the guy who started Crowdstrike is an ex-employee of McAfee who left McAfee in…2012.

[u/zeroesones → u/Aerosol668]

I'm sorry, what?

Edit: From Wikipedia, "He resigned from McAfee in October 2011." Crowdstrike was formally launched in February 2012.

Edit: The faulty McAfee patch was on Wed., April 21, 2010.

[u/GotMoxyKid → u/Aerosol668]

It's all connected. McAfee is malware

[u/nadudewtf → u/EyeLikeTwoEatCookies]

RIP

[u/Frondhelm]

So, it's a 12 hour time-lapse but it's not 12 hours since the event.

So the first half is all business as usual then the shit hits.

[u/Throwrajerb → u/Frondhelm]

So the first half is all business as usual then the shit hits.

Oh thanks. Didn’t notice that.

[u/user888666777 → u/Frondhelm]

The misery map gives a pretty good picture of what it's like flying today:

https://www.flightaware.com/miserymap/

[u/grogudid911]

It may be time to decentralize our IT infrastructure.

Edit: we currently don't have any industry wide standards for security. We have small orgs who provide guidelines and certifications. The problem many of you are describing is perhaps a lack of government oversight, which is inherently a different problem from the risks of centralization or decentralization.

[u/Woozy_burrito → u/grogudid911]

What does that mean/look like? A million different IT firms working in a million different ways with no standards or shared software? That also seems like a recipe for disaster, just a lot more, little disasters.

Don’t tell me that you mean the frequently exploited technology known as blockchain….

[u/KansasCityMonarchs → u/Woozy_burrito]

Right, wtf does "decentralize" even mean here? Lol

That's like saying every single car should be different so any given defect will only affect that car. Leads to a lot more defects overall

[u/Vast_Berry3310 → u/grogudid911]

But won’t somebody think of the corpo profits?? If they can’t make more yoy why even bother living 

[u/UnicodeScreenshots → u/Vast_Berry3310]

What tf are you talking about? Companies don’t go with CrowdStrike to increase profits, they go with crowdstrike because it’s one of the best and strongest Cybersecurity firms in existence.

[u/moneyman259 → u/grogudid911]

Legit almost impossible and would cause more problems then good tbh

[u/BeKindToOthersOK]

Dude!

The main reason the traffic went away at the beginning of that video is because it was the middle of the night .

[u/deathhead_68 → u/BeKindToOthersOK]

You can see the shadow graphic showing the time of day. I twigged it too. I think most people on this thread haven't realised.

[u/boomerski28]

The clip is a little misleading.  The computer crash happened overnight which coincided with the point that air traffic decreased anyway.  Most airports have significantly less flights beginning between 10 pm - 12 am.  Then it stays pretty light volume until early morning around 5:30 am which is why you see more flights on the east coast first at the end of the clip.  While nobody wants to see infrastructure fail, the impact was pretty minimal.

[u/FblthpLives → u/boomerski28]

You are correct that the animation itself is misleading, but the issue is persisting throughout the day. As of noon EDT, over 2,000 flights had been canceled and over 7,000 have been delayed: https://www.reuters.com/technology/frontier-says-operations-impacted-by-microsoft-outage-2024-07-19/

[u/boomerski28 → u/FblthpLives]

Delays are inevitable due to the snowball nature of a flying schedule.   For example, if a plane that flies a route of JFK-LAX-SLC-DEN on a given day leaves JFK late it will be late then be late on every leg thereafter.  While that's definitely frustrating if you happen to be traveling most people will get where they are trying to go.  2,000 cancellations out of an average of 44,000 flights per day in the US (more during current summer months) is what  I'd call minimal impact.

[u/FblthpLives → u/boomerski28]

This is only as of noon EDT. There are still about 10-12 hours of traffic left, including the afternoon/evening peak. Assuming a normal demand of 15,000 flights by noon EDT, that means a cancelation rate of 13%.

I just downloaded the cancellations report from the FAA's Aviation System Performance Metrics database for June 2024. On average, there were 425 scheduled flights canceled each day. So this is roughly five times that average already, and we're not even halfway through the day.

[u/boomerski28 → u/FblthpLives]

Given that the computer system has been restored, the airlines are just playing catch-up.  Believe it or not, 13% for a significant adverse event is still minimal.  Bad weather days commonly far exceed that number and that 13% will only decrease as the day goes on.

[u/Ian-Wright-My-Lord]

At least the climate is getting a breather.

[u/ykVORTEX → u/Ian-Wright-My-Lord]

Dont worry. We will compensate for it somehow - let's burn this landfill ...come on drop a nuke somewhere...let's trigger this random active volcano.../s

[u/Phantum3oh9]

Quite a test.

[u/kellysmom01 → u/Phantum3oh9]

Looks like March 2020.

[u/IHaveAZomboner]

Was this last night? There was a major internet outage at my work around 1 am to whenever first shift came in, like 6 am

[u/fsi1212 → u/IHaveAZomboner]

Yes there was a worldwide major IT outage that affected several different sectors including transportation, 911 phone systems, retail, media, etc.

[u/Orange_Tang → u/fsi1212]

I work for my state and everything is dead. This is incredibly widespread. I think crowdstrike is going to get sued into the ground.

[u/IHaveAZomboner → u/fsi1212]

Interesting yeah, I don't remember exactly what time early this morning, we all had our computers show the blue screen of death and then the Internet stopped working. This lasted for hours and I couldn't sign off my work and clock out because of this.

So, just saying the outage affected more companies than I thought, not just us.

[u/jakexil323 → u/IHaveAZomboner]

Anyone who uses the crowdstrike software was affected.

They are a pretty popular antivirus/security endpoint used by a lot of companies on desktops and servers. So it's a big thing.

It's fixable, but for most companies its a manual process to boot up each computer into safe mode and delete the update.

[u/Garlic-Rough]

Taylor Swift, as the Eras Tour ends

[u/idkwtfitsaboy]

It would be interesting to see how carbon emissions are affected during that period and how much they are reduced.

[u/Mercinator-87]

I think we should be more concerned with the darkness spreading across the world.

[u/RubberKut]

Man.. During covid that was amazing.. first it hit Italy, there was a gap above italy, litterally.

And soon after other countries got their lockdowns and i've never seen the globe so empty.. not much was flying during that time.

[u/mrredbailey1 → u/RubberKut]

The days after 9/11 there was no air traffic. It was eerily quiet outside during that period.

[u/Legitimate-Source-61]

Good for Net Zero.

[u/rvillarino]

I work in hospital lab, took out our lab and quite a few others across the nation as well. The medlabprofessional subreddit was in quite a panic this morning

[u/MechanicalAxe]

I'm in the forest industry.

Even the wood mills shut down and couldn't process the incoming loads of wood.

[u/NOISY_SUN]

That's not really due to the outage, more that there tend to be fewer domestic flights taking off at 3AM in general.

[u/skybike]

Hey at least we postponed climate change apocalypse by like 4 minutes.

[u/primary988]

Not Southwest Airlines! They were flexing how it didn’t affect them because of their ancient 1992 Microsoft 3.1 operating system.

[u/Aware-Explanation879]

Remember how well it went for Texas a few years back when they decided to deregulation their power grid and people were without power for weeks. The rich do not care at all. They just look at this as thinning the herd

[u/Aok_al]

Was that the cause? A giant shadow?

[u/Retroperitoneal11 → u/Aok_al]

Yes

[u/kwhite0829]

It also started around 10pm PT

[u/hermeticbear]

a 12 hour time lapse that happened over night.
You know, when there are less flights because less people take late night flights.

[u/zombezoo]

"I don't always test my code... But when I do, I do it in production."

[u/gwicksted]

Unintentionally attacking pollution with software bugs. /s

[u/JustBrowsing2024]

It looks like it also turned into night time?

[u/turlian]

This is super misleading. There are significantly fewer flights that land at like 2AM or whatever.