The Science Thread

Sure, you're right. I only brought it up because Homer and Louanne mentioned it, that's all.

 

... or a synagogue, or a Quaker meeting house, or ... you get the idea.

 

Haha, you're right. But yeah, since they most likely won't do it to a mosque, it's unfair. Either target everyone or find another target. It's like how I saw JSO did Taylor Swift's Jet. And I was a bit upset, because they didn't go after Musk, Gates, or any of the male Billionaires. I could be wrong, but it felt mean they went after Swift without taking the others into account. Maybe they did, but decided they could get away with it because she's a woman.

 

Nah, I am sure they would do it to a synagogue, because of 10/7. (Which is beyond mean.)

 

Just stop oil has been showing how unhinged they are. They attack artworks, monuments, and traffic, yet they wear synthetic fabrics, use cell phones and so many other things that require petroleum to make. They need to be required to face consequences of their actions.

 

Come with me if you want to live.

 

Not creepy at all. Looks very human. Their smiles make me feel all cuddly inside, like I've drunk a cup of warm summer tea. And their cells are us.

 

Just ask Salman Rushdie.

You see, if they went after all the religions, everyone would declare a holy war/crusade/jihad on them and, in the words of American vernacular, "open a can o' whoop-ass". And if they went after none, all the other environmental activists would accuse them of being too soft.

Ahhh, the dilemma of the Stop Oil folks. Won't somebody please think of the far-left militant environmentalist dickheads?

(Try getting Helen Lovejoy from The Simpsons to say that)

Isn't it always the way, though? It reminds me of the GWB presidency: with all the millionaires behaving badly, and sending Enron and Halliburton into bankruptcy, what did GWB do? He sent them a clear signal ... by prosecuting Martha Stewart. Why? Because she was clearly an uppity rich woman who committed the crime of not having a set of male genitalia. (Yes, I know she committed fraud, but compared to what the CEOs of Halliburton and Enron did, Martha's crime was incredibly minor).

I love hypocrisy. It once again proves that our esteemed so-called 'leaders', whether religious or political, are no different than the thugs down the street. Having more money doesn't make you a better person. You're the same preachy, scummy, bigoted fraud that you always were; you're just wearing a better suit now.

(I'm looking at you, Billy Graham. And you, MTG. And you, J. D. Vance. And you, Jimmy Swaggart. And you, Jim Bakker. And you, L. Ron Hubbard. And ... geez, I haven't even touched on the televangelists who committed violent crimes. But let it rest...)

 

And haha, yeah. They would. They should find another way to spread their message. I will not ignore the fact it is imporatnt, but don't be suck jerks about it. Also, if you're going to Just Stop Oil, then don't drive to the place you're gonna deface. Like, walk or ride a bike. I won't take you seriously like I do climate change until then. Also, it's big companies, NOT people who are the major polluters. (Aside from the Jet Class.) Go deface General Mills, not the Mona Lisa.

Oh, I didn't know this. Ugh, poor Marsha. That sucks. I am glad she's back on her feet.

 

Bingo. Like, walk your talk, people. Don't just be assholes.

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! The world seems to be suffering from Blue Screen of Death. I donno why, but it's really funny to me. (Most likely NOT funny as it hit hospitals) but seeing images of people looking at a screens that read 'sorry, couldn't load Windows' is beyond amusing.

 

We had about 700 clinics down overnight and well into the morning. No access to medical records for many hours. Bad!

Really, really bad day to be involved in anything IT. Honestly it's really alarming how easily one little mistake can have such an impact. Shocking stuff. And this wasn't even a virus, it was an update.

 

I guess a Windows updates are far more dangerous than you think. 11 is bad, but this only solidifies the reason to not upgrade or switch operating systems.

 

I didn't watch the whole video; just enough to confirm that they did mention CrowdStrike. That's the third-party company that caused the outage, not Microsoft/Windows.

Somehow an update for CrowdStrike software (which is installed on a LOT of Windows systems) was pushed through without proper testing and without giving end users a choice to accept it or not. Big whoopsies. Actual Windows updates and upgrades are properly tested and go through a vigorous staging process. Someone like @ps102 can probably explain this in proper detail.

For example, the medical records software I deal with, when there's a new update, it takes months before it actually ends up in a production system. There's automated testing for bugs, manual testing, and beta sites that will try the new version out for a month or two first to make sure there's no bugs we missed. Then we'll go ahead and roll it out to every other site.

 

From The Register, a British online tech magazine:
Crowdstrike Falcon BSOD Incident Bricks computers around the world
Crowdstrike shares sink as global IT outage savages systems worldwide

I love The Register. I've had a few years of IT training before turning to accountancy, so I understand a little of the more arcane terms, but The Register tends to explain things in a clear way without resorting to too much jargon.

(Plus, The Register also has the long-running BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell) series too!)

My favourite take on hypocritical environmentalists, amusingly enough, comes from The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett.

In the book, Sgt. Colon (one of the senior officers of the City Watch) is called into the office of Lord Vetinari, the ruler of the city of Ankh-Morpork, to be promoted to Captain. (Colon is methodical, but slow, thick, and somewhat bigoted. The only reason he's getting promoted is that everyone more capable is away).

Anyway, Colon and Vetinari discuss recent happenings in Ankh-Morpork, including a major robbery and murder in a condom factory owned by the late Mr. Sonky. Vetinari asks if any progress has been made. Colon, to deflect the blame from his own laziness in not investigating this, says:

"... anyway, not natural, in my view, sah. Not in favour of unnatural things."

Vetinari looks perplexed. "You mean, you eat your meat raw and sleep in a tree?"

 

Today was devoted to an outing with my grandson. I didn't realize there's been a Blue Screen of Death Insident until I got home and read about it online about 9:00 p.m. I'd just as soon miss participating in these events.

 

That's correct. Windows hosts without CrowdStrike Falcon were not affected. Most computers that run this software are servers that hold important data and services.

The thing is, Cyber Security is hard and very critical. You can harden server security all you want but there is almost always a way in because of some bug, even if it's very hard to find. For example, look at how the NSA discovered an SMB vulnerability and hid it from the world so they can presumably use it for spying on their targets. Stuff like this is real and it happens.

That's why software like CrowdStrike falcon are used so much. It's extra protection that monitors several types of activities in the system for anything that's suspicious. For example, an exploited service modifying system files to allow the hacker behind it to have persistent system access. It does all kinds of things I can't cover in a single paragraph.

What's important is that it achieves monitoring of this level through a kernel driver so it can give full-system access to itself. The kernel is the operating system's deepest part because it's what manages almost everything, including system hardware and processes.

CrowdStrike messed up and rolled out a broken kernel module. The broken kernel module made the kernel malfunction, and since it's so critical, it of course prevented the OS from booting. The kernel did its job and triggered a blue screen of death to prevent further damage to the system by the bad driver. Every OS has this feature, including Linux and MacOS. Those have so-called "kernel panics".

(I have seen plenty of Blue Screens of Death, but rarely any kernel panics)

The only thing I'm not sure of is the whether they did insufficient testing. That'd be mega weird for a Cyber Security tool.

This is correct too. But the Windows Update system truly isn't great. The truth is, system-breaking updates make the news all the time. And I've personally seen many major upgrades (for example, Windows 8.1 to Windows 10) break the system. Just do a Google search and you'll find plenty of articles.

Despite that, they do work most of the time, even if they are quite slow to complete. And they are important, so don't forgo them!

It sounds like whatever that medical software is has a proper development lifecycle implemented. This is how it should be for software as critical as this. User testing is a great way to rip out any missed bugs that the unit tests didn't catch.

 

Aha! That explains it. Thank you, ps102. I studied for my MCP years and years and years ago (back in the Windows NT days, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth ), so I learned about the kernel back then. But I didn't know this incident had anything to do with the kernel. Thank you!

Yep. I've seen lots of BSoDs, especially back in the Windows 98 and Windows NT days. I even accidentally caused one myself, while using Windows NT -- it was very easy to do. (Back in those days, the error messages were written in hexadecimal code, and there was no way to figure them out except digging out ye olde manual and RTFM -- excuse me, Reading The Fu**ing Manual).

And this reminds me of an ancient joke from those days ... here you go:

 

Windows NT is still technically a thing. Modern versions of Windows (ever since the Windows 2000 days) run on the NT Kernel, which I *think* is what Windows NT ran on if the name is anything to go by. They must have used the OS to leverage development for the NT kernel before it was implemented in consumer systems. Before the Windows 2000 days, Windows ran on top of MS-DOS, an operating system that had its roots on QDOS (Quick n Dirty OS).

I used to be scared of them. Child me would scream upon seeing them and would run to the fuse panel to turn off the entire power to the house. I'm not sure why. They just looked really scary I guess. Plus, they'd often create some screeching audio.

 

If you want to keep a computer truly secured, don't connect it to any type of network, put it in a locked room, and loose the key. Beyond that, there is some risk, and all you can do is manage the risks with security software, and updates.

 

Which is ironic, since it was a Crowdstrike update that caused all this havoc.