things i think about while powerwashing 84

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Hi all,

Just as I exit whatever vertigo-ish daze I was in, corporate users of Windows fell into another. By no fault of Microsoft really — just kernel-level software. I'm sure most of you by now have heard of the name Crowdstrike, the company that took down the country (kind of). Hospitals, bio labs, airlines, even court systems have all been thrown into disarray.

But why? How could this happen? How could this — the basic equivalent to a cyberterrorist attack — happen on US soil? Ok that was a little dramatic but this basically had a worldwide effect with countries like Australia and Japan getting hit hard.

The non-technical short version here is that there was a bug in Crowdstrike's computer security software that's installed on most computers, and this bug caused the entire computer to crash. But, you say, can't they just issue an update to fix it and it'll automatically download it? It could! But since the software boots up with you computer the bug happens before Crowdstrike's software has a chance to check for an update - let alone download one.

But they have issued a manual fix, which is to boot into safe mode then delete the offending file. Valiant anonymous sysadmins on Reddit have created and shared automated fixes for their peers to use, and it seems the world seems to be getting back on its feet again.

If you want thoughts — mine is that this shouldn't have happened. There should have been some type of testing process in place that wasn't there. There's no way this should have made its way past any type of quality assurance step of the release process — none that I could think of at least.

To end on a happy note, here are some funny links and wild tidbits related to this ordeal:

• one of our very own esteemed subscribers was grounded in Atlanta for the WHOLE DAY then told that their flight was to be cancelled and rescheduled for Saturday
• the only reason southwest is the only one left standing is because they're running a 25-year-old version of windows (twitter)
• japanese vending machine bsod (doesn't seem related) (twitter)
• conservative troll who lives in malaysia and has never lived in the usa tries to get in on the crowdstrike discourse (tweet) begone irrelevant
• maybe crowdstrike is just doing their jobs keeping your data safe from you (tweet)

musical item of the week

I've been on a mild city pop and Japanese jazz kick so here is Time-Lapse by YUKIKA! It's a city pop cover album and if you liked That One Maria Takeuchi Song you're bound to be listening to this all the way through. Sit back and let the nostalgia of living in 80s/90s Japan seep through you.

anonymous subscriber news

Only two submissions which is a 100% INCREASE OVER LAST WEEK. I believe in this section.

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• anon is going to buy a PS5 only so they can play the new EA college football game
• anon has been reading about the enormous amount of resources AI data centers uses and HATES AI EVEN MORE

animal of the week

This is Oreo the cat (Alex's former roommate's cat). I think beyond the cute animal here this does seem to be a pretty nice photo as well. Love the framing of the cat with the plant and all!

Send me your animals at ryan@torrtle.co!