https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2g5lvwkl2o Multiple major Aussie systems down....?

Yeah, The Guardian and a couple of others are reporting it as a massive MS Windows issue and linking to the Crowdstrike fail.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jul/19/microsoft-windows-pcs-outage-blue-screen-of-death?CMP=share_btn_url

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et Planes grounded as mass worldwide IT outage hits airlines, media and banks

Who needs Y2K when you've got Microsoft?

Let's test patches before we roll them out....nah, testing is for pussies.

Testing? That needs testers fk that expense we have bonuses to think about.

oh hey boss didn't know you were here

I'd hope that bonuses at Crowdstrike manglement are going to become a distant memory once all the damage claims have been paid but suspect the EULA will have protected them.

To be fair, this one is not directly Microsoft's fault, it's Crowdstrike who've pushed something without adequate testing.

Yes, crappy update, it happens; Microsoft release them all the time, and that's why you patch development and not go to production first without testing

It's Crowdstrikes Falcon sensor - i.e. a see security tool.

How many organisations test their security updates versus letting them be rolled out to all devices asap?

You can list them by discovering the businesses that have been hit today.

... and a Very Stable™ operating system?

It's a Crowdstrike issue, not Microsoft. Try reading the article.

I've never heard of Crowdstrike before today. Is it something you get cheap with Azure or 365?

It's an IBM product. Basically the McAffee for enterprise - at least that's the sales pitch.

It's the Windows monoculture that has turned this into a global outage.

It's fuck all to do with Microsoft, you dodo.

It's clearly a kernel mode crash. No OS can cope with that.

It'd be possible to have a kernel that can catch a subset of crashes in kernel space (and maybe eject a driver or something), but more to the point:

kernel crash means a bug in kernel space.

Either MS's code has bugs itself, or has a security hole that allows other software to crash the kernel (yes, in reality it's both).

Unless you're using a non-MS kernel, MS has something to do with this.

And yes, the same could happen with other kernels, sure, but it usually happens with Windows

And most of the UK train operators

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/service-disruptions/networkissues-20240719/

More being added to the list every time I refresh the page.

Who would notice if UK trains were not running. Strike laden networks with abysmal track (sic) records of operation & punctuallity.

yeah, that selling everything cheaply to make it private owned really fucking helped, fuck thatcher and all her descendants and sycophants (blaire and starmer included)

I remember when Starmer sold off Microsoft and Crowdstrike too.

Clown.

And this is relevant to the current discussion how?

Just to get a mouth frothing political rant in?

Thatcher knew the railways should remain in public hands and refused to sell them. We've got Major to thank for that terrible decision.

Did nothing to rectify that mistake. They had 13 years to do it but no, they didn't.

All politicians are liars and hypocrites.

My memory's a bit blurry and may be wrong but I seem to remember that Blair not only didn't rectify but happily jumped and pushed on the privatisation bandwagon.

How the heck did we end up here, coming from bricked Windows machines?

How would you rectify it exactly? Once it's sold it's sold, unless you renationalise. For governments that always an option, but given you're clearly no fan of Labour I presume you're to their right so I don't imagine this is what you had in mind...

If you think it's bad now, wait until it's renationalised. However bad some companies are today, they're worlds better (with far higher passenger numbers now) than they were in the 1970s/80s.

"wait until it's renationalised"

Perhaps I will wait, rather than rely on your crystal ball.

Yeah, over £100 to get into London from Suffolk. That's so much "better". I know a lot of things have gone up in price, but train tickets are highway robbery, but on rails.

" train tickets are highway robbery "

Railway robbery, surely?

yeah, not so fast, that "privatisation is great" argument has worn thin worldwide.

And the trains and service were way better back then.

Scene: Smith and Jones are sitting at a table on a British Rail train service. The drinks trolley approaches.

Trolly person: "Tea or coffee sir?"

Smith: "Darned if I can tell".

Meanwhile the german Win 3.11 rail still runs probably :D

Vunderschon! Ist sehr gut, ja?

*makes choo-choo noises*

A lot of the fans who went to Euro 2024 and traveled by train would disagree with you on the German rail system. Late or cancelled trains, overcrowding...

Does that seem familiar? DB in Germany, is just like BR in the UK, has/was been starved of investment by their government.

There was a long piece on the Euro 2024 issues on the BBC News site on Monday.

DB now owns a significant chunk of the UK rail and bus services..... coincidence?

It makes headlines when one of the UK operators manages to run an efficient service.

will appreciate knowing the reason why there isn't a train this time.

Definitely an improvement on BAU

Now top of the front page... doing a live update page: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cnk4jdwp49et

Just had a call from my GP to cancel a vaccination I had booked for this morning (with a lead time of almost 4 weeks) as they're unable to access the patient record system and were using a printed list to phone round and cancel all non-urgent appointments.

I suggested that, for a scheduled vaccination, they could perhaps administer it anyway and make a paper note and update their patient records when they came back online but it seems to be beyond their comprehension that medicine might be practised in the absence of a functioning computer. And they could offer no assurance that it might not be another 4 weeks before an alternative appointment could be made.

I think my local surgery use EMIS, but I have no idea whether this is merely a local problem or more widespread.

However, given the increasing frequency of major system outages, it's depressing that service providers have such poor contigency plans when in many cases they could perhaps continue to function with a little forethought.

The Cloud has taught service providers that all these 9s of uptime are optional. "Computer says no" is now a valid excuse.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-19/global-it-outage-crowdstrike-microsoft-banks-airlines-australia/104119960

appears this is world wide. I suspect this company is going to be in a world of hurt when the washout of this comes out. Fortunately it is late Friday afternoon for the East coast in Australia so I suspect there are going to be a lot of early marks taken. However you may be struggling to get a beer unless you have cash as a lot of banks and POS machines have been hit as well.

However you may be struggling to get a beer unless you have cash as a lot of banks and POS machines have been hit as well.

Except for those idiot pubs that refuse to take cash and only take card payments.

We went to one of those annoying pubs last week. Ordered 2 beers. Barman poured them. I offered cash. He said it was cards only. I gave him my Amex card. "We don't take Amex", he said. "All I've got", I lied and watched him pour the beer down the sink before I left and went to a decent pub. Can't wait to go back.

Yeah, that really pisses me off too, I've walked out of a few places that refuse cash (which I believe used to be illegal?)

The worst one for me is places that don't accept cash, and *still* add a 1.5% card fee.

Last Summer, I came across an ice cream van in Soho. It was hot. Got my 99 with Flake. Tried to pay with coins. Card only. We really are living in the future when ice cream vans are card only. How are kids supposed to pay?

Yep, this is pretty bad. Got a call from my colleague in HK (I'm in UK) at 0700 to ask if I could log in as they were having problems. I couldn't either. So I'll just twiddle my thumbs for now and let the Windows guys figure it all out. Hopefully it hasn't messed up all my Linux boxes!