Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Massive worldwide IT outage, hitting banks, airlines, supermarkets, broadcasters, etc. [19th July 2024]

Here is the news.

Nothing happened today.

Good night.


So. I'm really sorry to spoil everyone's fun by doing fact-checking and stuff, but -

Here's a screenshot from that Flightradar playback in the tweet, towards the end:

Screenshot 2024-07-19 at 17.16.25.jpg

Observation no. 1:
I can't recreate that on flightradar myself. I get this:

Screenshot 2024-07-19 at 17.23.33.jpg

Observation no. 2:
This is what I get for the same time yesterday, (12.00UTC, 18th July)

Screenshot 2024-07-19 at 17.23.54.jpg

Well, it looks to me like the US airspace was busier during this supposed meltdown than it was 24 hrs later.
 
So. I'm really sorry to spoil everyone's fun by doing fact-checking and stuff, but -

Here's a screenshot from that Flightradar playback in the tweet, towards the end:

View attachment 434004

Observation no. 1:
I can't recreate that on flightradar myself. I get this:

View attachment 434000

Observation no. 2:
This is what I get for the same time yesterday, (12.00UTC, 18th July)

View attachment 434001

Well, it looks to me like the US airspace was busier during this supposed meltdown than it was 24 hrs later.
There's no reason for huge outages in North America. By the time they woke up, Australia and Europe had been on it for hours. While it's certainly disruptive, a good priority list of services to fix first should see minimal down time. It took us, a medium sized University, about 3 hours to get everything important up and running and we have absolutely no out of hours support. A properly staffed place should have had everything fixed by the time the working day started in the US.

The endpoint problems, as I said above, are going to be an utter bitch for days but it shouldn't impact critical systems.
 
So. I'm really sorry to spoil everyone's fun by doing fact-checking and stuff, but -

Here's a screenshot from that Flightradar playback in the tweet, towards the end:

View attachment 434004

Observation no. 1:
I can't recreate that on flightradar myself. I get this:

View attachment 434000

Observation no. 2:
This is what I get for the same time yesterday, (12.00UTC, 18th July)

View attachment 434001

Well, it looks to me like the US airspace was busier during this supposed meltdown than it was 24 hrs later.

Kept you busy for a few minutes though didn't it? :D :thumbs:
 
So. I'm really sorry to spoil everyone's fun by doing fact-checking and stuff, but -

Here's a screenshot from that Flightradar playback in the tweet, towards the end:

View attachment 434004

Observation no. 1:
I can't recreate that on flightradar myself. I get this:

View attachment 434000

Observation no. 2:
This is what I get for the same time yesterday, (12.00UTC, 18th July)

View attachment 434001

Well, it looks to me like the US airspace was busier during this supposed meltdown than it was 24 hrs later.
Airplanes were and are in the air. Do you think this means that they therefore are being controlled, directed or navigated normally just because their engines worked & they got off the ground?

Go snatch some rosary beads from a nun; you'll fell better, Lord Cromwell..
 
Earlier today teuchter took the piss that around 1,000 flights had been cancelled, saying that was fairly normal.

The figure is now getting close to 4,500, and that is expected to continue to increase as time goes on, and many more are delayed, which far from normal..

Yah, you try an tell the trolling twat that, and they won't believe you...
 
Earlier today teuchter took the piss that around 1,000 flights had been cancelled, saying that was fairly normal.

The figure is now getting close to 4,500, and that is expected to continue to increase as time goes on.
I'm really good at keeping certain users on ignore but when there's a clear amount of correcting and fact checking going on I do have a peak behind the curtain. It's surely 90-odd percent trolling? I can't believe in this era of messageboards that there are people who still use their accounts for that 😂
 
remember the mighty yahoo message boards from a decade and a half ago? collapsed, disbanded and brought down by uncontrollable trolls; just like you who know here...
 
The plane impact is what it is and how long it lasts is what it is...
The big issue in this country is impact on the health service. Thats no joke, and we know how creaking the infrastructure is anyway without having to deal with this.
There's a great big collapse coming if this and the previous scam happens again. I work in medical records and we're still hobbling on with computers which are way too old for what's expected of them.
 
One of my first jobs was in medical records. We archived 80 years of records by reading each case file and working out if it needed to be kept for 8, or 25 years.
We manually read patient files to look for history of giving birth or a head injury. This was late 90s and the hospital had been functioning on paper records up until that period from its inception in the early 1900s.
 
There are some Boeing planes That still use Windows 95. There’s a guy in the US who has the last warehouse of floppy discs for them. Mostly used actually exclusively used on internal flights I believe. Can’t remember model.

I will look this up later. Heard about it on a Podcast.
 
There are some Boeing planes That still use Windows 95. There’s a guy in the US who has the last warehouse of floppy discs for them. Mostly used actually exclusively used on internal flights I believe. Can’t remember model.
It's not the actual flight systems though. The planes in question fly just fine without that system being active.

It's sort of irrelevant - flight systems do not and never will automatically update over the air for precisely this reason.
 

Likely none. ATC won't be, either. But scheduling, ticketing, baggage management, etc?
ATC and most backend airlines systems are based on z/TPF or MVS, with the odd Linux server farm thrown in as needed. The problem is many of if not most of the customer interface system such as check-in, ticket sales, customer service (who will have had a busy day today) baggage claim etc rely on a PC interface for whichever hapless Joe (or Jane) is directly sat across from the customer to access those systems. Doesn't matter how well the back end system is working if all the check-in clerk can see is the BSOD. (You ain't flying today mate!) Cancelled flights doesn't really mean there is no plane flying it might very well just mean there are no paying passengers on it.
I have this vision of some hapless techie working his way along the row of check-in desks individually booting each one whilst an angry crowd booes and demands he gets on with it.
There are some Boeing planes That still use Windows 95. There’s a guy in the US who has the last warehouse of floppy discs for them. Mostly used actually exclusively used on internal flights I believe. Can’t remember model.
This I think is an urban myth, they might very well use Pentium or even i386/486 processors but not Windows 95. I know that Rolls-Royce engines use custom built programmed modules that use C code written in house by their own development team. I applied for a job there back in the 90's (didn't get it). I would imagine other engine and aircraft makers are probably the same.
 
Last edited:
Ohhhh. This must have been what was making my wife's computer ask for a bit key. She is remote working in Japan and thought she was going to get into trouble. I guess this explains why it took so long for the MS bit key help page to load up.
 
It's not the actual flight systems though. The planes in question fly just fine without that system being active.

It's sort of irrelevant - flight systems do not and never will automatically update over the air for precisely this reason.

Think you’re correct. It was for loading flight plans in.
 
Back
Top Bottom