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> Worst case scenario you move foreword with less data and insurance does what it can Well, yes. Just like, after a house fire, you rebuild and try to carry on

by __jal 9y ago

> Worst case scenario you move foreword with less data and insurance does what it can Well, yes. Just like, after a house fire, you rebuild and try to carry on. It is still catastrophic. > Also, just because devices are on the same network does not mean they're homogenous. Of course not. The point is that there are many pressures towards running homogenous systems - easier to hire for, easier to manage, fewer support systems to run, fewer interop problems, bigger vendor discounts, etc. etc. These pressures are hard to resist, but we have to do better at running heterogenous systems, because without them, your entire farm can burn down before you notice. Nothing you say is wrong, but just because "it's just software" doesn't mean these aren't catastrophes.

scottLobster 9y ago
Not saying they're not, but the author specifically mentions "existential threat", "paralyzed economies", and worlds where people without technical skills are instantly hacked upon connecting to the internet. He uses the example of water supply so completely poisoned that no one can drink from it. The author seems to be making an assumption that we could enter a world where insecure technology could be taken offline all at once by some random hacker(s) and remain in such a state long enough to completely destroy economies and institutions. Frankly the system just isn't that brittle, if it was it would have failed long ago. It's like looking at Hurricane Katrina, which while catastrophic was never an existential threat to the US, and saying, "now imagine if Hurricane Katrina happened everywhere, every day!" without considering if such a thing were possible or likely in the first place. As for heterogeneous systems, what do you think the cloud is? Sure it may be homogenous for users, but that's all abstraction for what is a VERY heterogeneous system under the hood. Sure having independent/redundant subsystems is ideal for reliability, but at the end of the day I don't see the need for all the frightful abstractions. The farm isn't going to burn down without anyone noticing, there are simply too many powerful interested parties and too much built-in resiliency. I'm all for building in more resiliency/redundancy to prevent catastrophes as you mention, but the author takes a couple of major security incidents and spins them into apocalyptic techno-panic.

by __jal 9y ago

scottLobster 9y ago

Not saying they're not, but the author specifically mentions "existential threat", "paralyzed economies", and worlds where people without technical skills are instantly hacked upon connecting to the internet. He uses the example of water supply so completely poisoned that no one can drink from it. The author seems to be making an assumption that we could enter a world where insecure technology could be taken offline all at once by some random hacker(s) and remain in such a state long enough to completely destroy economies and institutions. Frankly the system just isn't that brittle, if it was it would have failed long ago. It's like looking at Hurricane Katrina, which while catastrophic was never an existential threat to the US, and saying, "now imagine if Hurricane Katrina happened everywhere, every day!" without considering if such a thing were possible or likely in the first place. As for heterogeneous systems, what do you think the cloud is? Sure it may be homogenous for users, but that's all abstraction for what is a VERY heterogeneous system under the hood. Sure having independent/redundant subsystems is ideal for reliability, but at the end of the day I don't see the need for all the frightful abstractions. The farm isn't going to burn down without anyone noticing, there are simply too many powerful interested parties and too much built-in resiliency. I'm all for building in more resiliency/redundancy to prevent catastrophes as you mention, but the author takes a couple of major security incidents and spins them into apocalyptic techno-panic.