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Gas shortage: Gov. Cooper declares state of emergency for NC
- baybal2 5y agoIt took less than a day to declare the state of emergency because of a gas outage. How long it took to declare the same when COVID came to US?
- erthlrthkj 5y agoNot sure why everyone is so concerned. Biden actively campaigned on getting rid of gas and the pipelines. He kept his promise - good on him.
- vmception 5y agoare we under attack?
- cma 5y agoIt's what happens when countries don't control their currency.
- mirekrusin 5y agoIt's what happens when you use Java.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoUm, what? We do in fact control our currency.
- cma 5y agoThis kind of thing is enabled by crypto. It could still happen without it out of pure malice, but ransomware had little incentive before since it was so hard to collect on.
- dredmorbius 5y agoDisconnected payments and cash transfers have long been a thing. Crypto in this sense is just a novel indirect payments system. Currency control is a red herring.
- cma 5y agoI don't think ransomware would be as prevalent, by an order of magnitude, without crypto. Nor with a govt controlled digital currency.
- dredmorbius 5y agoI definitely agree with the first. On the second, it would depend entirely on the design. And so long as one government crypto currency existed that was amenable to the practice, that should be sufficient. It's not as if lack of government endorsement is preventing usage now, and the fact that a cryptocurrency was sponsored by some foreign country should matter little.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoAh, I now see your point. For the record, I think it's a valid one. Ransom did happen with cash, but it was much riskier - physical delivery had to happen, and it led to the criminals.
- colechristensen 5y agoNo, some idiots who are going to find themselves made examples of tried to do a ransomeware attack on another group of idiots who didn’t take computer security seriously enough who also happened to control a major piece of us infrastructure that they (claim) they shut down out of caution. Some people are going to prison, some other people are going to start taking infrastructure security more seriously, and fuel traders are going to make a lot of money. This is exactly how our brittle infrastructure gets fixed in the best imaginable way. Millions of people minority inconvenienced so that politicians will start regulating a poorly self regulating piece of essential infrastructure.
- bsder 5y ago> This is exactly how our brittle infrastructure gets fixed in the best imaginable way. Millions of people minority inconvenienced so that politicians will start regulating a poorly self regulating piece of essential infrastructure. I'll believe it when the next cold snap in Texas doesn't wipe out the grid. This happened in 2011. The feds even made a report. Nobody did shit. This happened in 2021. Nobody has done shit. This will happen again. Nobody will do shit. If doing shit costs money, nobody will do it. If you want it done, it needs to be law and the penalty needs to be jail, not fines.
- colechristensen 5y agoThe consequence needs to be liability and the penalty insurance coverage. Nothing like an insurance company tripling your rates after a bad audit to motivate executives. Threat of jail invites regulatory capture and obfuscations to evade prosecutors (who are most often defeated by making crimes as convoluted as possible so they don’t think they can convince a jury)
- dredmorbius 5y agoYou and bsder are both right.
- bsder 5y ago> The consequence needs to be liability and the penalty insurance coverage. No, because bankruptcy discharges the liability. And that's exactly what's happening in Texas right now is a bunch of companies are going bankrupt after having skimmed off the top. If it's fundamental infrastructure, there should be minimum rules and if you fail those rules you go to jail. People died because a bunch of executives decided that it was too expensive to winterize properly.
- edrxty 5y agoProbably not, but I will say the timing is suspicious. There is currently an ongoing shortage on fuel tanker drivers[1] as the pandemic depressed gas demand, so the drivers went elsewhere. You need special certs to haul thousands of gallons of boom down the highway and when those drivers leave, they can only be replaced my themselves. Add the geopolitical situations in a number of hostile countries that I need not list and you theoretically have a pretty good opening for keeping the US at arms length long enough to play games. All that said, I don't think the impact is great enough to actually be effective in this sense. The US has a decent strategic reserve for this kind of event. If the intent was to put the US in a poor starting position to prevent intervention in a foreign conflict it has not likely been sufficiently effective. If this interests you, Red Storm Rising is a rather solid work of fiction about a similar event. [1] https://kstp.com/business/experts-shortage-of-tanker-drivers-could-lead-to-shortage-of-fuel/6091263/ https://kstp.com/business/experts-shortage-of-tanker-drivers...
- Syonyk 5y ago> ...Red Storm Rising is a rather solid work of fiction about a similar event. Indeed it is! I believe some of the scenes in there were the result of table top war games played out, then written up. Tom Clancy's writings are both really good, and lately really disturbing. I just finished Rainbow Six, and similarities to 2020 abound.
- dredmorbius 5y agoWe (the tech sector + tech users) have met the enemy and it is us.
- sschueller 5y agoNo, but some area already trying to blame Russia and China. However it appears to be a standard ransomware attack which was probably targeted because of the size of the company (larger ransom) and the fact that this company has such a poor administrative IT infrastructure that they can't deal with this swiftly (Wipe, restore from backup).
- legerdemain 5y agoIt is 1000% rational for individuals to hoard and over-purchase during a shortage. Your charity will only lead to prolonged pain for you as everyone else hoards and over-purchases basic supplies. We saw it with a bunch of commodities last spring. The correct solution for shortages is not to call upon a bunch of suckers to deprive themselves of basic goods, but to enforce rationing, by whatever means necessary. That is, if the goal is to reduce the pain from the shortage. I'm sure people actually hate rationing and love feeling accomplished and resourceful as they screw their community out of supplies. So maybe calling upon suckers to be suckers is, in fact, the rational choice for governments as well.
- nostrademons 5y agoOr let the price rise to equilibrate supply & demand. Rationing tends to create a black market as people who need cash more than they need fuel trade their fuel for cash with people who need fuel more than they need cash.
- thenewwazoo 5y agoThis comment is precisely right if the goal is to efficiently allocate capital, or if the state isn't prepared to punish those who violate rationing orders sufficiently to make the risk outweigh the reward (whether on the supply side or the demand side).
- jjoonathan 5y agoThat would tend to allocate the resource according to wealth. It's probably not the largest issue here, but historically this has turned ugly when food shortages were involved and the market cheerfully prioritized middle class hoarding over lower class life-and-death needs.
- throwaway09223 5y agoResources are allocated according to wealth, full stop. If you have money you can always pay someone to obtain it (by waiting in line or whatever) Recognizing and accepting this fact is the first step towards fixing supply issues.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Acrobatic_Road 5y agoPopcorn time.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoThe green new deal just got more real. How long before we are all riding bicycles like the Chinese used to do.
- nkellenicki 5y agoSounds good to me.
- caterama 5y agoYep, already riding.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoChinese made?
- 29athrowaway 5y agoThe people behind the cyberattack messed with the wrong people. They will have no peace of mind for the rest of their lives.
- nradov 5y agoThey're probably in Russia and nothing bad will happen to them.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tedd4u 5y agoEh, probably true but the petro-people are good friends with the drone-strike & secret-detention-site people. I wouldn’t plan on international travel if I were in the ransomware crew.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoHey, why does Russia always get the blame? Did Putin put Polonium in your underwear?
- petre 5y agoPerhaps because the perpetrators have been identified as a ransomware gang from the CIS states?
- dukeofdoom 5y agoCan you point me to the fake news source stating so
- plugger 5y agoIt's in the malware, the most fake of all primary sources.
- imoverclocked 5y agoMaybe the coal-rollers are freaking out and looking into buying a Prius. Time to buy Honda futures! On a serious note, infrastructure security is almost always the last thing infrastructure designers ... design for.
- Syonyk 5y ago> Maybe the coal-rollers are freaking out... Is diesel impacted as badly as gasoline out there? I've seen plenty about gas shortages, less about diesel shortages. In general, trucks tend to have far larger tanks than cars, so can ride through various disruptions a bit better if you're careful. > and looking into buying a Prius. Going from one liquid-fuel-only vehicle to another, even if it's more efficient, doesn't really seem to solve the problem of "liquid fuels are unavailable at the moment." If you want robustness against stuff like this, go with a PHEV of some sort - Chevy Volt, RAV 4, Prius Prime, etc. You can do most of your regularly driving on battery, while still having the easy long distance range of a gas engine. If liquid fuel is in short supply, don't do any long trips - just run on battery. On the other hand, if electricity is in short supply, most PHEVs make really good generators for at least limited loads. You typically can't find an inverter that runs off the high voltage pack, but most are good for 1500W or so on the 12V system. They'll just run the gas engine as needed to charge the high voltage battery, and run the DC-DC converter to support the 12V rail. It ends up being quite a bit more efficient than an open frame generator or inverter generator for light loads, though you're limited in what you can run. Storing 10 gallons of gas for a PHEV gets you quite a bit of electricity out of one, and it's no additional maintenance, because you're already maintaining the car. They're good options for uncertain times. Infrastructure security has been, and probably always will be, a joke. Except it's not funny.
- dredmorbius 5y agoEfficiency works best in the context where a resource's continued availability is assured, but the price increases. (Efficiency alone as a conservation measure is fatally flawed, as it's equivalent to a price decrease, and induces yet more demand, following the Jevons Paradox.) In an intermittent-supply model, efficiency-plus-cache helps ensure survivability through a spell of unavailability. If you need to refuel once a month vs. once a week, you'll manage (on avarage) a two-week outage fine, whilst the once-a-week case is stranded for ten days (average).
- hristov 5y agoHas anyone found out what version of Windows got hacked?
- davidw 5y agoI grew tired of the ever-growing body count in the Expanse books - it's kind of depressing if you think about it. But one thing I did enjoy was in one of the books where some of the protagonists score some bicycles on a devastated Earth to get around. The bicycle is the most efficient means of human transportation on any kind of reasonably surfaces road or trail.
- acidburnNSA 5y agoUntil the tires pop right?
- exporectomy 5y agoNot the most efficient. Humans have only about 10% efficiency converting food energy to mechanical work. You could burn that food and power a combustion engine to get more work from it. Or burn some other fuel that's easier to get than food, such as wood or, well, oil.
- Drunk_Engineer 5y agoYou failed to take account for the fact that cars are two orders magnitude heavier than bicycles.
- natchy 5y agoNobody mentioned cars. This little 125cc motorcycle get 125-150 mpg. Tops out at 55mph. https://powersports.honda.com/street/minimoto/trail125-abs https://powersports.honda.com/street/minimoto/trail125-abs
- jeffbee 5y agoIt's pretty wild that this order rescinds several regulations on truckers, as if that will suddenly increase the supply of tanker truck drivers? As if there's just tons of truckers hanging around who were ready to drive but too lazy to file tax returns?
- fmakunbound 5y agoNever let a crisis go to waste.
- rascul 5y agoIt may not increase the supply of drivers but it may increase the amount they drive and how much they carry.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoThis move increase the marginal capacity of the truck fleet. Exempting fuel haulers from the working hours requirements isn't about letting people drive 24hr straight. The goal is to let drivers and fleets absorb a delays (a routine thing in the trucking business) by putting in a 12hr driving day instead of having to park their truck because their driving hours are up or drive unsafely to make up lost time. Nobody in trucking gripes about limited working hours. The current hours per week available for work are more than enough to work at an unsustainable rate of sleep. What everyone bitches about is the electronic logging requirements that prevent them from cooking the books in order to account for delays that happen over the normal course of business. Because people can no longer cook the books they do other things that increase risk. For political and optical reasons the DOT can't exempt them from e-logs to make their lives easier. So they just exempt them from all of it. They're basically saying "if you're gonna push yourselves we'd rather you cut the smart corner and work a 12hr day than drive around like maniacs trying to fit X hours of driving in a Y hour window in order to make your books and records check out." Because fuel deliveries tend to happen during business hours (say 5am to 10pm in this case) and trucks always deadhead back to wherever they fill up this exemption is more impactful than it would be for other subsets of trucking because it lets the trucks get back to where they started and fill back up so the next day's deliveries are not pushed off schedule.
- sudosteph 5y agoI live in Asheville NC, and apparently all of the gas stations in the local area are out of gas due to this. Seems like panic buying happened the second the local news began reporting on the pipeline hack. I'm just happy we didn't run out during the weekend at least. We're a big tourist spot, and most of them drive in, so it would have been extra awkward to strand them here. FWIW, I've seen some locals on FB talking about being unable to drive to doctors appts / the vet / work - and in every case so far - other locals have volunteered to drive them. Will definitely be awkward if the good Samaritans run out of gas too though. I suppose the few drivers of electric vehicles are about to become really popular with their friends and neighbors.
- throwawaaays 5y agoI wonder if this, along with the Texas winter crisis, will make people further get into off-grid, self-sufficient & all electric systems. Most houses in the US have enough roof estate to put enough solar panels to keep a daily car charged up. Add more panels, large energy storage and more efficient heating/cooling systems, and you might be able to run your house for some hours in an emergency.
- Lammy 5y ago"In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another."
- arcticbull 5y agoRight but I suspect this is just fall-out from the cyber-attack.
- pasttense01 5y agoOne technique which helped significantly in the Arab embargo in the 1970s was even-odd rationing: based on if your license plate was even or odd then you could buy gas on every other day.