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> The outage highlighted a different kind of digital divide. On one side, gmail, Facebook, and Twitter kept running, letting us post photos of blue screens loca

> The outage highlighted a different kind of digital divide. On one side, gmail, Facebook, and Twitter kept running, letting us post photos of blue screens located on the other side: the Windows machines responsible for actually doing things in the world like making appointments, opening accounts, and dispatching police. At this point using windows for these tasks seems like using legacy software because training people to use an iPad or a web browser seems too complicated or because no one wants to move their age old systems to a more modern web based system because of costs. Native apps work great, but I think the world is moving to the cloud and that means web based everything should be the norm. Yes AWS AZURE outages can still happen but those can be fixed by spinning up a VM in different clouds. This is also why software jobs aren’t going anywhere thanks for a while. Many systems need to be changed to more modern and robust clouds. It might take decades for this transformation across the globe.

amluto 2y ago
Your “modern and robust cloud” is my “why on Earth doesn’t this thing work offline”. The world is absolutely full of things that have worked for decades to centuries without the Internet, are eventually more or less consistent (remember carbon paper credit card machines?), and did an amazing job of keeping the world running despite, wars, network partitions (the “network” would basically always be partitioned), mistakes, entire branches offline, etc. Sure, a lot of things are easier when centralized, and “the cloud” is incredibly powerful. But it’s not necessarily more robust. Also, depending on any sort of cloud means you’re also depending on the network, and networks are far from infallable. There’s a reason that a lot of stored-value transit systems still track balances on the card and will let people in even if a fare gate cannot connect to a cloud service. And CrowdStrike took out plenty of cloud instances, and recovering them can be worse than recovering physical hardware, as the “robust cloud” has an absolutely terrible ability to do anything outside the happy path of booting an instance normally.
- dailykoder 2y ago
  Okay this sounds all very reasonable, but how do you know when your washing machine is finished, when it's not connected to the cloud and you won't get notified in your app? It sure is not an easy thing and the cloud helps very much here
  - rozenmd 2y ago
    I can't tell if this comment is sarcastic but maybe washing doesn't need to be hyperoptimised down to the instant the machine finished
  - nihzm 2y ago
    I hope this is sarcasm, but if it isn't washing machine cycles have a fixed duration so a timer on your phone is more than enough, no cloud necessary.
    - 4ad 2y ago
      I wish washing machines had a fixed cycle duration. When I start the cycle my washing machines tells me the same duration, always, but in actuality it takes different amounts of time every time. Madness. I've been told this is a feature.
      - scrlk 2y ago
        Do you always load your machine up to the same level? A low load will trigger a shorter cycle time to save energy and water.
      - krige 2y ago
        My washing machine is kind enough to both indicate time to end in minutes, but also allows me to delay start so that the cycle is finished in [x] hours. It's not even that modern.
        broeng 2y ago
        My modern dishwasher is also very kind, and displays the time to end in minutes throughout the wash. Counting down from an hour. But I don't know what kind of upbringing it had, for some reason, the sneaky bastard always adds another 25 minutes, when there is supposedly only 10 minutes left. I guess dishwasher years are like dog years. At least it definitely behaves like a teenager at 2 years old, finishing when it wants to finish. Estimates be damned.
OvbiousError 2y ago
Try making a graph in excel online and then come back to tell us everything needs to move to the cloud asap.
- vel0city 2y ago
  Ok, just did. It went just about as smoothly as the desktop client. What's the hold up again?
  - OvbiousError 2y ago
    Hmmm, my experience is vastly different. I wanted to make a graph using 5 cols of data, first col is x labels, then data for 4 lines. The cols are not next to each-other in the sheet. Then add linear fits trough that. Then give specific html colors (woops no impossible) custom colors and line types to the original lines and the fitted lines. It's possible but the ui is terrible. Changing line type is simply bugged half of the time.
alibarber 2y ago
I'm not sure I follow, I doubt the web vs native implementation of an application makes much difference when the terminal used to access it is unavailable. A cloud based web-app is not much help if no one has a working computer and browser. I'm not sure we're quite at the stage where a check-in agent using their personal un-managed devices to handle passenger data via a web-app is a great idea.
- nolist_policy 2y ago
  It does make a difference, because now you can give end-users iPads or Chromebooks which don't need all this "security" BS.
  - rob74 2y ago
    They might not need them, but I'd be surprised if at least some companies don't install security BS on them anyway (just like they do on Linux machines), because of compliance reasons. It can't hurt, can it? (at least that was what most IT departments thought before CrowdStrike)
mike_hearn 2y ago
> training people to use an iPad or a web browser seems too complicated iPads aren't designed to be turned into kiosks or airport departure displays and web browsers aren't operating systems (except maybe ChromeOS). So this advice boils down to don't run Windows, but CrowdStrike has caused outages of Linux as well.
- nolist_policy 2y ago
  By the way, ChromeOS is a perfect fit for digital signage and kiosks. It's officially supported.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
ta1243 2y ago
This could have been fixed by having a minimal baseline of machines not running the same software Resilience comes from diversity, in computing and in biology. Whether that's having critical workloads on multiple cloud providers or having one user interface on windows on network A (Arista) with crowdstrike and one on a mac on network B (cisco) with Sentinal one Sometimes perhaps you can't eliminate a single point of failure, but you can sure reduce them to a minimum. Or you can choose to increase next years bottom line and thus your bonus by not having a robust DR plan or system. You can also skip on boring things like raid and backups. The trick for a CxO is to ensure that when failure happens, it's massive and widespread. Then it's not your fault. The CxOs in a given industry won't be fired because their DR plans didn't work because they believed Gartner and all their CxO chums in competitors did the same thing. Nobody got fired for choosing IBM/Microsoft/Cisco/Crowdstrike/Azure, even if it's worse than the alternatives. People do get fired for bucking the trend even when it's measurably more reliable.
- nolist_policy 2y ago
  Diversity increases your attack surface however. You rather want redundancy and easy deployment or rollback of your clients and servers
  - ta1243 2y ago
    Diversity means a successful attack will take out part of your operation. Monoculture means a successful attack will take out all of your operation.
    - nolist_policy 2y ago
      That is not a good model. Cyber attacks rarely take down stuff directly. Rather attackers will establish a bridge head into your organization first and inspect the network and gather data for further (phishing) attacks. Diversity only means more opportunities to install bridge heads.
- incorrecthorse 2y ago
  The update affected less than 1% of all Windows machines. [1] Although maybe the biggest software failure in history, far from the biggest possible one. The level of cloud connectivity in the world could basically break the world if we didn't have diversity. [1] https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/07/20/helping-our-customers-through-the-crowdstrike-outage/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/07/20/helping-our-cust...
dzonga 2y ago
let's not throw the baby with the bath water. native desktop apps are absolutely necessary for most professional / serious work and native desktop apps need offline support too. with cloud - your risk factor goes up massively. the risk here is that most of these companies are reliant on windows and of course snake-oil salesman of antivirus tools. if you have a proper native desktop app, that runs in a sandboxed environment then you simply wouldn't need crowdstrike and the likes. unikernels / bsd jails are things that have been well known and will easily mitigate "security" issues. even windows these days has sandbox mode. but incentives rule the world.
BiteCode_dev 2y ago
Counterpoints: - Latency - Security - Legal obligations - Offline work - Managing the different sources of locking. - Avoiding a single point of failure (I get the irony).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

amluto 2y ago

Your “modern and robust cloud” is my “why on Earth doesn’t this thing work offline”. The world is absolutely full of things that have worked for decades to centuries without the Internet, are eventually more or less consistent (remember carbon paper credit card machines?), and did an amazing job of keeping the world running despite, wars, network partitions (the “network” would basically always be partitioned), mistakes, entire branches offline, etc. Sure, a lot of things are easier when centralized, and “the cloud” is incredibly powerful. But it’s not necessarily more robust. Also, depending on any sort of cloud means you’re also depending on the network, and networks are far from infallable. There’s a reason that a lot of stored-value transit systems still track balances on the card and will let people in even if a fare gate cannot connect to a cloud service. And CrowdStrike took out plenty of cloud instances, and recovering them can be worse than recovering physical hardware, as the “robust cloud” has an absolutely terrible ability to do anything outside the happy path of booting an instance normally.

dailykoder 2y ago
Okay this sounds all very reasonable, but how do you know when your washing machine is finished, when it's not connected to the cloud and you won't get notified in your app? It sure is not an easy thing and the cloud helps very much here
- rozenmd 2y ago
  I can't tell if this comment is sarcastic but maybe washing doesn't need to be hyperoptimised down to the instant the machine finished
- nihzm 2y ago
  I hope this is sarcasm, but if it isn't washing machine cycles have a fixed duration so a timer on your phone is more than enough, no cloud necessary.
  - 4ad 2y ago
    I wish washing machines had a fixed cycle duration. When I start the cycle my washing machines tells me the same duration, always, but in actuality it takes different amounts of time every time. Madness. I've been told this is a feature.
    - scrlk 2y ago
      Do you always load your machine up to the same level? A low load will trigger a shorter cycle time to save energy and water.
    - krige 2y ago
      My washing machine is kind enough to both indicate time to end in minutes, but also allows me to delay start so that the cycle is finished in [x] hours. It's not even that modern.
      - broeng 2y ago
        My modern dishwasher is also very kind, and displays the time to end in minutes throughout the wash. Counting down from an hour. But I don't know what kind of upbringing it had, for some reason, the sneaky bastard always adds another 25 minutes, when there is supposedly only 10 minutes left. I guess dishwasher years are like dog years. At least it definitely behaves like a teenager at 2 years old, finishing when it wants to finish. Estimates be damned.

OvbiousError 2y ago

Try making a graph in excel online and then come back to tell us everything needs to move to the cloud asap.

vel0city 2y ago
Ok, just did. It went just about as smoothly as the desktop client. What's the hold up again?
- OvbiousError 2y ago
  Hmmm, my experience is vastly different. I wanted to make a graph using 5 cols of data, first col is x labels, then data for 4 lines. The cols are not next to each-other in the sheet. Then add linear fits trough that. Then give specific html colors (woops no impossible) custom colors and line types to the original lines and the fitted lines. It's possible but the ui is terrible. Changing line type is simply bugged half of the time.

alibarber 2y ago

I'm not sure I follow, I doubt the web vs native implementation of an application makes much difference when the terminal used to access it is unavailable. A cloud based web-app is not much help if no one has a working computer and browser. I'm not sure we're quite at the stage where a check-in agent using their personal un-managed devices to handle passenger data via a web-app is a great idea.

nolist_policy 2y ago
It does make a difference, because now you can give end-users iPads or Chromebooks which don't need all this "security" BS.
- rob74 2y ago
  They might not need them, but I'd be surprised if at least some companies don't install security BS on them anyway (just like they do on Linux machines), because of compliance reasons. It can't hurt, can it? (at least that was what most IT departments thought before CrowdStrike)

mike_hearn 2y ago

> training people to use an iPad or a web browser seems too complicated iPads aren't designed to be turned into kiosks or airport departure displays and web browsers aren't operating systems (except maybe ChromeOS). So this advice boils down to don't run Windows, but CrowdStrike has caused outages of Linux as well.

nolist_policy 2y ago
By the way, ChromeOS is a perfect fit for digital signage and kiosks. It's officially supported.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

ta1243 2y ago

This could have been fixed by having a minimal baseline of machines not running the same software Resilience comes from diversity, in computing and in biology. Whether that's having critical workloads on multiple cloud providers or having one user interface on windows on network A (Arista) with crowdstrike and one on a mac on network B (cisco) with Sentinal one Sometimes perhaps you can't eliminate a single point of failure, but you can sure reduce them to a minimum. Or you can choose to increase next years bottom line and thus your bonus by not having a robust DR plan or system. You can also skip on boring things like raid and backups. The trick for a CxO is to ensure that when failure happens, it's massive and widespread. Then it's not your fault. The CxOs in a given industry won't be fired because their DR plans didn't work because they believed Gartner and all their CxO chums in competitors did the same thing. Nobody got fired for choosing IBM/Microsoft/Cisco/Crowdstrike/Azure, even if it's worse than the alternatives. People do get fired for bucking the trend even when it's measurably more reliable.

nolist_policy 2y ago
Diversity increases your attack surface however. You rather want redundancy and easy deployment or rollback of your clients and servers
- ta1243 2y ago
  Diversity means a successful attack will take out part of your operation. Monoculture means a successful attack will take out all of your operation.
  - nolist_policy 2y ago
    That is not a good model. Cyber attacks rarely take down stuff directly. Rather attackers will establish a bridge head into your organization first and inspect the network and gather data for further (phishing) attacks. Diversity only means more opportunities to install bridge heads.
incorrecthorse 2y ago
The update affected less than 1% of all Windows machines. [1] Although maybe the biggest software failure in history, far from the biggest possible one. The level of cloud connectivity in the world could basically break the world if we didn't have diversity. [1] https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/07/20/helping-our-customers-through-the-crowdstrike-outage/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/07/20/helping-our-cust...

dzonga 2y ago

let's not throw the baby with the bath water. native desktop apps are absolutely necessary for most professional / serious work and native desktop apps need offline support too. with cloud - your risk factor goes up massively. the risk here is that most of these companies are reliant on windows and of course snake-oil salesman of antivirus tools. if you have a proper native desktop app, that runs in a sandboxed environment then you simply wouldn't need crowdstrike and the likes. unikernels / bsd jails are things that have been well known and will easily mitigate "security" issues. even windows these days has sandbox mode. but incentives rule the world.

BiteCode_dev 2y ago

Counterpoints: - Latency - Security - Legal obligations - Offline work - Managing the different sources of locking. - Avoiding a single point of failure (I get the irony).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]