OP
Apparently FB is suffering some massive outage right now
- Thread starter freedom_in_4low
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Routing tables and everything else in between should be backed up in an air gapped environment for moments such as this.
OP
I think most of us have alternate means of communication, but most of us reside in one of the richest countries on earth. Some don't have those options and they are having a hard time today.
The greatest inconvenience for me is that I have a hot date tomorrow night with a woman who typically uses WhatsApp for phone while in country. Good thing she uses ordinary email as well.
my hope is that they spend today jumping onto any of the other players in the messaging app space, re-establish their contacts, and by the time whatsapp comes back online, they're comfortable enough to stay where they are.
That's easy. Don't use it. If you have Wi-Fi, you have Internet access which means you have access to email. You certainly don't have to use 3rd party crap sites to conduct business - and you look stupid if you do. Sorry - not buying.
Uh-huh. Yep. Absolutely. I'm not an Internet security expert by any means, but I know enough to stay the HELL off of these sites and my opinions are validated by those who know a hell of a lot more about this than I do. You don't find too many IT types on facefuck, TWITter, and the like - and you find virtually NO security gurus. They know better, and so do I.
I too have my own server in the house, plus I rotate hard drives every month into a safe deposit box at my bank. You can NOT have too many backups...
But we can dream, right? Compromised backup and redundancy protocols by angry people on the inside? I'm sure Elon could get a sleeper cell inside. After a few months they could have all of them under their control. Just waiting patiently until they were ready. Ethan hunt could do it.
And today was the day they pulled the plug.
I, too, have a dream.
I remember people bitching about the news feed and "the wall thingie". Facebook has been a thorn in my side since about 2003 or so. Some idiot linked to my site from there claiming to be me. I've had that happen several times over the years, and I address such nonsense aggressively. However, facebook's admins wouldn't do anything about this, or even ack my email. So - I simply blocked access to my site from there, knowing it would blow up in the face of the impersonator. But - I never saw a reason to unblock facebook from my site, so its a policy that stand to this day!
Absolutely. The problem with many of these places is that there is a generation gap. From a generation that had to work to get anything, to the one that expects everything handed down to them. All you need is a group of these latter folks responsible to run backups and rotations to not do their job because nothing really happens and then a combination of bad server updates that weren't fully tested and some angry folks knocking at your doors with due diligence. A lot of those sandbox environments that stay open for programmers to work from home at their leisure and so on and so forth .... bad to worse in a minute
OP
I do feel bad for the folks in poor countries that depend on whatsapp... But I get pretty gleeful imagining the atmosphere at Facebook hq today.
The people I refer to rely upon WhatsApp for voice calls. For many in the world it is the only telephone access they have or can afford. We are spoiled living in 'Merica and all too frequently myopic to the circumstances of others in societies less fortunate.
I use the old fashion method to
contact family and friends !
OP
I'm baffled at how whatsapp took off. Skype has done everything whatsapp does since 2012 and had the backing of Microsoft.
I barely even know what "whatsapp" is, or why somebody would want/need it to start with. Microsoft manages to fuck up 99.55% of everything they touch, but at least they're not facebook. I like to say that on the very rare occasion Microsoft actually manages to get something right, there's still nobody happy. As opposed to Apple - no matter how brain dead a given decision of theirs is, its always a Good Thing (tm). If Apple was ANY other company, they would have been laughed out of business by now...
OP
agree that there's some cultural dislike for Microsoft, but I think they get a lot more right than they get credit for. Excel is the most useful and powerful software in the world as far as I'm concerned, and the entire Office suite has no legitimate competition. Thanks to Lens, I can take a photo of a document or a whiteboard, have it available as a PDF on my computer, filtered to look like an actual scan or like it was digital to begin with (removing shadows and glare), seconds later. Teams does everything whatsapp does, but it's integrated into everything else so I can schedule a video or screenshare meeting with the click of a button in my email, create group chats, transfer files, have unscheduled video or phone calls or meetings, and it's actually used by first world businesses (no disrespect intended for Mexico).
Windows 10 phones were fantastic, they were just too late to the game at that point. Third party app developers wouldn't put in the effort for a platform with 3% market share, and the market share couldn't grow without app developer support. Catch 22. I was bummed they dropped mobile but I understand the business reasons for doing it. I'm using a Google phone now but I have their assistant disabled and I use Outlook for my email and calendar instead of Google's apps...there's probably more I could do to protect my data but that's the best best I know how.
Microsoft dominates the business world, and rightfully so. My company just got onboard with Microsoft 365 so we're migrating to OneDrive and Teams in favor of Dropbox and Zoom...My previous employer had been there for years so when I came in I planted the seed over a year ago with one of those squeaky wheels that I knew would make it happen.
And ultimately...I am way more ready to trust my data to a company in the business of selling software (Microsoft) than I am to a company in the business of selling my data (Facebook, Google), and I'm more ready to do business with a company that lets me choose the device I run it on (Microsoft) than one whose primary development focus is forcing me to buy more of their shit (Apple).
I have a more jaundiced view of Microsoft, having worked IT for the last decade of my career, and computers in general for the entire time. Excel is well regarded for sure - I'm probably the last person in the world who doesn't use it for all sorts of things, including things it was never intended for! I maintain a database that was started in Excel, so I keep it there and it does make some sense - switched it to Libre Office though. I can NOT abide Word though, there are others that do the job, and are better at it - although I'll confess that much of my dislike of Word comes from buggy initial versions that crashed and lost data all the time. The secretaries of the day cursed it daily - why they switched to it away from utterly beautiful dedicated Xerox word processor machines is beyond me. Regardless, I seldom use any word processor - Modern ones are actually what were once called "Desktop Publishing", they do all sorts of wonderful things that I have no need for. My life runs on plain text editors.
Windows 8 was a complete disaster - Balmer got the "devices have replaced computers" religion and completely screwed the pooch on this one. Windows 10 is as ugly as home made sin, but it does run pretty well. Too bad about those crude, square cornered graphics - we won't discuss the phone-like "apps" and spyware that are bundled with it that are pretty hard to get rid of. As most here know, I detest smartphones of all sorts - but the one thing I'll stay in favor of the Widows phone is that it runs a REAL operating system and enables running of REAL software, however poorly. iOS and Android only run "Apps" - limited use software at best that can usually be replaced by a simple webpage! The Microsoft "Surface" is an impressive bit of kit. If one actually needs a tablet, that's the one to get for the same reasons: It runs a real OS and can run real software! It has a detachable keyboard so is home in both worlds.
Office 365 is nothing less than a money grab - I detest the subscription model, thank you Adobe! It has caused my ex-employer all sorts of grief and expense - they may still be using Office 2016, not sure. The whole "cloud computing" promulgated by just about everyone is a huge headache to them as well. Never mind that that's more subscription crap and a move back towards a centralized computing model, which is what we got away from with the "Microcomputer Revolution" in the late 70s. We've come full circle!
And now the "last version of Windows ever" is being replaced by a new version that REQUIRES security hardware that bricks any hardware that isn't almost new. This is a play DIRECTLY out of Apple's playbook.
