Nasdaq crash triggers fear of data meltdown

[dipsydoodle]

A series of system crashes affecting Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft in the past fortnight has brought warnings that governments, banks and big business are over-reliant on computer networks that have become too complex.

The alarm was sounded by industry experts in the aftermath of a three-hour network shutdown that paralysed the operation of the Nasdaq stock market in New York on Thursday, on what should have been a quiet day of routine share trading on the exchange.

Jaron Lanier, the author and inventor of the concept of virtual reality, warned that digital infrastructure was moving beyond human control. He said: "When you try to achieve great scale with automation and the automation exceeds the boundaries of human oversight, there is going to be failure. That goes for governments, for consumer companies, for Google, or a big insurance company. It is infuriating because it is driven by unreasonable greed. In many cases, the systems that tend to fail, fail because of an attempt to make them run automatically with a minimal amount of human oversight."

>

"These outages are absolutely going to continue," said Neil MacDonald, a fellow at technology research firm Gartner. "There has been an explosion in data across all types of enterprises. The complexity of the systems created to support big data is beyond the understanding of a single person and they also fail in ways that are beyond the comprehension of a single person."

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/23/nasdaq-crash-data

[rocktivity]

1. Comcast mail was knocked out for a few hours this morning

but I attribute that to being overloaded by their latest marketing effort:

rocktivity

[PoliticAverse]

2. In other words automation sometimes leads to cascading failure.

From utility grids to computer networks.

[hobbit709]

4. Murphy is always waiting.

[LearningCurve]

3. Fortunately the NSA should have backups of everything.

eom

[dipsydoodle]

6. Well they do seem to have paid for that.

NSA paid millions to cover Prism compliance costs for tech companies http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. NSA To Lay Off 90 Percent Of Its System Administrators

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has found an unusual way to limit the number of people who can access its secret surveillance data – it will simply lay off 90 percent of its system administrators.

According to NSA director Keith Alexander, the Agency has always planned to automate much of the work that goes inside its data centres. However, following the PR nightmare caused by revelations of the former security consultant Edward Snowden, this policy will be accelerated.
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/nsa-to-lay-off-90-percent-of-its-system-administrators-124357

What could possibly go wrong

[Warren DeMontague]

8. If any of those NASDAQ folks smoked any pot in the last 10 years

they've got that on the server, pending notification to the federal drug user arrest SWAT force.

[LearningCurve]

10. Somehow I missed the Daniel Chong story

So glad you posted.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. Yeah. Fortunately the DEA faces reprecussions in the form of having to pay $4 Million for the fuckup

....of our money.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. The robots are in rebellion.

[FarCenter]

9. Crashes make sure that recovery procedures are up to snuff.

[meow2u3]

12. It's the fault of high-frequency trading

[Egnever]

13. Fear! FEAR! FEEAAR!!!!!!

lol google was down for less than 5 minutes. The fact they aren't down for that amount of time daily boarders on wizardry!