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“Experts” quoted by the Daily Express claim that the internet as we know it could be taken out by Hurricane Sandy, thanks to a doomsday scenario that doesn’t really tally with how the internet actually works.
The paper quotes “Technology expert” Brian Proffitt, who claims that flooding, power cuts and general chaos could overwhelm any emergency power provisions server farms in the path of the storm might have in place, which might eventually lead to “the internet” failing completely.
We think what Brian means is that some people in the area might have problems getting online for a bit, and some sites might be down for a bit, which is rather different from claiming a hurricane could destroy the entire internet.
To be fair, though, there are some high-profile tech casualties already emerging. US news site Huffington Post is currently half broken and running on a barebones template, while the US version of Gizmodo and the rest of the Gawker portfolio is currently offline, thanks to power cut and flooding at its data centre in New York.
We understand Jesus Diaz is currently on site with a plastic bucket and is frantically bailing out the server room as we speak. All should be back up soon. [Express -- Thanks Darrell]
Image credit: NY&NJ Port Authority
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I was going to say something about the Giz US site.
Gutted for them.
“We think what Brian means is that some people in the area might have problems getting online for a bit, and some sites might be down for a bit, which is rather different from claiming a hurricane could destroy the entire internet.”
Exactly, stupid Brian – zealot.
“We understand Jesus Diaz is currently on site with a plastic bucket and is frantically bailing out the server room as we speak. ” did he remember to switch the power off first?
Seriously though why doesn’t Gawker have a west coast mirror at the very least?
Also, have the Express said anything about how this will affect UK House prices or the ghost of Princess Diana?
That mental picture made my morning
which one?
Diaz with a plastic bucket
Same here
Anyone else sliiightly hoping for the flood waters to overwhelm him?
Don’t give them ideas otherwise tomorrows headlines will be “Diana’s tears kill internet in shocking expose”
Gizmodo shows huge Daily Express ignorance by expecting a considered and non-hysterical story.
This is not about journalism, it’s about giving their readers a little shiver down the spine & an excuse to say “I told you so.”
I wonder if Michele Bachmann is going to say that this Hurricane is just God trying to get our attention again to cut federal spending?
https://plus.google.com/u/0/112413860260589530492/posts/BrnKN26jyvH
Jesus may think he’s down there trying to bail it out but really he’s a human sacrifice. They’ve welded the doors shut behind him.
Once again a wise man named Jesus will die for our sins.
If you ask Romney, he’ll probably tell you this hurricane is to kill all the homosexuals and legitimise some cases of rape.
It must not be a ‘legitimate’ Hurricane because Mother Nature has a way of shutting those down..
More importantly Kat is apparently on the east coast (or in EST time zone at least). Did she talk her wellies and a good umbrella?
take.
edit button please.
fml
Maybe Kat can bring one back with her, I here they have all sorts of wonderful technology out there.
if Jesus is bailing out a server room, does this mean less biased Gizmodo articles about Apple?
Keyword is less
Since the server room is flooded it means no articles about anything you doofus.
No American articles anyway. Probably cuts the APple stuff by at least 60%
I consider this flood a good thing.
Doofus is a good word. You don’t get enough ‘Doofus’ on a day to day basis..
Maybe you should read the express, then you’d get plenty of doofuses
I believe the plural is Doofii.
Everyone knows the internet is kept at the top of Big Ben, where it gets the best reception.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
One of the surprising things about the internet is that it’s so small
Non technical people are also surprised by the lack of wires, but of course this is the age of wireless internet.
Just make sure you de-magnetize it before you show it around.
I’d imagine that it would suck if this place got flooded though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Hudson_Street
Agreed. This is the only thing that gave me pause when I read this story – the storm clearly won’t bring down the whole web, but it could seriously impair it if one or more of these hubs went down.
I’m sure I read that this is one of the biggest hubs of it’s kind – acting as a switcher for a large amount of the world’s internet connectivity. Could be wrong about that, but I know it’s very heavily trafficked. Also, virtually all of Wall Street’s trading algorithms run through there, so the markets would take a tumble if there was any serious damage. (Plus side, if there was any damage, there’s enough money to be lost that there won’t be any delay in repairs)
Whoever planned to have a server room on a floor that can be flooded should be sacked and/or hung in a public square for all to see. Also, is there no contingency site for Gawker and the others?
Anything owned by Richard Desmond should be completely ignored. The man is scum personified.
Iroically right after I read this I went to youtube to find that it was down with an internal server error! This is the error I’m getting right now “Http/1.1 Service Unavailable “
a real shame about gizmodo.com
still, people can access the internet by sms as detailed in sam biddle’s lovely article… hmmpf
My company just migrated from a local cloud services company to Amazon to run away from being constantly offline. After a long process of negotiation with customers (some required their data to be stored inside the country, and Amazon only offered whet we needed in it’s Virginia servers), we convinced everyone to move.
In the first week we had several hours offline (just like foursquare and many other big players). Now, on the second week, we have this hurricane problem. Amazon services are much better than the ones of our previous cloud “supplier” but the timing of those problems was so unfortunate… Our infrastructure guys are spending most of their time just giving explanations
The Daily Express? Aren’t they just like the poorer, dumber in-bred cousin of the Daily Mail, but slightly more Right Wing? I wouldn’t trust them to tell me what the weather was like if they were standing next to me outside in a storm.