How To Break the Internet with Chris Stokel-Walker
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Causer media, everyone, welcome to Better off line on my host, ezek ron.

Now forgotten about month photo ago, we had a huge complete meltdown of the computer systems of the world when crowd strike failed. I did an episode on a and while we've all just kind of forgotten about IT, and today i'm joined by Crystal al Walker, who's a author, journalist, electra and starting new comes at the guardians as well. Auntie.

yeah, for a whole week and I not whole month. I'm taking over text box, which will be very exciting for the month of september.

But the recent approach honors you wrote great article for the independent back at the ended july about how crowd strike isn't the only cyber company that could trigger a global meltdown the second day fail. And this is a subject that fascinates me because I love disaster movies. And also, this article was terrifying. So why don't you walk me through IT?

yes. So basically backing july, we had that all outage that people might remember. Basically people woke up in asia, australia and and eventually the u. And accounted the screens of death on microsoft windows, which is something amazing that i'm thirty five now. And I remember that happening when I was a kid. And then it's never happened since, like for all people make fun of microsoft, actually their pcs a decent, but then suddenly everything went to own hand basket. So turns out that crowd strike, which is one of the big service providers for kind of anti virus uh tools and software h had missed one figured, uh, basically the thing that protects us so that had actually harmed us, which is just the ultimate in fantastic .

tic arts and and IT turned out that IT was actually within crowd strike. The thing that was bugged failed because the bug checking thing, we had a bug in IT, which is so good. It's so good that we have everything built on.

Yeah this this is china. This is the thing right is and I guess this is this is something that a lot of your listeners and others will chain with because you share a similar sensibility to me, which is that we have built a huge thing, which is kind of like on a house of cards, that is actually hiding the fact that humans are involved this, and humans screw up frequently. Yet we think that actually, because this is White bang tech, you don't have to worry about IT IT would .

of automation yeah.

precisely. And he is not, as some guy used overworked overtired and can't type properly. And as fat fini is like you, me.

yeah, a combination of private software companies like crowd strike and then as you'll get into open source solutions that are a lot of people doing them for the love of the game, which is wonderful. But at the same time, we got this patchwork system that holds up the internet and a lot of the tech we rely on, and we don't really know. And the fact that so much of IT is automated is also terrifying.

Yeah and this is the thing that, that update was sent out to millions of pcs over the course of an evening while people were sleeping and people didn't realized that there was a massive issue with that until they started to wake up. And at that point, IT is essentially too late. And and the best part of the story, I think, is that to fix the issue and and we have kind of fixed the issue a couple months on for other than we have to actually get individual people to go out to use a computer or or terminal somewhere and put in the actual update to unscrew up the problem that has existed initially.

But you have not direct the kind of the issue of how much of this is seen as kind of public utilities nowadays, like the plumbing ah of our kind of entire world and yeah these kind of really rickity and held together with scotched tape and little as a chewing gump I did think is a story a decade ago about how we had a similar issue with thing called heart lead, which was another go. Basically there was another similar thing where there was update with thing called open S S L, which is the the software, all that encrypts on the data that is sent through payment systems and passwords on so forced, whatever you see, that kind of yellow lock on your a, on your web brows, that is usually running open S S L. There was an issue with IT, which essentially meant that all of the information that people thought was being shared in encrypted form was actually being shown in plain text so someone could, in fury, come along and sleep on everything that you're putting in there from bank account details to pass words and so on.

So full. The reason why that happened is essentially the internet at the time, and to a certain extent now, or less so, walls being run by two guys named Steve. The whole thing was developed by a guy or Steve markets and his friend, who was also called Steve.

They were kind of this weird transatlantic problems where they kept going open. S S, L. IT was this initial volunteer run project that kind of became a key part of the internet that, Frankly, these multibillion dollar companies use day in, day out. But they decided that they didn't really want to pay a penny for the upkeep.

And open, necessary is one of the name to kind of things that could break the entire internet from your article as well.

Yeah, this is, this is kind of the key part of the internet s plumbing. And there are loads, if this is right, like this is the thing that we don't realize until things go wrong. And a generally unit, people want to have nineteen, nine point nine, nine, nine percent up time until you have that kind of minature final element where actually something does grow up. And actually you start to recognize that this thing is how together, pretty precariously, we don't realize IT, but there is a of cuba of half a dozen. So companies job is essentially to keep this stuff running, and sometimes they do grow up and open.

S, S, L. How is that actually funded? Is IT IT donations? Or yes, so initially .

at the time back in two thousand fourteen, when how was hard lead was a kind of an issue, they were essentially reliable to nations. And this was open source software. That is kind of the basic principle of of the way we often forget about this. Actually, he is hobbist that set this thing up. The longside, a huge new industry.

X, K, C, D comic, which is, everything is held up by a guy called drunk.

Yeah, yeah. That was actually Steve, but are basically things. And that is the problem is they weren't fully funded.

I did to follow up story back in twenty forty because hardly kind of drew the attention to this IT comes back to that idea of ah you started our podcasts a where you said this thing happened this huge chaotic thing and you probably forgotten about IT because it's been two months so he moved on same thing with harleys here. This happened. There was a huge outcry.

They got a bit of funding around about a million dollars that was meant to kind of make them back on a knee and killed and they could be sustainable. Reality is kind of didn't work. What do you mean IT didn't work?

Well in the .

sense they still have this issue happen again and again. So what was meant to be kind of a affronting up? I suppose a big tech companies saying, actually, you know what? We recognise that this hobby ist service is a vital part of our internet running.

We will fund d IT. So IT is sustainable. Didn't necessary happen, not to the extent that we had another health lead from open, necessary. But they do struggle still to kind of keep things going. And that is, I think, the the big problem here, which is, uh the the news agenda new zone, people forget very quickly. And because there is there not A A problem for a little while longer, we kind of lurch from from one catastrophic name st to another.

So opens to sell. What does he actually do though? I know you it's the little padlock on browsers, but what is its foundational point?

Yeah so IT basically IT shepey across data from from a user to uh kind of um a service providers. So if you think about IT is is kind of you input text on your laptop, your phone, wherever you are, I will then encrypt IT. IT will transfer IT over to a payment provider to a, your bank to Frankie. Also pretty much anywhere that you put to pass IT in a and IT will ensure that that is encrypt IT all the way. But there was a an issue with the coding of IT which meant that actually um again comes back to fat fingers. Some elements of what was being transfer went into kind of access memory um which basically meant that bits of IT were encrypted but then large possible IT wouldn't so if you were unlucky, then the bits that weren't encysted could be your credit card details, your short code in your account number in A C B C number and that's why there was kind of this big red flashing light back in in a decade or so ago where you know what, actually this exploit, if left unchecked, could become a massive issue in a real boon for cid criminals. I think actually had IT happened in twenty twenty four, we would have seen much more of us a significant issue in terms of second, third or motor vacations because cyber criminals would have been all over .

that stuff and if open access cell breaks again and that just means that the internet is not really encysted, but every place that used that is kind of at risk at the transaction on every place.

yeah and that is that is the issue. That is the high way that is the internet. And we've seen outages like this come on go time and time again.

We year we've had, uh, the crowds rike instant where you could actually get until that top of your laptops. We've had outrages on major payment platforms. We've had banks going off ying.

We've had social networks kind of disappearing for hours at a time. And invariably this is just a very simple error that snowballs repeatedly and we're kind of deem to repeater. And I guess the chAllenges like how do we put the web on A A firm of footing that prevented from happening again.

again, feels like funding the open as a cell foundation would probably be a good stop. But let's I imagine that's not happening. We need to build the computer. The next picture of Garfield.

exactly this is the commercial interest always come into this. And the reality is, as you and I both know and and as many Oliver s will know, companies, tech companies in particular, will take action when they realised that the spotlights on them and that there is this kind of intrinsic to and for them to do that, the students, it's off. They are back to doing the same thing. They are happy with the status where as IT is.

which is crazy as well because. What what is me about open S S L is that nobody will really be to blame, and thus nobody will really feel responsible. They might kick some money here in their google, especially very reliant on them, but I just don't see them doing IT.

yeah. And this is the thing that the only people that I really noticed when I was reporting about that story a decade ago, who felt any kind of like guilt or personal alarm, or kind of like even responsibility for, were actually those two steps like they were. They were got IT the storage yeah they have destination for the busty.

Back then was IT was very difficult to report out because they had been taken out of like not to only stereo pe, but they would like super technical people like they. They were very happy being in the background tinkering with this thing. They realized that I was important, and they took their jobs very seriously, but they had never been put in the spotlight.

And and they were initially very wary of speaking to me, because suddenly this thing happened. And IT is over the course of like hours that they got to thrust into the limb light. They had the daily mail knocking at their door, which was one of the reasons why they were the super wary of talking to me. So I took actually a few days of winning the move and think, you know what like this isn't gonna be a head job like i'm not looking to kind of hold you up and say this is the person responsible for this happening. It's more I wanted to tell the story of why this has happened, why it's an issue and why we shouldn't have the ability for kind of slight errors in upkeep to cause catastrophic effects.

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IT almost feels like people, people getting mad at the homeless to some extent, where it's like all of this person is on the street and there are problems that are happening around them and they they are up. And you blame the person who is the victim here. You blame the fact that when you look at the internet right now in its instability, you're like a, well, these open source people don't get for free.

It's therefore because they should have fuck in. They should have been Better doing this thing for free. That holds up the entire and adverse the fact that the problem is that the entire internet relies on this on the funded group of people.

And he really is. I just want to be clear for listening ers and cause you, of course, know this when I say they sold up the entire internet, I do actually mean that it's very easy to full file to hide. Perfect sometimes. But this is genuinely that level. When hopeful ly happened, IT sounds like IT could have been truly catastrophic.

good. IT really good. And this is the thing that we overlook is either there are kind of um not amazon because these people are super professional in terms of what they do and they take their jobs seriously.

But they are either not paid or they paid a pitance, particularly income. Harrison, as the total compensation packages that you see washing around silicon valley. And yet there is this kind of super extractive approach from big tech companies of we will kind of role in whatever IT is that you provided us, often open source.

This is the kind of big secret of a large part of big tex success is they rely on these open source developments that have kind of underpinned key parts of attack. And if things go wrong, they can only shift the blame onto those open source things and say, well, this is actually all of this is the full of our supplier. The thing that came second or food order down the line and .

you've got this big movement in cloud as well towards like composer architectures, which involves a lot of slotted in open source solutions as well. It's just IT almost feels like we need a big tech mutual aid thing for open source. I wish that I don't think this anyway. We could get a government do this, but I think they should force big tech to put like a percentage revenues, not profits, into open source and have very defined less for them because otherways, you get situations where I don't know the entire internet underpaid by two. Stephen.

yeah, exactly. And I think this is, this is the unfortunate thing is that should be the lesson that we learned IT should have been the lesson that we learned from harbin ad IT. Shouto been the lesson that we learned from exile utils, which was another issue that we encountered relatively ly recently, where there was IT turned out, we believe, a bad act to kind of deliberately inserting ministres code into another thing that kind of enter into large parts of our digital lives.

Turns out that the volunteers that were running that couldn't keep track of IT um one of them literally talks about that burn out and how they're taken a step away from the project. And yeah, we always see these things kind of passing by in the review window. We say, you know what? Isn't that such a shame? We ought to do something about that. And then we move on to the next six and we don't pay attention.

Take a step back. What was X Z utils for the american listeners? Exit for british canadian? Um what happened there?

Yeah so this is this is kind of again, another bit of free software um this was back in sort spring of twenty twenty four, a kind of malicious hacker had we basically socially engineered their way into the upkeep ep of this bit of open source utility, which is essentially designed to kind of compress data.

So the idea was that IT would kind of take a big file chunk IT up, make a smaller, get rid of a bit that you don't need um and IT was kind of in the same way you talk about of a cloud architecture slaughter in lots of really useful open source tools. This is a similar thing where you could spot in exit tails, exit utils into whatever you are building. And IT would be fantastic.

This guy had kind of offered to volunteer at a time when the original developers, the custodians of this tool, were feeling very burned out, said, I will help. Uh, the original person then took their eyes off the ball. This moitie actor started putting in back doors intentionally the ways of accessing kind of the data within. And he was only spots, basically by a microsoft developer who happened to come across this.

And I and just to be clear though, exit utils looks like its a big part of linux, which is a which people who use consumers software may not realize these basically depending most server architect, like a ton of server architecture, a ton of web architecture.

right? yes. So web service are cloud hosting tools. Leveling web comes basically anything that can exist that probably your fridge, if you have an internet of things, fridge, if you are that frivolous there, that will be connecting some waiter to linux. I hope, I hope that the old diao pe is not being kept by an I O T.

For age. There's someone who knows me so. But so this microwave developed a found IT. And so IT turns out that just the corruption of open source, like you can happen as well with these open source projects, particularly, I imagine, when that underfunded and the people .

get burned out. Yeah, and this is, this is the thing is, again, into another example of a kind of hobby project that turned into something bigger. Nobody who has the money either realised or decided that IT was important enough to fund directly the people involved who are often, again, I don't want a steroid pe, but I don't want to kind of make them seeing too much like a victim here.

But these votes are often super humble, super helpful, just trying to keep their heads above water, essentially because they, they've made something that that is proved very, very useful, and they don't want to trouble people by shouting for help. In this case, same thing happened. Single person in charge of this tour didn't want to shout too loudly about the problems that I would cause him in his life. He kind of took a step away, decided to get help from someone, turned out they were bad, and nobody decided to shout. So again, delivery.

say the these people are doing some of the most important work in the world, while sundara shi gets two hundred million dollars a year that I see these people as heroes and victims at the same time.

Yeah and I agree, I think I think what I mean by that is they would not want to be seen as either the hero or the victim in the piece. They they have A A thing to be involved in open source software more generally. You have to have a very kind of it's almost quite right.

You have you have to be very, very community minded, very kind of. I am doing this for a good of everybody, but I also don't want the praise for IT. And so either kind of being presented as like this hero defending us against stall of the bad stuff, or being presented as the victim who is you need pity I think that's the thing. They don't they don't want, right, but they just want money.

And I think we get back to the systemic problem then because I don't see them was like any kind of pathetic thing or indeed, I mean that I think that's something you are work about what they are doing, but I think what they are doing is cool. I think what the problem is, the systemic lack of support for them. We blame these things.

We don't. But people may blame these projects for breaking. Oh, IT didn't work as well as IT should. But IT turns out that it's just we put all of this pressure on these requirements, on these people and on these projects, and then don't give them the support at all.

So natural them in to say to my lessons, please go fund to your open source movements brought on Molly with wikipedia. mol. Wire, of course, about wipeout, a very early on in the show, fund these projects because they deserve. But the funny thing is, is that some of sometimes i've seem very stupid, idiot, things like, well, if they were fun, if they were private and corporate entities, they'd be fined and nothing would go wrong except look at crowd strike. And it's the complete opposite.

yeah. And the worst thing is with crown strike is, is they thought what they knew Better, right? Like this is this is the key thing. They thought that they were doing everything perfectly. They kind of crowd about how good their tools were, how well they could protect people, and then they didn't.

And and this is kind of the endemics thing is you you can't introduce profit to the equation because if you do, you're kind of you're looking to cut corners. Now we still don't really fully know why this happened. The crown strike is still taking a hit to its business, still has the threat of legal action from from those customers who were affected.

And the number of lot airlines were knocked off for basically an entire week in the united states. You couldn't get anywhere on some airlines because the systems were just so completely broken. Um but the idea that you can just kind of throw money at IT through a big techland doesn't really work because you need that that idea, that kind of ethos of undoing this not for profit, not for myself and not for the company that I work for but i'm doing IT for kind of the greater good. And I think the problem, if you brought this into a google or even a grown strike, whatever is that you end up looking at the bottom line and realizing actually, I need to require customers, I need to keep them. That's to be my focus, not just making good stuff and making IT work.

So onto profit seeking entities. One of the others you mentioned is fastly. So fastly, let's want to walk me through, firstly, because I know there are other companies in this around to.

yes. So fastly is a is kind of what you would call an edge cloud to provider. So that is basically an attempt to try and bring the internet t speeds up a little bit, make them a bit quick.

So the idea of bringing files that are are commonly used websites are are commonly used close or to where the users want to request them. The thing that people often overlook is that the web is essentially still A A data transmission system. And so you have to if if I was to pull up a huge be video from my home in the U.

K. IT would be very silly for me to put that request through youtube servers in the united states, because I would have to send the request the united states. The request would have to be fulfilled.

Youtube would have to go looking for the video. IT would then have to send the video back to me, and then I would have to be played. Now we're really talking about kind of a fraction of a second there. But I can be done quicker by suing IT closer .

to me physically.

Content delivery network. I vastly exactly. So that is what vastly does.

Uh, the problem is that a IT went wrong around about, so three years ago, again, a light crown strike a this configured file got pushed out the company systems because fastly is used by amazon, by redit, by twitch, by the U. K. Government, by papal.

All of those platforms were affected, which is kind of a big issue. This guy you who runs fastly hugely, uh, wealthy mom, and no, his done an awful good, makes the internet faster. But the problem is game, that is a private company that is a single point of failure if for many, many platforms, many websites that we use day and day out. And so something goes wrong IT IT goes really, really wrong.

And what's weight about that is you'd think the amazon, for example, would have their own .

cdn and they they do have never run C D. S. In some ways. But they they still the part of the thing is these companies are so bowling in these services that they provide are are so huge that they tend to train bucket them in different ways.

And so while um you the first element went down, they still had other bits. But IT IT was kind of very much concentrated on faster. So that's why we had those outages there.

And there are other companies like this, like action mize, the other one where if they buckle or for just chunks of the internet fall off line.

yeah. And again, IT goes back to around about maybe got the late nineties, early two thousands, we took a series of decisions that essentially decided we are onna, take this thing that was previously like a kind of hobby ous home developed by Frank amazes, but actually kind of work. And we're going to turn, listen, like a massive profit making machine.

And we're gna privatize large parts of IT. And right, we're going to simultaneous ly have um go big business and also kind of yet public goods and services being transacted on IT. And right, we've kind of existed in that award space forever. You've done episodes in the best about loads a part of social media and the fact that there is this kind of chAllenge of this is, as tuesday on mosques, favorite raised a defect of public square. But IT is based on essentially private land. And as soon as you kind of take what was and actually kind of like an educational base communications network, and you turn IT into something that is a for profit, you you really complicate things in a way that means you have single points of failure. And a lot of banks on those things working when they don't causes big issues.

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And is IT IT is a bit worrying. And i'm I try not to do too much further on this show, but this is the stuff that actually keeps me up at night. This is the thing, especially as we have the increasing electricity use of A I, as especially we have any basic strain on these companies that hold up the internet. The other thing I think about is what if there are problems with, I mean, we've seen this kind of times with amazon web services, with microsoft IO cloud and someone and so forth, they feel like a also a huge point of failure yeah .

and you see kind of rumbling of this, right? Like dow detector is constantly ping with things. Down detector is kind of in the website that everybody goes to whenever ver something either isn't working or isn't responding to see whether or not other people are noticing these sorts of issues. Um it's strange cry because it's like we have and that happens every month or two.

We have kind of like pretty significant traumas that put cracks in our walls and we kind of go argue what does just plus them up and not be all all okay? And we kind of overlook at and it's it's I suppose a question is, to what extent are those tremors kind of like the prey warnings of like a massive rupture, a huge kind of earthquake that can affect things? Or are we able to just kind of keep IT taking over and we have occasion and how to we fix IT? And that's okay.

Yeah, I would speak with barrel in the other day is antimony poly expert and he kind of made this point that we also have absolutely no public kind of measures of successful or efficacy y or indeed safety with any of these class providers. We have IT for power plants. We have IT for severity.

We have a water we don't treat despite those are utilities, but really cloud services, our utilities too, and we just don't we have no idea, we don't know and we have no quality standards. So who even knows as they push these massive data centres, whether they stay up that and IT IT terrifies me. IT really does.

Yeah, I think I think what's interesting is any data that we do have is also provided by them, and it's kind of into marketing materia, right? They say we like six digit up time, which is that kind of six nine after one thousand nine hundred nine points to highlight how how well they maintain their services and how likely IT is that you will never encounter an outage.

But the reality is even that kind of no point one percent over a long course of time can be quite a significant outage. And if it's the thing, if it's if it's an outage that happens, that is here keeping a hospital online or keeping your banking system online at a time when everybody needs IT, even the smallest outage on these kind of too big to fail services can be huge. And we don't we don't realize because, as you say, there is no centralized record of this is when we've hand out to just this is what we've had issues, they just come along every couple of months.

They kind of grab the attention in the case of cloud strike grabs the tension because I was quite so massive and quite so visual and visual. But then we move on. We forget about IT and actually that we're only ever reminded the next time. And by that point, we're so far beyond IT that we forget actually how significant IT was. People couldn't go to work on that friday because they couldn't use their computers.

Yeah, it's just really terrifying. This is the actual crisis, and I feel as if it's almost IT feels like screaming into the void at times. One of the reasons I wanted do this episode was because of this because I don't think most people realize how britain, everything is.

You've got all the way that most transactions are encrypted in the internet. That's by two Steves. And everything holding everything up is like a patchwork of a few companies that are come pretty much do not have they don't get held accountable until something breaks.

It's it's very bad. But let's get IT. Let's make IT worse. So the last two you brought up in your article, I can and vera sign when you talk about why they also very .

worrying yeah. So our calm is it's it's, how do I describe this? Basically icon at its hearts runs vertical LED dn sis of the domain name system, which is kind of the address. But so you typing A U R L to, uh, your web brows that is not machine reata. So IT gets converted into an I P address, which is bunch of digits. Essentially how that gets rooted through uh, what is called to D N S, which is essentially most of the dress book and it's run many of them, not all of them, three of the the kind of dozen or so that exist or run by icon, which is um uh um of non profit um that is one of the kind of earliest major organizations and not involved in kind of the early web and also very assign, which is kind of a private company. So if these things go offline, then like everything breaks because if the D N S, if the kind of the address system of the internet of the web is corrupted in some way, I don't know about you, but I don't remember the I P address of like the people see this website.

I remember my own phone number and nobody else is that should tell you everything. And just to be clear, every website you visit without exception is actually just a npi address, which is not gone through D N S. That's that's good.

Yeah and and so unless you I do know some some sort of amazing memory, powerful individual who can remember every single iy address.

who also knows them, we don't get exposed them by the nature of the dn s system no dn s yeah you .

you just type IT IT works. And that is is one of those things we ve we've traded off convenience for actually understanding how this technology works, which is great because IT works. But if IT doesn't work, then weren't real trouble.

And I think that is yes, if you if you think about kind of the economic impacts of of crowd strike and in the outages because they couldn't people couldn't get on to their devices, think about what happens if people can get on to their devices, but they don't know how to access their bank or they don't know how to access the websites that they need for data day working. That is the really interesting thing thing. And the icon is non profit.

IT has around about four hundred stuff. So like IT is, well, stuff. This isn't two steeps in a dog, but he is, I suppose four hundred seems fewer people. Then you need for something .

as important as this.

right? When you consider the the huge numbers that are employed by big tech companies, you would think that I would .

more than the U. N. Has thirty six thousand people working for and this is probably decided like this is a probably a little bit more important than the U. N. If you really think about IT.

yes, yeah the U N. Website, we will not work without these things. And so email would .

email break as well?

That's a good question.

I think if I through through the website would yeah and .

also presumably I would I don't fully know the answer, but I would presume that actually yeah because you are putting in A A kind of deb name is something at something don't come or not code on U. K. Or dot net or ever, that IT would still be wroted through the same systems. So yeah.

and a quick google says that that's the case too. This is how I learned things. And also another website I won't be able to access to. Dn s was down.

That's that's so good. yeah. exactly. This is the thing you would sometimes. This happened when I used to work.

Prior journalist, I used to work in an office, and sometimes, like the actual reuter would fail, and you were going to be stuck their toddling thumbs and thinking, what can I do? Like, imagine that. But everybody in the world, all at once, unable to do the most basic stuff. And think about like how reliant we are in all of the the internet connected services and tools that will use. And then think about what was the impact if all of those stopped suddenly and we didn't know what to do afterwards.

And IT says, IT in your article as thirteen of the largest dn s service as a run by I can. So three of the, three of the thirteen largest run by I can. So if you if someone took out, I can IT would still functioned. But I imagine that would be a massive outage just kind of connecting the bits.

Yes, they all have different root service, which is kind of like the they have kind of the original phone book says that were you can get copies of copies of copies of copies, but increasingly less reliable and IT kind of generally seems to work geographically.

So IT would probably affect parts of of the world rather than the entire world depending on which we are we received through in terms of which quite, quite phone book you got which root server, but it's IT is kind of his issue. And and the problem is we don't fully understand and wouldn't fully understand until IT happened what the impact could be because we know, okay, if IT affected those three, serve as those three root servers fine. But is there something on the other root servers or the the websites? So the the back ends of the organizations that Operate, the other root server that rely is on those are preservers to get access to like it's kind of could the domino effect start to play out here? We're actually one pretty thing that can error anyway could actually spread further and further and further.

It's yeah it's almost as if IT would be like if they won't forgot how to speak. You could perhaps write letters. But speaking was off the table.

It's terrifying. And again, three of them I held up by nonprofits. It's which is good, but all of them should be.

It's so strange as countries we can all get together to go to war or help support the war perhaps, but we genocide guess in that case. But we are in the situation where it's trucking. We can't put the money together to support the literal way that people communicate online.

which is because we get through .

right now. Yeah.

like this. IT works right now. And when IT goes wrong, IT hasn't gone completely wrong, one hundred percent wrong all over the world.

And so we going to go, well, that's a warp. Sy, okay, we can deal with IT and move on. Hopefully that will will happen again.

Fingers cross. Let's hope that's all okay. And that's the way that it's kind of working. That's the states go at minute.

I guess there's nothing is one of these. I like to end episodes by being like, what can regular people do? IT doesn't feel like we can.

And you have read some my journalism. You know that I am one of the most pessimistic people. I I do a radio slot here in the U.

K. A. Where are? I introduced tech stories to people who don't necessarily know lots about tech.

And every single week I get hurrying by the host because I always end with depressing notes. And unfortunately, that is the case here. I think.

yeah, I think that something I like to come back to that is knowledge is power. I think that I wonder if there is this is one of the dumb r things i've thought up, but I wonder if there is actually a way of most people downloading the phone book of .

DNA phone back ribs that could be crypto off the block chain.

a crypto the is funny as well because you see all of this A I, the cypher. And this is the future. This is so cool, important.

Objectively, DNS is cool. Like this stuff is that it's actually insane. The internet works at all.

Yeah, like I die. I wore a book called the history of the internet by its size chunks. And as I said, i'm thirty five. I kind of I joined the web when I was about ten or eleven.

Yes, i'm thirty eight, by the way. So we've right .

there go kind of got interested in IT and found incredible, but forgot that. Like I I lost that wonder because we don't see how that works anymore. You don't see the cracks shops.

You don't see the gears working in the way that you used to. Kids noted ays don't know how to store files on a computer because they just have club storage. It's just always accessible easily there. They don't have to structure if I assist able something like that. And so we take IT for granted that these things work and we just assume that like it's all okay, but actually yet knowledge's power, knowing that there is a person behind this, knowing that there is a system behind this and kind of getting a sense a little bit of how that works means that you understand more perhaps when things go wrong. And importantly, you can kind of advocate may be for how to to make sure that IT doesn't go wrong again in the future.

Chris, thank you so much for joining me. Where can people find you?

Unfortunately, find me on x stock. That is my, I am. I am going down with that ship. long. S.

S, T, O, K, yeah. right. Thank you so much. We've been listened to Better off line. You know where to find me. There's the same thing that comes on after IT that you'll complain of something changes. And well, thank you for listen one and then it's going to say thank you for listen again.

Thank you for listening to Better roof line. The editor um composer of the battery off line theme song is matter salesa pe. You can check out more of his music and audio projects. A meta salty dot com M A T T O S O W S K I dot com, you can email me are easy at Better off line 点 com or visit Better off line 点 com to find more podcast links and of course my news R I also really recommend you go to chat that whether your ad or at to visit discord and go to ask lash Better roof line to check out all redit。 Thank you so much for listening.

Better off line is a production of cooler zone media. For more from cool zone media. This is our website. Clues on, we get a dot com or check us out on the I heart radio up apple podcast or whatever you get your podcast.

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