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Trump & Musk biographer has a rundown o f the press conference. It was "interesting".
All flights in the United States are grounded until further notice,
- Thread starter Retired AF Guy
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Only an hour from Winnipeg.
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I watched the presser with the Secretaries of Transportation and DHS. Apparently, many elements of their system are pretty old and a software update caused some cascading failures. Updates on live networked systems are the nightmare scenario of system managers. They have brought down Bell and Rogers to name two.
As an aside, it must be in the Cabinet manual that they must praise Trump at least once per paragraph.
As an aside, it must be in the Cabinet manual that they must praise Trump at least once per paragraph.
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Overnight maybe but I don't think there's ever a good time for US airspace to not be busy.
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I thought I read that they pushed the update out Wednesday, but it took 24-36hrs for the problems to emerge.
That could well be, yeah. Not gonna pretend I know anything about those systems.
possibly because the system was going to crash at some unpredictable point if they didn't. The FAA started work on a new system in 2003: called it nextgen. As of 2024 when the office closed they had achieved less than 20% of their stated goals. Without going into great detail, the goal was to replace the airways structure and RADAR tracking with ADS-B and GPS routes. This was largely successful as far as the software was concerned but the programming was layered onto decades old systems and it simply wasn't possible to re-fit enough of the older fleets of aircraft to operate on the new format. The owners weren't about to invest in systems that wouldn't provide payback until the FAA updated their ground systems to match so the system never reached that critical point where they could switch over. Their estimates on software costs didn't even begin to cover the reality (my fears regarding HS trains incidentally) so hardware updates largely went by the wayside. Consequently procedures couldn't be changed to reflect the new software.
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So you're saying you're volunteering to be the head of the FAA?
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Click on the link and read the thread.
Great. Now the crackheads know the air traffic control system is full of copper wire.
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That and floppy disks, right?
As I wrote earlier the disadvantage to centralization. One group of cables in a remote location and it took down the entire system. I would assign some of the blame to the people who originally designed it without building in the ability to change equipment and wiring harnesses out and verify acceptance in total isolation.
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I saw a funny clip of UK stand-up comedian Jimmy Carr about the disruption of flights and he said America's parents are pissed. First it lost its internet privileges and then it was grounded.
Somebody said on FB than when Mullin was a senator during the Biden administration, he voted against a $X Bn bill to upgrade FAA systems. Unknown if that is true.
Nothing in the US is non-partisan..
Somebody said on FB than when Mullin was a senator during the Biden administration, he voted against a $X Bn bill to upgrade FAA systems. Unknown if that is true.
Nothing in the US is non-partisan..
I think a more likely reason for the ATC calamity is tied to the possible cyber attack that Microsoft suffered before hand. After all doesn’t the ATC run on Microsoft? No one would likely admit that ATC could be hacked, that would destroy the public faith.
What fuckin morons inhabit the WH. Good
Lord.
New AI system rollout... what could go wrong?
Mullin doesn't rule out cyberattack in unprecedented nationwide passenger plane grounding
The Homeland Security secretary also said the administration was looking into a new AI air traffic control system, which was rolled out at airports this week.
Michael Lewis of Moneyball and The Big Short fame has just written a book on DOGE. And he says it's way worse than the public understands. They literally hired felons and fired career public servants and cancelled public contracts based on simple keyword searches or political motivations. And some of those they fired were responsible for things like national security roles. He has a story about the one guy DOGE fired? He actually admitted in an interview that the government wasn't as inefficient as he thought before. They didn't fire anybody that lied or broke any laws.
Elon Musk Promised to Gut the Deep State. Did He Go Too Far?
A new book celebrates the federal bureaucrats who were quietly doing their jobs when the Department of Government Efficiency started squeezing them out last year.
www.nytimes.com
There's no way to say for certain that it's all related. But I don't think you create that much chaos and lose that much institutional experience and knowledge without risking many of these kinds of failures in the long run.
