blockchain fans: a must read: coindesk.com/the-false-prom…

If you happen to be using HPE servers you should check this announcement. If you do not update your firmware your SSDs WILL FAIL 3 years and 9 months after first use (32768 hours - for the techies a 16 bit signed integer - ugh) support.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/publi…

Just watched The Late Late Show with James Corden and realized why James Corden is leaving. There is no more space for celeb pics and signatures #nomorespace. Really sorry to see him go. I live for his news - #newssogood reggie watts and ian karmel ain't bad. Sorry I won't get to see the show live #bye

Ugh. I'm not doing well in the mens bracket!!! I took it out on the mosaic! Ha Ha. fanpost.art/marchmadness #marchmadness #fanpost

Years ago, my home network was under a denial-of-service attack. The source? A major university. The cause? A typo. I fixed it by… breaking time.

Thousands of their machines were accidentally pointed at my network for NTP (time sync). My bandwidth? Gone. Completely saturated.

I called their network team. They didn’t understand. I escalated. They said they’d “look into it.” Nothing changed.

A week went by. My network was basically unusable. Turning off my server didn’t help—they just kept hammering me anyway.

Since I was working for SunMicrosystems and had the source code... I modified my NTP server. First attempt: return completely random time. Didn’t work.

Turns out NTP clients are smarter than that. They ignore wildly incorrect time… and keep asking. Still 1000s of requests!

Then I noticed something in the NTP protocol: Time cannot just make a large jump suddenly— but you can slowly skew it!!!!

So I changed the server code and nudged their clocks forward. Minute by minute. Across thousands of machines.

Until every system was off by exactly 42 minutes. Yes 42 !😁 Two days later—silence.

Root cause? One mistyped IP address. Thousands of systems. One character. Most failures aren’t complex—they’re simple mistakes at scale. Full story (free): 👉 medium.com/@geoffmulligan…