- Sep
10
2012
Update 2012.09.12 05:50 MDT: GoDaddy says it wasn't a hacker, but "a series of internal network events" that shut down millions of webpages and e-mail accounts Monday. Whether the outage came from one meathead hacking or one intern tripping, the main point in the original post below about complexity and collapse remains.
* Â * Â *
Some anonymous hacker spent the workday kicking the crap out of GoDaddy's servers. For five hours or so, possibly millions of websites, including the Madville Times, went poof! Anxious business owners and Web honchos could do nothing but wait for someone at GoDaddy to hire a competitor to help switch the sites back on.
This outage hearkens to the prospect of a much larger economic collapse that I really hope economic development specialist Russell Olson will discuss with James Howard Kunstler at the Plain Green Conference. I find author Richard Heinberg amplifying Kunstler's concerns as he argues that economic growth will ruin us all:
Our solution is our problem... Its name is growth. But growth has become uneconomic. We are worse off because of growth. To achieve growth now means mounting debt, more pollution, an accelerated loss of biodiversity and the continued destabilization of the climate. But we are addicted to growth. If there is no growth there are insufficient tax revenues and jobs. If there is no growth existing debt levels become unsustainable. The elites see the current economic crisis as a temporary impediment. They are desperately trying to fix it. But this crisis signals an irreversible change for civilization itself. We cannot prevent it. We can only decide whether we will adapt to it or not [Richard Heinberg, interview with Chris Hedges, "Growth Is the Problem," TruthDig.com, September 10, 2012].
Wow: maybe we should hope that economic growth is over.
Heinberg's idea of what we can do to survive sounds very much like Kunstler's: decentralize and meet basic needs at the local level through gardening, coops, carpooling, and even local currency. (I'm not sure who will dig this future more, hippies or Teabaggers.)
In the same article, Hedges cites archaeologist Joseph Tainter's thesis that societies become more complex, must invest greater amounts of diminishing resources to sustain that complexity, and finally collapse. Tainter says all 24 of history's major civilizations have followed that arc. This time, for the first time, it's global civilization's turn.
One hacker, one attack, and millions of people lose services that have become essential to their daily livelihoods.
21 Responses to “Hacker Crashes GoDaddy; Economic Growth and Complexity Will Really Do Us In”
Wait till our Parent Star has a conniption fit like the one in the 1800s that caused an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strong enough to set telegraph stations on fire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGiejxMUtjs&feature=plcp
This is the sort of thing that makes me want to go off-grid and wire up every interconnection with coaxial cable and transient suppressors.
We need to develop a new socioeconomic paradigm based on prosperity without growth, but instead, focusing on sustainability.
Unfortunately, our current economic system requires spending and growth in order to function properly.
I've been reading a lot of books lately about simplifying lifestyles, uncluttering, and "doing without." I'm even thinking about reducing my living space this winter to conserve energy and send less money to the utilility companies.
Save, reduce, don't spend! But here's the rub: If people spend less, businesses make less money, so fewer jobs are needed, and downward goes the little rubber ball into a black hole of permanent recession.
We need to invent a whole new formula, not just here in America, but all over the whole world. Maybe this blog can serve as a forum for suggestions, ideas ...
#GoDaddy rapist used #DDOS IRC Bot script to control his bots (Hacked Servers) to perform attack | RT @Anon_Central
http://thehackernews.com/2012/09/anonymous-hacker-take-down-godaddy-with.html
Montana Cowgirl was down, too. GoDaddy denying attack, says event "internal."
I would love to see anonymous brought to justice. They have caused a lot of financial hardship and work for innocent people all because of their selfish motives. They are nothing more than terrorists of the 21st century. Scum.
I would love to see the Bush crime family indicted.
One might have a little more sympathy for Anonymous when one realizes that they represent the "little people" in their struggle against "The Man." They also do us a service by showing us how vulnerable the "soft" part of our infrastructure actually is.
As for the vulnerability of the "hard" infrastructure, I went after that notion in a previous blant.
I agree that endless growth is not sustainable. I tend to think that a Great Collapse is inevitable, and maybe not just one, but two or three or four or more.
The whole world system is built on deception and fraud. I can't say I'd be all that sorry to see it collapse. Many of the world's religions assure us that it will; they knew about the problem long ago, as did Native Americans ...
Way back when at SDSU, I wrote an exit essay for the history department arguing that the Second Law of Thermodynamics applied as much to social systems as to mechanical systems. Things break down, the center does not hold, and every civilization collapses. I did not include in my essay speculation about a natural civilization replacement rate. Suggestions, anyone?
And Larry, GoDaddy now says the outage was their screw-up, not an attack from outside? That makes them look even worse, doesn't it?
Ted Kaczynski became apoplectic in his fervor to bring the news to the world, folks: look where it got him...no, i'm not there...yet.
Cory,
In college, my roommate came up with a theory a lot like yours, maybe even identical. He called it "social entropy."
I would suggest that societies are like life forms of all kinds; they are born, they mature, they age, and they die.
In regards to our current situation, I would suggest something a bit more sinister. I compare our current world order, particularly in regards to the population increase and the notion of endless growth, to a dynamical system driven harder and harder. Stability eventually yields to wilder and wilder oscillations between two or more states (such as relative prosperity and mass starvation), and finally chaos (nothing makes any sense anymore at all).
We are, in my view, at the threshold where the oscillations begin; and neither Mitt Romney, nor Barack Obama, nor the Demopublicans, nor the Republicrats, nor any other mortal bunch of humans can do a doggone thing about it.
Of course all this theorizing falls by the wayside if you believe in the coming of the Son of Man, as described by Christ. Or the asteroid. Or the Desolation of Smaug. Or all of the above. But I won't go there now. It's been a long day.
"Social entropy"—very similar indeed! Now we need to figure out Asimov's psychohistory so we can ride the chaos wave, shorten the subsequent Dark Age, and rebuild a the most stable social system.
But note: one of the authors above (maybe Tanner... and I apologize for not keeping better track of sources!) suggests that collapse might not be so bad for individuals. When we stop pouring so many resources into bracing the failing system against those oscillations Stan mentions, we have more resources available for our local survival efforts. I'm not sure I'm ready to trade the Web, FedEx, and Uncle Sam for subsistence gardening, but there is an interesting argument about inputs and outputs. Would we be better off if the big system collapsed and we focused on little systems?
Larry, you are welcome to all the bicycling and tiny cabins you and your goddess find comfortable. But remember: pipe bombs cross the line.
gloating over the GOP evacuating the Romney campaign while they're imploding actually: maybe popcorn....
If we continue to just ignore the war college maybe it will go away. PP has forgotten how to write thought provoking or insightful posts and has made the war college an outlet mall for party/campaign clearance items. Until the quality goes up - nobody's buying.
I notice PP's Blue Plate Special at DWC is usually always something recycled from here, with an insult thrown in. Sad.
Madville Times: It's What's for Dinner! ;-)
Good point Dave...I would only add that being the only outlet that prints Kristi's press releases does keep him busy as well.
Sausage gravy. I can't stop thinking about sausage gravy and some of those taters my good friend Bob dislikes because they stick in his teeth. That is what would taste good cooked on a campfire in the middle of Reynolds Prairie.
Oh Gawd, he's still there. Won't somebody please shut him up? Must we endure two more years of this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4tGHEGETJU&feature=plcp
Stan, when you start a video with "Fantasy Representative," you may find yourself getting some weird Google juice.
Good question to the city officials about preparing for a six-month outage. I wonder: how costly would it be to invest in a serious six-month back-up plan, and how worthwhile? Would that be just another radical investment of dwindling resources in a futile attempt to fight that last oscillation? For what level of disaster should we prepare ourselves... and to what level of disaster should we resign ourselves?
Ultimately, we might have to organize into smaller communities than our current towns ... and wait for the actual event. Maybe certain things just lie beyond the preparedness zone.
I doubt many people in Lead would want to put up the tax dollars to invest in, say, solar power for the pumps that fill the tanks that get us our water. (That's how I was told the system works now ... water gets pumped into tanks and then flows down into town by gravity.)
As for the videos, well, you know, I'm sort of playing around, practicing for the real goal of doing video lectures to supplement some of my books. See
http://www.udemy.com
This site was suggested to me by a literary agent.
One learns certain things from watching one's own presentations on video. For example, I'd need to get some veneers on some front teeth before expecting Hollywood agents to come a-knocking. Second, I tilt my head an awful lot. And so on it goes.
I am, however, trying to put some real substance into videos when I hurl them at your wall. I don't want to waste people's time, although, of course, they can always just hit the little "x" in their browsers ...
Leave a Reply