Posted on 02/26/2026 6:38:44 AM PST by ShadowAce
How a single hack infected the world’s most important operating system.
Video is 53 minutes. Yes it's long, but it goes into all the background of what happened, plus a post-mortem and analysis.
This is about the xz compression hack several years ago. I remember hearing about it and being thankful we have unaffiliated people who can test things like this when they see an anomaly in the code/testing they are performing.
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TL;DW
Would have been a beautiful thing.
Imagine, no freaks to know about nor talk to each other. The freak harmonic....evaporated.
Maybe not THE worst thing; but at this point it would freeze commerce, banking, communications, etc.
True, we have become a very fragile society
What’s really scary is how fast it seems to have happened, or at least how quickly it transformed every day life.
Everything goes so much faster now; I think it’s affecting mental health.
Bring it on. I would welcome the demise of the internet.
It’s gonna happen eventually. I’d rather see it sooner rather than later.
I’d be out of work.
“The Internet Was Weeks Away From Disaster and No One Knew”. I wonder if algore knew...he invented it.
There’d be no Free Republic. I couldn’t carry a hundred books in one hand, to read while I wait in a doctor’s office. I can immediately contact help if I’m out somewhere and witness or suffer an emergency.
It’s all very wonderful; until something essential fails.
Know anything about the content creator -- "includes paid promotion" and such?
One comment said amusingly: "Only Veritasium can rickroll 1,2 million people within 7 hours after uploading a video."
VeritasiumDescription> An element of truth - videos about science, education, and anything else we find interesting.
And selling their "Elements of Truth - The Game" [ a tabletop trivia game ] via Kickstarter. 13,262 backers pledged $1,397,368 to help bring this project to life. Only $43, for a game of 200 questions....
And selling their "magnetic molecular modeling kit" -- strarting at only $87.98. Experience science with Snatoms by Veritasium
The channel is all about money. looking through the many video titles, one may conclude we've been wrong about everything. And Veritasium -- not an element on the periodic table, but a guy in Los Angeles making videos and asking for money via Patreon -- will set us straight. Like the recent title -- if you are a paid member -- "How One Rock (Almost) Poisoned The Entire Planet - our latest video, ad-free!" Almost. The entire planet.
About that money thing, here is a link to an estimate of his AdSense haul from Created On July 21, 2010
Circa $700 a day, as an estimate. Promote YouTube channels! Yeah, that's the ticket. Buy the board game. Snap up those Snatoms. Money makes the world go 'round.
And, " and No One Knew."
In my opinion, a global internet collapse makes a great YouTube thumbnail, but not a realistic scenario. The network is too distributed, too redundant, and too patched‑together to fail all at once.
What is fragile isn’t the infrastructure — it’s the people who assume the infrastructure is magic. Pull the plug for a week and you don’t get utopia or collapse. You get:
– banks dusting off their offline procedures
– stores running cash‑only
– people rediscovering that their phone is also a telephone
– and yes, fewer freaks yelling at each other
The “freaks” don’t vanish offline. They just show up in different places, usually louder.

If anyone wants on or off the Ping Me When the Internet Goes Down pinglist, kindly FReepmail me. Thanks!
I wouldn't mind all of social media collapsing.
Even if it means mass suicides.
AI slop.
Let's see. No food, gasoline, electricity, communications (HAM being the exception), etc...
No thanks.
Oh- I knew. I didn’t know I knew, but I knew alright. I know a lot of things i know nothing about! LOL
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