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ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

tennessean.com

101–110 of 517 posts

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were gunshots sounds but we're not sure if it was audio from the RV or actual gun shots

This makes for such a fascinating story. Supervillain type stuff. Except fortunately in this case a supervillian with some sort of code of ethics.

Let's not idolize crazy. Fascinating, yes. But supervillains have redeeming qualities. There's nothing redeeming about a car bomb.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#102
post #99

> I think bombers broadcasting warning messages is somewhat more common with certain types of political violence. I know weather underground bombings tried to choose times for their bombings when buildings would not be inhabited, not always successfully. Just wanted to point out that dressing things up as "political violence" is a disservice; violence performed in the commision of promoting an ideology is terrorism.…

Your definition is not quite accurate. Some forms of violence performed to promote an ideology are called war.

In fact, war is by far the most common, and the most destructive form of 'violence used to promote an ideology'.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#103
post #25
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was the first person in my town to get residential ISDN back in ~1996. I was a fledgling admin on the network team and work paid for it. It took me almost three months to help the local telco get it up and running, but we could never get 64kbps on the data channels because of some weird issue with the switch. (Still beat the hell out of dial up) I think your comment is the first time I’ve read or thought about the…

Tragically there was nothing simple about ISDN. A customer would have to know their switch type at the CO and there were a number of other things that could break it. At least with a T1/DS1 you only had to worry about SF/ESF, B8ZS/AMI and number of channels.

> Tragically there was nothing simple about ISDN

I’ve been working with some old telco equipment as part of a handful of projects and lord, has this hit me. Particularly some old PRI terminals I have are throwing me around left and right.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#104
post #51

Anti-5G crazies? T-Mobile partisans?

;)

> Comcast reminded Nashville residents Friday that the public Xfinity WiFi hotspots throughout the potentially impacted areas are available for anyone to use, including non-Xfinity customers, free of charge.

AT&T must have broken the NAP with Comcast

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#105
post #99

> I think bombers broadcasting warning messages is somewhat more common with certain types of political violence. I know weather underground bombings tried to choose times for their bombings when buildings would not be inhabited, not always successfully. Just wanted to point out that dressing things up as "political violence" is a disservice; violence performed in the commision of promoting an ideology is terrorism.…

> violence performed in the commision of promoting an ideology is terrorism.

Was the invasion of Iraq terrorism? What about the Boston tea party?

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#106
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AT&T says that their services went down along with the gas & power in the area, as a side effect: the gas shutoff cut off their backup generators. That doesn't sound all that targeted.

While that's true, I think two factors strongly indicate that this was targeted at the ATT building. The first observation is, of course, that the ATT building was the closest to the explosion. A direct witness to the RV broadcasting the evacuation message, who lives across the street, describes this fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iag6cTWpgq8 . The second observation is the evacuation message itself. How often…

> How often do we hear about bombings where the bombers broadcast an evacuation message on a loudspeaker for 15 minutes prior to the explosion?

This is how the Provisional Irish Republican Army operated, at least some of the time. For instance they telephoned in warnings 90 minutes before the 1996 Manchester bombing (1500 kg bomb, 212 injuries and no fatalities.) I've read somewhere they had established codewords with British authorities so those authorities knew which warnings to take seriously.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could just be good planning if they knew that was procedure after an explosion.

It could be interesting for regulators to see if anyone "miraculously" managed to make a lot of money from/during this incident, because some people do have the resources to pull something like this off and make a profit from it. But I think it's rather unlikely. Aside from that, I seriously doubt that just disruption of AT&T services was the objective here. Considering that this appears to have been a rather serious…

I agree unlikely but that same thing crossed my mind, an oceans 11, Italian job plot, knock out AT&T and the bank alarms go out ? I doubt it but come Monday Morning if a bunch of bank vaults in the area are cleaned out, it would be a pretty amazing heist plot for sure. But they would have to have some inside info because most C.O.'s have diesel generators so if the AT&T C.O. there depended on Natural gas, someone would have to know that. Also, most of them have 4 - 8 hours of battery so the AT&T services went about that long after. I am sure the cops are standing guard in front of the banks right now I would guess.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That voice announcing evacuation sounds very professional, not like a computer synthesized voice... I wonder if they will try to trace that.

If they do, it will be a case of no good deed going unpunished.

It's a good deed that they broadcast this message?

Why a rational human would broadcast this message-

a) The penalties if there were deaths would be much, much more severe. The manpower involved in the hunt would be exponentially larger.

b) They have some other goal that would be sabotaged if there were deaths.

c) They have morality and can rationalize bombing buildings, but not killing people.

This isn't a "good deed". It's a presumably rational person playing the situation.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#109

Looks like somebody didn't like Wonder Woman 1984. I think folks on social media are overthinking the motive. A lot of people (most?) hate telecoms and big tech companies (including their employees and contractors) and someone decided to stick it to one. There are so many reasons for this, some logical and valid and some conspiratorial nonsense. In the end, it all boils down to the fact that living under the watch of…

Yeah, I fully expect more incidences like this to happen all over the world. The incentives, socioeconomic backdrop, technical feasibility, and widely accessible tech are all enablers.

The cognitive dissonance and total denial is off the charts with telecom and tech leaders who don't realize (or care) that their massive growth has played a large role in global civil unrest. The general public is terrified and angry at the rapidly shifting technological landscape and the changes in social norms that come with it. Trust in technology is at a low, and for good reason.

We have titanic businesses with almost superhuman like abilities to get under our skin at an algorithmic level. Tech companies can literally, for all intents and purposes, make people disappear from the internet. A small group of companies can casually destroy your life with a small code change and you wouldn't even know it. Everyone's data is being sold, stolen, sold on the black market, and intercepted by governments both local and foreign. An internet outage now means that your thermostat or fridge could go out and you're going to spend the night cold.

I mean, there's a reason that Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the most hyped games of the last 5 years. The anxiety resonates. Sometimes I wonder if there are people in tech/cable who grew up reading Neuromancer or Snow Crash and thought "Cool! Let's make it happen!"

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#110

Reportedly, there was a visible countdown timer on the vehicle that exploded, and an audible warning played for 15-20 minutes prior to the blast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nygTJeu9fU

That voice announcing evacuation sounds very professional, not like a computer synthesized voice... I wonder if they will try to trace that.

Many of the current neural net voice synthesis engines are fantastic and sound extremely real. Amazon Polly for instance. I'd punch in the phrase and do some comparisons, but given the attention those logs will certainly get maybe I won't.
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