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ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

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Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#391

Post by microtherion »

ideophobia wrote: post #148

Considering the FBI recently foiled a plot by a group who was planning to "take out" parts of the energy grid, it seems likely from my experience that this is another set of people executing a similar plan targeting telecoms. I imagine there is a high probability of more incidents like this happening between now and the inauguration, meant to target various infrastructure and "big government" components throughout th…

> This attack screams anti-government militia with it's technique

The target and the means (RV stuffed with explosives) would sort of fit the pattern. Broadcasting an advance warning would be rather atypical for US right wing (or islamic, for that matter) terrorists, though, and rigging up a speaker that actually works would stretch the technical abilities of a typical US militia group.

The groups who did operate that way (weather people, IRA, RAF, etc) are not presently active in the US (unless some snowbird weather people decided to come out of retirement).

If the rumors of this being a suicide bombing pan out, a single disgruntled person with some technical skill probably would have the financial and technical means to carry this out, and a company like AT&T probably enrages thousands of technical people a year for various reasons — power laws would suggest that occasionally one of them might become enraged to the point of terrorism.

Or, for wilder speculation, maybe some foreign state level actor has an interest in causing extra chaos? With leadership of various security services in near constant turmoil, and new appointees being installed primarily with partisan domestic objectives, now is as good a time to carry out such an act as any.

It's probably best not to jump to conclusions, and be wary of any authorities looking to take this incident as a pretext to expand any of their ample existing powers.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#392

Post by throwaway743 »

joshuakelly wrote: post #22

This article doesn't make this so explicit, but ATT infrastructure appears to be the intentional target of the bombing. You can see the building in the helicopter shot at the top of the NYTimes article on the story: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/us/nashville-explosion.ht... Obviously a telecommunications/switch hub, with it being a large windowless building in a downtown core. The other thing that's particularly…

Watch it be anti-5G related... oh boy...

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#393

Post by harperlee »

rorykoehler wrote: post #308
gizmo686 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending a warning before a bombing isn't that uncommon. It's less common (although not entirely unheard of) if the bombing is a terrorist attack. But if, as you suggest, that target is infrastructure, the only real reason to not give a warning is tactical. WIthout knowing who is responsible for it, it is possible they wanted to inflict whatever damage they had in mind, without causing any loss of life or human injuri…

The IRA nearly always sent warnings in the 90s. Usually by calling a radio station with a code word.

Same with ETA in Spain.

> It's less common (although not entirely unheard of) if the bombing is a terrorist attack. But if, as you suggest, that target is infrastructure

A terrorist attack’s first objective is to cause terror, not to kill people. Thus warning in advance is also effective to instill terror. And separating terrorism from bombing infrastructure is a weird dichotomy...

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#394

Post by jlokier »

monoideism wrote: post #319
gxnxcxcx wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once an open platform becomes crowded enough, downvoting without further interaction to show disagreement is fully expected. It's unhealthy because it turns discourse into a popularity contest, but that's the world we live in. Maybe your opinion is just a tad less popular than what you expect it to be.

> Maybe your opinion is just a tad less popular than what you expect it to be. Perhaps you didn't read all of my comment. I said I end up with 10-20 upvotes. I also mentioned that these are opinions that HN as a whole finds popular. It's the discrepancy between the initial voting within the first few minutes and the later voting that is strange. And it's always an initial 2-3 immediate downvotes, followed by dozens o…

> It's the discrepancy between the initial voting within the first few minutes and the later voting that is strange. And it's always an initial 2-3 immediate downvotes, followed by dozens of upvotes.

There's no need to invoke a "cabal" theory because it's not odd, it's a natural and expected artefact of the system dynamics.

First you get downvoted because someone didn't like your comment. Or even by accident, mis-clicking the wrong arrow.

Probably something about your comment is seen as downvote-worthy by some people but not most.

After some time, your comment is seen greyed out because of the downvote(s); just 1 downvote is enough for this.

But your comment isn't that bad, there are mixed reactions. So people seeing it greyed out think "that doesn't deserve a downvote" and give it a compensatory upvote to remove the grey.

Those upvoters don't see the effect of each other's upvotes for a while because of the time between loading a page of comments and reading it, so multiple compensatory upvotes take place even though just 1-2 would be enough. And they can't react to the grey as early as the downvote(s) for the same reason.

The viewing figures go through an exponential rise phase, and if your first downvote(s) and subsequent trickle of downvote(s), and compensate-for-grey-because-it-wasn't-that-bad upvote(s) all fall on the exponential rise, you see the effect you've described: A small number of downvotes early followed by a lot more upvotes after a time delay.

If your comment elicits enough mixed responses from different people, it will still get a trickle of downvotes while the viewing figures are high. But you can't see downvotes easily while there are a burst of upvotes. So in this case, you see a small number of initial downvote(s), a larger number of upvotes, followed by a small number of downvotes again as the compensatory-upvote burst comes to an end.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#395

Post by lumberingjack »

rorykoehler wrote: post #308
gizmo686 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending a warning before a bombing isn't that uncommon. It's less common (although not entirely unheard of) if the bombing is a terrorist attack. But if, as you suggest, that target is infrastructure, the only real reason to not give a warning is tactical. WIthout knowing who is responsible for it, it is possible they wanted to inflict whatever damage they had in mind, without causing any loss of life or human injuri…

The IRA nearly always sent warnings in the 90s. Usually by calling a radio station with a code word.

This

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#396

Post by capableweb »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #379
gizmo686 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sending a warning before a bombing isn't that uncommon. It's less common (although not entirely unheard of) if the bombing is a terrorist attack. But if, as you suggest, that target is infrastructure, the only real reason to not give a warning is tactical. WIthout knowing who is responsible for it, it is possible they wanted to inflict whatever damage they had in mind, without causing any loss of life or human injuri…

Targeting infrastructure can be terrorism as well, it does not require aiming at killing people. Terrorism is unlawfully using violence, especially against civilians, to achieve a political aim.

> Terrorism is unlawfully using violence, especially against civilians, to achieve a political aim.

Important to note that there is not one single definition of "terrorism" that everyone agrees on. For some, "terrorism" is a label assigned to your opposing groups, for others it's about violence for political or religious purposes. If it's from another nation-state, it's usually not labeled terrorism, even if it's against civilians for political/religious purposes. Some groups are labeled "terrorists" even without any recorded history of violence, and so on.

I'm not disagreeing with you, just adding that what "terrorism" is, is not as black-and-white as you put it.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#397

Post by notsureaboutpg »

harperlee wrote: post #393
rorykoehler wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IRA nearly always sent warnings in the 90s. Usually by calling a radio station with a code word.

Same with ETA in Spain. > It's less common (although not entirely unheard of) if the bombing is a terrorist attack. But if, as you suggest, that target is infrastructure A terrorist attack’s first objective is to cause terror, not to kill people. Thus warning in advance is also effective to instill terror. And separating terrorism from bombing infrastructure is a weird dichotomy...

What about when countries bomb each other's infrastructure during war? That both causes terror in the populace and achieves a strategic objective...

If causing terror were a hallmark of a terrorist attack, wouldn't every attack be a terror attack (even, for example, mass school shootings or shootings like the Las Vegas shooting, etc.)

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#398

Post by whimsicalism »

happymellon wrote: post #310
cozzyd wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Destroying property for political reasons is still terrorism (like blowing up a parking lot of SUVs).

Destroying property for political reasons is not terrorism. You have to incite terror, if civilians are not scared then it isn't terrorism it is vandalism.

Your syllogism is resting on an unstated argument about what frightens civilians that you haven't justified.

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#399

Post by capitol_ »

lovetocode wrote: post #390
fibers wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you look at the map on the opposite side of the street/block its filled with random pubs/liquor stores/restaurants. do you really think the target was random restaurants?

I’d like to play the devil’s advocate. The restaurant industry took a big hit this year due to COVID. The motivation is there.

You mean that it's insurance fraud?

Wouldn't it be more effective to burn the restaurant down if you wanted to do that?

Re: ATT services down due to bombing in Nashville

#400

Post by cowsandmilk »

sneak wrote: post #311
ideophobia wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely my opinion and speculation here, but I'd say the things that stick out to me are the timing and avoidance of random casualties for one. This is a hallmark used by the IRA and the ETA in Spain to inflict damage upon the government without damaging the people, so to speak. The use of an RV also stands out to me, I don't recall many VBIEDs associated with foreign terrorists using that type of vehicle in the US, w…

I don't think the IRA counts as "anti-government" simply because they are anti- that -government. They are also not a "militia" as I understand the term. Why would you follow up "it screams" with "hard to say anything definitive"? Those seem quite contradictory to me.

Why do you feel the ira is not a militia? All of its modern forms (there have been splits) are armies of nonprofesssional soldiers.
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