Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms • Hacker News Board

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#51

Post by RossM » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 7:54 PM UTC

trafficlight wrote: post #45

patio11 wrote: post #24

Admin consoles: the soft underbelly of billion dollar software operations since... Seriously, though: you almost certainly have one if you run a software business. Client side SSH certificates are your friend. If you're not able to do that, because it is really annoying, separate it from the main app and lock it down as much as possible. (Separate authentication from the main site/app's authentication scheme. Lock do…

Take a look at Authy for a reasonably easy way to add two-factor auth to your normal SSH login. It's intended for website authentication, but there is a Github project for adding it to sshd. https://www.authy.com/ https://github.com/authy/authy-ssh

Alternatively, a solution using Google Authenticator.[1]

[1]: http://www.howtogeek.com/121650/how-to-secure-ssh-with-googl...

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#52

Post by flexxaeon » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 7:56 PM UTC

Thought "massive destruction" meant to the game infrastructure, or at least character data/inventory.

This is kinda funny.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#53

Post by dangrossman » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 7:57 PM UTC

waterlesscloud wrote: post #49

dangrossman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a historical event that affected millions and spawned research in at least 4 distinct fields. The wiki article cites several scholarly journals on top of BBC, Wired, Reuters, NPR and The Times. How much more notable could you want?

It was a short-lived bug in a video game. There were research proposals that never went anywhere because it was concluded that the model would be a poor match for the real world. Plenty of things happen every single day that affect millions and are covered in multiple world news sources. They don't have their own pages, so clearly that's not the standard.

> There were research proposals that never went anywhere

Multiple published research papers, not proposals. Over 600 Google Scholar results. It also made its way into several books.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#54

Post by bravoyankee » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 7:58 PM UTC

negamax wrote: post #9

2012 - End of World.. of Warcraft. Mayans knew this.

All joking aside, maybe this is what it's about?

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#55

Post by njharman » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 7:59 PM UTC

pooriaazimi wrote: post #43

bsphil wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what makes EVE so much more interesting to me. There's only one server. The monthly fee can be earned in-game. The economy is tied to actual dollars because it's so reliable. There have been plenty of universe-spanning conflicts that impact the entire game with genuine political drama, and the dev team steps back to let it unfold with minimal intervention.

Can someone explain what EVE is? And explain it like I don't know anything about it (and I don't). Wikipedia, etc. don't cut it and I still don't understand what EVE is and why people like it. Thanks a lot!

If you don't know what a MMO is then you need to back up and ask that question first.

Eve is an single "shard" MMO with a starship piloting theme. Similar in ways to Elite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_(video_game) The economy (and related such as production, resource ownership, politics, warfare) are, to an extent not found in most MMOS, player driven. That is what sets Eve apart.

People are a varied lot and thus like it for varied reasons. There are several ways to enjoy game.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#56

Post by patrickmay » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 7:59 PM UTC

There's more discussion and videos on ownedcore.com.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#57

Post by njharman » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 8:02 PM UTC

brador wrote: post #17

It's interesting to comprehend the amount of lives a hack like this will positively affect. How many will pick up a book, or go for a walk, now that they no longer have their go-to fix of virtual reality. How many WOW addicts will have time to think "never again" and follow through. Equivalent to all the cigarettes in the world vanishing for a few hours? Possibly. And equally as effective I say.

> How many will pick up a book, or go for a walk, now that they no longer have their go-to fix of virtual reality.

Statistically, Zero. Trust me, they are all madly typing on forums, mashing refresh, trying to find out / talking about what happened.

> How many WOW addicts will have time to think "never again" and follow through.

A few.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#58

Post by brown9-2 » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 8:04 PM UTC

jpxxx wrote: post #5

I think that there's something kind of fascinating and romantic about the idea that an entire world and the ongoing social affairs of thousands of people can fit on a single server blade in the middle of nowhere.

Neal Stephenson's "Reamde" had some very interesting takes on this topic.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#59

Post by Tooluka » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 8:05 PM UTC

pooriaazimi wrote: post #43

bsphil wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what makes EVE so much more interesting to me. There's only one server. The monthly fee can be earned in-game. The economy is tied to actual dollars because it's so reliable. There have been plenty of universe-spanning conflicts that impact the entire game with genuine political drama, and the dev team steps back to let it unfold with minimal intervention.

Can someone explain what EVE is? And explain it like I don't know anything about it (and I don't). Wikipedia, etc. don't cut it and I still don't understand what EVE is and why people like it. Thanks a lot!

EVE is a spreadsheets with a chat. Why people like it? Because everything else is so much simpler and dull (except elves in armored bikinis of course). It's like comparing Lego Mindstorms to a Barby game set. The latter is way more popular though :) , just like WoW and Lineage vs EVE.

Re: Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

#60

Post by klodolph » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 8:06 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #24

Admin consoles: the soft underbelly of billion dollar software operations since... Seriously, though: you almost certainly have one if you run a software business. Client side SSH certificates are your friend. If you're not able to do that, because it is really annoying, separate it from the main app and lock it down as much as possible. (Separate authentication from the main site/app's authentication scheme. Lock do…

There are a few scenarios in which client-side certificates just aren't good enough by themselves.

So you have folks administering the servers. A certain percentage of them need root access. One of them gets his certificate revoked and then laid off -- in that order -- but he already installed a back door account. Okay, so you're a good admin and you check the logs and make everyone use "sudo" for everything.

* But maybe it won't even show up in the logs. Maybe he was editing a file in sudo with vi and ran ":! bash". Okay, so you're a good admin and disabled that.

* Maybe he was editing crontab one day and added a one-shot script to create a nefarious account. Okay, you are a good admin and you have tripwires.

* Maybe he knows where your tripwires are. Do you honestly think you know every possible attack vector someone with legitimate sudo access could use?

It's really hard to stop an inside job. The principle of least privilege is a nice maxim, but there's a cost to figuring out exactly what the least privilege is, and there's a cost to giving someone too little privilege -- downtime when they can't fix something they're supposed to fix.