Optus Outage

[taztiger4]

What a disaster & I beleive there will be more to come in future years.

On a side note, I have a concern around tech in vehicles following an incident with my own 6 year old car.

Driving home a couple of weeks ago, a warning light appeared on the dash that mentioned Power Steering fault, all appeared normal so I continued on.

When I got home I turned sharp right to enter my driveway & nearly didnt make it !, I had normal 1.5 turns of steering wheel to left but only 1/2 turn to the right !

I tried this numerous times whilst car was stationary with same result .

I went inside & tried google mechanic with no joy.

Went back out , restarted car & fault cleared and steering normal !

 

[TigerForce]

What a disaster & I beleive there will be more to come in future years.

On a side note, I have a concern around tech in vehicles following an incident with my own 6 year old car.

Driving home a couple of weeks ago, a warning light appeared on the dash that mentioned Power Steering fault, all appeared normal so I continued on.

When I got home I turned sharp right to enter my driveway & nearly didnt make it !, I had normal 1.5 turns of steering wheel to left but only 1/2 turn to the right !

I tried this numerous times whilst car was stationary with same result .

I went inside & tried google mechanic with no joy.

Went back out , restarted car & fault cleared and steering normal !

Yeah i still can't get on. Just logged in via phone. What a bunch of idiots these telcos are. Media now assuming it was a planned outage gone wrong.

 

[Tigers of Old]

i wonder what has caused it? Just shows how fragile the whole system is.

 

[taztiger4]

I am assuming the activity on here is slow today beacuse of the outage, or maybe beacuse Spook was up all night watching the cricket

The last post on the 2023 Phantom draft was nearly 2 hours ago

 

[Baloo]

Surprised it's an issue really. Most Australians have had 5G chip implants which are used by Bill Gates

 

[TigerForce]

What a disaster & I beleive there will be more to come in future years.

On a side note, I have a concern around tech in vehicles following an incident with my own 6 year old car.

Driving home a couple of weeks ago, a warning light appeared on the dash that mentioned Power Steering fault, all appeared normal so I continued on.

When I got home I turned sharp right to enter my driveway & nearly didnt make it !, I had normal 1.5 turns of steering wheel to left but only 1/2 turn to the right !

I tried this numerous times whilst car was stationary with same result .

I went inside & tried google mechanic with no joy.

Went back out , restarted car & fault cleared and steering normal !

That's a real worry taz. I reckon a lot of new cars are overcooked with technology. Can't stop remembering that story I heard about a lady nearly crashing on a highway on a windy night when leaves covered the brake sensors of her car warning her that she was heading towards hitting a car In front which wasn't the case and making her come to an automatic stop.

 

[taztiger4]

That's a real worry taz. I reckon a lot of new cars are overcooked with technology. Can't stop remembering that story I heard about a lady nearly crashing on a highway on a windy night when leaves covered the brake sensors of her car warning her that she was heading towards hitting a car In front which wasn't the case and making her come to an automatic stop.

Yep, I have no doubt mine was some sort of sensor issue.

 

[tigersnake]

Major stuff up and inconvenience. But to me the issue, the worry, isn't that the network went down, the issue is how reliant we are on it. Any technology can and does break.

Any news on what the cause is?

 

[TigerForce]

Imagine if this happened yesterday with good ol' Metro not running

 

[Redford]

A lot of new tech in cars ranges from annoying to downright dangerous.

 

[mrposhman]

That's a real worry taz. I reckon a lot of new cars are overcooked with technology. Can't stop remembering that story I heard about a lady nearly crashing on a highway on a windy night when leaves covered the brake sensors of her car warning her that she was heading towards hitting a car In front which wasn't the case and making her come to an automatic stop.

I have similar things like this happen to me too. We all know when we approach a roundabout, how long we need to leave for the car coming round the roundabout, before you enter. We are all experienced enough to know the speed you need to take into this, but far too often my sensors believe that I will hit the car in front (which I won't) and it slams the brakes on.

The other concern I have (and 1 of the reasons I don't use the technology anyway) is with my cruise control, I have that smart cruise control system that matches the speed of the car infront and then maintains the speed of that car, using cameras essentially at the top of your windscreen. If its a cold day and we get in and the windscreen steams up, or on days when the rain is particularly heavy, the cameras turn off as the vision is blurred, so bearing in mind I assume this technology is used in self driving cars, how is this safe? The technology actually used to drive the car just turns itself off if visibility is bad? Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen and pretty much the reason I'd never trust a self driving car.

 

[year of the tiger]

Yep, I have no doubt mine was some sort of sensor issue.

yeah I have experienced that many times at the pub - kept telling my wife my sensor kept malfunctioning which stopped me finding the door - bloody 5G implants.

Surprised it's an issue really. Most Australians have had 5G chip implants which are used by Bill Gates

Love to get hold of the program that drives all those implants - I would schedule that everyone would stop what they were doing and at 3pm on the dot, break out into song singing ‘I want to break free’ (Queen) as a celebration of the capitalist world we live in.

 

[TigerForce]

I have similar things like this happen to me too. We all know when we approach a roundabout, how long we need to leave for the car coming round the roundabout, before you enter. We are all experienced enough to know the speed you need to take into this, but far too often my sensors believe that I will hit the car in front (which I won't) and it slams the brakes on.

The other concern I have (and 1 of the reasons I don't use the technology anyway) is with my cruise control, I have that smart cruise control system that matches the speed of the car infront and then maintains the speed of that car, using cameras essentially at the top of your windscreen. If its a cold day and we get in and the windscreen steams up, or on days when the rain is particularly heavy, the cameras turn off as the vision is blurred, so bearing in mind I assume this technology is used in self driving cars, how is this safe? The technology actually used to drive the car just turns itself off if visibility is bad? Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen and pretty much the reason I'd never trust a self driving car.

Exactly right posh. I still drive a 2003 Corolla which has done a brilliant job in 20 years, but as it's coming to an end, I'm going to look for a new car with less of this tech sh!t. We still need to do manual things. Listening/watching my sister continually using the GPS in her pork-arse 4WD makes me laugh on how wrong the directions continue to be.

 

[TigerForce]

Floptus says it's "slowly returning".....I'm logged on the laptop now. "Sorry" instead of "yes".....

Let's hope some incoming thunderstorms don't stuff things up again.

 

[Panthera Tigris]

i wonder what has caused it? Just shows how fragile the whole system is.

Compared to most technology sceptics, I'm on the younger side. Cusp of gen X and millenial/gen Y. Albeit, I grew up partly raised by depression/WWII generation grandparents. So perhaps developed a bit of a different general outlook to many of my similarly aged peers.

Since studying tech classes in high school, I've always been a sceptic as to the immense hidden underlying cost our increasingly tech dependent society is building in, with every layer of complexity. Every piece of technology we come to depend on, in an act of extreme hubris, people accept it unquestionably as an essential building block of our society, that we can't do without. But with every layer comes yet another level of complexity and fragility, like a precarious playing card tower.

As a practical hypothetical example, I always go back to the 1859 solar storm. Society was still very much analogue. The only piece of relatively sophisticated telecommunications technology of the time was the telegraph system, which was significantly disrupted. But generally life went on. Crops still grew and went to market, horses and carts still worked, steam engines went about their industrial business. The same event today would render pretty much every technological system we rely on to keep society running, crippled.

People would (in the western world in particular where pampered mental fragility, lacking any real resilience seems to dominate the general psyche) turn into marauding savages, eating each other within a couple of weeks at most.

 

[Ian4]

As a practical hypothetical example, I always go back to the 1859 solar storm. Society was still very much analogue. The only piece of relatively sophisticated telecommunications technology of the time was the telegraph system, which was significantly disrupted. But generally life went on.

We had the southern lights hitting Melbourne on Monday morning. As beautiful as it looks, this is actually really bad. Must have been a really big solar storm. We are in the Solar Maximum at the moment which is the most dangerous time of the Sun's cycle. a repeat of the Carrington event will be disastrous in today's society.

If I were ever gonna plan for a doomsday event, this would be the one. It will happen one day (just hopefully not in our lifetime).

Surprised it's an issue really. Most Australians have had 5G chip implants which are used by Bill Gates

Cookers that are Optus customers probably got their knickers in a knot today by thinking today could be the day the vaxxed dropped dead due to Bill Gates depopulation and the Great Reset.

 

[Panthera Tigris]

Exactly right posh. I still drive a 2003 Corolla which has done a brilliant job in 20 years, but as it's coming to an end, I'm going to look for a new car with less of this tech sh!t. We still need to do manual things. Listening/watching my sister continually using the GPS in her pork-arse 4WD makes me laugh on how wrong the directions continue to be.

Been looking myself with similar in mind. My little old Hyundai Getz is getting towards the end of it's life. Think I might look to pick up a 7-8 YO Suzuki Swift or similar for that reason (if I can find one with not too many kms on it). Something, basic, reliable, cheap to run and easy to service with not too much sophistication.

 

[TT33]

I keep getting messages from various companies asking me to change to "online & email" notifications. I either ignore them or politely tell them -- no thanks, I'll stick with the old-fashioned paper notices & invoices thanks.

3 reasons really.
1. I find the paper ones help me track of what has to be paid & when.
2. Email invoices can very easily finish up in the spam or junk mail files
3. Events just like what we're experiencing today.

I now have internet but, my landline phone & email is still kaput.

 

[Redford]

There is a burgeoning market at the moment for 3-5 year old low klm cars that have all the tech you really want in a car eg Apple CarPlay, blind spot sensors, front and rear cameras, HUD etc but not the insanely dangerous and annoying *smile* in new cars like auto braking, incessant speed limit chimes etc etc.

Speaking of the latter, I don’t have a Kia but apparently Kia Australia are bring inundated by buyers wanting their dealers to switch off the horrendous speed chime that comes on the moment you’re 1 kph over the speed limit. You can switch the feature off, but it keeps coming back on. Kia Australia is asking Headquarters to stop producing cars with this teeth grating feature and wanting them to allow and fund Australian dealers to change the OBD settings, such is the outcry. Good luck with that.

I was in a friend’s new Sportage a few 2weeks ago and it was utterly infuriating.

 

[TigerForce]

Been looking myself with similar in mind. My little old Hyundai Getz is getting towards the end of it's life. Think I might look to pick up a 7-8 YO Suzuki Swift or similar for that reason (if I can find one with not too many kms on it). Something, basic, reliable, cheap to run and easy to service with not too much sophistication.

Good logic PT. Other thing is you won't have to get grumpy (like I do) if a little scratch goes on it compared to seeing it just when you buy a shiny new car.