The asymmetry between securing systems and attacking them will never be solved by a piece of software; especially in an increasingly connected world. The same asymmetry exists in terms of the risks and responsibility of the providers (see “shared responsibility model”). This lack of symmetry and risk transfer is why the problems will persist.
Increased system complexity increases volatility. In my opinion, we ain’t seen nothin yet…
Why? I can’t imagine needing an atlas. Then again I’m in a rural area. I already know all the ways to get in and out of our valley including the cross country horseback only ones.
So true, when it comes to malice red team only has to find one mistake.
My parents still use these to plan trips although they’ve very recently started using GPS for traveling more. The idea I think @Bmosbacker has is if you’re on a trip and are a few hours away from home where you don’t know the roads and suddenly can’t use GPS. Also, in some areas of the US still don’t have reliable cellular service especially in the places where you would not want to get lost.
Exactly. Given recent events and what potentially lies on the horizon, it seems prudent to have the wherewithal to get around and provide for oneself and one’s family without complete dependence on digital technologies. I have family members scattered across the country. In a prolonged infrastructure disruption, I may want to travel to where they are to provide assistance or to get assistance. Without GPS or a physical map, that would be difficult. At least with a physical map, I can get where I need to go if required.
Looks like the 2025 version is cheaper (and newer), at least in the U.S. Rand McNally Large Scale Road Atlas 2025: Rand McNally: 9780528027598: Amazon.com: Books
I’m coming from a place where we regularly travel a couple of hours each way just to do grocery shopping. The only close family is in the town we do that shopping. There are few if any roads that aren’t well identified. Even traveling from Canada down to our home there are only 2 choices for how to get here. In our area, with 20+ years of living here we know all the roads through most of western Colorado. We never plan on cell service anywhere we travel.
Fair enough. There is only one group of family that is far enough away that we’d need a map to find them. It is highly unlikely that we would even consider traveling there in the event of a major disruption. They are several days drive away and we would not leave the animals and farm unprotected. Our “family” are the close friends here in town. Our roads haven’t changed since I was in high school. So no need for map or GPS.
If I had to change to Thomas Maps, I’d waste so much time, at first, trying to figure out where I was going, I’d never get there. 
I may be just a bit older than you, but I used maps for years to drive across country before GPS was available. I think, I can still read a map. Heck, I can even drive a stick shift. I like manual transmissions, except in a traffic jam. 
I still drive manual transmission. If I was in a busier city, I would probably want an automatic because manuals usually need a “first and a half gear” in stop and go traffic.
Edit: I learned how to drive manual with a 1966 Rambler Classic four-door sedan with a three on the column manual. Nowadays, that would be an antitheft device.
I remember the Arab oil embargo in 74. When gas stations did get a load of fuel, sales were frequently limited to 10 gallons, and lines of 50 to 100 cars were not unusual. I would expect fuel and food to be in short supply within days of a major disruption.
In cities yes. I remember the lines during the embargo as well. Fuel would be limited to what was on hand when it happened. For us that varies a bit but the tractors, equipment and our trucks all take diesel so we have tank full. Then again we wouldn’t be trying to go anywhere so it might not matter much. Our biggest issue would be dog food. We use a 50lb bag a week feeding the sheep guardian dogs. But we normally have a 1-2 month supply on hand. Human food not as big an issue because we raise a lot of our own food.
In the U.K. we’ve accidentally tested this several times ourselves in the last decade, so we can say with confidence fuel is one of the first shortages (which then does affect food since supply chains struggle).
In the context of this specific thread though a fuel shortage doesn’t really matter - would your electronic computerised car even work (depends on the cyber issue) and where would you drive to if nothing was working (excluding family/friends of course).
One thing that I feel is missing from this thread (and a lot of public discourse) is that people could have died from this cyber incident. Yes, computers are affected, the costs globally could rise to billions of lost economic value, but computers do things for us. And some of those things are not meaningless capitalist tasks, they are vital services that allow us to serve humanity in ways far more efficient than could be done with pen and paper.
I’m sure you can all think of examples, but I’m going to offer up two real-life ones:
I’ve not been able to renew my prescriptions, as by coincidence I put the request in on Thursday. My surgery is fine, the pharmacist is fine, but something in the middle isn’t running and they can’t talk to each other. On Monday I will chase, and the time that a health care provider could’ve spent with someone else will instead be spent faxing a prescription for me.
In the last couple of months an NHS (UK national health service) network was hit by a ransomware attack, and one of the key services affected were blood labs. Tests couldn’t be done, illnesses couldn’t be diagnosed, blood couldn’t be distributed to hospitals, surgeries couldn’t go ahead. People’s lives could potentially be permanently altered as a result of a computer problem.
Ignoring the who and why’s of this, we absolutely should be building redundancies into our systems. Capitalism can’t serve us here - short-term profit generation will never allow for the building of and implementation of redundancies that may never be required.
As @chrisecurtis noted in their first post on this thread, for the U.K. this event has occurred at a very timely moment, where we’ve just in the last few weeks had a massive change in government, and the news the days before this event interrupted were of all the failings of the last government in handling the pandemic. Many of those failings can largely be chalked up to money and hubris: “Bad events are rare, we’ve conquered the world, let’s keep all this money and not spend it on emergency systems we will never need.” It’s almost like the country that brought the world the Titanic has learnt nothing 
And this is generally the problem in both public and private sectors. There were no votes in maintaining and regularly replacing large stocks of PPE for a pandemic scientists knew would come but was nowhere in the public’s mind. Just imagine the newspaper articles about all this equipment being thrown out, unused, every few years! Who would vote for a government that would raise taxes or cut frontline services elsewhere to build redundancy into systems that already work?
When looking for budget cuts something that no one will notice is clearly the cut a middle manager will offer.
These issues need to be considered national defence issues. In the UK they’re more important (in my opinion) than stockpiling nuclear weapons, although it doesn’t have to be either/or. It’s going to be expensive, but it’s also where wars will be fought.
I was just saying it is both a positive and a negative. Not casting any aspersions on any type of application.
Fuel is a consideration for datacentres where backup generators use fuel. This is a consideration because
Maybe the zeal to finally eliminate fax machines is misplaced, or at least still premature. This is a great example of faxes providing a critical fallback. Something needs to be there to provide redundancy, and it better be in place before they’re all yanked.
Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of faxing
Several years ago the FCC mandated that POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) lines be replaced with modern alternatives by 2022. So one of my last big projects before retiring was moving my company from copper analog lines to fiber.
I kept a handful of standalone analog lines, at that time, to support our remaining fax machines and suggested we move to an online fax service. By now I would think that very few traditional fax machines are still used by businesses in the US. YMMV
