Hacker News

76 points by speckx 3 hours ago | 11 comments

andrewrn 38 minutes ago

I work on autonomous submarines that image the seafloor, and let me tell you it is very hard to engineer deep ocean systems. Just operationally, testing things in rolling waves is a brutal job. Arguably at parity with space as an engineering design environment.

EuanReid 43 seconds ago

I forget who said it, but there's a quote about how _of course_ we know more about space than the bottom of the ocean - in space we only have to deal with one atmosphere.

konschubert 4 minutes ago

Ah, the “unusually unlucky” cables serving Taiwan and in the Baltics.

Like statistically impossibly unlucky.

alexpotato 2 hours ago

I worked for an L1 blockchain for a couple years and while the term "decentralized" is bandied about a bit too much, reading articles like this does underscore how vulnerable global traffic is.

e.g. some EVM chains have a majority of "stake" in either one country or several adjacent countries (particularly in Asia). A cable cut there, which the article points out has happened, can lead to the blockchain getting cut off or even halting.

scottyah 2 hours ago

I think people conflate decentralization with redundancy or resilience. IMO it just means you have multiple points of failure instead of one.

hylaride 2 hours ago

I think the issue is that centralization is more economical due to scale, but that assumes all else (geopolitics or other black swan events) don't impact things.

We saw a similar thing with supply chains and chip suppliers.

embedding-shape 37 minutes ago

> reading articles like this does underscore how vulnerable global traffic is.

Then also remember that the internet haven't seen a global outage since forever, worst parts have been when some submarine cables break and traffic has to route around it, but never has the entire thing fully went down. Considering how most of it is built with bandaids, silver-tape and WD40, it's surprising it is as resilient as it is.

wuliwong 23 minutes ago

Underwater cables have been one of the more awe inspiring things for me. I know nothing about them but they seem SO crazy and yet we have them running all across the oceans. .·°՞( ̑ ᗜ ̑ )՞°·.

jgrahamc 30 minutes ago

I have been trying, and failing, to buy a cross section of a submarine cable. I'd love one as an art piece for my house.

JMiao 28 minutes ago

who have you asked?

ortusdux 2 hours ago

Reminds me of the Tom Scott video on the cable singe that leverages the moiré effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d99_h30swtM