[g-clef]

I'm going to regret this, I bet, but here we go: Many years ago I was the manager of the team inside NIH/CIT that ran both the border firewalls and the DNS servers in question (to be specific, at the time it was NIH/CIT/DNST/NEB/NSS). Obviously, since I'm not there anymore I don't have any special inside information, but given that the DNS servers were responding to TCP and not UDP during the outage, my bet would be a simple firewall screwup, rather than malice.

Stuff happens - maintenances have unintended consequences, people typo stuff, etc. Don't freak out about every event - save your powder for the real outrages (like 18F).

[bryancoxwell]

Editing to remove an unproductive comment.

[zmgsabst]

And you believe that DOGE employees are tweaking firewall rules at NIH IT?

[bryancoxwell]

Like the vast majority of Americans, I have no idea what DOGE is actually doing.

[brigandish]

Then why speculate when we have a real expert responding on the thread?

[bryancoxwell]

I’ve thought about it and you’re right, this was just confirmation bias on my part. There is in fact no evidence that DOGE is in any way involved. Apologies.

[brigandish]

I've popped back to this thread again (in the midst of another argument:) and noticed you've edited a preceding comment (perhaps unnecessarily but certainly magnanimously), which, along with this apology, I think, shows you in a good light and HN in general. Thank you, it's so good to see people being reasonable in amongst the tribalism.

[dcow]

This is exactly how the HN community responded to Twitter, too. The amount of baseless speculation paraded as fact is crazy for a supposedly rationalist community.

[nick__m]

HN is not rationalist community, there is a plurality of opinions and it is part of what make this site great.

Another important part is the excellent moderation that try to insure civil discussions.

[henryway]

18F?

[vaylian]

See https://18f.org/