[piker]

Though this outage may be more related to the copy.fail upgrade cycle, it reminds me of a thought I've had recently in respect of agents.

In the UK they have this issue called "TV pickup" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup). TV pickup is where everyone in the UK watching a popular TV show gets up to boil a high-powered tea kettle at the same time on an ad break. This causes a temporary surge in electricity demand and leads to real outages. It was a mystery at first but now is accounted for.

I suspect the global internet is facing an "agent pickup" problem where significant changes (e.g., releases of new frontier models or new package versions) puts unpredictable pressure on arbitrary infrastructure as millions of distributed agents act to address the change simultaneously.

[ImJasonH]

In the US we have the Super Bowl Flush: https://medium.com/nycwater/the-big-flush-on-super-bowl-sund...

[tgv]

It's literally the plot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flushed_Away

[lproven]

Watched that just a month or 2 ago with my 6YO. It's great, a very underrated film.

But it's not set during the Superb Owl flush isn't because the film is set in London, and most Londoners do not watch American football.

[tharmas]

Half time break for Coronation Street in the UK saw a power surge due to people putting the kettle on.

[_DeadFred_]

It appears to be a pro-Islamic Republic of Iran DDoS crew

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47975729

[kurlberg]

I had the same impulse (or at least copy.fail inducing many to upgrade at the same time.) However, it might be a "pro-Iran hacktivist group" according to

https://www.theregister.com/2026/05/01/canonical_confirms_ub...

"Canonical says its web infrastructure is under attack after a pro-Iran hacktivist group instructed its members to target the open source giant."

Perhaps more to do with extortion rather than activism. (I have no idea how accurate theregister is on this story.)

[Yoric]

Well, that and the rush to upgrade for copy.fail.

Has Ubuntu published patches yet?

[jamessb]

Yes, but I can currently only load the page about them via the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20260430191621/https://ubuntu.co...

[alecdw]

Patch published to disable the affected module. No patch for the module itself yet.

[sylware]

That let me think: I think I have never compiled af_alg in any of my linux kernels.

Now, I worry about the linux user mount namespace code... because I run the steam client which valve forces people to have in their kernel because they don't want/know how to craft "correct" ELF64 binaries, namely "-static-libgcc -static-libstdc++" compiling/linking options, maximizing static linking refactoring a bit source code with the pre-processor to avoid symbol collisions.

[sig-11]

We're at the stage where we blame AI for anything as a first reaction?

(Love the tv pickup story. I also thought of that, in other situations)

[Hnrobert42]

Indeed. It is far more likely to be the copyfail issue.

[piker]

I wasn't blaming this issue on that in particular, just making an more general observation in line with the post. I'll make that clearer.

[linker3000]

> leads to real outages.

Um, no.

I daresay you could find the odd example, as for any grid in a stressed situation, but it's not like we turn to each other every week in the dark and say "Oh, it must be half time at the Manchester United match".