Thanks for the link.
I clicked it and was greeted with this. LOL!
"It seems the shiny new AI tech tool Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories (SMART) may have become Failed Airspace Routing Trajectories (FART)"
1 days ago [-]
frutiger 1 days ago [-]
"Frequency outage", I think that translates to radio communications not working, until "22 Zulu" aka 22:00 UTC, 5 PM ET.
lenerdenator 1 days ago [-]
How does one prevent transmission on a frequency in an area the size of the continental US?
It's radio. Either you jam it or it works. That's the selling point.
NordSteve 1 days ago [-]
It's not the transmitting per-se. The network that gives controllers access to the en route radio system isn't letting them connect to the radios.
I can easily imagine a batch job on a mainframe that sends every hour some important data by mail and that some logic apps checks that mailbox to propagate the data but now that mails have been delayed +12hours it's going haywire
cucumber3732842 24 hours ago [-]
And that sort of architecture is normally not a problem (finance has all sorts of stuff like that)... but national ATC systems are not the kind of situation were some SRE can just side load the file while keeping their job.
PsycorAI 1 days ago [-]
good question
datas 1 days ago [-]
What are all the possible reasons to do this?
Has this ever happened?
tencentshill 1 days ago [-]
A credible threat from Iran? More likely a technical issue.
previous time it happened right before chinese baloon made the news
it may be something similar - remove all random, but controllable sources of radar return for military to start scanning
lobf 1 days ago [-]
It happened on 9/11, didn’t it?
stmw 1 days ago [-]
yes, 9/11
Jtsummers 1 days ago [-]
And in 2023, which was more similar to this. This is a departure stop, planes in the air are still heading towards their destinations. This is not the same as 9/11 where flights were redirected to their nearest airports for immediate landings.
If you refresh a few times it'll show the advisories.
throwaway81523 1 days ago [-]
"If builders built houses the way programmers built programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization" -- Gerald Weinberg.
Looks like the woodpecker has arrived.
elendilm 1 days ago [-]
I disagree vehemently that programmers build lousy programs. Many of us do quite the contrary.
But this is hilarious, and hence I am upvoting.
dijit 24 hours ago [-]
We’re in the “wooden dwellings” era of software.
Some cathederals are built, over time, by craftsmen who do work that spans decades.
However, very few of us are doing that. Most people are just throwing up a shack to live in.
elendilm 15 hours ago [-]
"Many of us", not "most of us".
Building wooden dwellings is comparatively easy and straightforward.
It is the lack of a tangible result that gives the insecurity that programmers feel when compared to constructed buildings.
The epic is not visible to the uninitiated when it comes to programming whereas with construction it is visible to the naked eye for everyone.
It is easy to see and marvel at a cathedral whereas most don't have the skill required to marvel at the architecture or the codebase of an elegantly designed distributed system.
To be blunt, building a wooden shack is physically easy. Building even a basic program requires a level of abstract mental discipline that most people simply do not possess.
So the "most people" you mentioned who are throwing up a shack to live in, I admire them for that.
jeffybefffy519 4 hours ago [-]
This reads like a trump twitter post... so it probably is via him
yanhangyhy 19 hours ago [-]
To stop Jesen flying to China?
wewewedxfgdf 16 hours ago [-]
The entire USA needs the three finger salute.
cuttysnark 11 hours ago [-]
Why stop there? Why not appeal to the Jedi Council? Or send a wire to the Avengers?
These of course are all alternate plans if Batman and Spiderman aren’t available.
roosterIllusi0n 1 hours ago [-]
Lets see that source code. I don't know how the trump admin is going to cover this one up. The source code is basically self documenting. They can't cover up the choices they made.
If they used AI to vibe code and vibe validate, this will be a criminal situation.FAA regulated code has to follow a structured development, testing, and release process with sign offs by qualified people with specifically roles at different steps.
You can't replace the human checks with AI. AI is an averaging machine that averages the data it was trained on. It gives average answers while brute forcing away problems until the solution passes a test that was slop coded the same way.
I look forward to the congressional investigations when these people try to say SI instead of AI. That SI moniker is only used by unqualified people in the trump admin or corrupt businesses. The source code is not going to lie, these people likely don't understand what they deployed.
pstuart 1 days ago [-]
I guess some of their floppy drives must have given out.
> I guess some of their floppy drives must have given out.
More likely: the reengineered system has a serious bug.
deadbabe 1 days ago [-]
This has been a horrible week for AI: Jensen resigned, Microsoft Outage, now FAA outage from new AI system.
The reason is clear: all this points to the ANT ipo next week, people want to pop the AI bubble.
vconnor 17 hours ago [-]
Not one of these things has affected me one iota. YMMV.
afavour 1 days ago [-]
1. There’s no proof yet that this is AI related
2. The idea that someone would ground all air traffic in order to disrupt Anthropic’s IPO is an absolutely wild conspiracy theory with no basis in reality
deadbabe 23 hours ago [-]
1. Everything is AI related now, there are no people hidden away somewhere secretly working on technical things without AI assistance.
2. Not wild at all. People have vested interested in creating fear around AI.
afavour 19 hours ago [-]
1. There are plenty of systems in existence that haven’t been touched or maintained by AI. Including creaky old air traffic control systems.
2. Yes, it’s a wild and ridiculous theory. The sheer number of people that would be required in order to pull it off would guarantee that it leaks. It would be a verifiably insane thing to do if you were trying to tank the Anthropic IPO.
syngrog66 22 hours ago [-]
1. I'm not. therefore this point refuted :-)
mcdonje 1 days ago [-]
What a cope. Per occam's razor, the most likely cause is putting hallucinations on the critical path. But sure, peddle a conspiracy theory.
Rendered at 00:24:38 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
"It seems the shiny new AI tech tool Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories (SMART) may have become Failed Airspace Routing Trajectories (FART)"
It's radio. Either you jam it or it works. That's the selling point.
Has this ever happened?
Happened in 2023 https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-notam-statement
Must I, even say their name.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/11/faa-orders-airlines-to-pause...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_FAA_system_outage
it may be something similar - remove all random, but controllable sources of radar return for military to start scanning
Looks like the woodpecker has arrived.
But this is hilarious, and hence I am upvoting.
Some cathederals are built, over time, by craftsmen who do work that spans decades.
However, very few of us are doing that. Most people are just throwing up a shack to live in.
Building wooden dwellings is comparatively easy and straightforward.
It is the lack of a tangible result that gives the insecurity that programmers feel when compared to constructed buildings.
The epic is not visible to the uninitiated when it comes to programming whereas with construction it is visible to the naked eye for everyone.
It is easy to see and marvel at a cathedral whereas most don't have the skill required to marvel at the architecture or the codebase of an elegantly designed distributed system.
To be blunt, building a wooden shack is physically easy. Building even a basic program requires a level of abstract mental discipline that most people simply do not possess.
So the "most people" you mentioned who are throwing up a shack to live in, I admire them for that.
These of course are all alternate plans if Batman and Spiderman aren’t available.
If they used AI to vibe code and vibe validate, this will be a criminal situation.FAA regulated code has to follow a structured development, testing, and release process with sign offs by qualified people with specifically roles at different steps.
You can't replace the human checks with AI. AI is an averaging machine that averages the data it was trained on. It gives average answers while brute forcing away problems until the solution passes a test that was slop coded the same way.
I look forward to the congressional investigations when these people try to say SI instead of AI. That SI moniker is only used by unqualified people in the trump admin or corrupt businesses. The source code is not going to lie, these people likely don't understand what they deployed.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/11/faa-to-finally-d...
More likely: the reengineered system has a serious bug.
The reason is clear: all this points to the ANT ipo next week, people want to pop the AI bubble.
2. The idea that someone would ground all air traffic in order to disrupt Anthropic’s IPO is an absolutely wild conspiracy theory with no basis in reality
2. Not wild at all. People have vested interested in creating fear around AI.
2. Yes, it’s a wild and ridiculous theory. The sheer number of people that would be required in order to pull it off would guarantee that it leaks. It would be a verifiably insane thing to do if you were trying to tank the Anthropic IPO.