Discussion
Another one of those XKCD-infrastructure-depends-on-some-random-person moments just happened.
Looks like the best database of meteors (and also reentries) just got taken out by a cyberattack. That really sucks. I hope they are able to get back online soon, that info is really useful to a lot of scientists (including me).
@kittylyst I don't have any personal connections to AMS (I just use their fireball website a lot). So, I don't know. Presumably they would have asked on their "we're broken" page?
@sundogplanets Possibly, but one of the possible corollaries to the ObXKCD is that the lynchpin may not *know* what is being supported by their project.
Still, if you're not connected with them, this is just pure speculation on my part...
@sundogplanets Why don't people just download it? Have you heard of torrents? A torrent would keep it up.
@sundogplanets https://xkcd.com/2347/ I think he also had one about left-pad at some point. This one's alt text is about image-magick
@sundogplanets It was so cool to see a big meteor & then check on how widespread the sightings were
@sundogplanets ...why do they feel the need to fucking vibe-code a maintenance page. that's literally the simplest thing to code. it's just some text. you can GET AWAY with making it look bland because it's a MAINTENANCE PAGE. this does *not* bode well for the "new infrastructure and services" they're on about
@GroupNebula563 I did not even think about that 😭
This is a rather wide deviation from your point and no need to respond, but that word 'reentry'. It has bothered me since the day I first heard it on TV back in the 1960s when I was a kid and space crazy.
I mean, 're' (to do again) and 'entry' (to enter) don't fit with what the object does; because it doesn't 'enter', it 'exits'. (Or, at least, it exits the atmosphere, give or take a thousandth of a bar. And only a few which actually exited the Earth's gravity have 'entered'.)
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@sundogplanets Do they need any help (e.g. funds) to recover?