What Would We Do If the Internet Crashed?

via mashable.com

In 1982, the Internet was a safe place where everyone trusted each other. The community was so small that every email address on the web could fit into one skinny "phone book" written in big font. If you made that same book today, it would be 25 miles thick.

Scientist Danny Hillis was one of the few people in that small digital community. In a recent TED Talk, Hillis says the Internet's current population exposes a new vulnerability.

"The Internet was designed with the assumption that the communications links could not be trusted, but that the people that connected computers to the Internet were smart and trustworthy," Hillis tells Mashable via email. "Those assumptions no longer apply."

We depend on the Internet for nearly everything, and we cannot imagine what would happen if it just quit working.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

Meteorite shower crashes into Russia (video)

via engadget.com

A meteorite shower has crash landed across Russia's Ural region, injuring over 250 900 people and damaging buildings in six cities. Residents in Chelyabinsk reported shaking ground, windows shattering and car alarms going off as the rocks fell to Earth. Officials in the country say that the shower began after a larger meteor disintegrated in the lower atmosphere, causing the fragments to wreak the (currently) non-lethal havoc. If you'd like to compare how wrong (or right) Michael Bay got it in Armageddon, head on past the break for some footage.

Posted via email from Create | Inspire - DM2 Studios

GoDaddy Gone: Can the Domain Giant Recover Its Reputation?

via mashable.com

Monday has not been the best of days for GoDaddy or its millions of customers. Thanks to what appears to be a distributed denial of service attack against the world’s largest domain registrar, the company’s DNS servers are down. With them went an untold number of websites.

Customers are understandably livid that their sites — for many, their entire livelihoods — are on pause. Much of the online anger is currently directed at Anonymous Own3r, the self-proclaimed security leader of Anonymous (to be clear, Anonymous is not taking any responsibility for this attack and Own3r says he is acting solely as himself).

Posted via email from Inspiration

Why Twitter Was Down

via businessinsider.com

It's enough to make us miss the Fail Whale.

During its outage this morning, Twitter's website displayed a bizarre message showing chunks of code:

Twitter is currently down for .

We expect to be back in . For more information, check out Twitter Status. Thanks for your patience!

It's pretty obvious that some Web-app subroutine was supposed to fill in "reason" with something like "emergency maintenance" and "deadline" with a time.

Posted via email from Inspiration

More bad news for Facebook, as site crashes

via gigaom.com

Facebook isn’t having a good May. First its IPO didn’t “pop” and then the stock traded down the week after it went public. And on Thursday night the social network experienced a substantial outage, going dark for up to 80 minutes for some people. The site is still loading slowly for me and is apparently out for some people at 6:35 PT.

Posted via email from Inspiration

Top Viral Videos Of The Week: The Most Embarrassing Car Crash Ever Recorded

via businessinsider.com

This week's most watched video on YouTube comes from an amateur videographer, who decided it would be wise to film the loud and flashy Lamborghini revving its engine at the stoplight in front of him.

Our very own car expert Travis Okulski sums up the entire situation quite nicely here:

"If you're driving a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo, there is a good chance that you're a bit of a show-off.

And if you're behind one that is revving at a stoplight, you are either about to see some brutal acceleration or a stupid accident."

Basically, what happens in this video is "some brutal acceleration" leading into "a stupid accident."

Watch the driver of a $225,000 Lamborghini get into one of the most embarrassing car crashes ever recorded in this week's top viral videos countdown.

Posted via email from Inspiration

Coca-Cola, Acura Websites Crashed During Super Bowl

via mashable.com

The New England Patriots weren’t the only ones who choked Sunday night.

Websites from Coca-Cola, Acura and film Act of Valor crashed Sunday night after being overwhelmed by Super Bowl ad-driven traffic. In Coke’s case, a Facebook app featuring animated polar bears in the ads buckled under the strain. On the other hand, Kia’s site had the most reliable, fastest performance of all Super Bowl advertisers Sunday night, according to Yottaa, a website optimization firm.

Posted via email from Inspiration