Exxons had a hard time meeting demand in Maryland, but I still have to travel. My car might run out of gas, but the news never stops; and and it’s Thursday. I’m on with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week, Elon Musk sends the Tweet heard around the Crypto World, people stop pumping gas in bags . You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.
MID-ATLANTIC GAS FRENZY SUBSIDES AS COLONIAL PIPELINE RESTARTS
I received the news about the Colonial Pipeline late Saturday night. I had just gotten a Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal. I did not go out and refuel. Instead, I watched Elon Musk tell Michael Che Dogecoin (and other cryptos) were one big hustle. Late Saturday night, Colonial Pipeline Company received a ransom note from DarkSide, a known Russian hacking group. Colonial Pipeline operates the longest oil pipeline in the United States delivering 3 million barrels of oil across 5500 miles of pipeline from Texas up the East Coast every day.
Colonial Pipeline’s billing systems were compromised in the attack, and they couldn’t figure out how to bill customers so they shut off their systems. Working with the US government and private industry, Colonial Pipeline was able to find the missing data on servers in the United States that were subsequently shutdown. Thanks to this quick work, Colonial Pipeline will not pay a ransom and has apparently been able to restart their systems from backups.
I did receive some insider knowledge on this one. There were murmurs of this attack going down two weeks prior to it happening, and the government was notified. What’s at issue is that US infrastructure is constantly under threat, and every threat can’t be investigated.
Please note, this is serious. This is an attack on critical US infrastructure. If bombs were involved, we would be declaring war. I’m not sure there should be a distinction when these types of events occur just because they happen in the digital realm. Also, please take this into consideration. Given the size and scope of this attack, more of these are to come.
Also, there was no need for panic buying. Not this time anyway.
TWO DAY OLD CRYPTO RISES STRONG
A newly listed digital token currency called Digital Internet Computer has surged to a market capitalization of $45 billion, with a B. The digital token is designed to make it easier to publish content to the Internet. (Whatever that means) The token uses smart contracts to publish content to the blockchain’s digital ledger and is supposed to be an alternative to using reputable cloud services like Amazon and Microsoft. Either way, the token’s price is hovering around $700 right now.
TESLA STOPS SELLING BITCOIN AMID ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS
Computers mining for BitCoin produce as much carbon pollution as the entire country of New Zealand. Computers are already notorious resource hogs, and the algorithms needed to mint the next BitCoin are some of the most energy intensive computations on the planet. In a bid to save the environment, Elon Musk Tweeted that Tesla will no longer be selling BitCoin or accepting as payment for cars. I’m curious to see what the impact will be on coins like BTC and Ethereum as their algorithms are the most environmentally impactful.
