This page: https://tf.nist.gov/tf-cgi/servers.cgi shows that NIST has > 16 NTP servers on IPv4, of those, 5 are in Boulder and were affected by the power failure. The rest were fine.
However, most entities should not be using these top-level servers anyway, so this should have been a problem for exactly nobody.
I believe if you use time.nist.gov it round robins dns requests, so there’s a chance you’d have connected to the Boulder server. So for some people they would have experienced NIST 5 μs off.
Who does use those top-level servers? Aren’t some of them propagating the error or are all secondary level servers configured to use dispersed top-level servers? And how do they decide who is right when they don’t match?
Is pool.ntp.org dispersed across possible interference and error correlation?
You can look at who the "Stratum 2" servers are, in the NTP.org pool and otherwise. Those are servers who sync from Stratum 1, like NIST.
Anyone can join the NTP.org pool so it's hard to make blanket statements about it. I believe there's some monitoring of servers in the pool but I don't know the details.
For example, Ubuntu systems point to their Stratum 2 timeservers by default, and I'd have to imagine that NIST is probably one of their upstreams.
An NTP server usually has multiple upstream sources and can steer its clock to minimize the error across multiple servers, as well as detecting misbehaving servers and reject them ("Falseticker"). Different NTP server implementations might do this a bit differently.
I've been running servers for the pool for years. They are checked regularly for accuracy/uptime or it's score goes down in the pool and eventually gets removed. I sync from 5 stratum 1 servers and use chrony these days.
From my own experience managing large numbers of routers, and troubleshooting issues, I will never use pool.ntp.org again. I’ve seen unresponsive servers as well as incorrect time by hours or days. It’s pure luck to get a good result.
Instead I’ll stick to a major operator like Google/Microsoft/Apple, which have NTP systems designed to handle the scale of all the devices they sell, and are well maintained.
IMHO, "tech optimism" reached its peak in 1969 when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the Moon.
We watched them walk on the Moon on live TV.
After seeing them perform that impossible feat, it seemed like we could use technology to do anything.
As far as the Digital and/or Internet revolutions, the changes have been so fast and widespread that people have not come to terms with them, at least I haven't, and I've been pretty deep into both.
My particular concerns are around atrophy of basic skills (reading, research, writing, etc.,) the authenticity/trustworthiness of "knowledge" obtained from various Internet sources (misinformation, fake news, deep fakes,) and lack of personal contact and interaction in a world where peoples' only connection to others is through a screen (fakebook, instagram, tiktok, etc..)
AI is not going to make any of those any better.
I would not describe my feelings as "dismay" or "fear" but rather of "extreme caution" -- if that makes any sense.
With that said, I'm going to step away from this computer and go play with my dog.
I have taken three of those classes as part of the Online Master of Cybersecurity program. They were all excellent. I can say that the assignments were an important part of the learning experience, for instance the practical experience of attacking weak RSA keys.
I would not let the lack of assignments, tests, and quizzes stop you from trying these if you are interested. At a minimum, they would give you a feeling for what the program/s are like, and possibly encourage you to enroll into the online degree program, which is an exceptional value.
Weird they'd do this after developing several generations of their own inference chip. Google is basically a competitor. This may just be a ploy to get better pricing from Nvidia.
I still have a PDP-11 Programming Card I bought at that Digital retail store. That was an interesting place. As I recall, there also was a AT&T store in that mall where you could buy... telephones.
They built it around 1980 when they built 93 as a ring road going around the city and I remember Sears immediately moving from a downtown location at the North End of Elm street to the mall and then most of the other department stores on Elm going out of business shortly thereafter.
As much as I could complain about the anti-pedestrian development of Southern NH that wants to be like a human lung and have exactly one path through the hierarchy from here to there [1] I can say my family did profit from Rt 93 because it caused the neighborhood I was in to develop so that the value of my house went up 1500%.
[1] this guarantees you'll encounter multiple traffic jams when multiple parts of the hierarchy get overloaded
Maybe it's hard to find these days. However it had the best VT220 emulation I have seen running on X Window System.
I will note that I have not seen a terminal emulator that supports the "double wide" and "double high, double wide" character modes of the VT100. Those giant letters were kinda fun. (<esc>#3, <esc>#4, and <esc>#6 if my memory serves me right.)
To say NIST was off is clickbait hyperbole.
This page: https://tf.nist.gov/tf-cgi/servers.cgi shows that NIST has > 16 NTP servers on IPv4, of those, 5 are in Boulder and were affected by the power failure. The rest were fine.
However, most entities should not be using these top-level servers anyway, so this should have been a problem for exactly nobody.
IMHO, most applications should use pool.ntp.org