IT Horror Stories Podcast
@ithorrorstories.bsky.social
Real IT failures, questionable decisions, and lessons learned from the people who were there. From mainframes and datacenters to cybersecurity, cloud, Shadow IT, and AI. No blame, some sarcasm. You are one of us.
Air traffic control has redundancy. Construction crews have excavators. A cut cable, an offline facility, and aircraft still in the sky. Harvey Scolnick joins Jack for Episode 26: Cleared for Disaster. ithorrorstories.eu#ep26 #Technology #Aviation #ITHorrorStories
“Obsolete” is one of those wonderfully optimistic IT words. Somewhere, somebody is still running the technology you just laughed at. And it's probably connected to something important. What's the oldest technology you personally know is still doing a real job in production? #Technology #IT
AI is the new Shadow IT. And blocking everything won't fix it. Jack joined Aaron Crow on PrOTect IT All to discuss uncontrolled AI, corporate data, and why training beats another firewall rule. Thanks for having us! protectitallpod.com/ep126/ #Technology #ShadowAI #Cybersecurity
Ep 126: AI Is the New Shadow IT: Why Blocking It Never Worked with Jack Smith
Work with Aaron: https://protectitallpod.com/work/ The book: https://protectitallpod.com/book/ This episode: https://protectitallpod.com/ep126/ The OT...
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Cray systems. Novell networks. Silverlight. Supercomputers. They're all in our production queue. Got an IT horror story of your own? We're always looking for people who were there when technology did something it really shouldn't have. #Technology #IT #SysAdmin #ITHorrorStories
Margaret Hamilton (1936–2026). During Apollo 11's landing, the computer reported overload alarms. Her team's software prioritized critical tasks and kept running. Good engineering means surviving when things go wrong. #Technology #Apollo11 #SoftwareEngineering
At what point does a machine become an IoT device? Modern pinballs have Wi-Fi, accounts, updates, leaderboards, apps & cloud services. Disconnect the Internet and there's still a machine happily throwing a steel ball around. ithorrorstories.eu#ep23 #Technology #IoT #Pinball
We uncovereth this in the sacred archives of Reddit. Knoweth thy classics. And thy logic gates. #Technology #LogicGates #Electronics
Messaging without Internet, cellular service, or somebody else's cloud? Jack's Rant 9 goes down the MeshCore rabbit hole: LoRa radios, decentralized mesh networking & off-grid communication. Sometimes the best network doesn't need the Internet. ithorrorstories.eu#rant09 #Technology #MeshCore
At what point during troubleshooting did you realize: “Oh. This is going to be a story.” Not necessarily the biggest outage. Just the moment the evidence stopped pointing toward anything normal. #Technology #IT #Troubleshooting
What's the longest you've seen a “temporary” IT solution remain in production? Next month. Next quarter. After the migration... Ours involved a laptop, a warehouse, and sleep mode: ithorrorstories.eu#ep14 #Technology #IT
The software was correct. The input was correct. The CPU instruction gave the wrong answer. IBM 3031, 1978. The investigation went all the way down to single-cycling the processor. UNPK was broken. ithorrorstories.eu#ep24 #Technology #Mainframe
IT protocols are standardized. IT people considerably less so. “The normal way of doing things” is mostly just the way you're used to doing things. What's the biggest cultural difference you've encountered in IT? ithorrorstories.eu#ep25 #Technology #IT
IT Horror Stories With Jack Smith
IT Horror Stories with Jack Smith is a technology podcast about real-world IT incidents, outages, cybersecurity events, DevOps failures, legacy systems, and the lessons learned when production…
ithorrorstories.eu
This deserves a signal boost. A lot of us got into IT because somebody gave us access to a computer, old hardware, or simply the opportunity to take things apart and learn. Sometimes that opportunity changes a career. Sometimes a life. www.youtube.com/shorts/7aUmV... #Technology #IT
Second Chance Silicon Booth - GrrCon 2026 #chrisboden #comedy #educational #it #helping #skills
NEW LIVE CHANNEL - https://www.youtube.com/@chrisbodenlive/streams And come hang out in the Discord! https://discord.gg/RGkCS4JApw Get the T-shirts here! :) bigbeaverenergy.com Here is my Patreon…
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We know how many of you listen. We know considerably less about who you actually are. So, IT Horror Stories now has an anonymous listener survey. All questions are optional, including whether IT people apparently own their homes. surveys.blubrry.com/3957342 #Technology #Podcast
IT Horror Stories with Jack Smith Survey
Thanks for participating, now share your thoughts on the show.
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IT is global. Work culture isn't. Ep25 of IT Horror Stories: France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany & the Netherlands. Directness, responsibility, deadlines, escalation, engineering & bureaucracy. Same technology, very different ways of working. ithorrorstories.eu#ep25 #Technology #IT #WorkCulture
As randomly found on the internet. We could add a funny twist or try to turn this into an IT lesson. But sometimes it's better to just leave things as they are.
Recently recorded at IT Horror Stories: Cray systems. Novell networks. Microsoft Silverlight. Supercomputers. Got an IT horror story of your own? We're always looking for more. #Technology #IT
IT archaeology: Old tickets. Forgotten scripts. Emails from 2009. FINAL_v2_OLD_DO_NOT_DELETE What's the oldest artifact that ever saved you ? #IT #Technology
Which one started your career ? And who is going to be first to complain that punch cards and reel-to-reel tapes aren't included ? Image: We Fix Stupid Computers ( wefixstupidcomputers.com ) #RetroComputing #FloppyDisk #IT #Technology
Laptop solves problem. People depend on it. Business depends on it. Congratulations. It's production. Someone closes the lid. ithorrorstories.eu#ep14 #IT #Technology
The software was correct. The input was correct. The CPU instruction gave the wrong answer. Texas, 1978. Robert Garrett single-cycled an IBM 3031 until he found the problem: UNPK was broken. Ep24: When UNPK Broke ithorrorstories.eu#ep24 #Mainframe #RetroComputing #Technology
If three teams claim ownership, nobody owns it. If three teams deny ownership, it's probably business-critical. #IT #Technology
Complete the sentence: "We don't need to document this because ________." We'll start: "...everyone knows how it works." Your turn. #IT #Technology
IT outage: Email unavailable: annoying. Factory losing ~$1M/day: suddenly everyone is interested. Episode 17: Cardboard Confidential ithorrorstories.eu#ep17 #OT #Technology
Production: down. P1: open. Vendor: "Please send a screenshot." Screenshot: CONNECTION TO VENDOR SERVICE FAILED Your best useless support request ? #IT #Technology
Pinball used to need electricity, a ball, and some coins. Now we have Wi-Fi, accounts, leaderboards, achievements, software updates, cloud services, and apps. Congratulations. Pinball has become IoT. Episode 23: Pinball as IoT ithorrorstories.eu#ep23 #Pinball #IoT #Technology #Arcade
"Our server hasn't been rebooted in four years." Engineering ? Luck ? Fear ? Nobody remembers the password ? ithorrorstories.eu#rant08 #IT #Technology
Every old IT environment has one. It works. Nobody knows why. Nobody dares replace it. Documentation: DO NOT TOUCH What was yours ? #IT #Technology
Random LinkedIn find of the day: Some procedures only exist because somebody already tried it. "Do not use $400,000 storage system as structural support." Found in a server room by Volodymyr Dubkin. #DataCenter #Technology
Melbourne Cup day, 1991. Betting system at peak load. CPU utilization drops to 5%. Good news ? Absolutely not. ithorrorstories.eu#ep19 #Mainframe #Technology
