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Venezuela Suffers Nationwide Blackout in Latest Power Outage:
Venezuela has suffered a nationwide power cut, including the capital, Caracas, which the country's Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said was caused by an "electromagnetic attack".
[...] The lights went out in most of Caracas at 4:41pm (20:41 GMT) while people in other parts of the country took to social media to report the power had gone out there too in the first major blackout since March.
"These blackouts are catastrophic," said 51-year-old janitor Bernardina Guerra, who lives in Caracas. "I live in the eastern part of the city and there the lights go out every day. Each day things are worse."
At least 14 Venezuelan states lost power on Monday, according to Reuters witnesses and reports on social media.
The state-owned power company Corpolec only reported a breakdown affecting sectors of the capital, Caracas.
[...] Blackouts are a common occurrence in Venezuela, especially in remote western regions.
The government usually blames them on sabotage but experts say that a lack of investment, poor management and corruption are the more likely culprits.
The oil-rich country's hyperinflationary economic crisis has led to widespread shortages in food and medicine, prompting more than four million Venezuelans to leave the country.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23 2019, @12:00PM (2 children)
This sounds like a run-of-the-mill Paranoia scenario, if you replace the government officials with The Computer. Our failures can't possibly be due to mismanagement, because we are infallible. It must be those damn terrorists again!
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23 2019, @01:10PM (1 child)
Millions without electrical power in Michigan and northeast US [wsws.org]:
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 23 2019, @02:08PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MostCynical on Tuesday July 23 2019, @12:15PM (1 child)
if you screw up maintenance of your transformers enough, they will probably go "pop" and create a nasty electromagnetic problems. Anyone nearby may well think they are under attack; although, any country with an "Information Minister" is unlikely to be investing in anything... important.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday July 23 2019, @05:03PM
Our building was shutdown recently, because a transformer nearby was sparking and doing bad things to our electricity.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23 2019, @12:23PM (3 children)
How can they determine it was an EMA, especially just an hour or so after the attack? They claim the last big blackout was caused by an EMA ... so clearly there are telltale signs, right? And wouldn't an EMA cause a lot of collateral damage to any electronic devices around the target area of the (supposed) EMA? And wouldn't you need, I don't know, say, electricity to examine those devices affected by the EMA?
There are many questions, but I'm not sure the Venezuelan government can be trusted to answer truthfully.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday July 23 2019, @12:54PM (2 children)
They can't blame it on a crumbling infrastructure and economy, so they went with an EMA, allowing them to also blame it on the U.S.
They should have gone with cyber attack.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23 2019, @08:16PM (1 child)
Wouldn't cyber imply they could prevent a future attack? An EMA is pretty much unstoppable, so it's a convenient excuse every time it happens.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 23 2019, @09:03PM
There's always another Rowhammer, Heartbleed, Spectre, Meltdown, WannaCry, iloveyou virus, etc.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by khallow on Tuesday July 23 2019, @01:15PM (2 children)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23 2019, @07:58PM (1 child)
Such a perfect post for you khallow, but I wonder if you have any idea why I would say that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 24 2019, @03:54AM
I've had SN posters (most particularly, the OriginalOwner dude, long may his craziness be missed) wax poetic about Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution miracle and how much US capitalists and counter-revolutionaries are holding it back. Plenty of other countries don't have that problem, but that never got through OO's reality deflector shields.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Tuesday July 23 2019, @01:44PM (2 children)
What is that even defined as? An EMP from an atomic bomb? Even that is largely overstated. Go ahead and find me video of an EMP disrupting anything.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 23 2019, @02:23PM (1 child)
We should be getting to the bottom of that mystery soon. https://www.buzzfeed.com/ishabassi/area-51-raid-alien-memes-tumblr [buzzfeed.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Tuesday July 23 2019, @03:54PM
Best meme in years. But it can only become the best meme of all time if the Air Force guns down at least one Naruto-running alien enthusiast.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23 2019, @07:56PM (2 children)
you can replace the "standard" size 12V battery in UPS with a bigger (more Ah) one, no problem.
fuses for cars (12V standard) are cheap and work, so dont forget to add one (max. VA of UPS /12V) on the plus pole cable from battery to UPS.
also, if everything goes sideways, you can parallize 12 V solarpanels (parallel =more A per sunshine-hour) to charge the UPS battery ...
sell your oil ONCE venezuelans, buy batteries and solarpanels and charge and discharge them many many times. it's like a cake that grows back. bon appetit!
(Score: 0, Troll) by NPC-131072 on Tuesday July 23 2019, @10:28PM
Hello Fren,
We won't be eating batterys under glorious socialism, what do you take us for? [thedailybeast.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 24 2019, @01:49AM
Sell oil? And be Capitalist? Now you're talking! With everything nationalized, I guess the government can be an even bigger capitalist than those before!