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@hzulla@infosec.exchange

2026-10-31 10:53 UTC

This is FASCINATING. Researchers were able to pin down the cause of measurable global 60 second power spikes to software that does regular checks on the minute mark. They found large scale battery installations as one major cause, but obviously this is true for any other computerized system that does cron jobs and has a synchronized clock. As weird as it sounds, adding random 0-59.999s delays to cron jobs in Linux distributions and other software would actually help the power grid. https://www.fz-juelich.de/en/news/archive/press-release/2026/mystery-of-60-second-fluctuations-in-power-grids-solved

Replies (1)

  • @hzulla@infosec.exchange 2026-10-31 11:15

    It is such an obvious cause once you think about it, and yet before you hear about this, no software developer or maintainer ever considers the possible effects of e.g. a default Debian cron job setting may have on the global electricity grid.

    Open ##5425417