IT Horror Stories with Jack Smith
by Jack Smith
Latest episode
Call Center Down : If Only AI Could Diagnose Network Traffic Problems
Call Center Down : If Only AI Could Diagnose Network Traffic Problems
About this podcast
IT Horror Stories with Jack Smith tells real stories from the world of IT: outages, failed migrations, broken infrastructure, cybersecurity incidents, software failures, networking disasters, cloud problems, Shadow IT, and the occasional decision that seemed like a good idea at the time.
Jack Smith talks with the people who were there about what happened, how they got out of it, and what others can learn from the incident. Stories are anonymized where needed, and the focus is on technology, processes, and organizations rather than blaming individuals. New episodes weekly, with Jack's Rants in between.
You are one of us.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 39 episodes
- Call Center Down : If Only AI Could Diagnose Network Traffic Problems · 44 min · Season 2 Episode 15Call Center Down : If Only AI Could Diagnose Network Traffic Problems What happens when hundreds of call center employees suddenly find their systems grinding to a halt, only for…
- Jack's Rants - PHP, Panic, and Technical Debt - PHP2Shell: Critical PHP Flaws, Emergency Patching, and Technical Debt · 15 min · Season 2Two critical PHP vulnerabilities. Emergency patches. Government websites going offline. And IT teams around the world suddenly discovering just how much forgotten infrastructure…
- Wrong Person, Right Skills : Technical Hiring Failures and Why Companies Mismanage IT Talent · 45 min · Season 2 Episode 15Companies complain that they can't find the right technical people. Technical people complain that companies have no idea who they're actually looking for. This time, Jack…
- Cleared for Disaster : Air Traffic Control Technology: Outages, Failures, and Recovery · 46 min · Season 2 Episode 14Jack talks with Harvey Scolnick about his years working with air traffic control technology and the failures that came with it. From construction work accidentally cutting a…
- Jack's Rants - Meshcore : Off-Grid Messaging, LoRa, Privacy, and Decentralised Networks · 20 min · Season 2Someone asked us why we weren't on MeshCore yet. First we had to establish that it wasn't a new kind of thrash metal. Then we discovered an off-grid messaging network built from…
- Cultural Differences in IT : When Global Teams Don't Work the Same Way · 21 min · Season 2 Episode 13IT may run on the same protocols everywhere, but the people operating it certainly don't. Put teams from different countries, companies, and working cultures onto the same…
- When UNPK Broke – Diagnosing an IBM Mainframe Hardware Failure · 33 min · Season 2 Episode 12Texas, 1978. Robert was working at a cotton co-op running what may have been one of the world's earliest online auction systems. Farmers received punch cards representing their…
- Pinball as IoT : When Arcade Machines Go Online · 38 min · Season 2 Episode 11A modern pinball machine isn't just flippers, bumpers, lights, and a very large box making expensive noises. It's a connected computer with software updates, online score…
- The Three Envelopes: Blame, Reorganize, Repeat · 25 min · Season 2 Episode 10The Three Envelopes: Blame, Reorganize, Repeat There is an old management joke about an outgoing manager leaving three numbered envelopes for their successor. When the first…
- Jack's Rants - Why You Need to Reboot : Why Rebooting Your Computer Actually Fixes Problems · 9 min · Season 2Jack's Rants - Why You Need to Reboot : Why Rebooting Your Computer Actually Fixes Problems "Have you tried turning it off and on again ?" became an IT cliché for a reason…
- Testing Software Properly : Software Testing Done Right – Where, When and What Should You Test? · 39 min · Season 2 Episode 9Testing software sounds simple enough. But what exactly should you test, where should those tests happen, and how do you decide which parts of a complex system need the most…
- Microcode Mayhem : How a Mainframe Timer Bug Slowed an Entire Development Team · 25 min · Season 2 Episode 8One day, a busy IBM-compatible mainframe began slowing to a crawl. Hundreds of programmers noticed immediately—some even resorted to banging on the server room window whenever…
- Jack's Rants - AI Is The New Shadow IT : Why Employees Are Quietly Building the Next IT Risk · 12 min · Season 2Artificial intelligence didn't invent Shadow IT—it made it invisible. In this Jack's Rant, Jack Smith explores how AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude have fundamentally…
- Melbourne Cup Meltdown : How a Betting System Crashed at the Worst Possible Moment · 30 min · Season 2 Episode 7Every year, the Melbourne Cup pushes Australia's betting infrastructure to its limits. In 1991, a known software bug turned one of the busiest days of the year into an IT…
- Jack's Rants - The Missing Five Minutes : Why scambaiting videos leave security professionals with more questions than answers · 11 min · Season 2Scambaiters like Kitboga, Jim Browning and Pierogi educate millions, waste scammers' time, and undoubtedly prevent people from becoming victims. As a security professional, I…
- One Network to Rule Them All : How a Missing VLAN Strategy Turned Smart City Infrastructure into a Cybersecurity Nightmare · 38 min · Season 2 Episode 6Smart cities promise better transportation, connected infrastructure, and improved services—but what happens when everything is connected a little too well? In this episode, our…
- Jack's Rants - Can I Keep Your ID? : Privacy, Identity Theft, Data Minimization, and Why Your Driver's License Is Not a Bar Tab Deposit · 10 min · Season 2Opening a tab at a bowling alley shouldn't require handing over your driver's license or national ID card. Yet many businesses still ask customers to leave government-issued…
- Cardboard Confidential : A Cybersecurity Incident, a Golf Course Conversation, and Why No Industry Is Too Boring to Be Targeted · 32 min · Season 2 Episode 5No one expects a cybersecurity incident to begin in the cardboard industry. Yet as our guest Kayne McGladrey explains, cybercriminals don't care what your company…
- Jack's Rants - The New Change Management : ITIL Change Control, Organizational Change, and Why Project Managers Suddenly Need Psychology Degrees · 13 min · Season 2Once upon a time, Change Management meant raising an RFC, preparing a rollback plan, and surviving the Change Advisory Board. Today, it also means stakeholder engagement…
- GDPR Enters the Chat : The Day a Hiring Exercise Became an Information Security Incident · 15 min · Season 2 Episode 4It was supposed to be a routine hiring exercise. A candidate receives a technical assignment, reviews the provided material, and prepares a solution. Then someone notices that…
