Two undersea cables in Baltic Sea disrupted

It's worth mentioning that cable breakages happen quite often; globally about 200 times per year [1] and the article itself mentions that just last year, two other cables and a gas pipeline were taken out by an anchor. The Gulf of Finland is evidently quite shallow. From what I understand, cable repair ships are likely to use ROVs for parts of repair jobs but only when the water is shallow so hopefully they can figure out whether the damage looks like sabotage before they sever the cable to repair it. Of course, if you're a bad actor and want plausible deniability, maybe you'd make it look like anchor damage or, deliberately drag an anchor right over the cables.

Cable repairs are certainly annoying and for the operator of the cable, expensive. However, they are usually repaired relatively quickly. I'd be more worried if many more cables were severed at the same time. If you're only going to break one or two a year, you might as well not bother.

1: https://www.theverge.com/c/24070570/internet-cables-undersea...

A 1 in 36 million chance for three breaks in one day.

https://mathb.in/80217

“Knowing that 200 undersea cables break every year globally, estimate the probability that 3 cables break in the baltic sea on the same day.”

I’m stealing this to use for grad-student mock-interviews—thank you!

A clever answer would be "it's a 50/50 chance, either it happens or it doesn't". That's statistics my simple brain can comprehend at least.

In what way is that clever? It's clearly wrong. If it were true, we'd experience three breakages at least 150 days of the year, every year.

I think it is in the spirit of Hacker News to explain rather than just whoosh someone.