cloud computing and why it’s a good or bad idea
Microsoft techies are trying to recover storage nodes for a “small” number of customers following a “power issue” on October 20 that triggered Azure service disruptions and ruined breakfast for those wanting to use hosted virtual machines or SQL DB. The degradation began at 0731 UTC on Friday when Microsoft spotted the unspecified power problem, Read more about Microsoft admits ‘power issue’ downed Azure in West Europe[…]
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft has once again come under blistering criticism for the security practices of Azure and its other cloud offerings, with the CEO of security firm Tenable saying Microsoft is “grossly irresponsible” and mired in a “culture of toxic obfuscation.” The comments from Amit Yoran, chairman and Read more about Microsoft Comes Under Blistering Criticism For ‘Grossly Irresponsible’ Azure Security[…]
Earlier this month, a group known as Anonymous Sudan took credit for a service outage that disrupted access to Outlook, OneDrive and a handful of other Microsoft online services. After initially sharing little information about the incident, the company confirmed late Friday it had been the target of a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks. In Read more about Microsoft confirms June Outlook and OneDrive outages were caused by DDoS attacks[…]
[…] The problem kicked off this morning with Redmond saying it was looking into errors within its caching infrastructure. In an advisory, the Windows goliath wrote “some users may be intermittently unable to view or access web apps in Microsoft 365.” A range of Microsoft 365 online services are affected, such as Excel, the company Read more about Microsoft 365 and Teams hit in global partial outage – again[…]
Some users of Microsoft’s free Outlook hosted service are finding they can no longer send or receive emails because of how the Windows giant now calculates the storage of attachments. Microsoft account holders are allowed to hold up to 15GB in their cloud-hosted email, which until recently included text and attachments, and 5GB in their Read more about Outlook attachments count toward OneDrive capacity so MS may just turn off your email[…]
Did someone actually break the internet? It sorta seems like it. Users of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, some of the web’s biggest platforms, reported experiencing major issues on Wednesday, with many losing access to basic features and functions. Reports first poured in concerning Twitter, where users reported being met with a message telling them Read more about Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube Endure Outages[…]
[…] According to outage tracker DownDetector, reports began coming in of users facing a 500 error and being unable to send, receive or search email through Outlook.com from about 4am UTC, peaking at 8 and 9am as Europeans reached their desks. Microsoft confirmed the outage on its service health website, saying: “We’re applying targeted mitigations Read more about Outlook, Teams, Calendar down for >5 hours[…]
[…] European researchers have successfully tested a system that uses terawatt-level laser pulses to steer lighting toward a 26-foot rod. It’s not limited by its physical height, and can cover much wider areas — in this case, 590 feet — while penetrating clouds and fog. The design ionizes nitrogen and oxygen molecules, releasing electrons and Read more about High-powered lasers can be used to steer lightning strikes[…]
Microsoft’s flagship cloudy productivity services are down across the Asia-Pacific region. “Our initial investigation indicates that there our service infrastructure is performing at a sub-optimal level, resulting in impact to general service functionality” states an advisory time-stamped 12:41PM on December 2. The incident means customers of Exchange Online may not be able to access the Read more about Microsoft mistake took down Exchange Online and Teams on 2/12/22[…]
A new experiment has shown that zapping clouds with electrical charge can alter droplet sizes in fog or, potentially, help a constipated cloud to rain. Last year Giles Harrison, from the University of Reading, and colleagues from the University of Bath, spent many early mornings chasing fogs in the Somerset Levels, flying uncrewed aircraft into Read more about Scientists zap clouds with electricity to make them rain[…]
New Fitbit users will be required to sign-up with a Google account, from next year, while it also appears one will be needed to access some of the new features in years to come. Google has been slowly integrating Fitbit into the fold since buying the company back in November 2019. Indeed, the latest products Read more about Fitbit accounts are being replaced by Google accounts[…]
That floor won’t clean itself… well, quite literally it won’t, especially if the vacuum robot you bought to clean the floor won’t hop off its dock when the servers are down Users started reporting issues with their Roomba app around midday Friday. The status page for iRobot, the maker of Roomba, identified there were outages Read more about Roombas don’t work if an iRobot server is down[…]
The incident began at 0627 UTC (2327 Pacific Time) and it took until 0742 UTC (0042 Pacific) before the company managed to bring all its datacenters back online and verify they were working correctly. During this time a variety of sites and services relying on Cloudflare went dark while engineers frantically worked to undo the Read more about Cloudflare explains hour long outage which broke a lot of internets[…]
Ubisoft has turned off online services for 91 games, including Far Cry 2, Splinter Cell, Just Dance, and more across multiple console and PC platforms. These shutdowns have since been gathered together in one list by Ubisoft. This news comes from a blog Ubisoft posted on April 22 listing 91 different games that have had Read more about Ubisoft Shut Down 91 Games Since 2021[…]
Is your Insteon smart home system down? I’m getting reports from dozens of Insteon users that as of Friday their smart home hubs have stopped working. So far, none of them have heard from the company, and Insteon’s Twitter account hasn’t been updated since June 2021. I reached out to Rob Lilleness, the president and Read more about Insteon is down and may not be coming back – yay cloud, your hardware is now a paperweight[…]
Apple’s services came back online in the late afternoon. Apple’s system status page shows that all of the services that had previously been listed as “down” are now back in the green. It’s still unclear what happened exactly, and Apple never returned Gizmodo’s email for comment on the situation. Apple is experiencing massive technical difficulties, Read more about Apple Maps, Music, iMessage, App Store, and iCloud Are Down[…]
Amazon’s crucial web services business AWS has experienced problems today due to a power outage, affecting services like Slack, Imgur, and the Epic Games store for some users. It’s not looking good if you’re working from home, with some Slack users unable to view or upload images and work management tool Asana also hit by Read more about Amazon’s AWS logs third outage this month, affecting Slack, Epic Games Store, Asana and more[…]
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the engine that powers many of the internet’s most-trafficked websites and apps, appears to be experiencing a widespread outage that is bringing down several popular services. Amazon, Disney+, and Venmo are all being affected by the outage, and are showing error messages when users attempt to visit their websites. Amazon appears Read more about AWS Outage Takes Down Amazon, Disney+, Venmo, loads of online games[…]
Some Tesla drivers who fancied going for a spin on Saturday were unable to do so after an update to the cars’ companion app produced server errors. Teslas don’t use conventional keys. Instead they require the presence of a fob, key card, or authenticated mobile phone app that links to the electric vehicles over Bluetooth. Read more about Tesla drivers locked out of their cars by server error[…]
Google Cloud suffered a brief outage, seemingly bringing down or disrupting a whole bunch of websites relying on its systems. If you’ve had trouble accessing Snapchat, Discord, Spotify, Etsy, retailers like Home Depot, and others today, this is likely why: a fault developed in Google Cloud’s networking infrastructure, resulting in websites throwing up 404 errors. Read more about Google Cloud partially fixes load balancer issues that killed Snapchat, spotify, etsy, discord and many many more[…]
Facebook offered “sincere apologies” Monday afternoon as a sweeping outage of its site and various other properties, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, stretched for more than six hours and helped to wipe more than $50 billion off Facebook’s market cap — the stock’s worst day of trading in almost a year. The issues started around Read more about Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp hit by 6 hr + global outage, stock tanks[…]
July this year, Security Discovery researcher Bob Diachenko came across a plethora of JSON records in an exposed Elasticsearch cluster that piqued his interest. The 1.9 million-strong recordset contained sensitive information on people, including their names, country citizenship, gender, date of birth, passport details, and no-fly status. The exposed server was indexed by search engines Censys and ZoomEye, Read more about Secret terrorist watchlist with 2 million records exposed online[…]
A $291 Adobe cancelation fee has provoked fierce criticism of the creative software company. A post from a customer has gone viral on Twitter, after he discovered that he would have to pay nearly $300 to bring his Creative Cloud subscription to an end. It has sparked a discussion about Adobe’s practices, with many others Read more about $291 Adobe Cancelation Fee Sees Twitter Users Argue it’s ‘Morally Correct’ to Pirate Software[…]
Microsoft is reporting an outage of Office 365, including Microsoft Teams. On its status page, Microsoft adds: Users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft services. User impact: Users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365 services, including the Service Health Dashboard. More info: Any service that leverages Azure Active Read more about Microsoft Office 365 Down For Some Users[…]
If you own a 2013 SmartThings hub (that’s the original) or a SmartThings Link for the Nvidia Shield TV, your hardware will stop working on June 30 of this year. The device depreciation is part of the announced exodus from manufacturing and supporting its own hardware and the Groovy IDE that Samsung Smartthings announced last Read more about SmartThings bricks all hardware (2013 – 2021) wtf?[…]