News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

GLOBAL OUTAGES

Roblox, Snapchat, Fortnite, Amazon and more suffer global outages

Hundreds of popular online games, apps, and websites — including Roblox, Snapchat, Amazon, and Ring — have experienced widespread server outages linked to Amazon’s cloud network.

Reports of outages began flooding in from the United Kingdom around 3 a.m. EST, according to Downdetector, which tracks online service disruptions.

Downdetector has recorded more than 2,000 outage reports from Roblox users, over 3,000 from Snapchat, and roughly 2,000 related to Ring and Amazon.com access.

Slack, Zoom, Venmo, Coinbase, Hulu, Microsoft 365, WhatsApp, and Fortnite were also among the platforms hit by widespread disruptions.

The disruption appears to be tied to Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) vast cloud network that hosts and powers countless websites and apps across the internet.

Amazon said on its service status page that “multiple AWS services” were experiencing “increased error rates” and delays.

“We can confirm increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue may also be affecting Case Creation through the AWS Support Center or the Support API. We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” Amazon wrote.

“Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:00 AM.”

The AWS disruption appears linked to a data center in northern Virginia but has triggered outage reports worldwide.

On Monday morning, the company said it was starting to recover from the issue and was “fully mitigated.”

Amazon Web Services mercilessly mocked with a slew of memes after major websites go down for hours

An hours-long crash of Amazon Web Services sparked a wave of tongue-in-cheek, apocalyptic memes Monday as social media users coped with the disruption of major sites and apps around the world.

Posts on X, Reddit and more mocked the meltdown with viral images including Homer Simpson warning “The end is near,” the popular cartoon-dog meme once again declaring amid flames, “This is fine,” and clips asking, “What do we do now?”

While most services were back online within hours, the social media reaction was relentless. Users joked that the collapse of their favorite apps was “the rehearsal for the end of the internet.”

Echoing the renowned yellow-dog meme, one user posted an image of panicked office workers insisting, “I’m fine … everything is fine.”

Others posted clips of users screaming into phones or mock photos of engineers surrounded by yellow caution tape in server rooms.

The online mockery followed a disruption that began around 3 a.m. ET and rippled across banks, retailers and gaming platforms before Amazon engineers restored most systems shortly after 5:30 a.m., according to the company’s service status page.

Amazon said the incident stemmed from an “operational issue” affecting multiple services “in the US-EAST-1 region,” with a massive data hub in northern Virginia linked to the crash.

In an update, the company reported “increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services” and said engineers were “actively working on both mitigating the issue and fully understanding the root cause.”

By early morning, Amazon said most websites and apps relying on its cloud were working normally again while staff continued “to work through a backlog of queued requests.”

The two-hour outage left millions of users unable to log in to platforms including Roblox, Snapchat, Ring, Fortnite, Hulu, Venmo, Coinbase, WhatsApp, the Starbucks app and Microsoft 365.

The British government’s official website and online tax portal also went dark, as did McDonald’s ordering systems in some markets, according to reports.
Screenshots posted to X showed AWS’ support account replying to waves of complaints as hashtags like #AWSdown and #internetcrash trended worldwide.

For many, the disruption served as a reminder that much of the modern web depends on a handful of cloud providers — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — whose outages can halt communication, commerce and entertainment within seconds.

Harry Halpin, chief executive of NymVPN, told the New York Times that the problem likely began with a technical glitch in one of Amazon’s main data centers.

ROBLOX

Florida AG says Roblox used to ‘abuse kids’ as criminal probe sparked

The wildly popular online game Roblox is facing a new criminal investigation in Florida, where the state’s attorney general accused the platform of being a “breeding ground for child predators.”

Roblox has failed to properly protect kids from sexual predators and is not making enough effort to verify user ages, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said Monday, citing a civil probe from April.

“Roblox is a breeding ground for child predators to get on the platform, solicit information, locations, and ultimately abuse kids. That’s a non-starter here in Florida,” the prosecutor told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”

“We will go after child predators with everything we’ve got, and we’re gonna hold Roblox accountable. We believe that they have knowingly allowed their platform to be used in this way.”

Roblox did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.

About 40 million players — more than a third of Roblox’s user base — are under age 13.

While the world-building video game is aimed at children, with users as young as 8 or 9, it also caters to adults — who can use the private chat and voice conversation features to speak with child players.

Several previous investigations have uncovered predators for using Roblox to groom minors. Adults have been able to imitate children on the platform, and content moderation efforts have failed to detect sexually explicit material, according to the Florida attorney general’s office.

Roblox insists it is safe for young users.

In July, it launched a face-scanning feature to help verify users’ ages. But it can be circumvented by playing on another person’s account, according to safety experts.

Some predators have even used the platform’s in-game currency – known as “Robux” – to bribe minors into sending sexually explicit images of themselves, Uthmeier’s office said.

Louisiana’s Attorney General Liz Murrill sued Roblox in August – calling it “the perfect place for pedophiles.”

Last month, the mother of a 15-year-old autistic boy who killed himself sued Roblox for wrongful death, alleging the app’s lack of guardrails allowed her son to be sexually coerced by an adult predator into sending explicit photos.

INSTAGRAM

Instagram implements new automatic restriction for teens — here’s what they won’t see

Teenagers on Instagram will be restricted to seeing PG-13 content by default and won’t be able to change their settings without a parent’s permission, Meta announced on Tuesday.

This means kids using teen-specific accounts will see photos and videos on Instagram that are similar to what they would see in a PG-13 movie — no sex, drugs or dangerous stunts, among others.

“This includes hiding or not recommending posts with strong language, certain risky stunts, and additional content that could encourage potentially harmful behaviors, such as posts showing marijuana paraphernalia,” Meta said in a blog post Tuesday, calling the update the most significant since it introduced teen accounts last year.

Anyone under 18 who signs up for Instagram is automatically placed into restrictive teen accounts unless a parent or guardian gives them permission to opt out.

The teen accounts are private by default, have usage restrictions on them and already filter out more “sensitive” content — such as those promoting cosmetic procedures.

The company is also adding an even stricter setting that parents can set up for their children.

The changes come as the social media giant faces relentless criticism over harms to children.

As it seeks to add safeguards for younger users, Meta has already promised it wouldn’t show inappropriate content to teens, such as posts about self-harm, eating disorders or suicide.

But this does not always work.

A recent report, for instance, found that teen accounts researchers created were recommended age-inappropriate sexual content, including “graphic sexual descriptions, the use of cartoons to describe demeaning sexual acts, and brief displays of nudity.”

In addition, Instagram also recommended a “range of self-harm, self-injury, and body image content” on teen accounts that the report says “would be reasonably likely to result in adverse impacts for young people, including teenagers experiencing poor mental health, or self-harm and suicidal ideation and behaviors.”

AI

Walmart will now let you shop with ChatGPT, becoming latest retailer to partner with OpenAI

Walmart said Tuesday it was partnering with OpenAI to enable customers and Sam’s Club members to shop directly within ChatGPT, using the AI chatbot’s Instant Checkout feature.

The world’s largest retailer is expanding its use of artificial intelligence as companies across sectors adopt the technology to simplify tasks and cut costs.

Walmart has announced AI tools including generative AI-powered ‘Sparky,’ which is available on its app to assist customers with product suggestions or summarizing product reviews, among other options.

The company’s growing investment in AI is also aimed at closing the gap with online behemoth Amazon, which had a head start with its chatbot, Rufus, a Gen AI-powered shopping assistant that answers various shopping queries.

Walmart’s tie-up with the ChatGPT-maker follows a similar partnership OpenAI announced last month with Etsy and Shopify.

About 15% of total referral traffic for Walmart in September was from ChatGPT, up from 9.5% in August, data from SimilarWeb showed.

However, referrals are only a minor source of traffic and ChatGPT referrals accounted for less than 1% of total web traffic for Walmart, the research firm said.

 I wonder if people really need ChatGPT to shop online.

Sam Altman greenlights erotica for ChatGPT — months after boasting he didn’t add a ‘sex bot’

OpenAI boss Sam Altman said ChatGPT will soon be allowed to engage in erotic chats with adults — despite continuing concerns over child safety and the tech mogul’s recent boast that the artificial intelligence giant had not created a “sex bot”.

Altman announced on Tuesday that OpenAI plans to “safely relax the restrictions” on hot and heavy conversations with ChatGPT now that engineers have built new safeguards around mental health content.

“Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases,” Altman said in a post on X on Tuesday.

“As part of our ‘treat adult users like adults’ principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.”

The move — expected to roll out by December — is a departure from company policy, which has historically restricted sexual content on ChatGPT.

In an Aug. 7 podcast interview with Cleo Abram, Altman was asked about a decision he made that was “best for the world but not best for winning.”

Altman replied by bragging that ChatGPT was beloved by many users because it’s “trying to help you accomplish whatever you ask.”

“That’s a very special relationship we have with our users,” Altman said. “We do not take it lightly.”

The OpenAI head then said that there were “things we could do that would…grow [the company] faster, that would get [users to spend more] time in ChatGPT that we don’t do because we know that our long-term incentive is to stay as aligned with our users as possible.”

Altman added that he was “proud of the company and how little we get distracted by that … But sometimes we do get tempted.”

When Abram asked for specific examples that come to mind, Altman said: “Well, we haven’t put a sex bot avatar in ChatGPT yet.”

Top US Army general says he’s using ChatGPT to help make key command decisions

A top US Army general stationed in South Korea said he’s been turning to an artificial intelligence chatbot to help him think through key command and personal decisions — the latest sign that even the Pentagon’s senior leaders are experimenting with generative AI tools.

Maj. Gen. William “Hank” Taylor, commanding general of the Eighth Army, told reporters at the Association of the United States Army conference in Washington, DC, that he’s been using ChatGPT to refine how he makes choices affecting thousands of troops.

“Chat and I have become really close lately,” Taylor said during a media roundtable Monday, though he shied away from giving examples of personal use.

His remarks on ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, were reported by Business Insider.

“I’m asking to build, trying to build models to help all of us,” Taylor was quoted as saying.

He added that he’s exploring how AI could support his decision-making processes — not in combat situations, but in managing day-to-day leadership tasks.

“As a commander, I want to make better decisions,” the general explained.

“I want to make sure that I make decisions at the right time to give me the advantage.”

Taylor, who also serves as chief of staff for the United Nations Command in South Korea, said he views the technology as a potential tool for building analytical models and training his staff to think more efficiently.

The comments mark one of the most direct acknowledgments to date of a senior American military official using a commercial chatbot to assist in leadership or operational thinking.

Well, Officer Alexander James Murphy aka  Robocop, San Francisco might no longer need your services. Have a good day!

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff suggests AI-powered ‘robo-cops’ help fight crime in San Francisco

Salesforce boss Marc Benioff is pitching AI-powered “robo-cops” to help stamp out crime in San Francisco — just days after stunning the city’s political leaders by backing President Trump’s call to send in the National Guard.

The billionaire tech mogul, still fending off fallout from his political U-turn, took the stage at his company’s Dreamforce conference this week and floated the idea that humanoid robots could one day patrol the streets where he once wanted soldiers.

“Do you see this as, that you’d be selling these to SFPD?” Benioff asked Brett Adcock, CEO of San Jose robotics firm Figure AI, as the pair watched a demo on Wednesday of a so-called “synthetic human” cleaning a living room.

““And saying [to the police], ‘Look, you’re down 500 or 1,000 officers. I can offer you robots to do some of these jobs, even if they’re not armed or not militaristic.’ Is that a role that you see them playing in cities?” Benioff said.

Adcock, who has bragged that his company is “building a new species,” dodged the question, insisting his company won’t build machines for “military or defense applications.”

Benioff pushed again — then quipped that “Google also used to say that, by the way.”

If robots become “self-replicating,” he told Adcock on stage at Dreamforce on Wednesday, they can “choose on their own” what they want to do, adding: “Why are you deciding for them?”

Adcock, looking increasingly uneasy, assured the crowd that Figure’s machines won’t be used for harm.

“It’s just not interesting for us,” he said.

The uneasy laughter in the room suggested the audience wasn’t sure if Benioff was joking, according to SFGATE.

Wikipedia blames ChatGPT for falling traffic — and claims bots are stealing its hard work

Is ChatGPT just Wikiped-AI?

After threatening to replace humans in many sectors, generative AI is now targeting online platforms as well. Wikipedia is seeing a sharp decline in traffic as online users increasingly turn to ChatGPT and Google AI overviews to get their info.

According to a new blog post by Marshall Miller of the Wikimedia Foundation, human page views are are down 8% these past few months “as compared to the same months in 2024.”

This troubling phenomenon came to light after Wikipedia’s bot detection systems seemed to show that “much of the unusually high traffic for the period of May and June was coming from bots that were built to evade detection.”

Miller believes that the trend reflects “the impact of generative AI and social media on how people seek information, noting “search engines providing answers directly to searchers, often based on Wikipedia content.”

Throw in the fact that “younger generations are seeking information on social video platforms rather than the open web,” and it’s no wonder that internet users are increasingly bypassing the Wiki middleman.

To wit, an Adobe Express report conducted over the summer found that 77% of Americans who use ChatGPT treat it as a search engine while three in ten ChatGPT users trust it more than a search engine.

Despite the looming threat of AI, Miller doesn’t believe that the digital encyclopedia was going obsolete.

“Almost all large language models (LLMs) train on Wikipedia datasets, and search engines and social media platforms prioritize its information to respond to questions from their users,” he wrote. “That means that people are reading the knowledge created by Wikimedia volunteers all over the internet, even if they don’t visit wikipedia.org.”

To help users get their info straight from the source, Wikipedia even experimented with AI summaries like Google, but put the kibosh on the movement after editors complained, Techcrunch reported.

Nonetheless, Miller expressed concern that the AI takeover would make it difficult to know where information is coming from. “With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work,” he fretted.

Wikipedia is not the only platform’s whose eyeballs have been impacted by generative AI.

In a statement to the Competition and Markets Authority in July, DMG Media, owner of MailOnline, claimed that AI Overviews had caused click-through rates for their site to plummet by 89 percent.

TAXIS

Driverless flying taxis of the future can fly nearly 125 miles on one battery charge

There’s electricity in the air.

A Chinese automobile firm is taking the electric vehicle to new heights by rolling out a driverless flying taxi that can fly over 100 miles on a single charge, per a video currently taking off online.

“It [the car] is engineered to transform intercity aerial travel into a safe, routine, and efficient transportation experience,” EHang Holding vehicles, made announced in a press release.

The VT35, launched on October 13 in Hefei, Anhui Province, is the firm’s latest generation of long-range pilotless electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

Building on the prior VT30 prototype, the two-seat flying vehicle features autonomous flight systems, electric propulsion, and a compact airframe with the goal of making urban aerial travel safer and more efficient.

It also addresses one of the biggest criticism of the eVTOL — electric fuel efficiency.

Fortunately, the VT35 can travel a distance of 125 miles on a single charge while cruising along at 134 miles per hour — the latter ability is thanks to a rear pusher propeller and fixed wings for efficient forward flight.

Meanwhile, the model is equipped with eight lift propellers for vertical take-off and landing, meaning it can travel to and land on rooftops, parking lots, and other ports, further enhancing its potential as an inner-city mode of aerial transit.

Although the company foresees its potential for traveling across mountains and oceans as well.

Waymo robotaxis probed after reports of failing to stop for school buses

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Monday it has opened a preliminary probe into about 2,000 Waymo self-driving vehicles after reports that the company’s robotaxis may have failed to follow traffic safety laws around stopped school buses.

The probe is the latest federal review of self-driving systems as regulators scrutinize how driverless technologies interact with pedestrians, cyclists and other road users.

NHTSA said the Office of Defects Investigation opened the review after flagging a media report describing an incident in which a Waymo autonomous vehicle did not remain stationary when approaching a school bus with its red lights flashing, stop arm deployed and crossing control arm extended.

The report said the Waymo vehicle initially stopped beside the bus then maneuvered around its front, passing the extended stop arm and crossing control arm while students were disembarking.

A Waymo spokesperson said the company has “already developed and implemented improvements related to stopping for school buses and will land additional software updates in our next software release.”

The company added “driving safely around children has always been one of Waymo’s highest priorities. In the event referenced, the vehicle approached the school bus from an angle where the flashing lights and stop sign were not visible and drove slowly around the front of the bus before driving past it, keeping a safe distance from children.”

NHTSA said the vehicle involved was equipped with Waymo’s fifth-generation Automated Driving System (ADS) and was operating without a human safety driver at the time of the incident.

Waymo has said its robotaxi fleet numbers more than 1,500 vehicles operating across major US cities, including Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin.

CRYPTO EREBOR

Feds green light Palmer Luckey’s crypto-friendly banking startup Erebor

Palmer Luckey’s ambitious crypto-friendly digital banking startup Erebor has received conditional approval from regulators to start operations, federal officials announced Wednesday.

As The Post was first to report, Luckey, the 32-year-old tech mogul known for leading the fast-growing defense firm Anduril, is among the chief backers for Erebor – which aims to aims to provide a stable option for Silicon Valley firms and tech entrepreneurs to park their money and cryptocurrency outside traditional banks.

Tech investor Joe Lonsdale of venture firm 8VC is another key backer for Erebor, as is Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

Conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, an independent branch of the US Treasury, marked a crucial step forward for the startup, which is based in Columbus, Ohio. It still needs to clear a few more regulatory hurdles before it can open for business – a process likely to take several months.

“Today’s decision is also proof that the OCC under my leadership does not impose blanket barriers to banks that want to engage in digital asset activities,” Comptroller of the Currency Jonathan Gould said in a statement.

“Permissible digital asset activities, like any other legally permissible banking activity, have a place in the federal banking system if conducted in a safe and sound manner,” he added.

An Erebor representative declined to comment.

Luckey is listed as Erebor’s principal shareholder and a member of its board of directors. Owen Rapaport, the cofounder of crypto-monitoring company Aer Compliance, is listed as Erebor’s CEO.

The startup’s unusual name is a reference to the mountain where the dragon Smaug stores his hoard of gold in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of The Rings” prequel “The Hobbit.”

Why are tech moguls obsessed with Tolkien's works?  There's also another company called Palantir like the crystal ball the mages used in The Lord of the Rings.

CHINA & CHIPS

Micron to leave server chips business in China after ban

SEOUL/SHANGHAI, Oct 17 (Reuters) – Micron plans to stop supplying server chips to data centers in China after the business failed to recover from a 2023 government ban on its products in critical Chinese infrastructure, two people briefed on the decision said.

Micron was the first U.S. chipmaker to be targeted by Beijing – a move that was seen as retaliatory for a series of curbs by Washington aimed at impeding tech progress by China’s semiconductor industry.

Shares of the chipmaker were down about 1%.

Since then, both Nvidia and Intel chips have similarly fielded accusations from Chinese authorities and an industry group of posing security risks, though there has not been any regulatory action.

Micron will continue to sell to two Chinese customers that have significant data center operations outside China, one of which is laptop maker Lenovo, the people said.

The U.S. company, which made $3.4 billion or 12% of its total revenue from mainland China in its last business year, will also continue to sell chips to auto and mobile phone sector customers in the world’s second-largest economy, one person said.

Asked about the exit from its China data center business, Micron said in a statement to Reuters that the division had been impacted by the ban, and it abides by applicable regulations where it does business.

Lenovo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Micron will look for customers outside of China in other parts of Asia, Europe and Latin America,” said Jacob Bourne, analyst at Emarketer.

“China is a critical market, however, we’re seeing data center expansion globally fueled by AI demand, and so Micron is betting that it will be able to make up for lost business in other markets,” he added.

U.S.-Sino trade tensions and tech rivalry have only escalated since 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump began imposing tariffs on Chinese goods during his first term. That same year, Washington ramped up accusations against Chinese tech giant Huawei (HWT.UL), accusing it of representing a national security risk, imposing sanctions a year later.