Crowdstrike's recent update caused significant issues, including Windows bluescreens and boot loops, affecting various sectors, including emergency services and hospitals.
A Reddit user reported that their emergency department was down during a heart attack treatment, and 911 services were also impacted, leading to delays in patient care.
The incident underscores the risks of relying on interconnected systems and the potential for catastrophic failures when updates are not properly tested before deployment.
A global IT disruption was triggered by a flawed software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings, affecting numerous Microsoft Windows systems.
Both Microsoft and CrowdStrike have released fixes to address the issue, but complete recovery is expected to take some time.
The situation has slightly improved, but the impact of the botched update is still being felt worldwide.
The FCC has voted to significantly reduce phone and video call rates for prisons and jails, cutting per-minute rate caps by more than half and prohibiting all fees, including deposit fees.
This change impacts 83% of incarcerated individuals, saving families at least $500 million annually and enhancing the well-being and reentry success of incarcerated individuals.
Major revenue losses are expected for prison telecom companies like Aventiv and ViaPath, while states such as Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Colorado have already moved to make prison calls free.
The FCC has voted to limit charges for prison telecom services, aiming to reduce the high costs of inmate phone calls.
Previously, inmates were restricted to using a single, prison-approved private phone operator, resulting in exorbitant prices due to lack of competition.
The new regulations are intended to alleviate the financial burden on inmates and their families, promoting better rehabilitation and reducing recidivism.
Foliate is an open-source e-book reader supporting various formats like EPUB, Mobipocket, Kindle, FB2, CBZ, and PDF, with customizable reading settings.
It offers features such as touchpad and touchscreen navigation, bookmarks, annotations, and integration with tools like Wiktionary and Google Translate.
Foliate supports right-to-left text, vertical writing, and fixed layouts, and is available for multiple Linux distributions or via source code cloning.
Foliate is an e-book reader praised for its simplicity, easy navigation, bookmarking, and annotation features.
It stores reading progress, bookmarks, and annotations in plain JSON files, facilitating easy export and synchronization.
Foliate uses file hashes to generate unique identifiers for books, ensuring PDFs remain unmodified when annotated, though some users note potential issues if files are altered.
Frontier Airlines grounded all flights for about 35 minutes due to a major Microsoft Azure outage, affecting booking, check-in, and boarding pass access.
The outage, starting at 5:56 p.m., also disrupted systems for Allegiant and Sun Country Airlines, impacting multiple systems in the central U.S.
Frontier, operating over 100 planes, was one of at least three airlines affected by the service disruptions.
Multiple airlines experienced disruptions due to a Microsoft Azure outage, potentially linked to a faulty Crowdstrike update causing global Windows machine crashes.
The outage has impacted various sectors, including ATMs, supermarkets, and airports in Europe and New Zealand, indicating a widespread issue.
The incident underscores the risks associated with centralized cloud services and emphasizes the necessity for improved disaster recovery plans.
AT&T, through Bell Labs, was pivotal in developing America's telephone infrastructure and produced significant inventions like the transistor, silicon solar PV cell, and UNIX operating system.
Bell Labs' success was partly due to AT&T's monopoly, which supported long-term research projects, resulting in numerous accolades, including 10 Nobel Prizes.
The breakup of AT&T led to the division and decline of Bell Labs, making it difficult to recreate such an institution today due to the unique historical and technological conditions that once existed.
Recreating Bell Labs would necessitate a quasi-monopoly, substantial funding, minimal competition, and a culture prioritizing long-term innovation over short-term profits.
Historical and modern examples, such as Sandia National Laboratories and tech giants like Google and Microsoft, highlight the importance of leadership, national culture, and tax structures in fostering innovation.
The current emphasis on immediate shareholder returns poses a significant barrier to the focus on long-term research.
Ryanair is known for using "dark patterns," manipulative design techniques, to increase profits during the booking process.
Tactics include "privacy zuckering," where customers are defaulted into promotional sign-ups, and "misdirection," which uses prominent buttons and popups to upsell services.
These deceptive designs are pervasive throughout Ryanair's website, making it essential for users to stay vigilant to avoid accidental purchases or sharing more information than intended.
Ryanair uses dark patterns, such as hidden fees and manipulative tactics, to increase profits, frustrating customers.
Examples include charges for app ID scans, misleading "speedy boarding" perks, and complex baggage policies, leading to additional costs for basic services.
Despite low prices and efficient flights, many customers prefer to avoid Ryanair due to its customer-unfriendly practices, with other low-cost airlines like EasyJet and WizzAir being considered less aggressive.
CrowdStrike's recent update led to Windows systems crashing with a blue screen of death (BSOD), causing significant disruption.
Fixes range from multiple reboots to more complex solutions like restoring backups or manually deleting the problematic driver, with additional steps required for systems using BitLocker encryption.
The update has been retracted, and CrowdStrike's CEO has apologized, assuring users that efforts are underway to resolve the issue.
CrowdStrike's recent fix requires up to 15 reboots, causing significant disruptions across various sectors, including CNC systems, AC and security alarms, phones, email, and accounting systems.
The incident underscores the risks associated with automatic updates and the necessity for improved security practices, with many advocating for more robust testing and gradual rollouts.
Users are questioning the reliance on internet-connected, Windows-based critical systems, highlighting a need for reevaluation of current IT infrastructure strategies.
SENDUNE has introduced a new open-source HTML email designer aimed at simplifying the creation of HTML emails, which are traditionally difficult to write and maintain.
The designer is lightweight, uses pure HTML, and avoids cumbersome dependencies, allowing users to save the HTML output as a template for any email service provider.
Users are encouraged to fork the repository, make improvements, and submit pull requests, fostering a collaborative development environment.
Sendune is an open-source HTML email designer that emphasizes simplicity and ease of use, producing pure HTML for compatibility with any email service provider.
The tool is lightweight, free from dependencies, and can be easily embedded in applications, with users able to save HTML output as templates.
Despite some reported issues with drag-and-drop functionality on Firefox, the community response has been positive, and contributions can be made via GitHub.
A 60-year-old German man is likely the seventh person effectively cured of HIV following a stem cell transplant, which also treated his aggressive leukemia.
The patient, referred to as the "next Berlin patient," stopped taking anti-retroviral drugs in late 2018 and remains HIV and cancer-free nearly six years later.
Researchers are cautiously optimistic, noting that this case suggests not all CCR5 gene mutations are necessary for successful HIV treatment, offering hope for broader HIV cure strategies.
A 60-year-old German man is likely the seventh person effectively cured of HIV, though the procedure is drastic and usually reserved for severe leukemia cases.
There is a suggestion to evolve this into an autologous stem cell transplant to avoid complications like graft-versus-host disease.
Despite advancements in HIV treatments that reduce viral loads to undetectable levels, 10,000 people still die of AIDS annually in the US, often due to poor sexual education and healthcare access.
Crowdstrike, a Texas-based cybersecurity company founded in 2011, specializes in endpoint security to protect corporate networks and cloud data from cyber threats.
Co-founded by George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch, the company went public on the Nasdaq in 2019.
Crowdstrike has been pivotal in investigating major cyber-attacks, notably the 2016 breach of the US Democratic National Committee's network.
A global IT outage, triggered by a Crowdstrike update, caused Windows systems to experience bluescreens and boot loops, affecting airlines, media, and banks.
The incident has sparked discussions on the reliability of endpoint protection software, the risks of supply chain attacks, and the heavy dependence on Windows infrastructure.
The outage, stemming from a "security update," has raised significant concerns about the sovereignty and resilience of IT infrastructure.
ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, launched in December 2013 to map over a billion stars in the Milky Way, recently faced significant challenges from a micrometeoroid strike and a solar storm.
The micrometeoroid damaged Gaia’s protective cover, and the solar storm caused a failure in one of its charge-coupled devices (CCDs), leading to thousands of false star detections.
Engineers from ESA and Airbus Defence and Space successfully adjusted Gaia’s software, reducing false detections and returning the spacecraft to routine operations, now producing some of its best quality data.
ESA's Gaia spacecraft recently sustained damage from a micrometeoroid and a solar storm but continues its mission, showcasing the resilience of space missions.
Historical examples like Voyager 1 and Hubble demonstrate that space missions often outlive their expected lifetimes through software updates and repairs.
Despite budget constraints and technical challenges, the dedication of engineers has allowed Gaia to continue producing high-quality data after recent adjustments.
CrowdStrike's C-00000291*.sys file has caused system crashes due to invalid formatting, affecting the CrowdStrike driver.
Users report different versions of the file, with some speculating encryption with customer-specific keys, though others have parsed them without decryption.
The files are proprietary update formats, not DLLs or patches, raising concerns about the security and reliability of CrowdStrike's update process.
CrowdStrike's C-00000291*.sys file has caused system crashes due to invalid formatting, affecting the main CrowdStrike driver.
Users report different versions of the file, with some speculating encryption with customer-specific keys, though others have parsed them without decryption.
The files are proprietary update formats, not DLLs or plain patches, raising concerns about the security and reliability of CrowdStrike's update process.
NASA’s Curiosity rover discovered elemental sulfur on Mars for the first time, a significant milestone in Martian exploration.
The discovery was made in a sulfate-rich region, with Curiosity finding an entire field of bright rocks composed of pure sulfur, intriguing scientists.
Curiosity's mission, which includes studying Mars' ancient terrain for signs of microbial life, continues as it ascends Mount Sharp, drilling its 41st rock sample for further analysis.
Research from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute highlights that loss of oxygen in lakes and oceans poses a significant threat to ecosystems, society, and the planet.
Aquatic deoxygenation, linked to climate change, land use, and pollution, has led to a rapid decline in dissolved oxygen, with lakes and reservoirs losing 5.5% and 18.6% of their oxygen since 1980, and oceans losing around 2% since 1960.
This deoxygenation impacts species' physiology, food webs, and ecosystem services, creating "dead zones" and harmful algal blooms, necessitating urgent action to address global warming and runoff.
Lakes and reservoirs have experienced significant oxygen loss, with 5.5% and 18.6% reductions since 1980, respectively, while oceans have seen around a 2% decrease since 1960.
Central California is particularly affected, with a 40% drop in oxygen levels, primarily due to greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient runoff, and raw sewage.
Suggested solutions include regenerative agriculture and reducing industrial meat consumption to mitigate the broader environmental impacts of climate change and pollution.