AWS Outage Takes Thousands of Websites Offline for Three Hours AWS experienced a three-hour outage early Monday morning that disrupted thousands of websites and applications across the globe. The cloud computing provider reported DNS problems with DynamoDB in its US-EAST-1 region in northern Virginia starting at 12:11 a.m. Pacific time. Over 4 million users reported issues, according to Downdetector. Snapchat saw reports spike from more than 22,000 to around 4,000 as systems recovered. Roblox dropped from over 12,600 complaints to fewer than 500. Reddit and the financial platform Chime remained affected longer. Perplexity, Coinbase and Robinhood attributed their platform disruptions directly to AWS. Gaming platforms including Fortnite, Clash Royale and Clash of Clans went offline. Signal confirmed the messaging app was down. In Britain, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland, Vodafone, BT, and the HMRC website faced problems. United Airlines reported disrupted access to its app and website overnight. Some internal systems were temporarily affected. Delta experienced a small number of minor flight delays. By 3:35 a.m. Pacific time, AWS said the issue had been fully mitigated. Most service operations were succeeding normally though some requests faced throttling during final resolution. AWS holds roughly one-third of the cloud infrastructure market ahead of Microsoft and Google. <a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=AWS+Outage+Takes+Thousands+of+Websites+Offline+for+Three+Hours%3A+https%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F10%2F20%2F140248%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"></a> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F10%2F20%2F140248%2Faws-outage-takes-thousands-of-websites-offline-for-three-hours%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"></a>
AWS Outage Takes Thousands of Websites Offline for Three Hours - Slashdot
AWS experienced a three-hour outage early Monday morning that disrupted thousands of websites and applications across the globe. The cloud computin...
 at Slashdot.
AWS Outage Takes Thousands of Websites Offline for Three Hours - Slashdot
AWS experienced a three-hour outage early Monday morning that disrupted thousands of websites and applications across the globe. The cloud computin...
Should We Edit Nature to Help It Survive Climate Change? A recent article in Noema magazines explores the issues in "editing nature to fix our failures." "It turns out playing God is neither difficult nor expensive," the article points out. "For about $2,000, I can go online and order a decent microscope, a precision injection rig, and a vial of enough CRISPR-Cas9 — an enzyme-based genome-editing tool — to genetically edit a few thousand fish embryos..." So when going beyond the kept-in-captivity Dire Wolf to the possibility of bringing back forests of the American chestnut tree, "The process is deceptively simple; the implications are anything but..." If scientists could use CRISPR to engineer a more heat-tolerant coral, it would give coral a better chance of surviving a marine environment made warmer by climate change. It would also keep the human industries that rely on reefs afloat. But should we edit nature to fix our failures? And if we do, is it still natural...? Evolution is not keeping pace with climate change, so it is up to us to give it an assist [according to Christopher Preston, an environmental philosopher from the University of Montana, who wrote a book on CRISPR called "Ma href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262537094/the-synthetic-age/">The Synthetic Age."] In some cases, the urgency is so great that we may not have time to waste. "There's no doubt there are times when you have to act," Preston continued. "Corals are a case where the benefits of reefs are just so enormous that keeping some alive, even if they're genetically altered, makes the risks worth it." Kate Quigley, a molecular ecologist and a principal research scientist at Australia's Minderoo Foundation, says "Engineering the ocean, or the atmosphere, or coral is not something to be taken lightly. Science is incredible. But that doesn't mean we know everything and what the unintended consequences might be." Phillip Cleves, a principal investigator at the Carnegie Institute for Science's embryology department, is already researching whether coral could be bioengineered to be more tolerant to heat. But both of them have concerns: For all the research Quigley and Cleves have dedicated to climate-proofing coral, neither wants to see the results of their work move from experimentation in the lab to actual use in the open ocean. Needing to do so would represent an even greater failure by humankind to protect the environment that we already have. And while genetic editing and selective breeding offer concrete solutions for helping some organisms adapt, they will never be powerful enough to replace everything lost to rising water temperatures. "I will try to prepare for it, but the most important thing we can do to save coral is take strong action on climate change," Quigley told me. "We could pour billions and billions of dollars — in fact, we already have — into restoration, and even if, by some miracle, we manage to recreate the reef, there'd be other ecosystems that would need the same thing. So why can't we just get at the root issue?" And then there's the blue-green algae dilemma: George Church, the Harvard Medical School professor of genetics behind Colossal's dire wolf project, was part of a team that successfully used CRISPR to change the genome of blue-green algae so that it could absorb up to 20% more carbon dioxide via photosynthesis. Silicon Valley tech incubator Y Combinator seized on the advance to call for scaled-up proposals, estimating that seeding less than 1% of the ocean's surface with genetically engineered phytoplankton would sequester approximately 47 gigatons of CO2 a year, more than enough to reverse all of last year's worldwide emissions. But moving from deploying CRISPR for species protection to providing a planetary service flips the ethical calculus. Restoring a chestnut forest or a coral reef preserves nature, or at least something close to it. Genetically manipulating phytoplankton and plants to clean up after our mistakes raises the risk of a moral hazard. Do we have the right to rewrite nature so we can perpetuate our nature-killing ways? <a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Should+We+Edit+Nature+to+Help+It+Survive+Climate+Change%3F%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F10%2F20%2F0514246%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"></a> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fscience.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F10%2F20%2F0514246%2Fshould-we-edit-nature-to-help-it-survive-climate-change%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"></a>
Should We Edit Nature to Help It Survive Climate Change? - Slashdot
A recent article in Noema magazines explores the issues in &#34;editing nature to fix our failures.&#34; &#34;It turns out playing God is neither...
 at Slashdot.
Should We Edit Nature to Help It Survive Climate Change? - Slashdot
A recent article in Noema magazines explores the issues in &#34;editing nature to fix our failures.&#34; &#34;It turns out playing God is neither...
'The AI Revolution's Next Casualty Could Be the Gig Economy' "The gig economy is facing a reckoning," argues Business Insider's BI Today newsletter." Two stories this past week caught my eye. Uber unveiled a new way for its drivers to earn money. No, not by giving rides, but by helping train the ride-sharing company's AI models instead. On the same day, Waymo announced a partnership with DoorDash to test driverless grocery and meal deliveries. Both moves point toward the same future: one where the very workers who built the gig economy may soon find themselves training the technology that replaces them. Uber's new program allows drivers to earn cash by completing microtasks, such as taking photos and uploading audio clips, that aim to improve the company's AI systems. For drivers, it's a way to diversify income. For Uber, it's a way to accelerate its automated future. There's an irony here. By helping Uber strengthen its AI, drivers could be accelerating the very driverless world they fear... Uber already offers autonomous rides in Waymo vehicles in Atlanta and Austin, and plans to expand. Meanwhile, Waymo is rolling out its pilot partnership with DoorDash [for driverless grocery/meal deliveries] starting in Phoenix. <a href="http://twitter.com/home?status='The+AI+Revolution's+Next+Casualty+Could+Be+the+Gig+Economy'%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fslashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F10%2F20%2F0616223%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"></a> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fslashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F10%2F20%2F0616223%2Fthe-ai-revolutions-next-casualty-could-be-the-gig-economy%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"></a>
'The AI Revolution's Next Casualty Could Be the Gig Economy' - Slashdot
&#34;The gig economy is facing a reckoning,&#34; argues Business Insider
 at Slashdot.
'The AI Revolution's Next Casualty Could Be the Gig Economy' - Slashdot
&#34;The gig economy is facing a reckoning,&#34; argues Business Insider
Was the Web More Creative and Human 20 Years Ago? Readers in 2025 "may struggle to remember the optimism of the aughts, when the internet seemed to offer endless possibilities for virtual art and writing that was free..." argues a new review at Bookforum. "The content we do create online, if we still create, often feels unreflectively automatic: predictable quote-tweet dunks, prefabricated poses on Instagram, TikTok dances that hit their beats like clockwork, to say nothing of what's literally thoughtlessly churned out by LLM-powered bots." They write that author Joanna Walsh "wants us to remember how truly creative, and human, the internet once was," in the golden age of user-generated content — and funny cat picture sites like I Can Has Cheezburger: I Can Has Cheezburger... was an amateur project, an outlet for tech professionals who wanted an easier way to exchange cute cat pics after a hard day at work. In Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters, Walsh documents how unpaid creative labor is the basis for almost everything that's good (and much that's bad) online, including the open-source code Linux, developed by Linus Torvalds when he was still in school ("just as a hobby, won't be big and professional"), and even, in Walsh's account, the World Wide Web itself. The platforms that emerged in the 2000s as "Web 2.0," including Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, allowed anyone to experiment in a space that had been reserved for coders and hackers, making the internet interactive even for the inexpert and virtually unlimited in potential audience. The explosion in amateur creativity that followed took many forms, from memes to tweeted one-liners to diaristic blogs to durational digital performances to sloppy Photoshops to the formal and informal taxonomic structures — wikis, neologisms, digitally native dialects... [U]ser-generated content was also, at bottom, about the bottom line, a business model sold to us under the guise of artistic empowerment. Even referring to an anonymous amateur as a "user," Walsh argues, cedes ground: these platforms are populated by producers, but their owners see us as, and turn us into, "helpless addicts." For some, online amateurism translated to professional success, a viral post earning an author a book deal, or a reputation as a top commenter leading to a staff writing job on a web publication... But for most, these days, participation in the online attention economy feels like a tax, or maybe a trickle of revenue, rather than free fun or a ticket to fame. The few remaining professionals in the arts and letters have felt pressured to supplement their full-time jobs with social media self-promotion, subscription newsletters, podcasts, and short-form video. On what was once called Twitter, users can pay, and sometimes get paid, to post with greater reach... The chapters are bookended by an introduction on the early promise of 2004 and a coda on the defeat of 2025 and supplemented by an appendix with a straightforward timeline of the major events and publications that serve as the book's touchstones... The online spaces where amateur content creators once "created and steered online culture" have been hollowed out and replaced by slop, but what really hurts is that the slop is being produced by bots trained on precisely that amateur content. <a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Was+the+Web+More+Creative+and+Human+20+Years+Ago%3F%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F10%2F20%2F0230212%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"></a> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fnews.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F10%2F20%2F0230212%2Fwas-the-web-more-creative-and-human-20-years-ago%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"></a>
Was the Web More Creative and Human 20 Years Ago? - Slashdot
Readers in 2025 &#34;may struggle to remember the optimism of the aughts, when the internet seemed to offer endless possibilities for virtual art a...
 at Slashdot.
Was the Web More Creative and Human 20 Years Ago? - Slashdot
Readers in 2025 &#34;may struggle to remember the optimism of the aughts, when the internet seemed to offer endless possibilities for virtual art a...
Ask Slashdot: Who's Still Using an RSS Reader? alternative_right writes: I use RSS to cover all of my news-reading needs because I like a variety of sources spanning several fields -- politics, philosophy, science, and heavy metal. However, it seems Google wanted to kill off RSS a few years back, and it has since fallen out of favor. Some of us are holding on, but how many? And what software do you use (or did you write your own XML parsers)? <a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Ask+Slashdot%3A+Who's+Still+Using+an+RSS+Reader%3F%3A+https%3A%2F%2Fask.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F08%2F06%2F2153255%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"></a> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fask.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F08%2F06%2F2153255%2Fask-slashdot-whos-still-using-an-rss-reader%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"></a>
Ask Slashdot: Who
alternative_right writes: I use RSS to cover all of my news-reading needs because I like a variety of sources spanning several fields -- politics, ...
 at Slashdot.
Ask Slashdot: Who
alternative_right writes: I use RSS to cover all of my news-reading needs because I like a variety of sources spanning several fields -- politics, ...
Linux Reaches 5% On Desktop Longtime Slashdot reader bobdevine shares a report from OSTechNix: For the first time, Linux has officially broken the 5% desktop market share barrier in the United States of America! It's a huge milestone for open-source and our fantastic Linux community. While many might think of Linux as a niche choice, this new data shows a significant shift is happening. According to the latest StatCounter Global Stats for June 2025, Linux now holds 5.03% of the desktop operating system market share in the United United States of America. This is fantastic news! [...] One truly satisfying detail for me? Linux has finally surpassed the "Unknown" category in the USA! It shows that our growth is clear and recognized. "It took eight years to go from 1% to 2% (by April 2021), then just 2.2 years to reach 3% (June 2023), and a mere 0.7 years to hit 4% (February 2024)," notes the report. "Now, here we are, at over 5% in the USA! This exponential growth suggests that we're on a promising upward trend." <a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Linux+Reaches+5%25+On+Desktop%3A+https%3A%2F%2Flinux.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F07%2F16%2F2048246%2F%3Futm_source%3Dtwitter%26utm_medium%3Dtwitter" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"></a> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Flinux.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F25%2F07%2F16%2F2048246%2Flinux-reaches-5-on-desktop%3Futm_source%3Dslashdot%26utm_medium%3Dfacebook" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"></a>
Linux Reaches 5% On Desktop - Slashdot
Longtime Slashdot reader bobdevine shares a report from OSTechNix: For the first time, Linux has officially broken the 5% desktop market share bar...
 at Slashdot.
Linux Reaches 5% On Desktop - Slashdot
Longtime Slashdot reader bobdevine shares a report from OSTechNix: For the first time, Linux has officially broken the 5% desktop market share bar...