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X Outage: Thousands Report Issues With Elon Musk's Platform
X outage: Thousands report issues with Elon Musk's platform:
Elon Musk's social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, experienced massive outages throughout Monday morning that impacted thousands of users in the US and UK.
The outage came as platform monitor Downdetector said it had seen tens of thousands of reports from US users of technical issues affecting the platform.
There were more than 8,000 outage reports from UK users shortly before 14:00 GMT, following a brief but notable surge of reports on Monday morning.
Connection issues lasted for some users into the afternoon.
Many users trying to access the platform and refresh feeds on its app and desktop site during Monday's outages were met with a loading icon.
Musk claims the outages stemmed from a "massive cyber-attack" that originated "in the Ukraine area".
But the technology billionaire, who has been a frequent critic of Ukraine and its President Volodymyr Zelensky, offered no evidence to support the claim and did not say whether or not he thought state actors were involved.
Earlier, he posted on X that "either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved".
[...] "We're not sure exactly what happened but there was a massive cyber-attack to try and bring down the X system with [Internet Protocol] addresses originating in the Ukraine area," Musk said in an interview with the Fox Business channel.
Alp Toker, director of Netblocks, which monitors the connectivity of web services, said its own metrics suggested the outages could well be linked to a cyber-attack.
"What we've been seeing is consistent with what we've seen in past denial of service attacks, rather than a configuration or coding error in the platform," he told the BBC.
Elon Musk Claims X Being Targeted in 'Massive Cyberattack' as Service Goes Down
Elon Musk claims X being targeted in 'massive cyberattack' as service goes down:
Elon Musk's X social media platform is experiencing multiple outages. Downdetector.com says more than 28,000 users reported an outage at 11:28 a.m.
The social media platform X (FKA Twitter) went down three separate times with the longest outage lasting several hours starting around 7 a.m. PT/10 a.m. ET.
No official words has come from X save for a single tweet from owner Elon Musk claiming that the outage was due to a 'massive cyberattack.'
More than 40,000 Downdetector reports poured in from users during the second outage — around 35,000 during the third outage — stating that they couldn't even get the X website to load, and it spiked hard again for a third one.
Elon Musk Says DOGE Involvement is Making It Harder to Run His Businesses
Elon Musk says DOGE involvement is making it harder to run his businesses:
In an interview with Fox's Larry Kudlow on Monday, billionaire Elon Musk admitted that his involvement with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Donald Trump's initiative to reduce federal spending, is making it tougher to run his many businesses: X, Tesla, xAI, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and Starlink.
"How are you running your other businesses?" Kudlow asked at one point. "With great difficulty," Musk replied. "Frankly, I can't believe I'm here doing this."
Musk and DOGE, which has around 100 staffers — a number that Musk expects to climb to 200 — have been criticized for overpromising and underdelivering on spending cuts across U.S government agencies. Government contracting experts say that DOGE's online record of reductions contains inaccurate information and inflates claims of "savings" by including misleading math about contract cancellations.
DOGE has also put the U.S.'s data and computing infrastructure at risk through its work, according to cybersecurity analysts. DOGE staffers, some of whom have little experience working with government systems, have reportedly accessed agency data through insecure means and copied that data onto unprotected servers.
[...] While Musk complains that his work advising DOGE has stretched him thin, the billionaire has been accused of using the initiative to weaken regulations that oversee his business ventures.
When asked by Kudlow if he would extend his involvement in DOGE by "another year," Musk said, "Yeah." "We're just getting things done, as opposed to writing a report," Musk added. "Like, reports don't mean anything. You've got to actually take action."
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 11, @07:04PM (10 children)
Like a lot of sci-fi plots, Babylon 5 bases many of its fictional plots on stuff that has happened many many times in human history. The kind of maneuvering GP is talking about is common enough it has a name: Self-coup [wikipedia.org] It's a lot like a normal coup, except instead of an outside force doing it to a leader who gained power legitimately according to some kind of democratic constitution, it's a legitimately-chosen-via-democracy leader doing it to the rest of the government to gain more power within that government, e.g. a president or prime minister attempts to declare martial law, and if enough of the military goes along with it they won't have to worry about elections or the legislature or courts stopping them from doing whatever they want.
Wikipedia lists about 30 historical examples, including the one involving a notorious Austrian-turned-German fellow in the early 20th century, which by all accounts was the instance that the Jewish writer of Babylon 5 was probably drawing from the most when he wrote it because he grew up around people who had lived through it.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday March 11, @07:49PM (2 children)
Not "probably." JMS [wikipedia.org] actually said he based a lot of that stuff on World War II. This was in (at least one) an episode commentary track by him. on the DVDs.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 11, @09:19PM (1 child)
The only reason I said "probably" is that he was also pretty explicitly drawing on stuff like what the Soviets were doing to what became the Warsaw Pact countries.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday March 11, @10:52PM
Yep. He talks more about Orwell as an influence rather than the USSR, but he discusses that too.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Troll) by c0lo on Tuesday March 11, @07:57PM (4 children)
I'm well familiar with the self-coup meaning and totally oblivious on Babylon 5.
So... thanks?
I mean. that's a lot of info that you put there - and still not an incentive for me to make the effort of finding and watching Babylon 5.
Maybe others will find it useful, thus +Informative.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 11, @09:29PM (2 children)
Babylon 5 is uneven but well worth watching if you're the sort that like audiovisual entertainment. Definitely available on a bunch of streaming services as well as via piracy. 91 episodes, so a bit longer than Star Trek TOS, but you can also easily skip the last season and not miss too much. Significantly better than a lot of stuff out there.
A couple of representative scenes [youtube.com] involving a guest character who is a true believer in authoritarian nonsense.
If you'd rather read than watch, there's plenty of good writing and reviews about it out there as well.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 11, @10:01PM
My bucket list is overflowing otherwise I'd give it a try. Thank you again.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday March 12, @04:44PM
Is that a young Marjorie Taylor Greene in there?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 12, @11:17PM
My take is that Babylon 5 is well thought out and has a great overall plot. They did a good job with characters, alien cultures, and history. And when they tie off a plot thread, it can be mighty tasty.
It has its limitations (such as almost everyone being humanoid and a tendency to draw plot analogues from real world history), or needing to watch a zillion episodes to get resolution on so many things. If you like your episodes nice and tidy, then the high level of continuity, foreshadowing, and so on between episodes will be a pain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 11, @11:07PM (1 child)
JMS is an Atheist, of the lapsed Catholic variety...now, had you said 'creative consultant', then that's indeed a different bucket of Lox..
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 12, @01:44AM
You're right, I stand corrected. I know he's cited significant Jewish influence, and couldn't have written Ivonova correctly without it.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin