Musk's X down for thousands of US users, Downdetector shows
There were more than 15,400 incidents of people reporting issues with the social media platform as of 9:52 a.m. ET, Downdetector showed, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.
X did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru)
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Can AI avatars ensure that a CEO has eyes and ears everywhere?
Having an avatar has seemingly always been for those immersed in video games and social media. It was confined to fun and games, until now. Sebastian Siemiatkowski, chief executive of Klarna, and Zoom chief executive Eric Yuan recently made news when they sent their AI avatars to take their place at quarterly earnings meetings. Better known as digital twins, these AI creations use data to build a visual representation of a real human being and mimic their speech and behaviour. In short, it is a virtual body double. Are business leaders finally getting to a point where they can be in two places (or more) at once? The reason this is possible is the emergence of agentic AI systems that have memory and are self-controlled, contextually aware, and capable of aligning goals. Such AI agents do not simply carry out orders, but know why a decision was made, how organisational dynamics work, and when it is time to act or escalate. To CEOs, this means a strategic leverage unseen before: the ability to triage complexity, extend presence over geographies and functions as well as provide leadership continuity at a machine-speed. The chief executive will be informed by their avatar, but we believe that the line will be drawn at decision making. Yes, the download that the CEO takes from their digital twin will be considered, but no true decision on the direction of a company, staffing, or choice of products or services can be made by an avatar. This is where the CEO must insert themselves and deliver all decisions and messages as themselves, as a human. Real-life implications of digital twins The global digital twin market is estimated to reach $155.84 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research estimates. In fact, when speaking of advanced industries, about 75 per cent of them have already adopted some form of digital twin technology, a McKinsey study found. The vast majority of this, however, is product simulations and service twins where companies can test and practice scenarios in controlled environments before going to market, not twins of actual humans. The benefits range from faster development, safer products, and greater innovation, to cost savings and greater predictions of outcomes. But, what about a human digital twin? Before any technology is truly embraced, there must be a proof of concept. With the likes of Mr Siemiatkowski and Mr Yaun successfully using digital avatars (albeit in closed one-off internal meetings) the technology is likely to gain momentum across industries. We already see people like Otter chief executive Sam Liang, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Khosla Ventures managing director Keith Rabois, all using AI digital twin avatars. The drive behind this? Time and availability. In some cases, digital twins have already cut total development times by 20 per cent to 50 per cent, and resulted in 25 per cent less quality issues on entering production, according to the McKinsey report. If these numbers stay true, or probably increase, there will be no stopping this technology from spreading across industries around the globe. When CEOs find that there is an increase in safety, production times are lessened, R&D time and expense goes down, and their profits go up from using digital twins, why would they not use digital twin technology? As more and more leaders around the globe see this technology used successfully, they will follow suit with a digital version of themselves. They will decide what meetings they will need to attend and then send their digital self to the rest. There will be no more double booking or missed opportunities. They can attend every meeting and have eyes and ears everywhere. They no longer have to rely on notes from someone else. The digital twin avatar will report back based on the data input it receives. The ethical dilemma As this technology spreads, we will begin to ask where the physical world ends and the digital world begins. Is there too much of a blur? Is it the moral responsibility of a leader to inform everyone before a meeting that an avatar will attend on their behalf? Consequently, will the people required to be in that meeting feel disrespected that the CEO did not physically show up? Leaders will need to struggle with this continuously. The follow-up from a digital twin also raises ethical concerns. How do you ensure that inherent biases are accounted for? As a human you can read facial expressions, notice that someone spends a lot of the meeting off camera, or appears to be having side conversations while the meeting is taking place. Will the avatar have these same instinctual observations and report back? As the technology evolves so will the demands put upon it by its human creators. This new power a chief executive can harness will be accompanied with an additional dimension of ethical and fiduciary responsibility. The digital twin of a CEO should have well-established guardrails and transparency, traceability and accountability of all the decisions that it might be involved in and influence. Auditability of agentic actions and alignment to corporate governance practices should be guaranteed to the boards and shareholders, not black-box behaviours. The ethical requirement is not simply to enable digital avatars, but to root them in human control, corporate responsibility and the interests of the business in the long term. This technology will become commonplace throughout the corporate world. But it will be up to each individual leader to decide what responsibilities they abdicate to a machine and which they keep for themselves. It will be interesting to see this evolution and monitor what becomes of businesses and the reputations of leaders that send digital twins to do their work.
Khaleej Times
9 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
How AI crawlers scrape the internet at large just changed
Cloudflare, Inc, the leading connectivity cloud company, has announced it is now the first Internet infrastructure provider to block AI crawlers accessing content without permission or compensation, by default. Starting today, website owners can choose if they want AI crawlers to access their content, and decide how AI companies can use it. AI companies can also now clearly state their purpose – if their crawlers are used for training, inference, or search – to help website owners decide which crawlers to allow. Cloudflare's new default setting is the first step toward a more sustainable future for both content creators and AI innovators. For decades, the Internet has operated on a simple exchange: search engines index content and direct users back to original websites, generating traffic and ad revenue for websites of all sizes. This cycle rewards creators that produce quality content with money and a following, while helping users discover new and relevant information. That model is now broken. AI crawlers collect content like text, articles, and images to generate answers, without sending visitors to the original source – depriving content creators of revenue, and the satisfaction of knowing someone is viewing their content. If the incentive to create original, quality content disappears, society ends up losing, and the future of the Internet is at risk. 'If the Internet is going to survive the age of AI, we need to give publishers the control they deserve and build a new economic model that works for everyone – creators, consumers, tomorrow's AI founders, and the future of the web itself,' said Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare. 'Original content is what makes the Internet one of the greatest inventions in the last century, and it's essential that creators continue making it. AI crawlers have been scraping content without limits. Our goal is to put the power back in the hands of creators, while still helping AI companies innovate. This is about safeguarding the future of a free and vibrant Internet with a new model that works for everyone.' 'Cloudflare's innovative approach to block AI crawlers is a game-changer for publishers and sets a new standard for how content is respected online. When AI companies can no longer take anything they want for free, it opens the door to sustainable innovation built on permission and partnership,' said Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast. 'This is a critical step toward creating a fair value exchange on the Internet that protects creators, supports quality journalism and holds AI companies accountable.' 'We have long said that AI platforms must fairly compensate publishers and creators to use our content. We can now limit access to our content to those AI partners willing to engage in fair arrangements,' said Neil Vogel, CEO of Dotdash Meredith. 'We're proud to support Cloudflare and look forward to using their tools to protect our content and the open web.' 'As the largest publisher in the country, comprised of USA TODAY and over 200 local publications throughout the USA TODAY Network, blocking unauthorized scraping and the use of our original content without fair compensation is critically important,' said Renn Turiano, Chief Consumer and Product Officer of Gannett Media. 'As our industry faces these challenges, we are optimistic the Cloudflare technology will help combat the theft of valuable IP.' 'Creators and publishers around the world leverage Pinterest to expand their businesses, reach new audiences and directly measure their success. As AI continues to reshape the digital landscape, we are committed to building a healthy Internet infrastructure where content is used for its intended purpose, so creators and publishers can thrive,' said Bill Ready, CEO of Pinterest. 'AI companies, search engines, researchers, and anyone else crawling sites have to be who they say they are. And any platform on the web should have a say in who is taking their content for what,' said Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of Reddit. 'The whole ecosystem of creators, platforms, web users and crawlers will be better when crawling is more transparent and controlled, and Cloudflare's efforts are a step in the right direction for everyone.' 'We applaud Cloudflare for advocating for a sustainable digital ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders — the consumers who rely on credible information, the publishers who invest in its creation, and the advertisers who support its dissemination,' said Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis. Cloudflare powers one of the world's largest networks, helping to manage and protect traffic for 20% of the web. The company handles trillions of requests daily, and thus has the world's most advanced bot management solutions, accurately distinguishing between human users and AI crawlers. In September 2024, Cloudflare introduced the option to block AI crawlers in a single click. More than one million customers have since chosen this option, meant to be an aggressive but easy solution that halts scraping while they determine their AI strategy. Now, Cloudflare is taking the next step to enforce a permission-based model for AI crawlers. AI companies will now be required to obtain explicit permission from a website before scraping. Upon sign-up with Cloudflare, every new domain will now be asked if they want to allow AI crawlers, giving customers the choice upfront to explicitly allow or deny AI crawlers access. This significant shift means that every new domain starts with the default of control, and eliminates the need for webpage owners to manually configure their settings to opt out. Customers can easily check their settings and enable crawling at any time if they want their content to be freely accessed. Now Cloudflare is making the content ecosystem more transparent for AI companies and creators. The company recently proposed new ways for AI bots to authenticate themselves as well as for websites to identify those bots – giving creators and website owners new identification mechanisms and control over what crawlers they want to allow. Cloudflare is participating in the development of a new protocol to provide bot owners and AI agent developers with a public, standard way to identify themselves.
Al Etihad
10 hours ago
- Al Etihad
Nvidia reclaimed market value pole position in June
2 July 2025 22:01 (REUTERS)Nvidia (NVDA.O) reclaimed the top spot among the most valued companies worldwide in June, as its shares were supported by renewed optimism over its leadership in artificial intelligence and expectations of surging demand for its AI chipmaker's market value stood at $3.86 trillion at the end of June, about 4.3% higher than Microsoft Corp's $3.69 trillion Nvidia's market value has yet to surpass Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) record high of about $3.92 trillion set in December 2024. Apple, with a market capitalisation of $3.1 trillion, ranked as the third most valuable company at the end of last Platforms Inc (META.O), Broadcom Inc (AVGO.O), and Inc (AMZN.O) saw their market values rise by 14%, 13.9%, and 7% respectively last month, reaching $1.86 trillion, $1.3 trillion, and $2.33 market value of Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) dropped 8.3% to $1.02 trillion last month, with sentiment hit by CEO Elon Musk's feud with US President Donald Trump. "We believe both Nvidia and Microsoft will hit the $4 trillion market cap club this summer and then over the next 18 months the focus will be on the $5 trillion club ... as this tech bull market is still early being led by the AI Revolution," said Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities.
