Second Major Tech Outage of the Week Affects Millions
The world was momentarily stopped in some regards this week when AI service ChatGPT suffered a massive outage on Tuesday. The artificial intelligence experienced issues for more than 10 hours, disrupting workflows and causing other problems all over the globe.
OpenAI noted the outage early on, but it took several hours to fix the issue - the entire work day, according to the company. At the peak of the outage, there were nearly 500 reports per hour, showing how widespread the issues were.
On Thursday, another massive tech outage has stopped the world in its tracks, holding up progress for several apps and services.
Amazon Web Services, Google, OpenAI and Spotify were all down on Thursday, according to Cloudflare. The company, which provides integral services for the affected brands, noted that it was experiencing intermittent issues during the day.
The company gave an update later in the afternoon, letting customers know that the services were gradually starting to come back online.
"We still expect to see intermittent errors across the impacted services as systems handle retried and caches are filled," Cloudflare said on Thursday.
A spokesperson for Cloudflare told CBS News that Google Cloud seems to be the problem point for the outages.
"A limited number of services at Cloudflare use Google Cloud and were impacted," the representative said.
"We expect them to come back shortly. The core Cloudflare services were not impacted."
Google reported nearly 13,000 reports of outages on its service on Thursday, according to Downdetector.com. The company announced that most of the services. had been restored in the late afternoon, but did not elaborate on which would be fully operational.
Spotify was the most affected service on Thursday, with nearly 50,000 reported outages. Other services operated on the Google Cloud framework include Discord, Snapchat, YouTube, Etsy, UPS and Verizon.
The music streaming platform said last year that it has an average of 675 million monthly users, meaning that the outage likely kept a lot of fans from listening to their favorite artists.
As the situation improves, we'll see if all of the affected services are back up and running before the weekend.
Second Major Tech Outage of the Week Affects Millions first appeared on Men's Journal on Jun 12, 2025
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
37 minutes ago
- Forbes
Meta Could Spend Majority Of AI Budget On Scale As Part Of $14 Billion Deal
Alexandr Wang will step down as Scale AI to join Meta and lead a new AI lab. Last night, Scale AI announced that Meta would acquire a 49 percent stake in it for $14.3 billion — a seismic move to support Meta's sprawling AI agenda. But there's more to the agreement for Scale than a major cash infusion and partnership. Forbes has learned that Meta intends to pay Scale at least $450 million a year for five years for its AI products, or more than half of its annual AI spend, whichever is less, according to a person who worked on the deal. Scale AI declined to comment. Meta didn't respond to a comment request. That commitment from Meta would make up a major part of Scale's revenue. Last year, Scale generated $870 million in revenue, largely driven by demand for its data labelling services. This year, the company expected to generate $2 billion in revenue, Bloomberg previously reported. But on Thursday, Forbes first reported Thursday that OpenAI, which still has contracts with Scale, had been winding down its spend on the company's services in recent months as it searched for new partners better suited to its needs (Scale denied the claim). The agreement with Meta could help Scale fill a potential revenue hole should OpenAI or customers like Anthropic and Microsoft consider revising their contracts with the company or allowing them to expire now that it had such close ties with a major competitor. Alexandr Wang, Scale's cofounder and CEO, and one of the world's youngest billionaires at age 28, is set to join Meta to lead its AI lab, where he will lead an effort to develop a so-called superintelligence, an AI system that outperforms human capabilities. The Meta deal is a major and unexpected turning point for Scale, which Wang has led since its founding in 2016. During his tenure, Scale built an army of clickworkers to train AI data models, which proved an essential tool for AI giants building LLMs and other applications. More recently, Wang led Scale's foray into national security, landing a series of contracts with the Pentagon to help the military implement AI models and use the technology for training and planning. Now, under new CEO Jason Droege, who launched Uber Eats, and previously was an executive at law enforcement technology company Axon, Scale — which some had hoped might be a 2025 IPO candidate — has tethered its future and founder to Meta's AI ambitions.
Android Authority
42 minutes ago
- Android Authority
Google Meet's Companion mode is finally ready for Android's biggest screens
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority TL;DR Google created Companion mode for Meet to offer a second screen for people in hybrid calls. Originally available for computers, last year Google expanded access to Android and iOS. Today Companion mode is getting an update to optimize it for tablets and foldables. Finding yourself stuck in a meeting can be a real slog, and it's a situation that's made all the worse when you feel like you're not particularly seen, or able to interact with other participants in a meaningful way. Earlier this decade, the pandemic super-charged development of remote access tools for companies everywhere, and that included Google Meet. One feature born of that era is Meet's Companion mode, and today we're learning about a long-overdue upgrade for it when it comes to Android tablets and foldables. In case you're not already familiar, Google launched Companion mode for Meet back in 2022. Envisioned as a second-screen solution for hybrid meetings, Companion mode would let you appear in a meeting as part of a group — for instance, if your in-office team gathered in a conference room to interact with remote colleagues — while also having access to Meet on a personal laptop. On that secondary Companion mode view, you could do stuff like react with emoji, participate in polls, keep up with chat, or even share your screen — while your video and audio are handled by another device. Last year, Google expanded Companion mode to support Android and iOS, and today Google announces that it's finally optimized for the biggest screens on those platforms: tablets and foldables. Feature-wise, this works just like Companion mode on phones, but taking advantage of the tool on a tablet-sized display sounds like it strikes a nice balance between offering the convenience of those mobile devices without needing the bulk of a full laptop. In fact, Google explicitly talks about use cases where your meeting space might be a little more cramped than usual. One particularly handy feature looks to be how you can use Companion mode in split-screen, continuing to interact with the ongoing meeting while finding yourself free to investigate something in your browser. Support starts rolling out as of today, and could take a few weeks to hit all devices — just make sure your Meet and Gmail apps are up to date. And while this is definitely a feature designed with the workplace in mind, Companion mode also supports your personal Google account, so everyone's free to give it a try. Got a tip? Talk to us! Email our staff at Email our staff at news@ . You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it's your choice.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
South Korean Stargate-like project could bolster US security alliance, tech exec says
South Korea's new president should work with American tech giants to pursue a Stargate-like artificial intelligence partnership — as a matter of global security, according to a Korean tech executive. After six months of political chaos and paralysis in South Korea, President Lee Jae-myung took over last week following snap elections, with ambitious plans for the country's AI sector, including a 100 trillion won (nearly $74 billion) fund aimed at turning the country into one of the top three AI powers globally. In an interview with Semafor, Jeff Kim, a leading AI figure in South Korea who helped advise Lee's party on AI during the election through policy forums, detailed a roadmap for how he expects the new government could approach the sector. Kim, the CEO of AI-powered travel platform Yanolja Cloud and a board member of the Korean AI-Software Association, said Lee wants to turn Korea into an 'AI-driven state.' 'That means everyone should be using AI and everything should be made with AI,' Kim said, adding that a possible government-led AI service platform could allow companies to connect their tools. The new president has previously said he wants to appoint an AI policy chief and develop a 'Korea-tailored ChatGPT,' which would be free to the public and could rapidly generate data. The 100 trillion won fund will have to be a mix of private and public capital, Kim said: 'It's impossible to make the fund only from the public side.' He envisions a project similar to Stargate, the $500 billion venture to build AI infrastructure in the US spearheaded by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank — which is one of Yanolja's backers. Last month, officials announced a version of Stargate in the United Arab Emirates. Through the Korean fund, Kim said local AI-related companies and Silicon Valley cloud service providers could collaborate to support data center buildout in Korea — an 'AI highway' — to power the rising demand for chatbots and AI models. This 'symbolizes the deepening of the US security alliance as well,' he said, reflecting how large-scale AI compute has become a strategic geopolitical resource. South Korea has a highly tech-literate population that has shown strong adoption of AI. OpenAI said last month it is setting up its first office in Seoul, noting growing demand for chatbots: The country has the largest number of paid ChatGPT subscribers outside the US. But experts see the highly digitized nation as lagging in the AI race behind the US and China. Political gridlock slowed many of the previous government's AI efforts, and former President Yoon Suk Yeol's impeachment further diverted attention. Some economists are skeptical of Lee's lofty AI ambitions, including whether it can raise 100 trillion won, Korea JoongAng Daily reported. 'Before debating budgets or regulations, the country must define whether it aims to replicate existing technologies or lead original innovation,' one expert said. The success of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which made the case for building a powerful model on a smaller budget, energized South Korea's frontier AI scene, with startups rushing to create homegrown models, Foreign Policy wrote. OpenAI has said it is open to working with to build on the Stargate venture and support local data center capacity, Data Centre Dynamics wrote.
