Tech Today w/ Ken May

In what’s sure to piss off most news readers and general web-perusing enthusiasts, Twitter has gone down. We’ve heard reports that it’s been down for the last fifteen minutes, and without access to Twitter, it’s tough to say whether or not the company has given any updates. A quick visit to DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com shows that the site is down across the boards, and of course visiting Twitter.com offers up the same results. What’s strange is that the usual Fail Whale is missing. We’ve checked in on Twitter’s blog site and found that they’ve made no mention of the matter yet, but we did see this : We’re reaching out now to see what exactly the problem is. The good news is that Twitter’s Mobile site seems to be up and running, so if you’re really desperate to get your Tweet on, get it done on your phone. On the other hand, the iOS app is offering up no joy at the moment. We’ll keep you updated as we go. Update : 1:00 EDT — And she’s back. Update 2 : 1:49 EDT — Back down. Update 3: 3:00 EDT — She’s up again, but there’s no telling how long it’ll last. We’ve been on a roller coaster ride. Update 4: 3:20 EDT — Twitter has made the following statement regarding what is going on with this massive service disruption. Check it out: Today’s outage is due to a cascaded bug in one of our infrastructure components. We’ll provide updated information soon. — Twitter Comms (@twittercomms) June 21, 2012 Update 5: 4:15 EDT — Twitter has “clarified” what a cascaded bug is, and done so in 140 characters or less: A cascaded bug has an effect that isn’t confined to a particular software element; its effect “cascades” into other elements as well. — Twitter Comms (@twittercomms) June 21, 2012 It’s been about three hours since the site formerly known as Twitter went down completely. This is a full-scale outage, people. No fail whale, no cutesy message about how awesome Twitter’s traffic is at the moment, just an error page. I’ve been refreshing Twitter’s developer site , and it looks like Status and Timeline updates have been going back and forth between “Performance Issues” status (yellow) and “Service Disruption” status (red). Tweeters seem to be going through a bit of withdrawal, with many wanting desperately to tweet about how Twitter is down. Irony is fun. In other news, Facebook is probably having a great day.

An anonymous reader writes “Sony has used the SID 2012 conference to demonstrate a brand new combination of conductive film and low-reflection film that promises to render screen reflection almost non-existent in devices like smartphones and tablets. Sony achieved such low reflections by combining its new conductive film with a moth-eye low reflection film. The key to the low reflectance is the formation of an uneven surface, which consists of both concave and convex structures (tiny bumps) that cover the entire film. The uneven surface means that light won’t just bounce back off the screen creating a reflection, and therefore making the screen usable in a wider range of lighting conditions.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

( Video Link ) To promote Futurama , Comedy Central made this live action version of the show’s opening . The video notes say that it was “made entirely by hand (and tentacle),” so presumably Dr. Zoidberg’s considerable cinematic talents were left unused. -via Geekologie

snydeq writes “Hacker group Rex Mundi has made good on its promise to publish thousands of loan-applicant records it swiped from AmeriCash Advance after the payday lender refused to fork over between $15,000 and $20,000 as an extortion fee — or, in Rex Mundi’s terms, an ‘idiot tax.’ The group announced on June 15 that it was able to steal AmeriCash’s customer data because the company had left a confidential page unsecured on one of its servers. ‘This page allows its affiliates to see how many loan applicants they recruited and how much money they made,’ according to the group’s post on dpaste.com. ‘Not only was this page unsecured, it was actually referenced in their robots.txt file.’” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The web is a busy place, and to tell us exactly how busy, Josh James of Domo shows us this infographic of how much data is created every minute on the Interweb: Link

Although the form factor and actual size are still unknown, TechCrunch has independently verified that Apple is working on adding a 19-pin port, replacing the current 30-pin port, to the new iPhone. It is a move that will surely send shocks through the iPhone accessory ecosystem. The new port, partially shown in this Mobilefun post as well as in this video , is similar in size to the Thunderbolt port available on many MacBook devices but I’ve been told by three independent manufacturers that the pin-out will be different. Apple’s 30-pin ports have been the standard since Apple released the third generation iPod. The connectors offered structural stability when connecting to most accessories but it’s clear – especially with the introduction of the MagSafe 2 port – Apple is more concerned with space savings inside each device. Three independent manufacturers all agreed that the 19-pin dock port is in the works and many accessory manufacturers are facing an uneasy few months as they wait for official news of the standard to be announced.

Something’s afoot at Apple’s massive North Carolina data center — or perhaps just on the various pipes and tubes leading to it. We’ve received many reports of iCloud and iMessage problems and, looking online, plenty of other folks are issuing the same complaints. Seeing something amiss on your end? Add your experiences in comments below — while you still can. Update : Luke wrote in to let us know that Apple has acknowledged the issue . “Normal service will be restored ASAP.” Update 2 : “All services are online.” That’s as of 4:06 ET. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] iCloud down for many, iMessages not going through (update: back online!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Jun 2012 14:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink | | Email this | Comments