In the last few minutes Cloudflare has confirmed it is aware of a major issue affecting its Global Network, which is causing outages on platforms like X, ChatGPT.. and ironically, Downdetector.
MORE..
According to the latest Cloudflare update
“During our attempts to remediate, we have disabled WARP access in London. Users in London trying to access the Internet via WARP will see a failure to connect.”
But what is WARP? Faster than light travel for starships?
Sadly not, Cloudflare’s WARP is seemingly a tool to secure internet connections by encrypting all traffic from a user’s device. It is mainly used as a privacy tool for consumers and corporate customers. Unlike a VPN, warp does not hide your IP address, it merely encrypts your traffic.
AOL just hit me with some news I didn’t see coming: they’re officially discontinuing their dial-up service.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I thought dial-up was long gone—like floppy disks and Blockbuster stores. Turns out, it’s been quietly hanging on this whole time. But as of September 30th, at least through AOL, it’s officially done.
From the company itself:
> “AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans,” according to AOL.
And… that’s it?
We’ve all talked about how the internet is slowly dying—not disappearing, but changing in ways that make it feel less real. Artificial intelligence is certainly helping speed that along. So are bots, spam, and fake accounts pretending to be real people. But at least with dial-up, you could count on one thing: if someone was using it, they were definitely a real person. They were out there, patiently (or impatiently) suffering through the endless hang-ups, busy signals, and painfully slow connections.
What worries me is that one day, we might actually need that phone line again. All it takes is one big asteroid or comet knocking a few satellites out of orbit, and suddenly those “ancient” connections start looking pretty useful again.
September 30th—mark it down. A day for dial-up that will live in infamy..
And just for that nostalgic melancholy hears the old sounds for your enjoyment.
When you hear your Microsoft team song sound this morning as your phone rings on a busy Monday, think about where your data is going.
A major hack has occurred… a vulnerability in Microsoft’s SharePoint server software was exploited by hackers to carry out “active attacks” globally on various entities, including businesses and U.S. federal agencies and state governments, prompting the software giant to issue an emergency patch.
In a statement on X, Microsoft said it has released a security update for SharePoint Subscription Edition and SharePoint 2019 users to “mitigate active attacks” targeting servers running the software.
The company noted that the vulnerability only impacts companies using Microsoft’s software to host their own servers, and customers relying on Microsoft’s 365 cloud services have not been affected.
Citing government officials and security researchers, the Washington Post reported that the vulnerability affected U.S. federal and state agencies, universities and various businesses.
In a statement on Sunday night, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said it was “aware of active exploitation of a new…vulnerability enabling unauthorized access to on-premise SharePoint servers.”
Anthropic said its latest artificial intelligence model resorted to blackmail when told it would be taken offline.
In a safety test, the AI company asked Claude Opus 4 to act as an assistant to a fictional company, but then gave it access to (also fictional) emails saying that it would be replaced, and also that the engineer behind the decision was cheating on his wife. Anthropic said the model “[threatened] to reveal the affair” if the replacement went ahead.
If you woke up this morning staring at your screen, wondering if that image in front of you is even real—you might need a little longer this time to figure it out. Suddenly, artificial intelligence is hitting differently.
There was a major update yesterday to ChatGPT, and images are now more perfect than ever. OpenAI just got incredible.
Incredible to the point where it’s more intelligent, more capable—it can now alter images, perfect them, and tailor them to look exactly the way you want. Those weird extra fingers and distorted hands? Gone. The awkward spelling in AI-generated text? Almost flawless now.
I’m not saying this is the “Dead Internet Theory” finally coming to life—but honestly, I think the dead internet has already been creeping in, quietly, for a while. This update just took it up a notch. From here on out, it’s probably time to stop believing every image you see online. Even when it comes from a so-called trusted news outlet, it might be worth keeping a shred of doubt.
Lately, I’ve been talking to people about artificial intelligence—how you really can’t trust what you see online anymore. And their response is usually something like, “Well, I don’t really use social media,” or “I’m not online much.” But that’s not the point.
It doesn’t matter if you think you’re not online. Because everything around you is. Every website. Every platform. Every piece of content. The potential for it to be AI-generated—or completely fake—is now everywhere.
What makes this even more real (or surreal) is that OpenAI just gave us an update that pushes image generation to near-perfection. And if we’re being honest, we already perfected writing. Schools across the country are struggling with students who can’t do a single assignment without ChatGPT stepping in.
And now we’ve arrived at a point where what we see—and very soon, what we hear—might not be accurate, might not be true, and might not be real.
There’s irony here. Because somehow, the dead internet just became more alive than ever.
Apple has announced that it will NOT put TikTok back in the app store and it will follow the law as required, regardless of what Trump plans to do.
January 19th, 2025 – “TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. apps are no longer available in the United States, and visitors to the United States might have limited access to features.
Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates. Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025.
The following are some of the apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries that are affected:
TikTok
TikTok Studio
TikTok Shop Seller Center
CapCut
Lemon8
Hypic
Lark – Team Collaboration
Lark – Rooms Display
Lark Rooms Controller
Gauth: AI Study Companion
MARVEL SNAP
If you live in the United States If you already have these apps installed on your device, they will remain on your device. But they can’t be redownloaded if deleted or restored if you move to a new device. In-app purchases and new subscriptions are no longer possible.
Users in the United States won’t receive updates for these apps, which could potentially impact performance, security, and compatibility with future versions of iOS and iPadOS, and some app functions might become limited or stop working since the app can’t receive updates.
If you’re visiting the United States ByteDance’s apps remain available for download in all other countries and regions where they are available.
Users visiting from outside the United States with their Apple Account set to a country or region that is not the United States are unable to download, update, or make in-app purchases and new subscriptions inside ByteDance Ltd. apps while within the land or maritime borders of the United States.
After leaving the United States, you’ll have access to all functionality.”
The modern world, instead of just going in taking a photograph of a glass of wine filled at the top, we rely on chat GPT, and other image generators with artificial intelligence.
Well, that artificial intelligence apparently has failed us according to a thread on Reddit, and at least one tiktoker that we were listening to, it appears that Image generators are unable to fill your glass to the top.
That is right.. Not only do they not top it off, but they also only fill the glass to the middle part of a glass of wine ..
Commenters on threads and the videos that we have reviewed clearly shows that everyone is having the same problem.
We did too. We were unable to get a glass filled to the top..
A friend claimed victory when he sent me this image of wine almost to the top. But I pointed out it was not to the top. There is some more to go:
. That said, one image generator I used actually give me quite the opposite of a glass of wine, but still described that the image was a glass of Cabernet:
We beg to differ, maybe chat GPT will fill our glass up in 2025 to our desires.. and accuracy..
On March 5, 2024, Meta’s outage exposed deep reliance on social media, as people panicked over Facebook and Instagram’s downtime. Elon Musk boasted about his platform’s stability, while the incident raised questions about our vulnerability without technology and the forgotten simplicity of old-fashioned alternatives. The mock seriousness hints at a society unprepared for a true crisis without electricity or social media.
So Facebook went down and jokes were flying.
Our favorite here:
Early morning on March 5, 2024, Meta seemingly had a giant outage that blocked people from their Facebook and Instagram accounts and did not let them log back in.
People went to X .. where Elon Musk was bragging his system stayed up during the great short outage of March 2024. He had his bragging rights..
When the socials slowly returned, people began commenting about how crisis level reactions were occurring during the hour and a 1/2 outage. Over the top… Outrageous people panicking over a brief outage of this nature showcased just how on the edge we all are…
Even on Facebook after META resumed its full strength, there are some people decrying how weak we all are as people.. Of course, many of the people making fun of those upset that Facebook was down also make money on their Facebook pages. And they would be upset and panicking too if the outage was a week and a half instead of just an hour and a half. Some websites had to remind their users today that they actually have a website and not just a social media presence. .
Without Facebook telling people to go to a website, most won’t. Sorry.. just ain’t happening until there is another cultural shift.
That has simply become the world we live in.
Back in the early 2000s we bookmarked pages and obscure websites.
Now if the algorithm does not give them to us, they are forever forgotten.
Questions not just about social media going down but all of it every bit of it.
Just think about the notion that everything that you do on the internet suddenly stops working websites, Facebook TikTok, Instagram and your email.
Also, couple that with the notion that you’re electricity suddenly takes a turn for the worse and you and all of your neighbors are without lights.
The Monsters are Due on Maple Street
If you charge your electric car in a charging station, you’re grounded in this potential future.
You’re also grounded even at a gas station since that runs on electricity as well. Your land lines don’t exist anymore. And even if you still have one, they’re tied into systems that don’t act like landlines of Ma Bell. They cease working as well
In different posts in which people asked what would YOU do if power went out, a few people said that they would knit or crochet. Some others said they would drink. Or express themselves in some sort of a consensual lustful relationship with their partner. One person honestly answered saying she would panic.
The shock was how no one said they would turn on a radio… No one said they would try old fashioned technology despite the fact it still exists–a bit–and could be utilized.
We don’t think about old-fashioned technology anymore.
But on days when outages that happened, maybe we should.
Maybe we should conjure up a future in which it feels a lot like the past.. All those staples and security blankets of the past have been shredded into pieces. When social media goes dark for just minutes, people do legitimately go into a form of panic.
While you scoff and laugh at those who feel the panic, be aware that we have all become accustomed and addicted to these social media algorithms.
YOU INCLUDED.
In a future when the power goes off–even for a day–your crocheting will get old fast and your beer will get warm even faster.
The world survives only when electricity keeps running. So.. leave the world behind if it happens…..
x x x
SO joking aside. If the ‘big one’ happens… what would you do?
The haunting words of Gordon Lightfoot’s IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND may be the best background for this story.. conjuring the imagination of his ghostly song coupled with technology piercing the safety nets of our mind.. and going deep into brains to predict what we will want. What we will buy.. what we will…think?
As this post is written, a LONG day is wrapping up. For some weird reason, this particular Saturday felt like the longest day that ever existed.. Maybe the snowy landscape and bone chilling temperatures.. Who knows.
I think it was hour number 5,000 of the day when I was just bored in the chair looking through stupid TikTok videos, one after the other. After the other.. And so on. People falling. Political content. Old ladies screaming. Ice storms and people slipping. Weird stuff and so on. Everyone’s for you page is different. That’s a peak at mine.
This is where the weirdness started.
In my brain, a voice said “it’s been a long time since you saw TikTok videos about Michael Myers and Halloween”.. No verbal output occurred, here, it was just an internalized passing thought. A blip on the brain wave radar.. It just popped into my brain, and I remembered rationalizing it by saying that ‘Halloween is over and of course I will not be seeing videos like that on the for me page’ for a while..
About a good solid minute later this video now pops up on the for you page:
First of all, great great video. Pure nostalgia and 1980s glory and all that..
But wait.. HALLOWEEN!? Just when moments earlier the idea of a Halloween video was crossing the brain and being dismissed due to the time of the year..
I completely got the chills and gave me a very bizarre feeling.
And it just started more thoughts to roll. Do you have this occur? Does this happen when you talk about things–we all know ads pop up a little bit after we search things or talk about them.. but how often do you actually have something on tech occur after you simply THINK about it?
Is there some algorithm that certain videos trigger people searching for other things? Or perhaps this was just all weird and random coincidence ..
Controversy about TikTok’s (and other social media platforms) algorithms have be been in the news for years. Most of those have revolved around the kids not being alright, teens with angst getting a perverted sense of purpose and meaning after diving too deep into rabbit holes.
Advertising clearly goes hand in hand with things you search and like. TikTok was accused of privacy violations recently. Others have accused social media platforms of monitoring heart rates and eye movements when viewing Apps. Sounds ridiculous, right? Conspiracy silly theory?
When it happens it’s weird.. But it does not feel real.. natural. It has no meaningful or paranormal context.. Instead it has a creepy and artificial feeling. You get an immediate impression that you’re a test subject, a spoke on a wheel. Nothing of it feels right, instead you just want to escape this hellscape that the future may be bringing us.
