An outage at Cloudflare that began moments ago has knocked many popular websites, including ChatGPT and X, according to user reports. Cloudflare says on its website: "Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which potentially impacts multiple customers. Further detail will be provided as more information becomes available." Update: In a statement after the outage was resolved, Cloudflare CTO said: Earlier today we failed our customers and the broader Internet when a problem in Cloudflare network impacted large amounts of traffic that rely on us. The sites, businesses, and organizations that rely on Cloudflare depend on us being available and I apologize for the impact that we caused. Transparency about what happened matters, and we plan to share a breakdown with more details in a few hours. In short, a latent bug in a service underpinning our bot mitigation capability started to crash after a routine configuration change we made. That cascaded into a broad degradation to our network and other services. This was not an attack. That issue, impact it caused, and time to resolution is unacceptable. Work is already underway to make sure it does not happen again, but I know it caused real pain today. The trust our customers place in us is what we value the most and we are going to do what it takes to earn that back.

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The FBI has subpoenaed popular Canadian domain registrar Tucows, demanding information about the owner of archive[dot]today, a popular archiving site used to bypass paywalls and avoid sending traffic to original publishers. The subpoena states it relates to a federal criminal investigation but provides no details about the alleged crime. Archive.today posted the document on X the same day. The site, also known as archive.is and archive.ph, started in the early 2010s and rose to prominence during GamerGate when users took snapshots of articles to avoid sending traffic to websites. It now has hundreds of millions of saved pages. The FBI requested the customer name, address, billing information, telephone connection records, payment methods, internet connectivity session times, and device identifiers. Very little is known about who operates the site. A 2013 analysis by Gyrovague suggested it is "a one-person labor of love, operated by a Russian of considerable talent and access to Europe." A 2013 FAQ states the site is privately funded. A 2021 blog post said "it is doomed to die at any moment."

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The Internet Archive celebrated archiving its trillionth webpage last month and received congratulations from San Francisco, which declared October 22 "Internet Archive Day." Senator Alex Padilla designated the nonprofit a federal depository library. The organization currently faces no major lawsuits and no active threats to its collections. But these victories arrived after years of bruising copyright battles that forced the removal of more than 500,000 books from the Archive's Open Library. "We survived, but it wiped out the Library," founder Brewster Kahle told ArsTechnica. In 2024, the Archive lost its final appeal in a lawsuit brought by book publishers over its e-book lending model. Damages could have topped $400 million before publishers announced a confidential settlement. Last month, the organization settled another suit over its Great 78 Project after music publishers sought damages of up to $700 million. That settlement was also confidential. In both cases, the Archive's experts challenged publishers' estimates as massively inflated. Kahle had envisioned the Open Library as a way for Wikipedia to link to book scans and help researchers reference e-books. The Archive wanted to deepen Wikipedia's authority as a research tool by surfacing information often buried in books. "That's what they really succeeded at -- to make sure that Wikipedia readers don't get access to books," Kahle said of the publishers. He thinks "the world became stupider" when the Open Library was gutted. The Archive is now expanding Democracy's Library, a free online compendium of government research and publications that will be linked in Wikipedia articles.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Cloud-computing firm Salesforce was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit by two authors who alleged the company used thousands of books without permission to train its AI software. Novelists Molly Tanzer and Jennifer Gilmore said in the complaint that Salesforce infringed copyrights by using their work to train its xGen AI models to process language.

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The Internet Archive must block access to books in its Open Library project for Belgian users after negotiations with publishers failed. A Brussels Business Court issued a site-blocking order in July targeting several shadow libraries and the Internet Archive. A Belgian government department paused the order for the U.S. nonprofit and urged both parties to negotiate. The talks over recent weeks were unsuccessful. The Department for Combating Infringements of Copyright concluded last week that the Internet Archive hosts the contested books and has the ability to render them inaccessible. Publishers must supply a list of books to be blocked. The nonprofit then has 20 calendar days to implement the measures and prevent future digital lending of those works in Belgium. The order includes a one-time penalty of $578,000 for non-compliance and remains in place until July 16 next year. The Internet Archive operates Open Library by purchasing physical copies and digitizing them to lend out one at a time. Publishers previously won a U.S. federal court case against the project.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Within the nightly builds of the Firefox web browser is finally the ability to support playback of Matroska "MKV" content. Enabled just within the Firefox Nightly builds for now or opting in within the media.mkv.enabled preference is the ability to support MKV playback. Initially just AVC/H.264 and AAC within MKV containers are supported but other codec support will be expanded over time. For the past eight years there has been this feature request for supporting Matroska/MKV playback support.

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Europe's share of global economic output has fallen from 33% to 23% since 2005 while its space launch capacity has nearly collapsed, launching just four rockets this year compared to over 100 for the United States and 40 for China. The continent's economic stagnation spans 15 years -- likely the longest streak since the Industrial Revolution according to Deutsche Bank calculations -- with Germany's economy growing just 1% since late 2017 versus 19% US growth. Per capita GDP gaps have widened dramatically: $86,000 annually in the US versus $56,000 in Germany and $53,000 in the UK. Industrial electricity costs have become prohibitive, running three times higher in Germany and four times higher in the UK than American rates. "America innovates, China imitates, Europe regulates," Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni observed. The continent's largest company by market value, SAP, now ranks just 28th globally. Further reading: The Technology Revolution is Leaving Europe Behind.

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The Internet Archive has received federal depository library status from California Sen. Alex Padilla, joining a network of over 1,100 libraries that archive government documents and make them accessible to the public. Padilla made the designation in a letter to the Government Publishing Office, which oversees the program. The San Francisco-based nonprofit organization already operates Democracy's Library, a free online compendium of government research and publications launched in 2022. Founder Brewster Kahle said the new designation makes it easier to work with other federal depository libraries and provides more reliable access to government materials for digitization and distribution. Under federal law, members of Congress can designate up to two qualified libraries for federal depository status.

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Japan Post has launched a "digital address" system that links seven-digit combinations of numbers and letters to physical addresses. From a report: Under the system, users can input these seven-digit codes on online shopping websites, and their addresses will automatically appear on the sites. People can obtain digital addresses by registering with Japan Post's Yu ID membership service. Their digital addresses will not change even if their physical addresses change. Their new addresses will be linked to the codes if they submit notices of address changes.

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BrianFagioli writes: Signal has officially had enough, folks. You see, the privacy-first messaging app is going on the offensive, declaring war on Microsoft's invasive Recall feature by enabling a new "Screen security" setting by default on Windows 11. This move is designed to block Microsoft's AI-powered screenshot tool from capturing your private chats. If you aren't aware, Recall was first unveiled a year ago as part of Microsoft's Copilot+ PC push. The feature quietly took screenshots of everything happening on your computer, every few seconds, storing them in a searchable timeline. Microsoft claimed it would help users "remember" what they've done. Critics called it creepy. Security experts called it dangerous. The backlash was so fierce that Microsoft pulled the feature before launch. But now, in a move nobody asked for, Recall is sadly back. And thankfully, Signal isn't waiting around this time. The team has activated a Windows 11-specific DRM flag that completely blacks out Signal's chat window when a screenshot is attempted. If you've ever tried to screen grab a streaming movie, you'll know the result: nothing but black.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Panasonic will undertake a major restructuring across a range of its business, including consumer electronics, cutting 10,000 jobs globally, as the Japanese company plans to streamline, spinning out struggling divisions in hopes of reversing its dwindling market share and fending off fierce Chinese competition. Panasonic did not say which businesses it intended to shrink. The company expects to book structural reform costs of roughly $900 million this business year. Panasonic ended the fiscal year

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Microsoft officially shuttered Skype on May 5, ending the pioneering video chat service's 22-year run. The closure, announced in February, completes Skype's absorption into Microsoft Teams, the company's Slack competitor. Users opening Skype apps will now be redirected to Teams. The only surviving component is the Skype Dial Pad, which remains available within Microsoft Teams Free for subscribers to make calls to traditional phone numbers. The once-dominant video calling platform was purchased by Microsoft for $8.5 billion in 2011, replacing the company's Windows Live Messenger. Created in 2003 by developers behind Kazaa file-sharing software, Skype became synonymous with video calling during broadband internet's expansion. Skype's decline accelerated after Microsoft's acquisition, with unpopular redesigns and competition from Zoom, which captured market share during the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft began phasing out Skype in 2017, starting with Skype for Business, while bundling Teams with Office applications until regulatory intervention forced their separation.

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More than half-a-dozen VPN apps, including Cloudflare's widely-used 1.1.1.1, have been pulled from India's Apple App Store and Google Play Store following intervention from government authorities, TechCrunch reported Friday. From the report: The Indian Ministry of Home Affairs issued removal orders for the apps, according to a document reviewed by TechCrunch and a disclosure made by Google to Lumen, Harvard University's database that tracks government takedown requests globally.

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Japan Airlines said it was hit by a cyberattack Thursday, causing delays to more than 20 domestic flights but the carrier said there was no impact on flight safety. From a report: JAL said the problem started Thursday morning when the company's network connecting internal and external systems began malfunctioning. The airline said the cyberattack had delayed 24 domestic flights for more than 30 minutes, and the impact could expand later in the day.

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Classic first-person shooters Unreal (1998) and Unreal Tournament are now available for free on the Internet Archive, with official OK from publisher Epic Games. An Epic spokesperson confirmed to PC Gamer that users are permitted to "independently link to and play these versions." Players can download the games directly from the Internet Archive and apply patches from Github for modern Windows compatibility, or use simplified installers through oldunreal.com. Both titles run on current hardware despite their age, though users may need to adjust dated default settings like 640x480 resolution and inverted mouse controls.

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The business world's favourite software program enters its 40th year. The Economist: Excel has featured in plenty of workplace blunders -- though its defenders will be quick to blame human error. The financial world is littered with tales of costly spreadsheet errors. Excel has also been blamed for botching gene names in over a third of genomics papers (because it labelled them as dates); underreporting covid-19 cases in England (because it only had a limited number of rows in which to record the results); and disrupting the trial of January 6th rioters in America (because sensitive information was left in hidden cells). Such snafus have not dented Excel's dominance. Might artificial intelligence (AI) steal its crown? With whizzy new tools powered by the technology promising to make data analysis easier, the familiar grid of numbers and calculations could soon feel outdated. Rather than replacing spreadsheets, though, AI might make them even better. Last month Microsoft introduced an AI assistant for Excel which lets users crunch data using natural-language prompts. Excel, and its faithful, aren't ready to be filtered out just yet.

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The Internet Archive has resumed operations in a read-only state following a cyberattack that took the digital library offline on October 9, coupled with the theft of 31 million user authentication records. "Safe to resume but might need further maintenance, in which case it will be suspended again," said Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive's founder. The website is currently now allowing users to save pages.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: YouTube Premium users around the world woke up to bad news today. In over a dozen countries, the price of YouTube Premium individual and family plans increased significantly. This is only the most recent sweep of price increases from Google, as many countries saw price jumps only months ago, with the United States being one of them last summer. Impacted countries include Ireland, Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, UAE, Switzerland, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Colombia, Thailand, Singapore, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Denmark. The prices have gone up by as early as 40%.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: CERN, the European particle-physics collaboration that operates the Large Hadron Collider, will expel hundreds of Russian-affiliated scientists from its laboratories. The Geneva-based organization decided to cut ties with Moscow after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, ending nearly 60 years of collaboration, and the agreements are now lapsing.

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Internet Archive's "controlled digital lending" system and removal of controls during the pandemic don't qualify as fair use, the Second Circuit affirmed Wednesday. Bloomberg Law: Four major book publishers again thwarted the online repository's defense that its one-to-one lending practices mirrored those of traditional libraries, this time at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Copying books in their entirety isn't transformative, and lending them for free competes with the publishers own book and ebook offerings, the unanimous panel said. Internet Archive said in a statement: We are disappointed in today's opinion about the Internet Archive's digital lending of books that are available electronically elsewhere. We are reviewing the court's opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books. Further reading: Full-text of court opinion [PDF].

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