This one about problems with Google services: '... A widespread Google Cloud outage hit Sunday, rendering popular sites and apps like YouTube and Gmail unusable for many users, CNET reports. Google's Cloud Computing Engine and Cloud Networking services began experiencing issues as of 4 p.m. ET, according to the status page on company's website. The Google Cloud Platform is a set of cloud computing services that includes online management tools to manage data storage, data analytics and other services. According to Down Detector, which logs outages and service interruptions, the outages appear to be primarily clustered along the East Coast of the United States as well as in parts of South America and Europe. In addition to popular social media sites, Google Cloud is relied on by a variety of large-scale companies, including Weight Watchers, PayPal and Target. Even Apple admitted it uses Google Cloud for its iCloud storage services, The Verge reports. Social media users have been quick to voice their frustrations. The hashtag #YouTubeDOWN is now among Twitter's trending topics in the U.S...'.
Some of the copy provided by MSN comes from a web site called Down Detector, which I had never heard of before. See references 1 and 2, from the first of which the snap left is taken. Sites which come with plenty of advertisements - which I suppose is fair enough: short of making such things public services, someone has to pay, and skipping the advertisements is easier than reaching for PayPal, or whatever, everyone one visits such a place. Perhaps we need the equivalent of swiping one's card in a cashless bar.
All of which reminded me of stories about power outages, particularly the widespread problems on the US east coast caused a few years ago now by power surges triggered by some modest sounding failure, somewhere deep in the network. Nothing like the problems I used to see in my days in the world of work, usually confined to a single computer, or at least a single computer room, although the symptoms might spread a bit further. Identify the few lines of code causing the problem, fix them, reboot and everything is fine again. No need for incident control rooms and computerised maps of the world displayed on the wall.
At first sight, I thought the map above, at maximum zoom out, was a bit silly, having two copies of everything. But then I worked out that this meant that one could see the whole world from anywhere in the world, in this case from the UK. Which is not the case when you have just one copy, when someone somewhere has to be near the edge.
The things one learns about when one wakes up a little early.
PS: MSN seem to have gone to a little trouble to stop one lifting their news for one's own purposes, with select by mouse hold and click not seeming to work at all. But after a bit of fiddling about, I found that I had selected all, and after a bit more fiddling about in Notepad, I had the quote included above.
Reference 1: https://downdetector.co.uk/.
Reference 2: https://downdetector.com/.
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