Gawker
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servicey
How Valleywag Got MySpace to Drop Its Sony Ban
Sony Pictures employees can now waste their time on MySpace again, thanks to Valleywag. (You're welcome.) Here's the tale, from inside Sony's Internet operations, of how our story got the ban lifted. More » -
breakdowns
Sony Moviemakers Banned from MySpace
A tipster tells us that when Sony employees in L.A. try to log onto MySpace, "it directs you to google.com." Bizarrely, Sony's IT staff is saying it's MySpace's fault. More » -
Shut Up, Twitter
Why #googlefail Is Really a #twitterfail
An hour-long outage of some Google services this morning has turned into a full-fledged Twitter storm. What this really shows is a failure of Twitter to be meaningful and relevant to anything but Twitter. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by badasscat: I hereby coin the phrase "twitstorm" for this sort of thing. 3 Responses | Other threads
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breakdowns
Twitter Is Wondering Why Facebook's Down
Some people are having trouble connecting to the new, Twitter-like Facebook. So where are they complaining? On Twitter, naturally, where conspiracy theories abound. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Silverbackne: *Bleep boop beep* welcome to the Valleywag Post Generator. Please select a topic: A. Twitter is great/sucksB. Facebook is great/sucksC. Google... 8 Responses | Other threads
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breakdowns
Did Barbara Walters Kill Twitter?
Twitter, a message-blasting site rendered infamous by its downtime, is out of service once more. Who killed it? We're blaming Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Queen of the Passive Aggressives: She also killed the idea that 4 women can have a conversation at one time. All I hear is SCREECH,... 2 Responses | Other threads
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breakdowns
Google sends tourists looking for wrong subway line
As a stunt, Google has wrapped subway trains in New York City with ads for Google Maps. Inside, ads give specific directions to tourist landmarks like Madison Square Garden. Unfortunately, they misplace Grand Central Terminal by several blocks, directing people to subway lines which do not run through the station. A mistake we can see someone sitting in a cube in Mountain View making — but doesn't Google have a large New York office full of employees who might have been called on to vet the ads in their 20 percent time?
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By Owen ThomasComment by ifstone: Oh, it's worse than this. Google Earth is full of misplaced points of interest. I took a trip through Big... 1 Responses | Other threads
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software as a disservice
Lulu.com books-on-demand site broken
You would think an online print-on-demand bookstore would be able to print books on demand. But you'd be wrong! A reader reports that he wasn't able to finish checking out a book on Lulu, a print-on-demand startup. (Red Hat founder Bob Young, shown here, was inspired to start the company after he ended up with boxes of unsold copies of his Linux nonthriller, Under the Radar.) A customer-support rep said that the company had known about the ordering bug for a week, and might not fix it for another week. An online store which doesn't want its customers' money? Odd. The only possible conclusion: Lulu doesn't have enough actual customers to worry about letting them conduct business with the company. Here's the exchange with the support rep: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by GalvinBabas: lulu.com now appears to have gone AWOL completely - I've been trying to access the site for 3 days with... more » | Other threads
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geeks gone wild
Angry, angry IT guy goes to jail
Drugs! Alcohol! Baseball bats! Hey, it's a good story. IT contractor Steven Barnes will serve a year in prison and pay a $54,000 restitution after being convicted of logging into a client's network and deleting the Exchange database, among other things. Barnes claimed he acted after coworkers from Blue Falcon Networks, now known as Akimbo Systems, came to his home and took away his personal computers by force. Barnes reconfigured Blue Falcon's server as an open relay for spammers, causing the company to be automatically blacklisted from delivering real mail. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with Barnes's temper that a little prison time won't — haha! I almost finished that sentence without laughing.
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By Paul BoutinComment by Shadowlayer: More like federal pound me in the ass prison, amirite? more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Facebook's ad targeting badly misses the mark
Google and Yahoo target search ads based on mere keywords. How passé! Facebook's targeted ads, which draw on the personal information users enter into their profiles, are clearly the future, right? If only the company's engineers could competently write the code that targets those ads. A Facebook advertiser who has spent thousands of dollars on campaigns targeted by age and country says that the site's new reporting tools for advertisers have exposed a serious problem: Either the targeting routines are broken, or the reporting is completely off. An ad meant for U.K. teens went mostly to the U.S. and other European countries instead. A campaign meant to be placed in front of Irish users saw 1 in 14 ads go elsewhere. It's a poor reflection on Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, whose expertise in running Google's automated ad systems was touted as her main qualification for the job. Here are screenshots of some of the advertisers' reports: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by apersonattheplex: after all of this, why are you still naming Sheryl as the person who "ran" AdWords. She did no such... 1 Responses | Other threads
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breakdowns
MySpace foe can't keep it up
Brad Greenspan, the former CEO of Intermix Media, the company which launched MySpace, loves to make trouble for News Corp., the media giant he claims bought Intermix and MySpace for a song. Too bad he pays more attention to his ongoing, one-sided feud than his revenge vehicle, LiveUniverse. Greenspan's startup is having trouble with his uptime; a tipster says his LiveUniverse and LiveVideo sites have been down for two days running. That's not the real problem; the real problem is that it took two days for anyone to notice they've been down.
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By Owen ThomasComment by MaiaEuryalus: The company is being evicted from its LA offices after months of not paying rent, and they had their phones... more » | Other threads
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Tim the IT Guy
Microsoft saves my job for the weekend
Hooray — another zero-day patch! The financial sky is falling! The only good news is I'm used to hedge fund managers throwing themselves out the windows. If you're as familiar with zero-day patches as collateralized debt obligations, let me explain the difference to an IT guy. A CDO means I'm fired. A zero-day patch means I'm working. All weekend. More »
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Comment by Nekoni: Maybe he's like my partner, likes the routine, regular money, a challenge, but not too much responsibility, just enough to... 1 Responses | Other threads
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breakdowns
eBayers aghast over porny penis come-ons
An anonymous eBayer spoke out on the auction website's user forums recently, irate over seeing penis-enlargement ads on the eBay homepage. Within seconds, a horde of other outspoken eBayers chimed in with over 600 replies to share their shock and dismay of seeing the same penis-envy ads. One grandmother was extremely offended at having her little grandson wonder whether his manhood is up to par. But it turned out eBay wasn't actually at fault — malware on the computers of people seeing the ads had replaced eBay's G-rated come-ons with racier fare. Maybe those offended should just pick up some discounted antivirus software on eBay? That seems easier. Here's another malware-placed ad: More »
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Comment by trevo: I believe this is due to the Trojan called DNS Changer. Very smart and simple app. It just redirects your... more » | Other threads
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your privacy is an illusion
Twitter bug reveals friends-only messages
Be careful what you Twitter — especially if you think the website will keep it secret for you. In 1999, Scott McNealy, then Sun's CEO, said, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." Webheads have been diligently trying to prove him wrong since, with online tools that zealously guard our privacy. And yet they keep proving him right, with senseless coding errors which destroy the very privacy they try to protect. The latest example: Twitter. A Hungarian website, Webisztán, has found a simple exploit for Twitter. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by ValdemarLibolo: Man I just tested that and you're right! Enter a random commonly-used nick and you see everything...(tho not that exciting,... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Hotel discount offer blamed for server crash
Leading Hotels of the World, the fancy-lodging chain I only ever hear about in airline-magazine advertisements, has badly flubbed a discount offer celebrating its 80th birthday. So many people tried to get the chain's $19.28/night discount rate that its servers supposedly crashed. More » -
breakdowns
AdBrite serving zero ads, according to AdBrite
We knew things were looking grim in the fatally overcrowded online ad-network space. But this is ridiculous. AdBrite's homepage currently states that the network, favored by smaller publishers, is serving "0 impressions a day on 0 sites." A glitch in its stats mechanism, surely — but also a harbinger of the shakeout to come. We hear persistent rumors of high turnover in the site's sales department.
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By Owen ThomasComment by apunter: "It is with great pleasure that I am announcing the promotion of Dionne McCray to Director of Engineering Services. ... 1 Responses | Other threads
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breakdowns
Skype apologizes for Chinese privacy breach
Josh Silverman, president of eBay's Skype Internet-calling service, has issued a mea culpa blog post. The short version: Tom Online, Skype's Chinese partner, is storing instant messages sent over the service — and storing them insecurely, to boot. [Skype Blogs] -
breakdowns
Apple's five worst quality control failures
In the past year, Apple earned top scores in both customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. It's a tribute to the power of marketing. And for Apple customers' collective delusion, we credit Greg Joswiak, a top marketing executive who handled Mac hardware before he moved on to pushing iPods and iPhones.While Apple products may be shiny, easy to use and full of whizbang features, going back at least as far as 1999, they've been often unreliable and sometimes dangerous. Five reasons Joswiak deserves a raise, below. More »
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Comment by CaliforniaCajun: I used to run the IT side of a Mac-based business. About thirty Macs. Never had the hardware fail. Occasionally had... 4 Responses | Other threads
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breakdowns
Bank of America site down for seven hours
Thinking about making a run on your bank from the privacy of your own home? If you're a Bank of America customer, good luck — the site has been down since 8 a.m. PST, and the problem has seems to have grown worse since it started. At first, users couldn't verify their "SiteKey" to access their accounts. The company then disabled online access and posted a note to the homepage, pictured. I couln't even access the homepage until just now, possibly because millions of customers are now desperately checking and re-checking the site to see when access is restored. Now that I can get in, it looks like I still have some money! So don't panic — I'm sure Bank of America, like the rest of America's financial services industry, has everything under control.
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By Jackson WestComment by schlizzag: it's up now, but it was down for me throughout the day, without so much of a notice like the... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Lehman Brothers spent $309M on IT last quarter
Pride cometh before the fall, with Lehman Brothers having spent $309 million on information technology infrastructure in the quarter before the venerable financial firm went belly-up, which was up from $282 million the previous quarter. The company spent $1.1 billion on IT in 2007. Projects included a system for the London Stock Exchange to create an anonymous, automated way for traders to do business (which, in the wake of the United Airlines share price debacle, sounds like a fantastic idea). While the relevant divisions can be split off and sold (and the IT grunts are still hard at work), as more banks fail, selling IT equipment to financial firms doesn't look it's going to be a growth business for some time to come. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by QADude: Craigslist should see a sudden increase in "IT for sale" as well... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Text-message trainwreck story gets more complicated
Journalists hate when this happens: Federal investigators say Friday's fatal collision of a Ventura County Metrolink commuter train with a freight train may not have been caused by an engineer busy with text messages, as was reported over the weekend. The spokesperson who blamed the engineer and called it "unbelievable" that he'd been texting on the job has resigned. The National Transportation Safety Board says they've found evidence of missed safety checks, but it'll be months before they determine the cause. Here's the Contra Costa Times's wrapup of recent reports: More » -
Leave Terry Childs Alone!
Why San Francisco deserved to lose control of its network
Terry Childs is the San Francisco government systems administrator who, threatened with losing his job, took over the network. Childs finally gave in from his jail cell and handed mayor Gavin Newsom the passwords he'd changed, along with a liturgy of hate for his pointy-haired bosses. San Francisco bureaucrats make Childs out to be another Kevin Mitnick, capable of breaking into confidential data. Truth is, he's a grunt router admin who got sick of being on call 365 days a year. Here's a rundown of the exaggerated claims San Francisco officials are heaping onto Childs: More »
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Comment by mmmike: More likely Childs just forgot to save to flash. You can't be serious. This guy is a Cisco-certified... 2 Responses | Other threads
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itunes 8
Latest Windows malware comes from Apple
Running on Windows Vista, Apple's iTunes 8 isn't actually a computer virus, according to WordNet's strict definition of term as "a software program capable of reproducing itself and usually capable of causing great harm to files or other programs on the same computer." But that's only because iTunes 8 doesn't replicate itself and spread other computers. It is causing plenty of harm to computers, according to complainers on an Apple Support forum. They say they're seeing Windows's infamous "blue screen of death" reboot screen anytime a user plugs in an iPod or iPhone and launches iTunes 8 at the same time. We can already hear th fanboys telling us how this is all Microsoft's fault. (Photo by tomeppy)
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Comment by Robert Synnott: Actually, it does sound like Microsoft's fault, unless Apple is actually installing a kernel-space driver. (Are they?) User-mode applications simply... 1 Responses | Other threads
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microsoft
Vista launch bugs that may have doomed the product — the 100-word version
What exactly went so horribly wrong with Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system, the one customers waited seven years for only to have a steaming pile of fail land on their laptops? That's the question Maximum PC had for representatives from Team Redmond. After the jump, the key problems a surprisingly candid Microsoft rep admitted hobbled the launch. More »
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By Jackson WestComment by Norcross: I read a while ago that MS should be split into multiple companies, i.e. Windows, Office, ect. and allow each... 1 Responses | Other threads
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breakdowns
Firefox developer loses three months of browser-bug data
Ever suspected those "Report Bug" tools in Web browsers leave you shouting into an abyss, your feedback discarded? An engineer at Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, has just confirmed that's actually been the case for months. Mark Smith explains that his misconfiguration of database led to the loss of three months of data about websites which users say Firefox doesn't display correctly, information Mozilla uses to "help prioritize fixes to the browser." More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by BartKela: In addition to the two-person rule, there should be a change log on production systems (who did what when and... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
London stock exchange outage ruins biggest day of the year
British traders should've been buying and selling like mad earlier today on the news of the U.S. government's effective nationalization of sputtering loan giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Instead, they got kicked offline. A spokesperson for the London Stock Exchange says the exchange's TradElect trading system didn't crash — there was a "connectivity issue" at 9:15 am London time. That's about as technical an explanation as we're likely to get today. (Photo by jam_90s)
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By Paul BoutinComment by Mouser_UK: sounds like back hoe fade caused by a navvy with a JCB. though i'me sure the daily telegraph will blame Gordon... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Why Google doesn't want your money
Can Google charge for a service it mostly gives away — and that doesn't always work? That's the experiment it's conducting with Google Apps. Gmail, the email service at the heart of Google Apps, went down three times earlier this month, and Google has sent a note to customers who pay for its "Premier Edition" — typically colleges and small businesses. As Fortune notes, Google hasn't had much success breaking into the large business accounts where Microsoft rules. The tone of Google's apology speaks volumes. It's mostly apologetic, but there are overtones of Stanford-comp-sci huffiness: More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Shadowlayer: Well from my POV the googlenomics of mountain view were always too similar to those of web 1.0. The reason... more » | Other threads
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Tim the IT Guy
Stupid Google calculator tricks
Google's named after "googol," an incredibly large number — misspelled. Does it surprise you that the search engine makes mistakes with math, too? Just for fun, watch what happens when you use the Google calculator to solve equations involving a Googol (10^100). More »
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Comment by sample032: [en.wikipedia.org] explains it all in language that only hardware engineers and math majors can understand, pedantics usually reserved for MathWorld. 3 Responses | Other threads
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e-commerce
Botched software upgrade costs J. Crew $3 million
Luxer-than-thou retailer J. Crew has mostly avoided the economic pinch, since its customers barely notice that they're paying $4 a gallon for gas. Instead, the retailer has been laid low by buggy software, reports the Business Technology blog. One outraged customer, shown here, was billed $9,208.50 and shipped baby-size shirts, not the mediums he'd ordered. J. Crew's net income in its most recent quarter fell 12 percent from the same period last year to $18.1 million, and the company said it spent $3 million to fix the problem. Do the math: Had J. Crew not had the software problem, its income would have been up 2.5 percent. It's a shameful comeuppance for J. Crew CEO Mickey Drexler. More »
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By Owen ThomasComment by Motoko Kusanagi: Yeah, well, J. Crew has a long history to making shitty IT decisions. Anyone else remember this guy? ... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Google can't do math
Google's calculator function fails when handling large numbers. News.com's Stephen Shankland opinionates: "Any company that named itself after a big number must be held to a higher standard." Cut the Googlers some slack, Stephen: How are they supposed to maintain optimal blood-sugar levels for accurate coding when Larry and Sergey are taking away their snacks? (Screenshot via Blogoscoped)
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By Owen ThomasComment by chenry: Why would you bother using Google as a calculator anyway? more » | Other threads
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caption contest
@ev will you follow me now?
Sent in by a tipster: A leg bedecked with a tattoo of Twitter's "fail whale," the cetacean mascot deployed when the short-updates site takes on water. Can you think of a better caption? Leave your suggestion in the comments. The best one will become the new headline. Yesterday's winner is trisomy21 with "Sergey, we're going to need more dark fiber." (Photo by morrowplanet)
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By Jackson WestComment by theRab: you need to more thoroughly check your sources. this photo is not by mike morrow. this tattoo belongs to @critter... more » | Other threads
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We Read Twitter So Sheryl Sandberg Doesn't Have To
South Park power outage frees workers from Web 2.0
The power is out in South Park, San Francisco's startup epicenter. Wired and Yahoo Brickhouse — in the same building — are affected. Caffe Centro is down. Jack Falstaff isn't answering the phone. Six Apart, a block away on Fourth Street, is up. Workers are roaming the neighborhood. Got any more data points? Send 'em in to tips@valleywag.com.
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By Paul BoutinComment by Troll_2.0: Web 2.0 freedom, but never free from Troll 2.0 more » | Other threads
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Agami
Storage startup burns through $45 million in 6 months, shuts down
Sunnyvale-based storage startup Agami called an all hands at 11 AM, Monday, August 4. "I thought we were getting bought out,'' one sales rep told the Mercury News. Instead, CEO David Stiles told his employees that the company was shutting down and that everyone had to clear out by 1 PM. "Basically we all felt betrayed,'' another employee told the Mercury News. They had reason to be surprised. Agami only closed its third round of funding in February, after raising $45 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins. More » -
breakdowns
Apple confirms iPod Nano fires
Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry claims “there have been multiple cases of overheating and fire damage, in particular during recharging" iPod Nanos sold during the model's first year of production in 2005. An Apple spokesperson confirmed that “in very rare cases”, batteries in first generation iPod Nanos sold between September 2005 and December 2006 can overheat. Full statement from Apple: More »
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By Paul BoutinComment by ciscokidinsf: @TheChris2.0: Dunno, The Doors' Jim Morrison would've been a better choice. more » | Other threads
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olympics
Michael Phelps breaks Facebook
Long-torsoed anatomy model Michael Phelps has won more gold medals in one Olympics than anyone before him. That's not the only record he's set in the last week. According NBC's Bob Costas, Phelps has more Facebook "fans" than Will Smith, Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers — 767,885 at last count! Phelps tells Costas that besides the fans, he's got about 7,600 pending Facebook friend requests, too. "I can't accept any more," he tells Costas. Obsessed? You can always try. You might have better luck at friending Phelps than becoming his fan. Check out the screenshot below — that feature seems to be broken right now, perhaps because of the sudden onrush of Phelpsmania on Facebook. More »
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Comment by colonelpanic: @Passerby: It's just a couple of years from "fan" to "I promise I will never appear before this court again,... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Stalled Tesla Roadster in venture capital's epicenter
A Tesla roadster dead at the intersection of Sand Hill Road and Alameda in Menlo Park, at approximately 4 p.m. yesterday. Yes, the sexy electric car that's the darling of Valley cleantech investors, on the road that runs through the heart of venture-capitalist country. With so few Teslas in the wild, there can't be that many possibilities on who the unlucky buyer was. Let us know in the comments which rich guy you think was late getting home last night. The big question is, was it a mechanical breakdown, or did the batteries run out of juice? While others may look at this and think Tesla can't manufacture a reliable car, we see this as an opportunity for the fledgling automotive startup: Electric tow trucks.
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By Jackson WestComment by PerpetualMotion: @sardina1151: Actually you are wrong... The body is Tesla-designed, and the chassis has been so heavily modified that it's not really... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Netflix crash caused by botched Oracle upgrade
How did Netflix end up with massive delivery delays? "Because of massive database corruption in their Oracle cluster caused by a botched upgrade," according to a tipster. But don't blame Oracle (or Microsoft), necessarily. The tipster believes Netflix's own database adminstrators who bungled the upgrade. Why not just roll back the system? More »
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By Jackson WestComment by Brian_Sullivan: Even if you have a valid backup, it may not be potitical to 'restore' it. Many transactions may have been... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
Netflix shipping system crashes for two days running
Woe be unto Netflix if my parents don't get the latest installemnt of Foyle's War. In an email sent out to customers and a notice posted to the site, the DVD-by-mail company says it is having problems with its shipping system affecting around a third of the company's customers. It has now persisted for two days. So if your friendly mail carrier doesn't show up with a red envelope or three today, don't blame it on a Postal Service "blue shorts of death" error. Graciously, the company has preemptively offered a credit for any delays. Why not tout its online-video offerings, like Watch Now streaming on its website or the Roku set-top box? Oh, right, website outages and inventory problems. But hey, at least if your request gets returned "404 Not Found," it won't cost you a stamp. Netflix's alert, after the jump: More »
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By Jackson WestComment by amillians: @caesar32: Say what? Their back-end is custom + Oracle apps. They f'd up a DB upgrade. And funny, but I've never... more » | Other threads
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breakdowns
All the news that's fit to print, unless the website's down
The website of the New York Times is unresponsive beyond an archaic "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" error. We didn't even have to check the site — we could have gathered as much from the frantic IMs being sent by the same Internet poseurs who like to blog about how the mainstream media is irrelevant to their lives.
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By Owen ThomasComment by mrfomoco: Hmm...NYT victimized by a 'Denial of Objectivity' attack, no doubt. more » | Other threads
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Apple Users Held Hostage
Good news! MobileMe is now a-okay!
The enigmatic David G. of Apple has been given the go-ahead to proclaim MobileMe's email problems, affecting those lucky 1 percent of users, resolved after three weeks. I guess someone should email the FailMe Is More Like It guy. [Apple]
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Comment by matto: Every time I sync more than one machine, every contact in my addressbook gets duplicated. I think they still have... more » | Other threads
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HD Moore
DNS hack author gets DNS hacked
HD Moore is the guy behind the Metasploit Project. In general, Metasploit helps sysadmins find security holes in their networks. Last week, Moore published an exploit for a weakness in the domain name server (DNS) software used to route Web surfers to the correct machine for, say, www.valleywag.com. On Tuesday, some of the traffic to Moore's employer, BreakingPoint, was rerouted to a fake Google page operated by a scammer running a click fraud racket. The cause? An AT&T DNS server for the Austin, Texas area that had been compromised using ... you guessed it. Moore emailed us, "There is no way to verify now that it has been fixed, but my impression is that it was actually a different exploit."
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By Paul BoutinComment by giddieup: gotta handle those important things to those telecoms. they are so good at what they do. more » | Other threads
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Transformers blows up this weekend. Need to know more? io9 gets down and dirty with the superbots.
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