Technologies

Cloudflare Outage Hits Hard Across the Web, but Recovery Is in Progress

When web services provider Cloudflare went down on Tuesday, a significant portion of the internet became unavailable.

Web services provider Cloudflare got hit by an outage on Tuesday, disrupting access to many websites and services including OpenAI, Spotify, X, Grindr, Letterboxd and Canva.

Cloudflare is a cloud services and cybersecurity company based in San Francisco that is used by approximately 20% of all websites, according to W3Techs. It’s one of a handful of services, along with Amazon Web Services, CrowdStrike and Fastly (all of which have experienced major outages in the past few years) that you might never have heard of, but that provide essential internet infrastructure.

The bulk of sites and services impacted by Tuesday’s outage, which began around 3.30 a.m. PT, seemed to recover within three hours of Cloudflare going down. It’s likely that some continue to be affected, and may still experience difficulties throughout the day. At the time of writing, Cloudflare was still issuing updates about the incident to its system status page.

Cloudflare hasn’t yet said what caused the outage, but has promised to conduct a full investigation.

Which sites and services were impacted?

Cloudflare has a massive range of clients across the internet, ranging from websites that are household names to smaller services you might not have heard of. Due to its size, when it went down, it took many of those sites and services with it.

Among those affected by the outage was Downdetector, which is where most people go to report problems when services are offline. (Downdetector is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.)

Now that it’s back up and running, Downdetector says that it received over 2.1 million reports during the outage period. Over 435,000 of these came from the US, with the UK, Japan and Germany appearing to be the countries that were next most affected.

Most of the reports pertained to Cloudflare, but other affected companies also received a significant number of reports. They include X (320,549 reports), League of Legends (130,260 reports), OpenAI (81,077 reports), Spotify (93,377 reports) and Grindr (25,031 reports).

How did the outage unfold?

Cloudflare first acknowledged the outage at 3.48 a.m. PT. The company issued a statement on its system status page saying that it was aware of the problem.

«Cloudflare is aware of, and investigating an issue which impacts multiple customers: Widespread 500 errors, Cloudflare Dashboard and API also failing,» it said. «We are working to understand the full impact and mitigate this problem. More updates to follow shortly.»

At 5.09 a.m. PT, the company said the issue had been identified and a fix was being implemented. In the subsequent hours, errors began to drop and services gradually came back online.

Cloudflare added at 9.14 a.m. PT that most services had returned to normal. «A full post-incident investigation and details about the incident will be made available asap,» it said.

Is the internet stable and reliable?

The Cloudflare outage comes just one month after Amazon Web Services went down, causing havoc across the internet. The AWS outage affected sites including Reddit, Snapchat, Roblox and Fortnite, sparking many to ask whether having such huge swathes of the internet reliant on a few centralized services is sensible or safe.

Major outages are also highlighting concerns about our growing reliance on AI — in particular the fragility of the infrastructure AI relies upon to function every day.

«The most dominant platform did not buckle because of simultaneous queries or the release of a new competitive model, but because of a problem with Cloudflare, a web security and performance provider,» said Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University. «The issue exposes the reality that this multi-billion, even trillion dollar investment in AI is only as reliable as its least scrutinized third party infrastructure.»

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, Feb. 28

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Feb. 28.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? As is usual for Saturday, it’s pretty long, and should take you longer than the normal Mini. A bunch of three-initial terms are used in this one. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Rock’s ___ Leppard
Answer: DEF

4A clue: Cry a river
Answer: SOB

7A clue: Clean Air Act org.
Answer: EPA

8A clue: Org. that pays the Bills?
Answer: NFL

9A clue: Nintendo console with motion sensors
Answer: WII

10A clue: ___-quoted (frequently said)
Answer: OFT

11A clue: With 13-Across, narrow gap between the underside of a house and the ground
Answer: CRAWL

13A clue: See 11-Across
Answer: SPACE

14A clue: Young lady
Answer: GAL

15A clue: Ooh and ___
Answer: AAH

17A clue: Sports org. for Scottie Scheffler
Answer: PGA

18A clue: «Hey, just an F.Y.I. …,» informally
Answer: PSA

19A clue: When doubled, nickname for singer Swift
Answer: TAY

20A clue: Socially timid
Answer: SHY

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Morning moisture
Answer: DEW

2D clue: «Game of Thrones» or Homer’s «Odyssey»
Answer: EPICSAGA

3D clue: Good sportsmanship
Answer: FAIRPLAY

4D clue: White mountain toppers
Answer: SNOWCAPS

5D clue: Unrestrained, as a dog at a park
Answer: OFFLEASH

6D clue: Sandwich that might be served «triple-decker»
Answer: BLT

12D clue: Common battery type
Answer: AA

14D clue: Chat___
Answer: GPT

16D clue: It’s for horses, in a classic joke punchline
Answer: HAY

Technologies

Ultrahuman Ring Pro Brings Better Battery Life, More Action and Analysis

The company’s new flagship smart ring stores more data, too. But that doesn’t really help Americans.

Sick of your smart ring’s battery not holding up? Ultrahuman’s new $479 Ring Pro smart ring, unveiled on Friday, offers up to 15 days of battery life on a single charge. The Ring Pro joins the company’s $349 Ring Air, which boosts health tracking, thanks to longer battery life, increased data storage, improved speed and accuracy and a new heart-rate sensing architecture. The ring works in conjunction with the latest Pro charging case.

Ultrahuman also launched its Jade AI, which can act as an agent based on analysis of current and historical health data. Jade can synthesize data from across the company’s products and is compatible with its Rings.

«With industry-leading hardware paired with Jade biointelligence AI, users can now take real-time actionable interventions towards their health than ever before,» said Mohit Kumar, CEO of Ultrahuman.

No US sales

That hardware isn’t available in the US, though, thanks to the ongoing ban on Ultrahuman’s Rings sales here, stemming from a patent dispute with its competitor, Oura Ring. It’s available for preorder now everywhere else and is slated to ship in March. Jade’s available globally.

Ultrahuman says the Ring Pro boosts battery life to about 15 days in Chill mode — up to 12 days in Turbo — compared to a maximum of six days for the Air. The Pro charger’s battery stores enough for another 45 days, which you top off with Qi-compatible wireless charging. In addition, the case incorporates locator technology via the app and a speaker, as well as usability features such as haptic notifications and a power LED.

The ring can also retain up to 250 days of data versus less than a week for the cheaper model. Ultrahuman redesigned the heart-rate sensor for better signal quality. An upgraded processor improves the accuracy of the local machine learning and overall speed.

It’s offered in gold, silver, black and titanium finishes, with available sizes ranging from 5 to 14.

Jade’s Deep Research Mode is the cross-ecosystem analysis feature, which aggregates data from Ring and Blood Vision and the company’s subscription services, Home and M1 CGM, to provide historical trends, offer current recommendations and flag potential issues, as well as trigger activities such as A-fib detection. Ultrahuman plans to expand its capabilities to include health-adjacent activities, such as ordering food.

Some new apps are also available for the company’s PowerPlug add-on platform, including capabilities such as tracking GLP-1 effects, snoring and respiratory analysis and migraine management tools.