v3.9_bonus: Don’t roll out updates on a Friday
Of course, there was only one tech story worth talking about in this bonus episode: the CrowdStrike outage that hit 8.5 million Windows devices worldwide – on a Friday, a day when developers will typically advise you not to roll out major updates. Oops. 🙈
While it was all over the news, some news didn’t even make it to air because of the outage. But while it was a bad day for tech consolidation, it was a good day for human ingenuity, with clever manual solutions deployed to keep things running.
Whiteboards being used at @belfastairport as all the screens are blue. Passenger Martin McElroy took this, and told us that it's like “the dark ages, but to be fair they’re making it work, which you have to give them credit for.” #outage pic.twitter.com/FfSmEHCvuO
— Stephen Murphy (@SMurphyTV) July 19, 2024
Elaine shared this post in praise of innovation and the replies are worth a look.
And, of course, there were jokes.
But what really made us laugh was the pitiful goodwill gesture from CrowdStrike to the “teammates and partners who helped customers affected”, which backfired badly. 🙈🙈
But sure it all worked out in the end – even for CrowdStrike, which is still way up on its market cap year on year, despite plunging $12.5 billion in the aftermath. So good for them, we suppose? 🤷🏻♀️
Speaking of tech businesses making great losses, did you know that X has covertly opted all users into helping to train both Grok and other AI systems for xAI? Now you know, Elaine explains how you can opt out.
That’s it until we’re back in the main feed next week with an all-new episode. In the meantime, we can’t wait for the next round of the fight between X and EU regulators. Ding ding! 🥊