Hasta La Gadget!

The CrowdStrike outage that started late on Thursday is still causing havoc as Delta was forced to scrap an additional 1,250 flights yesterday on top of the 3,500 already cancelled, Reuters reported. That has left tens of thousands of Delta fliers stranded waiting for new flights that could take days, forcing many to cancel or postpone trips. The airline has yet to say when it will resume normal operations. 

Delta has scratched a third of scheduled flights for a total of 5,000 since Friday, and delayed another 1,700. “In particular one of our crew tracking-related tools was affected and unable to effectively process the unprecedented number of changes triggered by the system shutdown,” said Delta CEO Ed Bastian.

CrowdStrike’s software update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, causing many to go into a boot loop that could only be recovered by technicians with direct access to machines. The problem turned out to be a faulty sensor designed to detect malicious activity that “triggered a logic error that resulted in an operating system crash,” according to CrowdStrike.

Delta was the worst hit of any US airline, and United Airlines was a distant second with about 266 (9 percent) of flights cancelled on Sunday. 

At first, United and Delta told stranded travelers that they wouldn’t cover bills since the CrowdStrike crash was out of their control. However, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg later stepped in and said that he considered the situation self-inflicted, so carriers would need to cover food, transportation and lodging costs for any delays longer than three hours as required by law. 

CrowdStrike said today that a “significant” number of devices are back online and the company is reportedly close to rolling out an automatic fix to the issue. Also heavily impacted by the outage are healthcare and other public services in the US and UK, with the NHS warning patients that “there may still be some delays.” 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/crowdstrike-outage-aftershocks-cause-delta-to-cancel-over-1000-more-flights-120025978.html?src=rss

A faulty update from cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike caused a global outage last Friday, apparently affecting some 8.5 million Windows devices, according to Microsoft itself.

The update triggered a blue screen of death (BSOD), knocking offline systems used by hospitals, airlines, and banks. Only machines running Windows were affected — according to CrowdStrike, the total number of devices affected was “less than one percent of all Windows machines.”

The update “was designed to target newly observed, malicious named pipes being used by common C2 frameworks in cyberattacks,” according to CrowdStrike. Unfortunately, it included a logic error, crashing the OS. In the blog post on Saturday, Microsoft’s VP of enterprise and OS security, David Weston, wrote that the company is working with CrowdStrike to “develop a scalable solution” to fix the faulty update. Microsoft has also called for help from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Unfortunately, not everything is fixed quite yet — just ask Delta flyers over the weekend.

— Mat Smith

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Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 review

The foldable king, but for how much longer?

Engadget

No one has been making foldable phones longer than Samsung. But the pace of innovation from the company has slowed while new challengers, like the OnePlus Open and Pixel Fold, have arrived. Now for 2024, Samsung has reinforced the Galaxy Z Fold 6 with a stronger but significantly lighter frame, a new ultra-wide-angle camera and a bunch of AI-powered tools. It’s better, sure, but it feels like complacency is eroding Samsung’s foldable lead. 

Read the full review.

Kunitsu-Gami review: Demonic delights

Come to defend humanity, stay for the beautifully rendered desserts.

Kunitsu-Gami is a game of two halves: frenzied combat and peaceful base building. Demon enemies are often gross (intentionally!), filled with pus, and armed with claws. The game blends real-time combat with tower-defense mechanics, with all of it taking place in a zoomed-out third-person view. With so many samey action RPGs and Soulslikes, Kunitsu-Gami takes a refreshingly different approach. Oh, and so much delicious-looking, hyper-detailed video game food.

Continue reading.

NASA’s Curiosity rover accidentally found pure sulfur crystals on Mars

‘It shouldn’t be there.’

NASA scientists say pure sulfur has been found on Mars for the first time after the Curiosity rover inadvertently uncovered a cluster of yellow crystals when it drove over a rock. And it looks like the area is filled with it. While minerals containing sulfur have been observed on the red planet, elemental sulfur has never been seen before. Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s project scientist, said: “It shouldn’t be there, so now we have to explain it.”

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Rivian opens its first Charging Outpost, a not-gas station near Yosemite

There’s trail mix and coffee too, for your own refueling.

Rivian

Rivian just opened its first EV charging rest stop, 24 miles outside Yosemite National Park. Alongside the five DC fast chargers, only for Rivian owners, there are bathrooms, a lounge with a small library, a water refill station, free coffee, and make-your-own trail mix. These other amenities are open to anyone, and Rivian says it’s planning more Charging Outposts “around national parks and other high-traffic areas across the country.”

Continue reading.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-morning-after-blue-screen-of-death-outage-affected-around-85-million-devices-112012903.html?src=rss

Somehow in all these years, I’ve never gotten into visual novels, despite being a person who loves both reading and video games. The idea has always intrigued me in some way, but I’ve never really felt compelled to actually pick one up. That changed when I first saw the announcement for Echoes of the Emergent a few months ago. Described as “a personal journey through a shattered post-apocalyptic world,” all it took was a glimpse of Echoes of the Emergent’s gritty aesthetic and melancholic atmosphere to get me to preorder it. And now that I’ve finally gotten around to playing (reading? experiencing?) it, I’m kind of blown away.

Echoes of the Emergent is a Playdate-exclusive title from RNG Party Games, the same team that made Bloom. It opens with its main character, Ayumi, on a tense scavenging trip to find any food she can in a ruined city. She’s alone, afraid and increasingly concerned about her dwindling resources. As the story progresses, it bounces between Ayumi’s bleak new reality and flashbacks to a time when things were normal. Her panicked efforts to stay alive, to keep going, are interwoven with memories of her family and friends — some of them happy, some painful. And there’s a cat.

RNG Party Games

The narrative is illustrated with haunting backgrounds of Ayumi’s dilapidated surroundings, and these move ever so slightly to create a really unsettling effect. If you press the down arrow on the D-pad, you can collapse the text box to get a full view of the backgrounds. It takes a few hours to get through the entire story, but it’s definitely worth carving out some time for. You can save your place by pressing ‘B’ to pull up the menu.

Echoes of the Emergent is the kind of experience that will stick with you for a little while even after it’s over. It’s available on the Playdate Catalog for $8, but you can also get it — and its captivating soundtrack — on itch.io.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/echoes-of-the-emergent-a-hauntingly-beautiful-playdate-exclusive-sold-me-on-visual-novels-222033336.html?src=rss

Somehow in all these years, I’ve never gotten into visual novels, despite being a person who loves both reading and video games. The idea has always intrigued me in some way, but I’ve never really felt compelled to actually pick one up. That changed when I first saw the announcement for Echoes of the Emergent a few months ago. Described as “a personal journey through a shattered post-apocalyptic world,” all it took was a glimpse of Echoes of the Emergent’s gritty aesthetic and melancholic atmosphere to get me to preorder it. And now that I’ve finally gotten around to playing (reading? experiencing?) it, I’m kind of blown away.

Echoes of the Emergent is a Playdate-exclusive title from RNG Party Games, the same team that made Bloom. It opens with its main character, Ayumi, on a tense scavenging trip to find any food she can in a ruined city. She’s alone, afraid and increasingly concerned about her dwindling resources. As the story progresses, it bounces between Ayumi’s bleak new reality and flashbacks to a time when things were normal. Her panicked efforts to stay alive, to keep going, are interwoven with memories of her family and friends — some of them happy, some painful. And there’s a cat.

RNG Party Games

The narrative is illustrated with haunting backgrounds of Ayumi’s dilapidated surroundings, and these move ever so slightly to create a really unsettling effect. If you press the down arrow on the D-pad, you can collapse the text box to get a full view of the backgrounds. It takes a few hours to get through the entire story, but it’s definitely worth carving out some time for. You can save your place by pressing ‘B’ to pull up the menu.

Echoes of the Emergent is the kind of experience that will stick with you for a little while even after it’s over. It’s available on the Playdate Catalog for $8, but you can also get it — and its captivating soundtrack — on itch.io.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/echoes-of-the-emergent-a-hauntingly-beautiful-playdate-exclusive-sold-me-on-visual-novels-222033336.html?src=rss

Somehow in all these years, I’ve never gotten into visual novels, despite being a person who loves both reading and video games. The idea has always intrigued me in some way, but I’ve never really felt compelled to actually pick one up. That changed when I first saw the announcement for Echoes of the Emergent a few months ago. Described as “a personal journey through a shattered post-apocalyptic world,” all it took was a glimpse of Echoes of the Emergent’s gritty aesthetic and melancholic atmosphere to get me to preorder it. And now that I’ve finally gotten around to playing (reading? experiencing?) it, I’m kind of blown away.

Echoes of the Emergent is a Playdate-exclusive title from RNG Party Games, the same team that made Bloom. It opens with its main character, Ayumi, on a tense scavenging trip to find any food she can in a ruined city. She’s alone, afraid and increasingly concerned about her dwindling resources. As the story progresses, it bounces between Ayumi’s bleak new reality and flashbacks to a time when things were normal. Her panicked efforts to stay alive, to keep going, are interwoven with memories of her family and friends — some of them happy, some painful. And there’s a cat.

RNG Party Games

The narrative is illustrated with haunting backgrounds of Ayumi’s dilapidated surroundings, and these move ever so slightly to create a really unsettling effect. If you press the down arrow on the D-pad, you can collapse the text box to get a full view of the backgrounds. It takes a few hours to get through the entire story, but it’s definitely worth carving out some time for. You can save your place by pressing ‘B’ to pull up the menu.

Echoes of the Emergent is the kind of experience that will stick with you for a little while even after it’s over. It’s available on the Playdate Catalog for $8, but you can also get it — and its captivating soundtrack — on itch.io.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/echoes-of-the-emergent-a-hauntingly-beautiful-playdate-exclusive-sold-me-on-visual-novels-222033336.html?src=rss