Until this past weekend, Pokémon Go was only available in a few countries, including the U.S. So when Niantic and Nintendo finally launched the mega popular mobile game in 26 more countries on Saturday, players were probably super excited… and then servers started crashing, causing more headaches than monster-catching glee. [More]
servers
Snapchat Clarifies Privacy Policy Change, Promises It Doesn’t Store Photos Or Messages
By 11.2.15
Once again a company has taken steps to clarify its privacy policy after recent changes caused confusion and worry for its customers. Over the weekend, Snapchat reassured users that their information and photos are private, and always will be. [More]
Man’s Family Determined To Carry Out A Last Request: Order A Pizza & Tip The Server $500
By 7.13.12 — Updated: 7.8.13
When Aaron passed away at the age of 30, he left his family with a will with all the usual instructions, including that any debt he owed his parents be repaid if he had money in the bank when he died. But he also had another request, one that his family has succeeded in thanks to the generosity of strangers: Order a meal and leave the server a really awesome tip. [More]
Comcast Suffers Major Midwest Outage
By 12.6.10
Another major outage hit Comcast customers, this time in the Midwest. Like the outage that occurred exactly a week ago on the East Coast, this one too started on a Sunday and involved their DNS servers being down. [More]
Ubisoft Authentication Servers Go Down, No One Can Play Anything
By 3.7.10
Hey, remember a few weeks ago when we posted about Ubisoft’s draconian DRM measures that keep players from saving their progress if their Internet connection goes out? Today, players found out what’s even worse than that: the authentication servers going down. [The Escapist] [More]
50 More Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do
By 11.6.09
As promised, here is part II of the NYT “Stuff Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do” series. The list was written by a fellow who is opening a seafood restaurant in Bridgehampton, NY. We’ve grabbed the most debate-worthy of them for your enjoyment.
50 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do
By 11.3.09
Over at the NYT there is a raging debate going on about restaurant server etiquette. We won’t reproduce all 50 “do nots” here, but we did pick a few particularly debate worthy edicts.
T-Mobile: We Won't Swap Out Your Sidekick For A Different Phone
By 10.15.09
Amber is a pre-paid Sidekick owner who has been a T-Mobile customer for 7 years. After the recent T-Mobile data disaster, she doesn’t intend to get burned again. She wants to switch to a different phone, and she wants T-Mobile to buy back her Sidekick since they can’t deliver the data security they promised. Initially T-Mobile agreed, but then they pulled a Sidekick Data Outage on their promise and it disappeared forever.
T-Mobile Sidekick Data Outage Turns Into Epic Customer Data Fail
By 10.11.09
This time last week, we thought of the T-Mobile Sidekick data outage as a mere inconvenient outage, but a temporary one. We grossly misunderstimated how badly T-Mobile and Danger/Microsoft could screw things up.
UPDATE: Additional Information On $5,700 Bandwidth Overage Story
By 5.26.09
Last week, we brought you the story of Mick, whose dedicated server was compromised and he was hit with $5700 in bandwidth charges. Many readers, especially those working in the field, had questions about the particulars of his plan and contract with the Web host. The company, Servepath, contacted us with those details, as well as some crucial background information.
Host Monster Turns On Customer, Shuts Down Blog Without Warning Or Sensical Explanation
By 5.11.09
Web hosting company Host Monster only has so many SQLs to hand out to people, and can’t go around passing them out willy-nilly. Why, there are probably websites in Africa that don’t have any SQLs. We’re not really sure what “SQL” is but we think it’s used to store blog entries; whatever it is, Joe Posnanski used too much of it. The Kansas City Star/Sports Illustrated reporter upgraded his hosting package a few months ago and was assured by Host Monster that there’d be no problems as his professional blog drew more traffic. “No problems,” except that last Friday they permanently closed his account without warning.
Walmart Decides To Honor DRM-Protected MP3 Purchases After All, At Least For Now
By 10.10.08
Last month, Walmart announced it was shutting down the DRM side of its online music store, and too bad if you were a customer, because they were also going to turn off the DRM server that authorized your music for playback. Apparently enough customers complained, because they came to their senses—at least for the time being—and decided to keep the server running. Read their email below.
Hewlett-Packard Takes Shipping Malware-Infested USB Sticks Very Seriously
By 4.11.08
WHO: Hewlett-PackardWHAT: A batch of USB keys for HP’s line of ProLiant servers have been shipped infected with the worms W32.Fakerecy and W32.SillyFDC. Both can allow attackers to take over a system.WHERE: HP ships USB sticks with malware [CNET] (Thanks to Jimbo!)
Court Rules "World Yacht" Can Be Sued For Not Distributing Gratuities To Its Servers
By 2.19.08
“Hold on,” you say to yourself—”If it’s a gratuity, doesn’t that by definition mean it goes to the wait staff?” Not if you’re a server for World Yacht, a “luxury dining fleet” in Manhattan that will now be sued by its employees for slapping automatic gratuities on diners’ bills, then keeping the extra money for itself. New York labor laws require “employers to pass on to workers any payments that customers understand to be tips,” but World Yacht argued that the banquet industry was exempt, and its servers should get nothing. Thanks to last week’s ruling, the employees can move forward with their suit.
Dell Business Blows Up Servers
By 10.11.06
If there’s one thing you expect Dell to know, it’s computers. And although that assumption may be baseless when you’re talking to a CSR from the Orient, telling you the only solution to your monitor being broken is to wipe your hard drive and reinstall, if you’re a business-class customer, talking to your Dell contact to set-up a RAID, you at least hope that they have an inkling of what they are doing.
Danish Time Geek’s Open Letter to D-Link
By 4.7.06
Poul-Henning Kamp, a Danish citizen, has a good heart and an obsession with time but his time is running out, thanks to inconsiderate manufacturing by the D-Link corporation.
