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Today's Topics:
1. Live Hackerthon Pitches to Combat AI Cheating at ANU
(Tom Worthington)
2. Which apps and websites are affected by the Amazon Web
Services outage? (Stephen Loosley)
3. Major AWS outage (Stephen Loosley)
4. Re: Major AWS outage (Marghanita da Cruz)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2025 15:56:38 +1100
From: Tom Worthington <[email protected]>
To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Live Hackerthon Pitches to Combat AI Cheating at ANU
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
Greetings from The Australian National University, where a lecture
theater has been repurposed as a pitch arena. This form of experiential
learning is one way to combat AI cheating. Teams of students are making
three minute presentations on an app they developed. As well as being
graded, students can win a prize and may be talent spotted by
entrepreneurs. While the presentations are digital, I noted that
Professor Charles Gretton used an pen and paper for notes on the work. ;-)
https://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2025/10/hackerthon-for-learning-at-anu.html
--
Tom Worthington http://www.tomw.net.au
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2025 22:29:32 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Which apps and websites are affected by the Amazon Web
Services outage?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Which apps and websites are affected by the Amazon Web Services outage?
By Emily Bennett 9:40pm Oct 20, 2025
https://www.9news.com.au/national/aws-outage-which-apps-and-websites-are-down-amazon-web-services-outage/0dc38ec2-467f-49a8-b1c1-a95ac128a44a
Which apps and websites are affected by the Amazon Web Services outage?
Amazon Web Services, which provides cloud computing, is a subsidiary of Amazon.
An issue with Amazon Web Services is impacting some of the world's biggest apps
and websites.
Users on ?Down Detector, a website which measures outages, have reported
difficulties accessing a range of popular services including Snapchat, Roblox,
Fortnite, Canva and Duolingo.
The problems appear to stem from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides
infrastructure for many major websites and apps.
The technology giant has confirmed its engineers are working to fix the problem.
Which websites are down?
Down Detector shows a huge list of sites and apps that users are reporting
errors.
Some services have confirmed their issue is linked with Amazon Web Services,
while Down Detector has reported others are likely to be impacted by the issue.?
Websites experiencing difficulties include:
Snapchat
My Fitness Pal
Epic Games Store
Fortnite
Canva?
Roblox
Hinge
Tinder
Signal?
Duolingo?
PlayStation Network
XBox
Steam
Ubisoft Connect
Pokemon Go
Video service Zoom
Xero
EA Games
Strava
Telstra
Optus
Music service Tidal
Ring doorbells
Online game Among US
Lloyds Bank
Halifax (UK bank)
Slack
Reddit
Amazon Alexa
Life360
Signal
BT (British Telecom)
Bank of Scotland
Virgin Media
Vodafone
EE
3 (British telco)
Blink Security
HM Revenue and Customs
Microsoft 365
Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Teams
Just Eat
Whatsapp
What has Amazon Web Services said?
Just after 8pm AEDT, Amazon Web Services said its engineers had "identified a
potential root cause" of the outage and services were being restored.
"We continue to observe recovery across most of the affected AWS Services," the
company said in a statement.
"We can confirm global services and features that rely on US-EAST-1 have also
recovered.
"We continue to work towards full resolution and will provide updates as we
have more information to share."
?Is Snapchat down right now?
One of the biggest websites affected by the outage has been Snapchat, a social
media platform with about ?900 million active monthly users.
Users reported difficulty logging into Snapchat after being met with error
messages.
The company told users on X its team was looking into the issue.?
--
Send your stories to [email protected]
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2025 22:43:14 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Major AWS outage
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Major AWS outage across US-East region breaks half the internet
Amazon reports DNS issues hitting DynamoDB, leaving services from Roblox to
McDonald's struggling
By Dan Robinson Mon 20 Oct 2025 // 09:49 UTC
https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/amazon_aws_outage/
A major outage is affecting Amazon Web Services (AWS), with even Amazon's own
web page reported to be offline and dozens of other online services and
websites affected, including disruption in the UK.
AWS reported an issue to its Health Dashboard at 12:11 AM PDT (7:11 UTC) of
increased error rates and latencies for multiple services in the US-EAST-1
Region, effectively Amazon's home region in Northern Virginia.
By 1:26 AM PDT (8:26 UTC), the cloud biz said there were significant error
rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in that region, which were
having a knock-on effect on other AWS services.
At 2:01 AM PDT (9:01 UTC), Amazon's techies identified a potential root cause
for the error rates, saying it appeared to be related to DNS resolution of the
DynamoDB API endpoint, and they were working on multiple parallel paths to
speed recovery.
Global services or features that rely on US-EAST-1 endpoints such as IAM
(Identity and Access Management) updates and DynamoDB Global tables may also be
experiencing issues, the company warned.
This appears to be an understatement, as dozens of websites and services remain
unavailable due to the problems in Northern Virginia.
The list includes McDonald's, DisneyPlus, Snapchat, Signal, Roblox, Verizon,
Fortnite, Venmo, Perplexity, Hulu, Duolingo, Perplexity, Reddit and Coinbase.
Even Amazon.com was offline at one point, and some users have also reported
that their Alexa smart speakers and Ring doorbells had stopped working.
Banks and even some government websites have been affected, as well as comms
applications like Signal and WhatsApp.
Across the pond in the UK, numerous services were down and out for the count,
with Lloyds Banking Group's apps and websites hitting the canvas, while some UK
government services were struggling, including HMRC.
We asked Amazon to comment, but it referred us to the Health Dashboard, which
says the company will continue to provide updates as it has more information to
share. ?
--
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2025 10:41:04 +1100
From: Marghanita da Cruz <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [LINK] Major AWS outage
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Internet or www?
Human Health of part of america improves as people seek health food.
Marghanita
On 10/20/25 23:13, Stephen Loosley wrote:
> Major AWS outage across US-East region breaks half the internet
>
> Amazon reports DNS issues hitting DynamoDB, leaving services from Roblox to
> McDonald's struggling
>
>
> By Dan Robinson Mon 20 Oct 2025 // 09:49 UTC
> https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/amazon_aws_outage/
>
>
> A major outage is affecting Amazon Web Services (AWS), with even Amazon's own
> web page reported to be offline and dozens of other online services and
> websites affected, including disruption in the UK.
>
> AWS reported an issue to its Health Dashboard at 12:11 AM PDT (7:11 UTC) of
> increased error rates and latencies for multiple services in the US-EAST-1
> Region, effectively Amazon's home region in Northern Virginia.
>
> By 1:26 AM PDT (8:26 UTC), the cloud biz said there were significant error
> rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in that region, which were
> having a knock-on effect on other AWS services.
>
> At 2:01 AM PDT (9:01 UTC), Amazon's techies identified a potential root cause
> for the error rates, saying it appeared to be related to DNS resolution of
> the DynamoDB API endpoint, and they were working on multiple parallel paths
> to speed recovery.
>
>
> Global services or features that rely on US-EAST-1 endpoints such as IAM
> (Identity and Access Management) updates and DynamoDB Global tables may also
> be experiencing issues, the company warned.
>
> This appears to be an understatement, as dozens of websites and services
> remain unavailable due to the problems in Northern Virginia.
>
> The list includes McDonald's, DisneyPlus, Snapchat, Signal, Roblox, Verizon,
> Fortnite, Venmo, Perplexity, Hulu, Duolingo, Perplexity, Reddit and Coinbase.
> Even Amazon.com was offline at one point, and some users have also reported
> that their Alexa smart speakers and Ring doorbells had stopped working.
>
>
> Banks and even some government websites have been affected, as well as comms
> applications like Signal and WhatsApp.
>
> Across the pond in the UK, numerous services were down and out for the count,
> with Lloyds Banking Group's apps and websites hitting the canvas, while some
> UK government services were struggling, including HMRC.
>
> We asked Amazon to comment, but it referred us to the Health Dashboard, which
> says the company will continue to provide updates as it has more information
> to share. ?
>
> --
>
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
--
Marghanita da Cruz
Telephone: 0414-869202
Email: [email protected]
Website: http://ramin.com.au
------------------------------
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