Articles
June 29, 2017
The Record Fine: Google and the Shopping Search
The fine is the story of the week, and the story is the number: 2.42 billion euros, the record that the European Commission set on June 27, the penalty that Google must pay for the shopping search, the decision that the company said it respectfully disagrees with. The fine is the antitrust case: the investigation that opened in November 2010, the comparison shopping services that complained, the Google Shopping unit that sat at the top of the results, the abuse of dominance that the Commission found. The fine is the June 2017 story, and the story is the lesson: the platform that controls the search, the power that comes with the position, the rules that even the giants must follow.
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May 18, 2017
WannaCry: The Ransomware That Stopped the NHS
The ransomware is the story of the week, and the story is the Friday: the May 12 attack that hit the hospitals and the banks and the factories, the worm that spread without a click, the screens that lit up with the red demand, the machines that locked and the data that waited. The ransomware is WannaCry, and WannaCry is the biggest outbreak the internet has seen: more than 200,000 machines in 150 countries, the National Health Service in England with 47 trusts directly affected and 13 other NHS organisations, roughly 19,000 appointments cancelled, the operations postponed, the ambulances diverted. The outbreak is the May 2017 story, and the story is the lesson: the patching that was postponed, the legacy systems that were trusted, the worm that travelled through the gaps.
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April 12, 2017
The Passenger: United and the Dragged Doctor
There is a video that the whole world watched this week, and the video is the flight: the United Express plane at O'Hare, the passenger who was dragged down the aisle, the blood on his face, the phone that recorded it, the weekend that turned into the crisis. The flight was United Express 3411, operated by Republic Airways for United, bound from Chicago to Louisville on Sunday April 9, overbooked, oversold, and then over the line. The video is the April 2017 story, and the story is the lesson: the passenger who was pulled from his seat, the airline that fumbled the apology, the leadership that is now defined by the response.
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March 3, 2017
The Typo That Broke the Internet: AWS and S3
There is an outage that is still being measured this week, and the outage is the storage: the Amazon Web Services region that went down on Tuesday, the Simple Storage Service that failed in US-EAST-1, the four hours that took a large part of the internet with it, the typo that caused it all. The outage started around 9:37 in the morning Pacific time on February 28, the errors spread to the sites that depended on the region, the recovery came in the early afternoon, the full restoration stretched toward nine in the evening. The outage is the March 2017 story, and the story is the lesson: the single command that broke the network, the single region that held the internet, the human error that the infrastructure could not absorb.
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February 22, 2017
The Letter: Susan Fowler and Uber
There is a letter that is being read across the industry this week, and the letter is the post: the account that Susan Fowler published on her blog on Sunday, the story of her year at Uber, the roughly two thousand nine hundred words that described the harassment and the indifference, the document that did more damage than any outage or any scandal so far. The letter arrived on February 19, and by Tuesday it was everywhere: the engineers sharing it, the press covering it, the executives responding to it, the board hiring the lawyers. The letter is the February 2017 story, and the story is the lesson: the employee who spoke, the company that was exposed, the culture that is now under investigation.
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January 17, 2017
The Return to Flight: SpaceX Launches Again
There is a return that happened this week, and the return is the flight: the Falcon 9 that lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Saturday, the first launch for SpaceX since the pad explosion in September, the mission that carried ten Iridium NEXT satellites toward orbit, the company that came back from its worst failure. The launch happened on January 14, four months after the Amos-6 accident destroyed a satellite and grounded the fleet, and the landing followed minutes later: the first stage settling onto the droneship in the Pacific, the booster that came home. The return to flight is the January 2017 story, and the story is the lesson: the failure that was investigated, the cause that was found, the fix that was proven in a single mission.
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December 13, 2016
The Store: Amazon and Just Walk Out
Amazon unveiled a cashierless store in Seattle on Monday, and the checkout line became a relic.
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November 23, 2016
The Translation: Google Goes Neural
Google Translate switched to neural networks this month, and the machines started to understand sentences instead of words.
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October 31, 2016
The Botnet: Mirai and the Day Dyn Fell
A botnet of hacked cameras and routers took down Twitter, Netflix, and half the internet on Friday, and the internet of things showed its dark side.
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September 5, 2016
The Recall: Samsung and the Galaxy Note 7
Samsung recalled every Galaxy Note 7 on Friday after battery fires, and the best phone of the year became the company's worst crisis.
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