IT General

I love Star Trek (not you, Lower Decks) but even the best shows have their fair share of silly, dumb, or downright baffling episodes. Sometimes the writers seem to have pulled their plots out of a hat full of words, and then somehow the episode makes it all the way to broadcast.

Google Cloud was identified by a Cloudflare representative as the cause of a massive outage that disrupted services across the internet Thursday.

The widespread internet outage affected a variety of popular platforms, with users reporting problems accessing Google services, Cloudflare, Spotify, Twitch, and Discord.

The outage also included popular cloud hosting services such as Cloudflare, which reported service disruptions on its status page. However, a Cloudflare representative stated in an email to Mashable that Google Cloud was responsible for the disruptions to internet services.

"This is a Google Cloud outage," a Cloudflare spokesperson told Mashable by email. They added, "A limited number of services at Cloudflare use Google Cloud and were impacted. We expect them to come back shortly. The core Cloudflare services were not impacted."

On the Google Cloud status page, the company initially reported that it was "experiencing service issues with multiple GCP products beginning at Thursday, 2025-06-12 10:51 PDT."

At 3:41 p.m. ET, Google Cloud provided a further update: "Our engineers have identified the root cause and have applied appropriate mitigations. While our engineers have confirmed that the underlying dependency is recovered in all locations except us-central1, we are aware that customers are still experiencing varying degrees of impact on individual google cloud products. All the respective engineering teams are actively engaged and working on service recovery. We do not have an ETA for full service recovery."

On its own status page, Cloudflare reported, "Cloudflare’s critical Workers KV service went offline due to an outage of a 3rd party service that is a key dependency. As a result, certain Cloudflare products that rely on KV service to store and disseminate information are unavailable..."

Mashable reached out to Google for comment on the outages, and we will update this story if they respond.

On Thursday afternoon, the website Down Detector showed a spike in user error reports starting around 2 p.m. ET. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis owns both Mashable and Down Detector.) By 3:30 p.m., service had been restored at many of the affected platforms, though some users are still reporting problems.

Prime Day is coming, and if you want to shop all the best deals, you'll need an Amazon Prime account.

Here's how shoppers can sign up for Amazon Prime:

Total Time

• 5 minutes, email address or phone number

What You Need

• Internet access

Step 1: Go to the Amazon Prime sign-up page and click on Start your free 30-day trial.

Head to Amazon Prime's sign-up page.

Step 2: Input your email if you have an existing Amazon account or click on Create Your Amazon account.

A new sign-in page will open up on the website. Input your email or mobile number and password if you have an existing Amazon account or click on Create Your Amazon account. If you make a new account, you'll need to provide some basic information such as name, email, and password.

Step 3: If you're creating a new account, follow the steps to verify your email with a One-Time Password.

If you choose to create a new account, Amazon will send an OTP to your respective email address or mobile number for account verification. If you are using an existing account, skip to Step 5.

Step 4: Input the OTP and click on Verify.

Once the OTP verification page appears on the screen, input the code and click on Verify.

Step 5: Sign up for your free one-month trial or purchase a full subscription.

Now users have two options: sign up for a free one-month trial or purchase a full subscription, though many users might not qualify for a free trial if they have already availed it in the past with the same email or phone number. If you are purchasing a subscription, click on one of these four plans to become a prime member: Monthly Prime Membership — costs $14.99 per month Annual Membership — costs $139 per year or under $12 monthly Student Monthly Membership — costs $7.49 per month; students are eligible for exclusive offers including a 6-month free Prime trial. Prime for government assistance recipients — costs $6.99 per month (must verify eligibility)

For a long time, the tracker fight has been very one-sided, with Apple's Find My network reliably using other Apple devices as a mesh network. That only really caught on with Android recently, and now, the Moto Tag has just become probably the most accurate Android tracker out there.

Meta has struck out against a popular app used to produce AI-generated nonconsensual intimate images — commonly referred to as "nudify" or "undress" apps — as the company selectively cracks down on advertisers.

In a new lawsuit filed in Hong Kong against the makers behind a commonly-used app known as Crush AI, the tech giant claims parent company Joy Timeline HK intentionally bypassed Meta's ad review process using new domain names and networks of advertiser accounts in order to promote the app's AI-powered deepfake services.

"This legal action underscores both the seriousness with which we take this abuse and our commitment to doing all we can to protect our community from it. We’ll continue to take the necessary steps — which could include legal action — against those who abuse our platforms like this," Meta wrote in a press release.

SEE ALSO: FDA wants to use AI to speed up drug approval process

Meta has previously been under fire for failing to curb nudify apps from advertising on its platform, including allowing ads featuring explicit deepfake images of celebrities to appear repeatedly on the platform — in addition to its advertising policies, Meta prohibits the spread of non-consensual intimate imagery and blocks the search terms "nudify," "undress" and "delete clothing." According to an analysis by Cornell researcher Alexios Mantzarlis, Crush AI allegedly ran more than 8,000 ads across Meta platforms between the fall of 2024 and January 2025, with 90 percent of its traffic coming from Meta platforms. Broadly, AI-generated ad content has plagued users, as the company has relaxed its content moderation policies in favor of automated review processes and community-generated fact-checking.

Victims of AI-generated nonconsensual intimate imagery have spent years fighting for greater industry regulation and legal pathways for recourse. In May, the Trump Administration signed the Take It Down Act, a law that criminalizes nonconsensual intimate imagery and sets mandatory takedown policies for online platforms. AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has also proliferated across the internet in recent years, prompting widespread concern about the safety and regulation of generative AI tools.

In addition to taking legal action against Crush AI, Meta announced it was developing a new detection technology to more accurately flag and remove ads for nudify apps. The company is also stepping up its work with the Tech Coalition’s Lantern program, an industry initiative to coalesce information on child online safety, and will continue sharing information on violating companies and products. Since March, Meta has reported more than 3,800 unique URLs related to nudify apps and websites and discovered four separate networks trying to promote their services, according to the company.

Despite being one of gaming's most accessible genres, visual novels are still fairly niche. Some people don't have the time to sit through 50 hours of reading, or have been turned off by the countless dating sims that make up much of the genre. However, there's a lot more to visual novels than you may realize.

UPDATE: Jun. 12, 2025, 5:33 p.m. EDT The Google Cloud service page has posted another update saying, "most of the Google Cloud products have confirmed full service recovery."

UPDATE: Jun. 12, 2025, 5:12 p.m. EDT The Google Cloud service page says engineers "have implemented mitigation for the issue" and are "seeing signs of recovery" in multiple regions. The status update says Google Cloud expects the recovery to complete in "less than an hour."

If you noticed some of your favorite sites aren't working this afternoon, you're not alone. It seems like practically the entire internet is down, including Google Cloud, OpenAI, Twitch, Discord, Nintendo, and Spotify.

Down Detector, a platform where users can report errors and other problems, showed a widespread spike in problems. (Disclosure: Down Detector is owned by Mashable's parent company Ziff Davis.) And on social media platforms like X, users also shared their frustration.

On the Google Cloud status page, the service admitted to "service issues" at 2:46 p.m. ET. According to the most recent updates at 3:41 p.m. ET and 4:16 p.m. ET, engineers “have identified the root cause and have applied appropriate mitigations.” However, the company also noted that they don’t have an ETA for full recovery.

Meanwhile, a Google Cloud representative provided this statement to Mashable: "We are currently investigating a service disruption to some Google Cloud services."

The Google Cloud status page states that affected areas include regions all across Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America.

What is Google Cloud?

Google Cloud is a popular cloud hosting service. Because it provides hosting for a variety of other services, websites, and apps, an outage with Google Cloud Products (GCP) could cause major ripple effects across the digital ecosystem.

This story is developing and we'll update it with more information...

Is the entire internet down?

Around 2:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, June 12, users started reporting widespread service disruptions at popular websites and apps, including Twitch, Gmail, Discord, Nintendo Switch Online, Spotify, and dozens of other platforms. By 3:30 p.m., some services appeared to be restored, although ongoing outages continue.

The service Down Detector showed a spike in error messages across the internet, and users are taking to social media to complain of problems at their favorite websites. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis owns both Mashable and Down Detector.) Mashable reporters experienced problems accessing some Google services, such as Google Meet, when the outage first occurred.

Credit: Down Detector

Cloudflare, a popular IT management company that provides hosting services, is among the services disrupted by the massive internet outage. Cloudflare reported "Broad Cloudflare service outages" on its website on Thursday afternoon. The company initially reported that they are "continuing to investigate this issue." However, a more recent message states, "We are starting to see services recover. We still expect to see intermittent errors across the impacted services as systems handle retried and caches are filled."

At the same time, a Google Cloud status page states, "Multiple GCP products are experiencing Service issues."

According to Down Detector, the following sites are experiencing a spike in user error reports:

• Discord

• Google (Google Cloud, Gmail, Google Meet, and others)

• Spotify

• Twitch

• character.ai

• Rocket league

• Cloudflare

• Etsy

• Pokémon Trading card game

• Snapchat

• fuboTV

• Anthropic (maker of Claude)

• Shopify

• Gemini

• MLB.tv

• Doordash

• Ikea

• Equifax

• Marvel

• Vimeo

• Nintendo Switch Online

• Gitlan

• Calendly

Disruptions to platforms like Cloudflare, Google Cloud, Shopify, and AWS could cause ripple effects across the internet. And because the disruption occurred during work hours, frustrated workers are complaining of problems accessing tools like Google Meet. As of 3:35 p.m., many of the impacted websites appeared to be recovering, according to user reports on Down Detector.

On social media sites like X, confused users are reacting in real-time to the widespread service disruptions across the internet.

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This is a developing story and will be updated as new details emerge.

UPDATE: Jun. 12, 2025, 4:40 p.m. EDT This story has been updated with additional details about the widespread internet service disruption. An earlier version of this story stated that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was impacted by the outages; however, an Amazon representative told Mashable this is not the case. An AWS spokesperson said, "Currently there are no board service issues with AWS."

UPDATE: Jun. 12, 2025, 5:06 p.m. EDT According to the Cloudflare status page, the service issues have been fully resolved. "All Cloudflare services have been restored and are now fully operational," the company wrote. "We are moving the incident to Monitoring while we watch platform metrics to confirm sustained stability."

Large swaths of the internet went down on Thursday afternoon, affecting a wide variety of services, including Cloudflare.

Down Detector showed a spike of user-reported issues for the popular IT tool, but it was far from alone. User-reported issues for major sites and services flooded in. Sites like Spotify, Google, Snapchat, Discord, Nintendo, Character.ai, and more all saw spikes on Down Detector. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis owns both Mashable and Down Detector.)

Cloudflare has provided regular updates on the issues on its status page. Most recently, it wrote: "Cloudflare’s critical Workers KV service went offline due to an outage of a 3rd party service that is a key dependency." That update was posted online at about 4 p.m. ET, indicating the problems persisted, to some degree, hours after it was first identified.

"Cloudflare engineers are working to restore services immediately," the company added. "We are aware of the deep impact this outage has caused and are working with all hands on deck to restore all services as quickly as possible."

The large spike on Down Detector has begun to trend downward and, in an earlier update at about 3:15 p.m. ET, the company noted it was "starting to see services recover" but still expected "intermittent errors." According to the most recent updates, the service issues have been resolved.

What is Cloudflare?

Cloudflare, in short, supplies IT management for lots of businesses. The idea is it improves website security, hosting, and functionality and, apparently, works with many of the sites you might come across daily.

"Cloudflare powers Internet requests for millions of websites and serves 78 million HTTP requests per second on average," its site reads.

So, a disruption to Cloudflare could cause ripple effects across the digital world.

This is a developing story and will be updated as new details emerge.

The Schwartz has been awakened! That's right: Writer-director Mel Brooks' cult classic Spaceballs is getting a sequel, 40 years after the sci-fi parody's original release. Jury's still out on whether it will be called Spaceballs 2: The The Search for More Money, as the original film joked.

SEE ALSO: The 10 best movies of 2025 (so far), and where to watch them

Amazon MGM Studios announced the sequel will be arriving in theaters in 2027, with a video of Brooks himself discussing making more Spaceballs.

"After 40 years, we asked, 'What do the fans want?'" Brooks says. "But instead, we're making this movie."

The video also sends up just how drastically the franchise landscape has changed since Spaceballs' 1987 release. In an opening title crawl, the video reminds us that there are now three Star Wars trilogies, several spin-off TV shows, and a whole host of other massive franchises, like "36 MCU movies with two different Robert Downey Jr.'s."

So where will Spaceballs 2 fit into the world of franchises? Is it a sequel? A prequel? A reboot? According to its log line, it's actually "A Non-Prequel Non-Reboot Sequel Part Two but with Reboot Elements Franchise Expansion Film."

While Spaceballs 2's plot details are currently under wraps, there's still lots to get excited about. Brooks will be reprising the role of Yogurt, Spaceballs' Yoda stand-in who encourages hero Lone Starr (Bill Pullman) to use the Schwartz.

According to Deadline, Pullman is also set to return in Spaceballs 2, along with Rick Moranis, who played Spaceballs' villainous Dark Helmet. The role would mark Moranis' return to live-action films after a hiatus of 28 years. (Moranis did do voice work, like Brother Bear, as well as TV work during this time.)

On top of the returning Spaceballs cast members, Spaceballs 2 will star Keke Palmer. Josh Gad is also expected to star. Gad wrote the script alongside Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez. Josh Greenbaum (Will & Harper, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar) will direct.

Spaceballs 2 hits theaters in 2027.

Amazon and other major online retailers' websites are still working amid this afternoon's massive internet outage, but they're taking their time to load.

The outage appears to be affecting dozens of online services, including the ecommerce platform Shopify. Walmart and Target rely on Shopify to support their third-party marketplace sellers.

SEE ALSO: Massive internet outage: Google services, Cloudflare, Spotify all down, users report

Mashable reporters were able to add products to their cart and get through the checkout process on Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and eBay as well as several online stores that use Shopify (Sennheiser, Good American, Allbirds, Brooklinen, and Netflix). However, all sites we tried were very slow to load.

It's still unclear what exactly caused today's outage.

This story is developing.

Apple will release macOS 26 Tahoe later in 2025, bringing with it a fresh new “Liquid Glass” aesthetic, improved Spotlight search, a more capable Apple Intelligence, and some brand new apps.

On Thursday afternoon, a massive list of popular internet services all started experiencing outages at the same time.

Thousands of confused internet users took to Google and social media to ask why they couldn't log into their favorite websites and apps. The front page of Down Detector was a menagerie of spiking orange line graphs, starting around 2 p.m. ET on Thursday, June 12. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis owns both Mashable and Down Detector.)

Here's what we know so far.

What's causing the service outage?

At the time of writing, it's unclear what the cause of this outage is, though both CloudFlare and Google Cloud have reported problems. Cloudflare's status page is reporting broad service interruptions.

According to the most recent updates from the company:

• "We are starting to see services recover. We still expect to see intermittent errors across the impacted services as systems handle retried and caches are filled."

• "We are seeing a number of services suffer intermittent failures. We are continuing to investigate this and we will update this list as we assess the impact on a per-service level."

• Cloudflare engineering is investigating an issue causing Access authentication to fail. Cloudflare Zero Trust WARP connectivity is also impacted.

And at the Google Cloud status page, the company reported earlier today that "Multiple GCP products are experiencing Service issues." The most recent update states: "We have identified the root cause and applied appropriate mitigations. Our infrastructure has recovered in all regions except us-central1. Google Cloud products that rely on the affected infrastructure are seeing recovery in multiple locations. Our engineers are aware of the customers still experiencing issues on us-central1 and multi-region/us and are actively working on full recovery. We do not have an ETA for full recovery."

A representative for Google Cloud told Mashable via email, "We are currently investigating a service disruption to some Google Cloud services. Please view our public status dashboard for the latest updates.”

What does Down Detector say?

Down Detector, a platform where users can report errors, has received an avalanche of user reports, with Google Services, popular AI platforms, and e-commerce websites all affected. Social apps like Twitch, Nintendo Switch Online, and Discord all received a spike in error reports as well.

Even more services. Credit: Screenshot: Downdetector Some impacted services. Credit: Screenshot: Downdetector More services. Credit: Screenshot: Downdetector Is Google down?

Down Detector users have reported problems to a variety of Google services, although Google Search and Gmail appear to be working for most users. Multiple Mashable reporters have also experienced problems accessing services such as Google Meet. Google Cloud is reporting issues, which would help explain why so many Google services are struggling.

As of 3:30 p.m. ET, Google Cloud said it doesn't have an ETA for "full recovery" yet.

What websites, apps, and platforms are affected?

As of 3:20 p.m. ET, dozens of popular platforms are down or experiencing issues. According to Down Detector, the following sites reported a surge in error messages.

• Discord

• Google and all related services (e.g. YouTube, Google Meet)

• Spotify

• Twitch

• Character.ai

• Rocket League

• Cloudflare

• Etsy

• Pokemon Trading Card Game

• Snapchat

• fuboTV

• Anthropic

• Shopify

• Gemini

• MLB.tv

• Doordash

• Ikea

• Equifax

• Marvel

• Vimeo

• Nintendo Switch Online

• Gitlab

• Calendly

• Bluesky

• Grok

• Fortnite

• Apple Music

• Netflix

• Disney Plus

• Prime Video

This story is developing...

UPDATE: Jun. 12, 2025, 4:30 p.m. EDT This story has been updated with additional details about the widespread internet service disruption. An earlier version of this story stated that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was impacted by the outages; however, an Amazon representative told Mashable this is not the case. An AWS spokesperson said, "Currently there are no board service issues with AWS."

Countless sites and services — stalwarts like Twitch, Gmail, Discord, Nintendo, and more — went down on Thursday afternoon, eastern time. The internet, even as large swaths of it went down, was quick to react on social media. And, in short, people were freaking out.

People posted screenshots of Down Detector, which showed, well, just about everything was out. It's worth noting that Down Detector registers user-reported issues, so you still may have access to sites experiencing spikes. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis owns both Mashable and Down Detector.)

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The memes and jokes flowed in, too, of course.

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Almost all of the internet may be down, but the internet still has jokes about it.

This story is developing and will be updated as needed...

If you're having trouble with Google right now, you're not alone.

On Downdetector, users started reporting outages with Google around 1:30 p.m. EST — so you're not the only person experiencing tech issues today. (Disclosure: Ziff Davis owns both Mashable and Downdetector.)

SEE ALSO: Massive internet outage reported: Google services, Cloudflare, Character.AI are all down

And Google Search isn't the only thing on the internet struggling right now. Mashable editors are experiencing service disruptions to Google Meet in particular.

"We are currently investigating a service disruption to some Google Cloud services. Please view our public status dashboard for the latest updates," a Google Cloud spokesperson told Mashable over email. As of this writing, Google's status dashboard reports that "multiple [Google Cloud Platform] products are experiencing Service issues."

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And, on Downdetector, users are also reporting outages with Google Cloud, Discord, Spotify, Amazon Web Services, CharacterAI, Snapchat, Cloudfare, Rocket League, Pokemon TCG, Google Nest, FuboTV, Box, HighLevel, Etsy, Vimeo, OpenAI, Google Drive, Mailchimp, Shopify, UPS, Microsoft Azure, Google Maps, Anthropic, cursor, reCAPtcha, Dialpad, Verizon, YouTube, Gmail, NPM, AT&T, T-Mobile, Gemini, Twitch, Pokemon GO, Dragon Ball, Phasmophobia, DoorDash, and more.

So, basically, the entire internet is having issues.

SEE ALSO: Much of the internet is down and social media is not taking it well

This is a developing story.

USB-C is one of the greatest additions to modern computers. We’ve gone for 10 cables that might do 5 jobs to 1 that can do at least 10. However, not every PC comes with a USB-C port, or if it does, it may be a little older. Here’s how I added an extra USB-C port to my PC.

SAVE 20%: Through Aug. 10, you can slash 20% off a Ninja Thirsti Max bundle and Dirty Soda pack when you use the code JEN20, DEMI20, TAYLOR20, or MAYCI20 at Ninja Kitchen's website. Add the Ninja Thirsti Max bundle and your choice of Dirty Soda pack to your cart to redeem the codes.

Opens in a new window Credit: Ninja Ninja Thirsti Max bundle + Dirty Soda flavor pack Get 20% off with codes JEN20, DEMI20, TAYLOR20, or MAYCI20 Get Deal

Dirty soda — aka soda spiked with cream and flavored syrup — is a TikTok favorite, thanks greatly in part to MomTok creators Taylor Frankie Paul, Jen Affleck, Demi Engemann, and Mayci Neeley. So, Ninja decided to tap into the viral drink trend by joining forces with the beloved Utah-based influencers to create four hand-crafted Dirty Soda bundles for fans.

No need to head to a drive-thru. Ninja's collab with the MomTok ladies makes it easy for fans to craft the unique drinks at home at the touch of a button using the Ninja Thirsti. And for a limited time, you can get the drink maker and exclusive Dirty Soda packs for 20% off.

Through Aug. 10, shoppers and MomTok fans can save 20% when purchasing the Ninja Thirsti Max bundle and a Dirty Soda pack at the Ninja Kitchen website with the code JEN20, DEMI20, TAYLOR20, or MAYCI20. That knocks the cost of the Ninja Thirsti Max drink system bundle down to $143.99 from $179.99 and the Dirty Soda pack of your choice down to $16.78 from $20.97 — a grand total of $160.77.

In order to redeem the discount, you'll first need to add the Build Your Own Ninja Thirsti Max bundle to your cart. Then choose one of the Dirty Soda packs and add it to your cart. When you're ready to check out, enter the code of the MomTok creator that matches your Dirty Soda pack — JEN20, DEMI20, TAYLOR20, or MAYCI20 — and hit "apply." The price should go from $200.96 to just $160.77.

One of our favorite Ninja appliances, we're big fans of the Ninja Thirsti. Mashable Sam Mangino calls it "a fantastic carbonated drink maker, best for the flavored water devotee."

I think we all have days when we have little to no free time, but still want to game. I know I often find myself in the unfortunate situation of wanting to play, but not having the time to commit to some of my favorites.

If you have an older car or stereo head unit and wish you had wireless Android Auto, we have a deal for you. While many newer cars support wired Android Auto, or you upgraded your stereo and have it, only newer options have wireless Android Auto. The easiest way to solve that problem is with a wireless adapter, and right now the Motorola MA1 is over 50% off at Best Buy.

More and more people are activating dark mode on their devices, especially on apps like Excel that display a lot of white elements. If your eyes are sensitive to light, you spend a lot of time in Excel, or you're working at night, switching to dark mode can help reduce your visual discomfort.