hosting
Latest
Spotify's podcast hosting service went down because of a lapsed security certificate
All shows hosted on Megaphone were unavailable for several hours due to the slip up.
GoDaddy discloses recent security breach that exposed 1.2 million accounts
The hack relates to GoDaddy's WordPress hosting service.
TikTok and WeChat will be banned from US app stores on Sunday
TikTok and WeChat will be banned from US app stores starting on Sunday, September 20th, the US Department of Commerce has announced.
New music platform Audius plans to capitalize on SoundCloud's faults
A new streaming service, Audius, wants to make up for SoundCloud's shortcomings. The free hosting service and music streaming platform launched today, and it's positioning itself as a blockchain-based SoundCloud alternative that lets artists upload songs at no cost. The founders claim it's built with artists in mind and will be free from things like takedowns, which plagued SoundCloud.
Gab loses hosting provider following Pittsburgh mass shooting
Gab continues to lose support from internet services following the anti-Semitic mass shooting in Pittsburgh. Hosting provider Joyent is suspending service for Gab as of the morning of October 29th, likely leaving the social network "down for weeks," according to a tweet. Joyent only said there had been a "notice of a breach of our Terms of Service," but it was likely a response to Gab's inaction against the shooter's numerous racist conspiracy posts ahead of the attack, including one that same morning.
Man erases thousands of websites with a bad command (update: it's a joke)
As one business owner showed, things can go spectacularly wrong when you don't backup properly. User "bleemboy," who runs a site-hosting business with 1,535 customers (!), wrote to a server forum saying he was using a bash script command to erase some specific files. The command he used, "rm -rf" is infamous in Linux circles for causing disasters, thanks to the "f" part that forces it to proceed without warnings. Normally, his script only deletes specific files, but something went wrong and "all servers got deleted and the offsite backups too," since they were mounted to the same machine.
Guild Launch rebrands as Gamer Launch, targets MOBA players
Remember Guild Launch? Sure, you do. Hasn't everyone signed up for the firm's instant-MMO-website services at one time or another? Anyway, Guild Launch is now Gamer Launch thanks to a scope expansion designed to "support additional game genres" and broaden the company's "appeal within the larger gaming community," according to a new press release. "In recent years we've seen a significant influx of players from a variety of other gaming communities including MOBAs and Minecraft," president Stephen Johnston says. The firm currently services over four million gamers and now offers new features designed for League of Legends, Dota 2, SMITE, and Minecraft players. [Source: Gamer Launch press release]
Minecraft Realms subscription service now available
Mojang has launched its Minecraft Realms subscription service in North America, offering hosting and setup for multiplayer Minecraft worlds starting at $13 per month. Mojang notes that the service holds particular value for parents, as Minecraft Realms makes it easy to set up a child's individual sandbox world and restrict it to invited players. The subscription fee also covers an automatic backup feature, allowing players to undo unwanted alterations and roll back worlds to a previous saved state. Up to 10 players can join a Minecraft Realms-hosted world at once, and the service will host minigames and other exclusive in-game events on a regular basis. Discounts are available for users who sign up for a three- or six-month subscription package. The service is currently exclusive to the PC version of Minecraft, though support for Minecraft: Pocket Edition is planned in a forthcoming update. [Image: Mojang]
MacStadium to provide new Mac Pro hosting and colocation
For the Mac faithful, it won't do to share space on just any server -- you want to use a Mac server. Likewise, we like to have our own Mac servers colocated at a place that specializes in Macs. That's why hosting providers like MacStadium are so popular. Now MacStadium has announced that as soon as the new Mac Pros arrive, they'll be ready to rack 'em and stack 'em in their hosting and colocation center. The company expects to be able to fit 270 Mac Pro servers per POD on only 12 square feet of floor space in their datacenter. That's what that Lego-like image above represents, with Mac Pros sitting on their sides stacked 15 tall, nine wide and two deep. That MacStadium facility provides redundant cooling, power and security systems, and each of those Mac Pros will be connected to the world with Gigabit Ethernet through a 50 GB/s network backbone. The existing Mac Pro, according to MacStadium, has never been popular in the hosting and colocation world because of their huge physical footprint and high power draw. MacStadium will be able to provide Mac Pros as a monthly rental or purchase, or you can send in your configured Mac Pro for collocation.
Some fun uses for a remote Mac Mini server
MacStadium does remote Mac mini hosting, offering customers a fully connected Mac mini in a secure, controlled datacenter (just like the folks at MacMiniColo, who we've visited and written about before). If you have a Mac mini already, you can even send it to them for hosting, or you can rent or buy one yourself right from the company. Having a remote server all for yourself can be very helpful, and using a Mac mini for the job can be one of the cheapest and easiest ways to do so. In fact, not only does MacStadium run hosting, but the company has also been putting up blog posts over the last month or so, going through a few different ways to make use of a connected mini for yourself. You could install a remote Minecraft server on it, for example, creating a world that you and your friends can log into anytime. Or you could set up something like Kerio Connect, which serves as a Microsoft Exchange-style way to share and send email, contacts and calendars across a number of different users. Obviously, these tutorials are for MacStadium's hosted minis, but they should work for any Mac mini you've set up to be accessed remotely. Apple's littlest Mac is relatively cheap but still very powerful and MacStadium's tutorials could be a start to help you get the most out of your remote mini.
GoDaddy acknowledges issues with sites, is 'working on it' (Update: DNS switched to VeriSign, 'most' customers back online)
GoDaddy looks to be having a rough one today. Users are complaining of issues with sites and email addresses tied to the popular and oft-controversial domain registrar. For the moment, GoDaddy's own site appears to be working just fine, though the company has acknowledge its woes via Twitter, noting, "we're aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We're working on it." According to TechCrunch, the outage has affected "millions of sites." Update: The company still hasn't commented on the source of the outage, but a tweet indicates "most customer hosted sites back online...no customer data compromised" Meanwhile, Wired notes GoDaddy has switched from self hosting DNS servers to those of its competitor, VeriSign. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
OTA Update Center encourages PC-free upgrades for custom Android ROMs
Over-the-air firmware updates are mainstays for most smartphone platforms, but custom ROM builders have rarely had such a luxury, even with Android. The OTA Update Center wants to shoulder that noble burden. Along with simply hosting the updates to prevent outrageous bandwidth bills, the Center enables everything an Android ROM creator might need, such as update checks, on-device firmware flashing and wiping either a cache or all user data for the more dramatic upgrades. In practice, the real perk is the cost: it's free to use, so everyone from hobbyists to seasoned teams can take advantage. While the list of those either using or planning to use the OTAUC isn't public, we're hoping it leads to a few more experimental builds of CyanogenMod and other ROMs that can now get the same tender loving care as the official code.
Squarespace iOS app updated for v6 of web hosting tool
Squarespace recently updated its website hosting platform to version 6; the update includes new templates, an improved layout engine and better social integration. The company added a total of 50 new features to the platform. To accompany this change, Squarespace also updated its iPhone and iPad app to support version 6. The Squarespace app lets you manage most aspects of your website from your mobile device. You can create and edit posts, add photos and even manage comments. The app also lets you preview your site on your phone and check your traffic stats on the go. Besides support for Squarespace 6, the latest version of the iOS app has a handful of undisclosed bug fixes. You can download the Squarespace iPhone app and the iPad app from the iOS App Store for free. Though the app is free, Squarespace is a monthly paid service. You can read more about Squarespace 6 on Squarespace's blog. #next_pages_container { width: 5px; hight: 5px; position: absolute; top: -100px; left: -100px; z-index: 2147483647 !important; }
Cisco phasing out FlipShare: 30 days to save your videos
Many Flip fans are already sporting black arm bands with little red spots in honor of the dying brand, and the New York Times reports there's more bad news coming. Starting May 12th, all videos uploaded to FlipShare will expire 30 days after they've been posted. This applies to videos you've already uploaded as well --- so you've got till June 11th to follow the lead of Google Video users and back up your collection of clips before they disappear into the digital ether. The FlipShare service will continue to live on for another two and a half years, if you don't mind the one month limit, but clearly Cisco wants users to move on with their video-sharing lives. Check out the more coverage link for instructions on how to export your videos, and let's have one more moment of silence for the tiny camcorder that could... at least until it couldn't.
Google Video shutdown halted for now, Google slinging content over to YouTube itself
Seems Google sparked a bit of spirited debate when it decided to pull the plug on Google Video, because the company's put that plan on indefinite hold, telling users that it's looking for "an easier way" to migrate its massive archives of video to YouTube. Originally, Google gave users an ultimatum to download videos (or just tap a simple "Upload Videos to YouTube" button) before it erased them for good, but now Mountain View plans to automatically transfer content to YouTube itself. Why wasn't that the plan from day one? We'd guess that hosting terabytes of streaming video isn't cheap, folks.
AT&T will continue Blizzard hosting
We haven't gotten much of a look at Blizzard's server architecture, but here's a tiny one: AT&T has announced in a press release that they're re-signing to a two year agreement to provide Blizzard with hosting for World of Warcraft and Battle.net. We'll get the joke out of the way first: that explains why Blizzard's sites go down so often! Ba-dump ching!But seriously, the press release says AT&T has been working with Blizzard on providing bandwidth and network monitoring for nine years already, and that they have multiple "Internet Data Centers" that provide global support of the network infrastructure that lets your character wander around Azeroth. AT&T isn't the only company Blizzard works with -- while their network provides the connections and bandwidth, the actual coding and the databases behind all of the action in WoW are another story, and Blizzard likely works with multiple big companies to make sure that all runs smoothly. AT&T provides the cables, but someone's got to help provide the servers and the code they're hooked up to.Still, despite the jokes about the downtime, it's quite a feat. We're still interested in hearing more about the mechanics behind the World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, lots of this information is probably a trade secret at this point -- even if no other MMOs are coming close to WoW's numbers, Blizzard has probably come up with a lot of techniques they don't exactly want known to the public. But a look inside one of these "IDCs" or an idea of just what machines they're using to run a realm of WoW would be intriguing.
Petopia down, working on getting back up
You may have noticed in the past day or so, as a few of our tipsters did, that Mania's great Hunter pet site, Petopia, has been down for the count lately. Loading up the main page gives the message above, and going straight to the redirect gives a "this site has been suspended" notice.But don't worry -- Mania says over on her forums that she's aware of the issue and working on it. It's an issue with the site host, and not any sudden plan on her part to dismantle the site (good thing, too, because losing two great WoW community sites this week would be too much for us).So hopefully, the problem will be solved soon and the database will be back up and running. We'll keep you posted if there are any more problems, but don't panic, Petopia is not gone forever.
WoW Model Viewer updated for Wrath, but still needs work
WoW Model Viewer is a crazy useful tool for machinimists or just anyone out there (like Zach) looking to enjoy the art of Warcraft outside of the game itself. The only problem with the app is that it hasn't updated since way before Wrath's release, but the code monkeys over there have finally rectified that: they've dropped release version 0.6.0.2, which we're told is compatible with the models in Wrath of the Lich King.Mostly compatible, anyway -- we're told that lots of the new animations aren't working yet, and there are quite a few bugs still poking around. And there's more trouble -- the program's admin has reported that the site could use a new host, since the last admin had some troubles with the hosting provider. Surely there's someone out there who can help -- lots of people use the program (and of course it's spawned countless terrific machinima movies that we've all enjoyed).Hopefully Model Viewer will find its way back on track -- the program has really jump started the world of machinima, and it would be a shame to see it fall into disrepair due to lack of support.
WotLK Wiki is back in action
Don't count the WotLK Wiki out yet -- after going down late last week due to a suspected cease-and-desist order from Blizzard's lawyers (now confirmed), they have returned with a completely different host and all the information from the leaked Alpha they were originally hosting. They say that their original wiki hosts, Wikidot, were extremely supportive on both the traffic and legal fronts, as they upgraded their servers just to keep the site up, and originally did help with legal troubles. When Vivendi Universal took legal action against their ISP, however, Wikidot had to fold, and the wiki has now moved hosts to wotlkwiki.info.Last week, there was also mention that the C&D didn't ask them to remove all information, only "over-the-line" info, such as screenshots or video. But apparently that clause doesn't apply to the new host -- there are still screenshots all over the site, and though Vivendi has pulled video from YouTube before, it's still there as well.Of course, any C&D sent to the old site would still apply to the new one -- it's just a question now of whether the wiki's new host will comply with Vivendi's demands (the wiki's creators sound very sure that they won't). And after that, it'll be up to Vivendi to determine how far they want to take this -- if they really feel that having this leaked information on that site has hurt them in a justifable way, there is a possibility that an actual lawsuit could be issued, and if this escalates even further, the two parties could eventually end up in court. As always, we'll be watching to see what happenes.
iPhone 101: Uploading your Pictures to Flickr and printing sites
Uploading pictures from your iPhone to Flickr couldn't be easier. Many photo hosting and printing sites now allow you to upload pictures by email. (Of coure check with your host or printing service to see if they offer this option.) For Flickr, visit flickr.com/account/uploadbyemail. They'll assign you a "secret" email address. Just mail photos from your iPhone to that address and it loads right into your Flickr account. For Costco, mail your images to save@mycostcophotos.com. You'll receive a confirmation letter at the address you used to send the message. The letter includes a link to the Costco Photo Center website where you can print your photo.Unfortunately, the iPhone automatically scales your images when you choose the Email Photo option. It does this to save the mailbox of the person you're sending your images to. That's great when you're sharing cute pictures of the family or dog. It's not so great when you want to print out your emailed photos. To address this problem, I've written SendPics, a utility that allows you to select a photo from your iPhone and email it at full resolution. You'll find a copy of this utility at iphone.natetrue.com and via Installer.app. Your iPhone must be modded to allow third-party applications in order to take advantage of this utility
