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(Reuters) -Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said his office is issuing criminal subpoenas to Roblox Corp, calling the video gaming platform a "breeding ground for predators" that puts children at risk. In a video posted on X, Uthmeier accused Roblox of profiting from children while failing to protect them. "They enabled our kids to be abused," he said. The subpoenas will allow prosecutors to gather more information about the alleged criminal activity on the platform, including evidence related to suspected predators and victims, according to Uthmeier. Roblox has long faced questions over children's safety, a concern highlighted by a short seller report from Hindenburg Research in October last year. The concerns prompted Roblox to invest heavily in protecting younger users on its platform by tightening messaging rules for children under 13, intensive content moderation and AI-powered monitoring. In an emailed statement to Reuters, Roblox said it prohibits sharing images and videos in chat, uses filters designed to block the exchange of personal information, and is working to implement age estimation for all users accessing chat features. "While no system is perfect, our trained teams and automated tools continuously monitor communications to detect and remove harmful content," a Roblox spokesperson said. Iraq banned Roblox late on Sunday, citing concerns that the platform enables direct user communication exposing children and adolescents to potential exploitation or cyber-extortion, and saying its content was "incompatible with social values and traditions." Roblox faces mounting scrutiny in the U.S., with multiple lawsuits, including by the Louisiana attorney general and an earlier case in San Francisco, alleging it fails to implement adequate safety measures and enables sexual predators to exploit children. (Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Tasim Zahid)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

(Reuters) -Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said his office is issuing criminal subpoenas to Roblox Corp, calling the video gaming platform a "breeding ground for predators" that puts children at risk. In a video posted on X, Uthmeier accused Roblox of profiting from children while failing to protect them. "They enabled our kids to be abused," he said. The subpoenas will allow prosecutors to gather more information about the alleged criminal activity on the platform, including evidence related to suspected predators and victims, according to Uthmeier. Roblox has long faced questions over children's safety, a concern highlighted by a short seller report from Hindenburg Research in October last year. The concerns prompted Roblox to invest heavily in protecting younger users on its platform by tightening messaging rules for children under 13, intensive content moderation and AI-powered monitoring. In an emailed statement to Reuters, Roblox said it prohibits sharing images and videos in chat, uses filters designed to block the exchange of personal information, and is working to implement age estimation for all users accessing chat features. "While no system is perfect, our trained teams and automated tools continuously monitor communications to detect and remove harmful content," a Roblox spokesperson said. Iraq banned Roblox late on Sunday, citing concerns that the platform enables direct user communication exposing children and adolescents to potential exploitation or cyber-extortion, and saying its content was "incompatible with social values and traditions." Roblox faces mounting scrutiny in the U.S., with multiple lawsuits, including by the Louisiana attorney general and an earlier case in San Francisco, alleging it fails to implement adequate safety measures and enables sexual predators to exploit children. (Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Tasim Zahid)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Deborah Mary Sophia and Shubham Kalia (Reuters) -Amazon's cloud services unit AWS was struggling to recover on Monday from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world's most popular apps – Snapchat and Reddit – and disrupted businesses globally. The turmoil marked the largest internet disruption since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports, and highlights the vulnerability of the world's interconnected technologies. After more than nine hours of disruptions, some applications were gradually coming back online as of 1:00 p.m. ET (1700 GMT). But AWS acknowledged that elevated errors were still affecting several AWS services and that it was working on recovering connectivity. AWS was down for more than 9,300 users as of 1:00 p.m. ET, according to outage tracking website Downdetector. That figure is higher than the earlier peak of about 5,800 reports at 3:48 a.m. ET. Lambda, one of AWS's computing services, was experiencing errors due to issues with an internal subsystem, AWS said in an update on its status page. "We are taking steps to recover this internal Lambda system," it said. AWS said earlier the root cause of the outage is an underlying subsystem that monitors the health of its network load balancers used to distribute traffic across several servers to ensure improved performance and capacity. The issue, AWS said, originated from within the "EC2 internal network." EC2 refers to Amazon's "Elastic Compute Cloud" service, which provides on-demand cloud capacity within AWS. Businesses use EC2 to run virtual servers that they need to develop, launch and host applications, and can scale up or down on capacity as required. Steps to resolve EC2 system-related issues resulted in some early signs of recovery across a few data centers, AWS said in an update on its status page. It is taking similar measures at the remaining locations and expects the problems to subside, AWS added, without providing a specific timeline. While some apps like Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilized, according to outage tracking website Downdetector, others, including Snapchat, PayPal's Venmo and Duolingo, were showing a resurgence in issues seen earlier in the day. ISSUE ORIGINATED FROM AWS SITE KNOWN FOR PREVIOUS OUTAGES AWS provides computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals and is the world's largest cloud provider, followed by Microsoft's Azure and Alphabet's Google Cloud. Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms – ranging from food delivery apps to gaming platforms and airline systems – that rely on its cloud infrastructure. AWS said on its status page that Monday's outage originated at its US-EAST-1 location in northern Virginia, its oldest and largest for web services. The site suffered outages in 2021 and 2020. According to documentation on the AWS website, the US-EAST-1 site is often the default region for many AWS services.  Asked for comment, AWS directed Reuters to its status page. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. "FRAGILE INFRASTRUCTURES" The problem highlights how interconnected everyday digital services have become and their reliance on a small number of global cloud providers, with one glitch wreaking havoc on business and day-to-day life, experts and academics said. "This outage once again highlights the dependency we have on relatively fragile infrastructures," said Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor at European cybersecurity firm ESET. In Britain, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were all hit, according to Downdetector's UK website, as was UK tax, payments and customs authority HMRC's website. "The main reason for this issue is that all these big companies have relied on just one service," said Nishanth Sastry, director of research at the University of Surrey's Department of Computer Science. Ookla, which owns Downdetector, said over 4 million users reported issues due to the incident. "For major businesses, hours of cloud downtime translate to millions in lost productivity and revenue," said Ryan Griffin, U.S. cyber practice leader at insurance broker McGill and Partners.  FROM SNAPCHAT TO VENMO: OUTAGE TAKES DOWN APPS Ookla said at least a thousand companies were affected by the outage. Snapchat last had over 7,500 reports on Downdetector, lower than the peak of more than 22,000 but still higher than the 4,000 outage instances at around 7:00 a.m. ET. Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood all experienced platform disruptions and attributed them to AWS. Amazon's own services, including its shopping website, Prime Video and Alexa, were also hit, although Downdetector last showed a decrease in severity. Fortnite, owned by Epic Games; Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were among the gaming platforms affected. Uber rival Lyft was also knocked down in the United States. In a post on X, Signal President Meredith Whittaker confirmed the messaging app was hit by the outage as well, though billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, said his platform continued to work. While there has been no indication of a potential cyberattack behind Monday's outage, the scale of the disruption has fed speculation. "When anything like this happens, the concern that it's a cyber incident is understandable," said Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Sophos. "AWS has a far-reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset." (Reporting by Shubham Kalia, Devika Nair, Ananya Palyekar and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by James Pearson, Jaspreet Singh and Arsheeya Bajwa; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Joe Bavier and Richard Chang)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Deborah Mary Sophia and Shubham Kalia (Reuters) -Amazon's cloud services unit AWS was struggling to recover on Monday from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world's most popular apps – Snapchat and Reddit – and disrupted businesses globally. The turmoil marked the largest internet disruption since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports, and highlights the vulnerability of the world's interconnected technologies. After more than nine hours of disruptions, some applications were gradually coming back online as of 1:00 p.m. ET (1700 GMT). But AWS acknowledged that elevated errors were still affecting several AWS services and that it was working on recovering connectivity. AWS was down for more than 9,300 users as of 1:00 p.m. ET, according to outage tracking website Downdetector. That figure is higher than the earlier peak of about 5,800 reports at 3:48 a.m. ET. Lambda, one of AWS's computing services, was experiencing errors due to issues with an internal subsystem, AWS said in the latest update on its status page. "We are taking steps to recover this internal Lambda system," it said. AWS said earlier the root cause of the outage is an underlying subsystem that monitors the health of its network load balancers used to distribute traffic across several servers to ensure improved performance and capacity. The issue, AWS said, originated from within the "EC2 internal network." EC2 refers to Amazon's "Elastic Compute Cloud" service, which provides on-demand cloud capacity within AWS. Businesses use EC2 to run virtual servers that they need to develop, launch and host applications, and can scale up or down on capacity as required. While some apps like Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilised, according to outage tracking website Downdetector, others, including Snapchat, PayPal's Venmo and Duolingo, were showing a resurgence in issues seen earlier in the day. ISSUE ORIGINATED FROM AWS SITE KNOWN FOR PREVIOUS OUTAGES AWS provides computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals and is the world's largest cloud provider, followed by Microsoft's Azure and Alphabet's Google Cloud. Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms – ranging from food delivery apps to gaming platforms and airline systems – that rely on its cloud infrastructure. AWS said on its status page that Monday's outage originated at its US-EAST-1 location in northern Virginia, its oldest and largest for web services. The site suffered outages in 2021 and 2020. According to documentation on the AWS website, the US-EAST-1 site is often the default region for many AWS services.  Asked for comment, AWS directed Reuters to its status page. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. "FRAGILE INFRASTRUCTURES" The problem highlights how interconnected everyday digital services have become and their reliance on a small number of global cloud providers, with one glitch wreaking havoc on business and day-to-day life, experts and academics said. "This outage once again highlights the dependency we have on relatively fragile infrastructures," said Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Advisor at European cybersecurity firm ESET. In Britain, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were all hit, according to Downdetector's UK website, as was UK tax, payments and customs authority HMRC's website. "The main reason for this issue is that all these big companies have relied on just one service," said Nishanth Sastry, director of research at the University of Surrey's Department of Computer Science. Ookla, which owns Downdetector, said over 4 million users reported issues due to the incident. "For major businesses, hours of cloud downtime translate to millions in lost productivity and revenue," said Ryan Griffin, U.S. cyber practice leader at insurance broker McGill and Partners. FROM SNAPCHAT TO VENMO: OUTAGE TAKES DOWN APPS Ookla said at least a thousand companies were affected by the outage. Snapchat last had over 7,500 reports on Downdetector, lower than the peak of more than 22,000 but still higher than the 4,000 outage instances seen at around 7:00 a.m. ET. Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood all experienced platform disruptions and attributed them to AWS.  Amazon's own services, including its shopping website, Prime Video and Alexa, were also hit, although Downdetector last showed a decrease in severity. Fortnite, owned by Epic Games; Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were among the gaming platforms affected. Uber rival Lyft was also knocked down in the United States. In a post on X, Signal President Meredith Whittaker confirmed the messaging app was hit by the outage as well, though billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, said his platform continued to work.  While there has been no indication of a potential cyberattack behind Monday's outage, the scale of the disruption has fed speculation. "When anything like this happens, the concern that it's a cyber incident is understandable," said Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Sophos. "AWS has a far-reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset." (Reporting by Shubham Kalia, Devika Nair, Ananya Palyekar and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by James Pearson and Jaspreet Singh; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Joe Bavier and Richard Chang)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Harshita Mary Varghese and Kritika Lamba (Reuters) -Netflix's $120 billion stock market rally this year faces a crucial test on Tuesday: proving that its costly investments into advertising and video gaming can support the growth that made the streaming pioneer a Wall Street darling. A strong content slate including "KPop Demon Hunters", Netflix's most successful movie ever, and the second season of "Wednesday" are expected to power the company's fastest revenue increase in more than four years when it reports third-quarter results on Tuesday. The last three months of 2025 will also feature strong programming, including the last season of "Stranger Things."  But some investors and analysts fear that the streamer's years of runaway growth could fade. They noted that the company decided to stop sharing subscriber numbers earlier this year, urging Wall Street to focus more on financial metrics such as revenue and profit. That has pushed the company to focus on newer ventures such as video games, which, analysts said, have struggled amid shifts in leadership and strategy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Netflix is estimated to have invested around $1 billion buying gaming studios and building the business, which now offers more than 120 mobile games, including Rockstar Games' "GTA: San Andreas" alongside games based on its own hit shows such as "Squid Game: Unleashed." Netflix said this month it would offer family party games such as "Boogle Party" and "Pictionary: Game Night" on TV. A BET THAT HASN'T PAID OFF  Netflix's video games have boosted user time spent – a key engagement measure – by less than 0.5%, after more than four years in operation, an analysis from technology research firm Omdia showed in June showed. Co-CEO Greg Peters – seen as the architect of Netflix's gaming strategy – recently likened the expansion into video games to the streaming service's entry into Japan, when only 2% of consumers knew the brand. "We just did the 10th Anniversary in Japan … but it took us a long time. The gaming situation is not dissimilar to that," he said at the Bloomberg Screentime conference earlier this month. That problem is not unique to Netflix. Major media and entertainment companies other than Warner Bros Discovery have struggled to turn hit films into profitable game ventures.  Netflix's main challenge in gaming is its limited roster of iconic intellectual property unlike Warner Bros Discovery, which owns iconic intellectual property such as DC Comics, said Michael Pachter, managing director, strategic planning at Wedbush Securities. Sensor Tower data showed that "GTA: San Andreas" remains Netflix's most downloaded game, outperforming its originals – a sign that the company's own IP lacks the merchandising pull of established entertainment franchises. Omdia analyst Rob Gallagher said video games stand out awakardly within Netflix's lineup because most subscribers come for a passive, lean-back viewing experience – a habit that even light party games struggle to change. AD TIER  Focus will also on the ad-supported tier, widely expected to become a major driver of Netflix's growth from next year. The plan has been attracting more than half of the company's new subscribers and had around 94 million users as of May, but its contribution to Netflix's topline remains small.  The streamer does not break out the revenue figure for the tier but analysts expect it to bring in $662.3 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, according to data from three analysts polled by LSEG.  Overall, the company is expected to report a revenue jump of 17.2% to $11.51 billion, while net profit likely surged 27% to $3.01 billion.  "We understand why they're taking these measures to have diverse streams of revenue but in the short term, they are not profitable segments," said Brian Mulberry, senior portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management, which offers Netflix-linked ETFs. "But we will certainly want to see that develop over the next couple of quarters." (Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese and Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni and Anil D'Silva)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Harshita Mary Varghese and Kritika Lamba (Reuters) -Netflix's $120 billion stock market rally this year faces a crucial test on Tuesday: proving that its costly investments into advertising and video gaming can support the growth that made the streaming pioneer a Wall Street darling. A strong content slate including "KPop Demon Hunters", Netflix's most successful movie ever, and the second season of "Wednesday" are expected to power the company's fastest revenue increase in more than four years when it reports third-quarter results on Tuesday. The last three months of 2025 will also feature strong programming, including the last season of "Stranger Things."  But some investors and analysts fear that the streamer's years of runaway growth could fade. They noted that the company decided to stop sharing subscriber numbers earlier this year, urging Wall Street to focus more on financial metrics such as revenue and profit. That has pushed the company to focus on newer ventures such as video games, which, analysts said, have struggled amid shifts in leadership and strategy. According to the Wall Street Journal, Netflix is estimated to have invested around $1 billion buying gaming studios and building the business, which now offers more than 120 mobile games, including Rockstar Games' "GTA: San Andreas" alongside games based on its own hit shows such as "Squid Game: Unleashed." Netflix said this month it would offer family party games such as "Boogle Party" and "Pictionary: Game Night" on TV. A BET THAT HASN'T PAID OFF  Netflix's video games have boosted user time spent – a key engagement measure – by less than 0.5%, after more than four years in operation, an analysis from technology research firm Omdia showed in June showed. Co-CEO Greg Peters – seen as the architect of Netflix's gaming strategy – recently likened the expansion into video games to the streaming service's entry into Japan, when only 2% of consumers knew the brand. "We just did the 10th Anniversary in Japan … but it took us a long time. The gaming situation is not dissimilar to that," he said at the Bloomberg Screentime conference earlier this month. That problem is not unique to Netflix. Major media and entertainment companies other than Warner Bros Discovery have struggled to turn hit films into profitable game ventures.  Netflix's main challenge in gaming is its limited roster of iconic intellectual property unlike Warner Bros Discovery, which owns iconic intellectual property such as DC Comics, said Michael Pachter, managing director, strategic planning at Wedbush Securities. Sensor Tower data showed that "GTA: San Andreas" remains Netflix's most downloaded game, outperforming its originals – a sign that the company's own IP lacks the merchandising pull of established entertainment franchises. Omdia analyst Rob Gallagher said video games stand out awakardly within Netflix's lineup because most subscribers come for a passive, lean-back viewing experience – a habit that even light party games struggle to change. AD TIER  Focus will also on the ad-supported tier, widely expected to become a major driver of Netflix's growth from next year. The plan has been attracting more than half of the company's new subscribers and had around 94 million users as of May, but its contribution to Netflix's topline remains small.  The streamer does not break out the revenue figure for the tier but analysts expect it to bring in $662.3 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, according to data from three analysts polled by LSEG.  Overall, the company is expected to report a revenue jump of 17.2% to $11.51 billion, while net profit likely surged 27% to $3.01 billion.  "We understand why they're taking these measures to have diverse streams of revenue but in the short term, they are not profitable segments," said Brian Mulberry, senior portfolio manager at Zacks Investment Management, which offers Netflix-linked ETFs. "But we will certainly want to see that develop over the next couple of quarters." (Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese and Kritika Lamba in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni and Anil D'Silva)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

(Reuters) -An outage at Amazon's cloud computing unit was gradually easing on Monday, after disrupting many online services offered by banks, social media companies and businesses. The turmoil marked the largest internet disruption since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled tech systems in hospitals, banks and airports. It highlights the vulnerability of the world's interconnected technologies. The cloud unit, Amazon Web Services, or AWS, has more than one million active customers every month and it currently spans 120 availability zones across 38 geographic regions, according to the company website. Below are key details about the outage: CAUSE OF ISSUE The outage began when a problem with the Domain Name System prevented applications from finding the correct address for the DynamoDB API, which is a cloud database that many online services use to store user information and other critical data. The internet uses DNS like a phone book to turn names into numeric addresses as computers require an IP address to connect to the right server. Apps could not look up the IP address for DynamoDB's API due to the DNS problem. AWS said the issue originated from within the elastic compute cloud (EC2) internal network, the high-speed network that AWS uses to connect all its cloud services within the data centers of the US-EAST-1 region. PLACE OF ISSUE AWS said on its status page that Monday's outage originated at its US-EAST-1 location in northern Virginia. AWS hosts its cloud infrastructure at US-EAST-1, which is one of the most prominently used AWS locations. The US-EAST-1 site is often the default region for many AWS services, according to the AWS website. PREVIOUS OUTAGES June 2023 A capacity management issue in the US-EAST-1 region affected the AWS Lambda service that lets customers run computer programs without having to manage any underlying servers and other interdependent services. Many applications were impacted for hours. December 2021 An internal automated system in US-EAST-1 unexpectedly triggered a network congestion event, overwhelming network devices. It caused a widespread outage for several hours, hitting services, including Ring security cameras, mobile banking app Chime and robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot, which use AWS. BY THE NUMBERS AWS' revenue grew 18% from a year earlier to $30.9 billion for the second quarter ended June 30. SERVICES AFFECTED E-commerce and retail ** Amazon Streaming and media ** Prime Video ** Crunchyroll Gaming ** Roblox ** Epic Games' Fortnite Social media and communications ** Snapchat ** Reddit ** Signal Finance and payments ** PayPal's Venmo ** Robinhood ** Lloyd's Banking Group Transport ** Lyft Artificial intelligence ** Perplexity Education/Productivity ** Duolingo Source for services hit: Downdetector.com (Reporting by Jaspreet Singh, Anhata Rooprai and Arnav Mishra in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Deborah Mary Sophia and Shubham Kalia (Reuters) -Amazon's cloud services unit AWS was struggling to recover on Monday from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world's most popular apps – Snapchat and Reddit – and disrupted businesses globally. The turmoil marked the largest internet disruption since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction hobbled technology systems in hospitals, banks and airports, and highlights the vulnerability of the world's interconnected technologies. After more than nine hours of disruptions, some applications were gradually coming back online as of 1:00 p.m. ET (1700 GMT). But AWS acknowledged that elevated errors were still affecting several AWS services and that it was working on recovering connectivity. AWS was down for more than 9,300 users as of 1:00 p.m. ET, according to outage tracking website Downdetector. That figure is higher than the earlier peak of about 5,800 reports at 3:48 a.m. ET. Lambda, one of AWS's computing services, was experiencing errors due to issues with an internal subsystem, AWS said in the latest update on its status page. "We are taking steps to recover this internal Lambda system," it said. AWS said earlier the root cause of the outage is an underlying subsystem that monitors the health of its network load balancers used to distribute traffic across several servers to ensure improved performance and capacity. The issue, AWS said, originated from within the "EC2 internal network." EC2 refers to Amazon's "Elastic Compute Cloud" service, which provides on-demand cloud capacity within AWS. Businesses use EC2 to run virtual servers that they need to develop, launch and host applications, and can scale up or down on capacity as required. While some apps like Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilised, according to outage tracking website Downdetector, others, including Snapchat, PayPal's Venmo and Duolingo, were showing a resurgence in issues seen earlier in the day. ISSUE ORIGINATED FROM AWS SITE KNOWN FOR PREVIOUS OUTAGES AWS provides computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies, governments and individuals and is the world's largest cloud provider, followed by Microsoft's Azure and Alphabet's Google Cloud. Disruptions to its servers can cause outages across websites and platforms – ranging from food delivery apps to gaming platforms and airline systems – that rely on its cloud infrastructure. AWS said on its status page that Monday's outage originated at its US-EAST-1 location in northern Virginia, its oldest and largest for web services. The site suffered outages in 2021 and 2020. According to documentation on the AWS website, the US-EAST-1 site is often the default region for many AWS services.  Asked for comment, AWS directed Reuters to its status page. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. "FRAGILE INFRASTRUCTURES" The problem highlights how interconnected everyday digital services have become and their reliance on a small number of global cloud providers, with one glitch wreaking havoc on business and day-to-day life, experts and academics said. "This outage once again highlights the dependency we have on relatively fragile infrastructures," said Jake Moore, Global Cybersecurity Advisor at European cybersecurity firm ESET. In Britain, Lloyd Bank, Bank of Scotland and telecom service providers Vodafone and BT were all hit, according to Downdetector's UK website, as was UK tax, payments and customs authority HMRC's website. "The main reason for this issue is that all these big companies have relied on just one service," said Nishanth Sastry, director of research at the University of Surrey's Department of Computer Science. Ookla, which owns Downdetector, said over 4 million users reported issues due to the incident. "For major businesses, hours of cloud downtime translate to millions in lost productivity and revenue," said Ryan Griffin, U.S. cyber practice leader at insurance broker McGill and Partners. FROM SNAPCHAT TO VENMO: OUTAGE TAKES DOWN APPS Ookla said at least a thousand companies were affected by the outage. Snapchat last had over 7,500 reports on Downdetector, lower than the peak of more than 22,000 but still higher than the 4,000 outage instances seen at around 7:00 a.m. ET. Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood all experienced platform disruptions and attributed them to AWS.  Amazon's own services, including its shopping website, Prime Video and Alexa, were also hit, although Downdetector last showed a decrease in severity. Fortnite, owned by Epic Games; Clash Royale and Clash of Clans were among the gaming platforms affected. Uber rival Lyft was also knocked down in the United States. In a post on X, Signal President Meredith Whittaker confirmed the messaging app was hit by the outage as well, though billionaire Elon Musk, who owns X, said his platform continued to work.  While there has been no indication of a potential cyberattack behind Monday's outage, the scale of the disruption has fed speculation. "When anything like this happens, the concern that it's a cyber incident is understandable," said Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Sophos. "AWS has a far-reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset." (Reporting by Shubham Kalia, Devika Nair, Ananya Palyekar and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by James Pearson and Jaspreet Singh; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Joe Bavier and Richard Chang)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Gianluca Lo Nostro (Reuters) -French IT group Atos reported a sharp drop in quarterly revenue on Monday, owing to key contract losses, and said it would only target acquisitions from 2026. WHY IT MATTERS Atos, which owns the supercomputers serving France's nuclear deterrent capabilities, completed a sweeping financial restructuring last year after financial troubles nearly toppled the former IT giant. It has since slashed 2.1  billion euros in debt, with banks and other bondholders becoming the main shareholders of the company. Chief executive Philippe Salle is leading a turnaround plan focused on divestments, cost-cuts and investments in areas such as defence and high-performance computing. KEY QUOTES Salle told journalists the mergers and acquisitions expected in the years ahead as part of his plan will not happen until September 2026 and will accelerate in 2027 and 2028. "If they're very large acquisitions, it'll take longer, but that won't be the case because we're not actually targeting very large acquisitions. We're aiming for companies with sales of between 20 (million euros) and 200 million, to put it simply," he said. BY THE NUMBERS Third-quarter revenue came in at 2 billion euros ($2.3 billion), down 10.5% from a year ago. The company cited contract losses and voluntary contract exits, especially in one of its units in the U.S. and Britain, as the main reasons for this drop. Atos, which also provides IT services to the National Health Service in Britain and the Olympics, confirmed its annual forecast as well as its financial targets up to 2028. ($1 = 0.8575 euros) (Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro; Editing by Matt Scuffham)

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(Reuters) -Apple shares surged to an all-time high on Monday, with the iPhone maker close to becoming the third company to hit a $4 trillion market valuation as data showed strong momentum for the latest iPhone. Data from research firm Counterpoint showed the iPhone 17 series outperformed its predecessor in early sales in China and the United States, with the newer models out-selling the iPhone 16 series by 14% during their first 10 days of availability in the two countries. Apple shares jumped 4.2% to $262.9, giving it a market capitalization of about $3.9 trillion and making it the second most valuable company in the world after AI-chip giant Nvidia. Over the weekend, Evercore ISI added the stock to its Tactical Outperform List as the brokerage expects Apple to beat market expectations for the current three-month period and issue upbeat forecasts for the December quarter. "The recent launch of online orders in China may be a positive tailwind for the Dec-qtr, as initial delivery time data reflects stronger initial demand relative to other regions at launch," Evercore ISI analysts wrote in a note. Apple unveiled in September an upgraded line of new iPhones, including a slimmer iPhone Air, and held prices steady amid U.S. tariff concerns. "They rolled out the latest version of their iPhone and it's doing much better than anticipated … the demand trends for the company's iPhones are now on the front foot," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth. Apple shares had struggled earlier this year on concerns over tough competition in China and uncertainties around how the company would navigate high U.S. tariffs on Asian economies such as China and India, its major manufacturing hubs.  However, the stock has risen modestly since early August after the company pledged $100 billion in additional U.S. investment, a move that could help it sidestep potential tariffs. The stock is set for its biggest one-day jump in four weeks if gains hold and will be up more than 5% for the year. Apple will report quarterly earnings after the bell on October 30. (Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan and Twesha Dikshit in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Arun Koyyur)

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