Middle America's Worldview

The social network Facebook was down globally on Monday, October 21, 2013. This was unusual since widespread global downtime is rare. The outage occurred so long that a new official hashtag, #FacebookDown, in multiple languages from multiple countries was created. Reports of the outage reportedly lasted for hours. However, the social network only reported the outage as a mere “brief period of time.” Users were prevented from posting, liking, or placing comments, or receiving birthday message updates. Officially the downtime was due to performance of some “network maintenance.” The week prior, the network’s public stock reached $54 dollars per share. The Facebook social network was created by.... Continue Reading

This Saturday, October 12, 2013, The EBT system went down for 17 states. Across the 17 states panic and mayhem occurred as those on the EBT card system were unable to buy food. Karen Arena a spokeswoman for Xerox, the company that runs the EBT card system confirmed Saturday afternoon that some Electronic Benefit Transfer systems are experiencing temporary connectivity systems. “Xerox spokeswoman Karen Arena confirmed via email Saturday afternoon that some Electronic Benefits Transfer systems are experiencing temporary connectivity issues. She said technical staff is addressing the issue and expects the system to be restored soon. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage is not related to the government shutdown. Xerox runs EBT card systems for 17 states and all were affected by the outage” States affected.... Continue Reading