Yesterday's Facebook outage, oil spill in Huntington Beach, California: 5 Things podcast
On today's episode of 5 Things: The Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram outage was one of the company's worst ever, lasting six hours. Plus, there's a state of emergency as oil spill cleanup continues in California, President Joe Biden sells his infrastructure bills on the road, refugee admissions have fallen to a record low and the MLB Postseason is here.
Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is 5 things you need to know Tuesday, the 5th of October 2021. Today, what happens when Facebook goes dark? Plus cleanup continues in California in the wake of a massive oil spill, and more.
Taylor Wilson:
Here are some of the top headlines.
- At least 14 soldiers have been killed by jihadist extremists in Burkina Faso. Violence linked to Al Qaeda in the Islamic state is increasing in the once peaceful West African country.
- Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang is no longer a Democrat. He yesterday changed his voter registration to independent.
- And there's a power ball winner. A single ticket sold in California matched all six numbers drawn yesterday. The prize, a jackpot of nearly $700 million.
Taylor Wilson:
Communications around the world were severely disrupted yesterday when Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp went down for hours. The platform stopped working around 11:30 AM Eastern time and only began to work again at about 5:40, more than six hours later. Facebook emailed a statement to USA Today apologizing for the outage but did not initially say what caused it. Later, the company said its engineers found the problem originated with a networking issue that interrupted communications between its data centers. Doug Madori, the head of internet analysis at Kentick had this explanation yesterday with the AP.
Doug Madori:
The DNS service that Facebook operates in order to translate things like facebook.com to a numeric sequence that a computer can go and fetch files from, that DNS translation is not working. I am cautious to assign any kind of malicious activity to these things because a lot of times, more often than not, it turns out that there was an internal slip up that caused the outage. There's no company that's immune from an outage. And so at all times, these engineers need to be doing things like this, looking at other companies that have gone down, understand why, how did it happen and how they can learn from that and improve their own processes.
Taylor Wilson:
According to downdetector.com which tracks website outages, the Facebook blackout was the largest they'd ever seen with nearly 11 million problem reports around 5:00 PM Eastern. The outage was a financial mess for the company. According to MarketWatch, Facebook lost about $60 million yesterday with more than $163,000 in revenue lost every minute. Facebook's stock price was already tumbling early in the day after a 60 minute interview with whistleblower, Frances Haugen who said the company put profit over safety on not doing enough to stop misinformation. By the end of the day, Facebook stock had fallen nearly 5% and the company will again be in the news today when Haugen testifies in front of a Senate panel.
Taylor Wilson:
A massive cleanup continues after an oil spill off the coast of Orange County in Southern California over the weekend. The spill left to shine on the ocean surface across miles and gobs of tar keep coming ashore in Huntington Beach and other coastal communities. California governor, Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Orange County directing state agencies to take immediate action to clean up the spill. California and federal officials updated the max oil spill potential to 144,000 gallons yesterday up from an initial estimate of 126,000. Dead birds and fish have washed up on shore and organizations are working to save animals still alive who have been affected. Michael Ziccardi, director of the Oiled Wildlife Care Network said they've saved several birds.
Michael Ziccardi:
To date, we have collected three live oiled birds, one brown pelican, one American coot and one ruddy duck. Unfortunately, the brown pelican had chronic injuries that required us to humanly euthanize it yesterday. We do have a fourth bird that was just collected from our teams.
Taylor Wilson:
As for what caused the spill, it increasingly looks like a ship's anchor may have struck a pipeline on the ocean floor. Ships waiting to enter Los Angeles or Long Beach ports have been hit with backlogs in recent months and there are often several dozen ships or more at a time anchored offshore as they wait. The head of Amplify Energy, the company that operates the pipeline said that divers examined more than 8,000 feet of pipe and are now focused on one area of significant interest. A California spokesman told USA Today that several investigations are underway into the company's actions and the spill itself, and several beaches remain closed.
Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, an Associated Press review of oil spill reports is raising questions about the response time to the tragedy by both Amplify Energy and the US Coast Guard. The latter said it was not notified of the disaster until Saturday morning, but records show its hazardous spill response hotline received the first report of a possible oil slick Friday evening. For all the latest in the spill's aftermath, stick with USAtoday.com.
Taylor Wilson:
President Joe Biden heads to Michigan today to promote his $3.5 trillion budget bill and $1 trillion infrastructure package. A majority of democratic lawmakers and the president himself support both bills, but the party's thin majority in Congress means any small group of lawmakers could jeopardize its passage. That's the case with senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin on the larger bill and for some progressive parts of the House on the smaller one, because they want assurance the broader human infrastructure focused legislation will pass. It's clear the president is getting increasingly frustrated at the log jam and negotiations as he told reporters over the weekend.
Speaker 4:
With regard to dealing with childcare, dealing with the tax credit for people putting everything from solar panels on their home and making their homes so the windows and doors are solid, all those things are in that second piece of legislation and I'm going to be going around the country this week, making the case why it's important. Look, it's understandable. There's an awful lot that's in both of these bills that everybody thinks they know, but they don't know what's in them.
Taylor Wilson:
Biden later this week will host lawmakers from different factions of his party for talks on the spending bills. Congress is also focused on raising the US debt ceiling, something Republicans have essentially told Democrats to figure out on their own.
Taylor Wilson:
Refugee admissions to the United States fell to a record low during the 2021 budget year, which runs from October 1st to September 30th. That's despite President Joe Biden's pledge to reverse the cuts made by the Trump Administration. A total of 11,445 refugees were allowed into the US during the budget year that ended last Thursday. That does not include tens of thousands of Afghans brought to the country in recent weeks after the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan. They came under a different legal status, but the number still highlights the president's challenges in keeping his word on refugees. The 11,000 plus refugee admissions fall dramatically below the cap of 62,500 that Biden set in May and it's even below the record low ceiling of 15,000 that Trump initially set for the year. Biden has said he did not expect to get anywhere near that 62,500 number. In addition to work, his administration says is needed to rebuild the program, Biden cited coronavirus pandemic restrictions as another issue. But refugee advocates say that excuse isn't good enough and that the Biden Administration has moved too slowly.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, after 162 regular season games, major league baseballs playoffs are here. The postseason begins today with the American League Wild Card Game and it's a doozy, featuring one of the best rivalries in baseball, the Boston Red Sox hosting the New York Yankees. Both teams locked up their postseason fates on Sunday, finishing with identical 92 and 70 records. USA Today Sports' Mackenzie Salmon looks at the matchup.
Mackenzie Salmon :
Biggest rivalry in the sport kicks off the best month for the sport. Yankees, Red Sox, Fenway Park win or go home. For Boston, no one thought they'd be here at the start of the season, but have proven to be formidable the entire year. For the Yankees, no one thought they'd be here either and is frankly a disappointment for the franchise that they didn't win the division given all the investment in this year's team. Head to head, the Red Sox won 10 of their 19 match ups this year, but the Yankees won the last six get togethers. The teams in many ways are mere images of each other. The pitching doesn't wow you, but both Boston and New York possess high powered offenses. For the Red Sox, the trio of Rafael Devers, Hunter Renfroe and J.D. Martinez lead the way. But everyone, one through nine can go deep at any time.
Mackenzie Salmon :
For the Yankees, Aaron Judge and Stan have been the true one-two punch New York fans have always dreamed of. But for all the high profile names in the rest of the lineup, many of them have severely underperformed this year. This New York team has essentially gone as far as Judge and Stan can take them. While Boston will host the game, it's New York that comes in with immense pressure to win and go deep in the playoffs. Expect a high scoring back and forth affair between the two most iconic franchises in the game. Whoever wins the wild card game should be considered a legitimate threat to win the pennant in the American League.
Taylor Wilson:
First pitch is set for just after 8:00 PM Eastern on ESPN and it's just the start of October post-season magic. Tomorrow it'll be the National League Wild Card Game Between the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers. Then on Thursday and Friday, the Division Series in both leagues begin. Stay up on all the latest at USA Today Sports.
Taylor Wilson:
And you can find 5 Things every morning right here wherever you're listening right now. Also, if you have a chance, please drop us a rating and review. Thanks as always to Shannon Greene and Claire Thornton for their great work on the show. And I'll be back tomorrow with another edition of 5 Things from the USA Today Network.