bugs

A Facebook official said the social network did intend to give its new @facebook.com e-mail addresses exclusive visibility on user profiles, but insists that a software bug is responsible for resetting your contacts' e-mail addresses the same way.

The social network's faux paux that outraged Facebook users and prompted misdirected e-mails throughout the Web was actually caused by a bug, FB said.

On certain devices, the bug was syncing the last e-mail linked to the account instead of the primary address set by a user, Facebook engineering director Andrew Bosworth told the Verge. This meant phones were pulling … Read more

It only takes a single second to wreak havoc on the Internet.

The addition of a leap second to the Coordinated Universal Time at midnight Greenwich Mean Time last night appears to have caused site disruptions for a handful of popular Web sites and software platforms.

The adjustment, which was made by International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, was necessary to keep atomic clocks in line with the Earth's ever-changing speed of rotation. Dozens of leap seconds have been added since their introduction in 1972.

One of the sites affected by the bug was the popular link-sharing site … Read more

Twitter's service went down and up multiple times in a three-hour period this morning and it was all because of a bug, the company explains to users. The company said it was a "cascading bug," that spread into other parts of its system, causing the outage.

Twitter's VP of engineering Mazen Rawashdeh wrote in a blog post today that the bug isn't confined to a particular software element and instead "cascades" into other elements, affecting users worldwide. He said the company took "corrective actions," after it discovered the bug.

"Not … Read more

Some friends of mine recently bumped into a member of the Canadian Secret Service. He said he spent most of his time gardening because Canada doesn't really have enemies.

Perhaps the northern sister of the U.S. has decided to give its security forces a little more to do, as Ottawa airport will now be graced with bugging microphones.

No, these aren't necessarily being strategically placed where suspicious people might gather -- wherever that might be. And yes, they will be capable of recording conversations between any travelers (or airport employees) who happen to fall within their range.… Read more

GarageBand got a few tweaks, but they are mostly limited to fixing stability issues. Apple says a bug that formerly would crash the app when uploading songs to iCloud, and another that caused an error when logging into SoundCloud with a Facebook account, have been fixed.

iPhoto received mostly bug fixes and enhancements to streamline use as well, but did get a minor interface tweak that will be useful. Now when you publish a journal to iCloud, a new button lets you copy the link to clipboard -- useful for sharing freshly made journals with friends right away.

iMovie received … Read more

In an effort to cut down on hacking, bugs, and vulnerabilities, Google offers dollar rewards for people to hack into its Web services.

The Internet giant began swapping security research for cash over the past couple of years, but today it announced that it was upping the ante.

"In just over a year, the program paid out around $460,000 to roughly 200 individuals," Google security team members Adam Mein and Michal Zalewski wrote in a blog post. "We're confident beyond any doubt the program has made Google users safer."

As of today, hackers can … Read more

Apple's new iPad has had its fair share of problems, and it appears another one might need to be added to the list.

An increasing number of new iPad owners have been complaining on Apple's forums about trouble connecting to 3G networks from their tablet. Based on the growing thread, the issue appears to be widespread across Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia. Only a few people in the U.S. have said that the device is having trouble connecting to 3G.

"When I travel with my iPad, e.g. taking it on a train, it loses … Read more

Satellite navigation maker TomTom has pushed out an update to fix a software glitch that left customers worldwide complaining about not being able to find their location.

The problem, which began on Saturday, meant the sat-navs failed to get a GPS position. Instead, users saw a gray screen or a message saying the GPS signal was poor.

Today the Dutch company apologized for the glitch, which it said was caused by a "leap year" bug in the GPS receiver software from a third-party supplier.

"A software update fixing the issue is now available via MyTomTom," it … Read more

Have you ever followed someone on Twitter only to find that the person no longer appears in your follow status? Well, it's not you, it's Twitter.

The site has finally acknowledged a glitch that's causing people you follow to appear as if they've been unfollowed. Twitter is working on a fix but insists the bug only makes it seem like you're no longer following someone. Clicking on the user's actual profile page can confirm that you're still a follower: