Musk's X down for thousands of US users, Downdetector shows
There were thousands of users reporting issues with X, Downdetector showed.
Billionaire Elon Musk's X was down for thousands of users in the US on July 2 , according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
There were more than 15,400 incidents of people reporting issues with the social media platform as of 9.52am Eastern Time (9.52pm, Singapore time), Downdetector showed, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources.
X did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
This story is developing. REUTERS
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Times
13 hours ago
- Business Times
Tesla has a problem – and it's not just the Elon Musk backlash
[AUSTIN] Tesla is in a sales slump, with deliveries of its electric vehicles on track to decline for the second full year in a row. The polarising politics of chief executive officer Elon Musk have alienated car buyers in major markets. Customers have yet to flock back to showrooms after Musk stepped away from his activities in Washington and ended up in a very public feud with President Donald Trump. But Tesla's problems run deeper than the consumer backlash seen over the past few months. While the automaker has given its most popular model – the Model Y – a facelift, it is lacking a new, more affordable car to revitalise its dated lineup. That has left the company vulnerable to competitors, particularly those hailing from China. Tesla's US$1 trillion market capitalisation suggests investors remain buoyant. The value they ascribe to the company is increasingly rooted in Musk's vision of a future filled with autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots, rather than the human-driven EVs in the here and now. What's happened to Tesla's sales? Deliveries hit an almost three-year low in the first quarter. The drop was due in part to the process of redesigning the Model Y, as Tesla paused output at each of its assembly plants to retool production lines for the revamped SUV. The company was counting on the spruced up Model Y to boost sales in the second quarter. Overall deliveries instead slid 13 per cent from a year earlier, undermining Musk's claim in mid-May that sales had 'already turned around.' BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up By Musk's own admission, Europe is the company's weakest major market. The number of new Teslas registered across the region plunged 37 per cent during the first five months of the year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association – even as the broader market expanded. Industrywide battery-electric vehicle sales in Europe were up 28 per cent. Tesla's struggles have created an opening for rival BYD. The Chinese automaker sold more fully electric cars in Europe than Tesla for the first time ever in April, in what one analyst called a watershed moment. Some are predicting BYD will pull ahead of Tesla globally for the full year – and that's without BYDs even being available in Tesla's home market, the US. Cox Automotive estimates Tesla's US vehicle sales fell 15 per cent in the first half. Tesla is still the top-selling EV brand in the US, but its share of electric-car sales has shrunk from more than 75 per cent in 2022 to under 50 per cent as of 2024, according to Cox-owned Kelley Blue Book. In China, the world's biggest EV market, Tesla's shipments from its Shanghai plant – destined both for domestic customers and for export – declined for eight consecutive months year-on-year before ticking up in June, according to the China Passenger Car Association. Why is Tesla losing ground in the EV market? Musk has stuck to a less-is-more approach to Tesla's lineup. The company only sells five vehicles – the Model S (which debuted in 2012), Model X (2015), Model 3 (2017), Model Y (2020) and the Cybertruck (2023) – and not all of these are available globally. BYD, by contrast, offers substantially more models and most of them are cheaper than Tesla's best-sellers, the Model Y and Model 3 sedan. BYD also announced in March that it had developed an EV battery system that can charge within five minutes, which could make the brand even more competitive. New entrants are threatening Tesla's standing, particularly in what was an already-crowded and competitive Chinese EV market. The most noteworthy newcomer has been Xiaomi, the smartphone maker that's branched into car manufacturing. The company secured almost 300,000 pre-orders for its second electric vehicle, the YU7, within the first hour of making the SUV available. At around US$35,000, it's cheaper than Tesla's Model Y. A sub-US$30,000 car has long been seen as key to further sales growth for Tesla. But the affordable vehicle Musk has been promising since his first 'Master Plan' in 2006 has yet to materialise. In recent years, the company instead launched the Cybertruck, an expensive pickup that's fallen well short of its CEO's volume expectations. Tesla told investors in April that new vehicles, including more affordable models, were on track to go into production during the first half of this year. But there's still no sign of any cheaper new cars, leading analysts to speculate they may have been delayed. It's unclear whether Tesla will make meaningful adjustments to its lineup anytime soon. In the near term, it could just introduce stripped-down, lower-priced versions of existing models and look increasingly out of step with competitors' fresher designs. How much are politics at play in Tesla's slump? The starkest sign that Musk's close links to Trump and the Republican Party were beginning to drag on Tesla came from California, the Democratic stronghold where the EV maker's registrations fell in all four quarters last year. The backlash intensified after the US election in November, as Musk got to work dismantling federal agencies in his role as the government's efficiency czar and cheered on far-right politicians in Europe. Musk's politicking sparked the 'Tesla Takedown' movement, whose organisers arranged protests at showrooms globally and called for a boycott of the company's products and its shares. The EV maker has also dealt with incidents of vandalism and arson. Musk has acknowledged 'blowback' from his involvement in the Trump administration, though he also insisted he's opened paths to consumers on the political right that could counter the sales he was costing Tesla on the left. That has yet to show up in the company's quarterly figures, and now Musk's ties to Trump have come under strain due to his scorching criticism of the president's tax bill. With the bromance days in the rearview, Republican lawmakers did not spare Tesla when putting the US$7,500 tax credit for EV purchases on the chopping block. As the Trump administration looks to ease fuel-economy and tailpipe-emission standards, Tesla's billions of US dollars in revenue from selling regulatory credits that help other automakers comply with the rules could come under pressure. What is Tesla doing to try to recover? Musk has assumed oversight of sales in Europe and the US after the departure of longtime confidant Omead Afshar, according to people familiar with the matter. Afshar's exit followed a string of senior-level departures this year, including Milan Kovac, the engineering lead for Tesla's Optimus robot programme, and David Lau, who ran software for over a decade. Musk's deeper involvement comes at a time when analysts estimate Tesla will fall short of the 1.79 million cars it sold last year. That would stand in contrast with a growing global market, with BloombergNEF forecasting sales of battery-electric vehicles will climb 19 per cent in 2025. As Tesla's EV momentum slows, Musk has been hyping up what he sees as the company's true calling: self-driving cars and humanoid robots. Both endeavours are some way off from starting to 'move the financial needle,' as Musk put it during an earnings call in April. Tesla's ambition is to have a driverless ride-hailing network that initially uses its consumer vehicle models before incorporating a purpose-built Cybercab, which will have no steering wheel or pedals. After roughly a decade of predicting Teslas should soon be able to drive autonomously, the company launched its long-awaited robotaxi service in late June. It was a modest debut, with Tesla only offering rides to a small contingent of fans in a confined area of Austin. Footage of several journeys drew scrutiny from federal safety regulators after the vehicles appeared to violate traffic laws. The challenge for Tesla now is to scale these operations to prove that its future is indeed in autonomy rather than automaking. 'The central question is, do you believe cars will be autonomous and electric in the future? If the answer is yes, Tesla will pull through and will be in a really good place,' said Gene Munster, managing partner of Deepwater Asset Management. BLOOMBERG
Straits Times
15 hours ago
- Straits Times
Think like criminals, anticipate cyber attack tactics: Experts
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox SINGAPORE - Organisations need to think like cyber criminals and proactively run simulated real-world attacks internally to better prepare their cyber defenders in the age of artificial intelligence (AI), speakers at a cybersecurity conference said. 'Globally, we are seeing growing interest, and increasingly brazen activity, against critical infrastructure: ports, utilities, telecommunications, transport networks,' said Singapore's Defence Cyber Chief on July 4. 'Not perhaps for immediate disruption or commercial gain, but to map dependencies, identify vulnerabilities and pre-position for possible future leverage,' Colonel (COL) Clarence Cai. 'Now add AI to the mix — and this threat landscape goes on steroids.' Urging organisations to use AI to anticipate attack tactics, he said: 'This mindset shift might be the most important variable in the fight to come.' COL Cai was one of several speakers at ST Engineering's Cybersecurity Summit 2025, which brought together industry leaders to discuss AI-powered cyber attacks, and plans to stay ahead in an increasingly complex threat landscape. Cyber attackers can run countless permutations on how to breach systems, considering factors such as credentials to unlock systems and potential points of exploitation, he said. In sharp contrast, defenders often think in a more checklist-oriented manner, he said during his keynote address at the event. He added that this fundamental difference gives attackers the upper hand - unless defenders learn to adopt the dynamism that attackers have, which would level the playing field. He said that the mindset shift has already taken place in the military, citing what is being done at Singapore's Cyber Defence Test and Evaluation Centre (CyTEC). CyTEC was established in 2015, and falls under the banner of the Defence Cyber Command (DCCOM). It provides a virtual sandbox environment that simulates cyber threat scenarios to test defenders' skills and responses. 'CyTEC is where our most promising cyber minds—including national servicemen—develop AI-native workflows for red teaming and defence,' he said. Red teaming is when ethical hackers simulate cyber attacks so organisations can test the effectiveness of their cybersecurity system. In his speech, COL Cai said defence is no longer just about where uniformed personnel meet, but also about where vulnerabilities exist. People and commercial organisations face non-kinetic, military-grade threats, said COL Cai, citing the cyber attack on Marks & Spencers earlier in the year which resulted in an estimated £300 million (S$522 million) loss in profit. 'The T-72 (battle tank) never rolled in - but the digital equivalent of a precision strike did,' he added. Military conflicts also no longer just target weapon platforms, but also the digital infrastructure that people rely on, said COL Cai. He said: 'During recent hostilities between Israel and Iran, the world watched hypersonic missiles light up the night sky. But in the shadows, cyber attacks disrupted air traffic, spoofed the global positioning system, and interfered with hospital and financial services. 'These attacks weren't just at the front line, they were levelled at the foundations of modern society.' Urging all organisations, including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to prepare early and systematically, the chief executive of Cyber Security Agency (CSA) of Singapore David Koh likened cybersecurity to brakes on a car. 'If you want to go fast, you need good brakes. If you want to digitalise, you need good cybersecurity,' said Mr Koh. He added that digital resilience is a basic requirement for everybody, to succeed in an increasingly digital economy. 'When the security posture of SMEs is strengthened, then there is a multiplicative effect. The protection extends beyond the SMEs themselves into the wider supply chain ecosystem, which all of us depend on.' During the summit, Senior Minister of State for Digital Development and Information Tan Kiat How said Singapore has built a strong cybersecurity foundation. He cited initiatives such as the Infocomm Media Development Authority's CTO-as-a-Service, which gives SMEs access to expert digital guidance, and CSA's CISO-as-a-Service, which helps SMEs overcome resource constraints and knowledge barriers they may face in implementing cybersecurity. However, he added that consistently building on this foundation is important to keep up with the evolving threat landscape. Eight in 10 Singapore organisations had experienced a cybersecurity incident in 2023, said Mr Tan, citing CSA's Singapore Cybersecurity Health Report 2023. Of these, 99 per cent reported suffering business impacts, with the top three being business disruption, data loss, and reputational damage. 'Some SMEs hold the view that they are too small or too unimportant to be targeted,' said Mr Tan, adding that he hears this feedback sometimes from SMEs. 'I often explain that threat actors may target small companies as a way to reach bigger targets,' he added. 'And when one firm is compromised, the impact may cascade through the broader industry sector - potentially disrupting services, leaking data, and even compromising national infrastructure,' he said, urging firms to up their game. 'Let us not be remembered for what we failed to protect, but for what we had the foresight to be prepare for.'
Straits Times
17 hours ago
- Straits Times
ChatGPT's mental health costs are adding up
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox From brain rot to induced psychosis, the psychological cost of generative AI is growing and flying under the radar. The private and personalized nature of AI use makes its mental health impact difficult to track, but the evidence of potential harms is mounting Something troubling is happening to our brains as artificial intelligence platforms become more popular. Studies are showing that professional workers who use ChatGPT to carry out tasks might lose critical thinking skills and motivation. People are forming strong emotional bonds with chatbots, sometimes exacerbating feelings of loneliness. And others are having psychotic episodes after talking to chatbots for hours each day.
