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Forget about any online orders from America that you were excited about, they're not coming.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) has temporarily suspended international mail to a list of countries including Australia and New Zealand.

According to USPS, the interruption is 'due to impacts related to the COVID-19 pandemic and other unrelated service disruptions'.

Australia is just one of twenty two countries affected by the suspension, so say goodbye to any online shopping orders coming from America.

Customers in the United States have been asked to no longer send parcels downunder, and even packages already on their way could be returned to the sender.

Services being affected include Priority Mail, First-Class Packages, Commercial ePackets, Priority Airmail and Surface packages. 

Australia Post has also listed the distruption on their International Service Updates page:

The USPS (US Postal Service) has temporarily suspended some outgoing parcel services to a number of countries, including Australia, due to air freight capacity issues. We are closely monitoring efforts by the USPS to resume their service to Australia.

So, expect a hefty wait period on any orders from the States and be sure to shop local from here on in! 

Image Credit: Liza Summer / Pexels

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facebook outage

Australia woke up on Tuesday to Facebook and Instagram experiencing a global outage. (What's App got hit too, which FB also owns).

Some say the issues are interesting timing given a whistleblower just brought to light damning allegations about the company. Hmmm...

But let's not get too serious... instead, we're looking at the funniest responses to the outage. Which of course is mostly on Twitter because that's all that remained... at least for a few glorious hours.


Facebook reaches out to users... on Twitter lol


Twitter is king for a few hours


And when Twitter said hi to the world, some big brands had a lot of fun saying hi back


Of course, who couldn't resist using the global phenomenon that is Netflix's Squid Game for some witty commentary:


It really was an apocalypse


Meanwhile, what Zuckerberg was up to during the outage


But not everyone was sad


Not sure what the issue was, but there's some theories...


Thankfully it's all back now and you can get back on with your life

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The cause of the outages on the platforms, all owned by Facebook, was not immediately clear.

But error messages suggest there's a problem with Domain Name System (DNS), which allows web addresses to take users to their destinations.

In Australia, outages began being reported by users of Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp from around 3am AEDT local time on Tuesday.

Thousands of users reported issues accessing Facebook websites and aaps, according to Downdetector's Australian site.

A similar outage at cloud company Akamai Technologies Inc took down multiple websites in July.

Facebook's internal systems used by employees also went down, the Associated Press reported.

Security experts tracking the event said the outage could have been triggered by a configuration error, which could be the result of an internal mistake, although sabotage could not be ruled out.

An outside hack was viewed as less likely.

 

 

A massive denial-of-service attack that could overwhelm one of the world's most popular sites would require either coordination among powerful criminal groups or a very innovative technique.

Facebook acknowledged users were having trouble accessing its apps but did not provide any specifics about the nature of the problem or how many were affected by the outage.

"We're working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible and we apologise for any inconvenience," Facebook said.

Shares of Facebook, which has nearly two billion daily active users, fell 5.5 per cent in Monday afternoon trading in the US, inching towards its worst day in nearly a year.

Downdetector - which only tracks outages by collating status reports from a series of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform - showed there were more than 50,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook and Instagram.

The outage might be affecting a larger number of users.

Meanwhile, the social-media giant's instant messaging platform WhatsApp was also down for more than 35,000 users while Messenger was down for nearly 9800 users.

Facebook has experienced similar widespread outages with its suite of apps this year in March and July.

Several users using their Facebook credentials to log in to third-party apps such as Pokemon Go and Match Masters were also facing issues.

"If your game isn't running as usual please note that there's been an issue with Facebook login servers and the moment this gets fixed all will be back to normal," puzzle game app Match Masters said on its Twitter account.

The outage comes a day after a Facebook whistleblower accused the firm of repeatedly prioritising profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation, and said her lawyers have filed at least eight complaints with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

with AP

ยฉ AP 2021

Image: Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

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newlyweds cake demand

A wedding guest has received an unexpected message requesting they pay up after they helped themselves to an extra slice of cake at a wedding.

Reddit user Unlucky_Low_6254 posted the screenshot of the text exchange to the Wedding Shaming forum and said:

"I paid for the first slice after it was announced on the day we'd be helping to pay for their cake!! Apparently didn't count for the second.โ€

Attached to his post, the screenshot of the conversation between the guest and the newlyweds shows a 17-minute video from the CCTV camera, with the poster replying, โ€œDuno what you meanโ€.

The demand then came, with one of them writing, โ€œHey so we were just looking at the CCTV and saw that you had two pieces of the wedding cake. We announced that each guest must pay per slice and noticed that you only paid for the one. Can you please send the ยฃ3.66 asap.โ€

Of course, fellow Reddit users came to the comments section perplexed at the unusual request with one saying, "They charged for cake? WTF?"

Others were equally as gobsmacked and said the review of the CCTV footage was tacky, crazy and cheeky. They wrote, "That's what has me the most gobsmacked. Paying per slice is tacky as well, but sending actual video feed is a whole other level of crazy," and "It's incredibly cheeky to ask guests to pay for the cake, let alone review footage and then bill guests after the fact for ยฃ3.66! How are they not embarrassed?"

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Would you ask your guests to pay for cake? This couple did! (Image Credit: N K @ Shutterstock.com)

One person shared that if the newlyweds couldn't afford cake then they shouldn't have had a reception and commented, "If you can't afford the cake, don't have a reception. Seriously. Scale your day back to something you can afford. They charged their guests and reviewed footage? This is a cheap a** insult. Begin your lives as you mean to move on. In their case, it's fully dependent on the charity of their friends and family. I'm appalled. That's just gross."

When asked if paying a slice of cake was a cultural thing and if they had to pay for other things like chairs and a plate, the original poster replied with:

I've never heard of it before. It was quite a talking point at the wedding as the best man first announced it and then it was confirmed in the groom's speech too. Thought it was a joke but then when people were queuing for the cake people had to go back to their tables to get cash. And get this they had a card reader and we're even taking names for tabs!

According to the wedding guest, the guests were notified during the wedding when the best man announced it and they thought it was a joke. When people were lining up for the cake, some had to go back to their tables to get cash and they even had a card reader and a tab for those who didn't carry any cash. It appears the guest had helped themselves to an extra slice and was shocked when he received the message of the CCTV footage requesting for the ยฃ3.66 or $6.82 (AUD) (at the time of writing).

Main image credits: (Unlucky_Low_6254 / Reddit) + (George Tolkachev / Shutterstock.com)