A faulty software update to a widely used piece of cybersecurity software has been causing widespread problems across the globe Friday, including flight cancellations and delays, 911 system failures, banking system crashes, and more.

The US woke up to a raft of chaos Friday in what the New York Times describes as another "stunning example of the global economy’s fragile dependence on certain software, and the cascading effect it can have when things go wrong."

At issue was a CrowdStrike software update that crashed computers worldwide that are running the Microsoft Windows operating system. Thesse included United Airlines' entire operation, and as the Chronicle reports, the airline began grounding flights out of SFO Thursday night around 11 pm.

One family described flying from Salt Lake City to San Francisco in order to connect to a flight to Australia, where they were planning to board a cruise on Sunday morning, Australia time. They were told to get off their plane Friday morning around 2:30 am and ultimately told to exit past security at SFO to the ticketing desks where they could be rebooked, joining hundreds of people doing the same.

"We’re out about $15,000 now," said passenger Shauntelle Anderson, speaking the Chronicle, saying that the cruise line told them their tickets were non-refundable.

The stories are sounding similar at other airports across the country, however it seems Southwest Airlines and others at Oakland Airport aren't having the same level of problems. The Chronicle reports that the airport only had seen two cancellations as of 6 am and 19 delays.

Heather Knight reports in the Times that the San Francisco Fire Department responded to a spate of 20 fire alarms across the city in the span of 16 minutes this morning, between 2:34 and 2:50 am, which were all false alarms triggered by the software issue.

Hilariously, Muni isn't having any problems because their systems aren't even connected to the internet. ""Long live floppy disks, I guess!" quips SFMTA spokesperson Erica Kato. Similarly, BART doesn't seem to be experiencing any delays or problems.

In Los Angeles, the entire Los Angeles County Superior Court system melted down, and all remote court appearances were being rescheduled.

UPS is experiencing a systemwide problem that may delay package deliveries, and FedEx tells the Times that it has put contingency plans in place and is working "diligently" to minimize disruptions.

911 systems across California appeared to be operating normally, however 911 systems have been impacted in Oregon, Alaska, and Arizona.

The banking sector also appears to be affected, but only TD Bank has been reported as being affected so far, per the Times, with TD Bank customers saying on social media that they can not access their accounts.

American Airlines reported that it had recovered much of its operations as of 2 am Friday, however it's not clear how long United flights may be impacted, with the cascading impacts of cancellations likely to be felt for days. These include the thousands of Republican delegates who flew United to Milwaukee, and are stuck there right now as they tried to fly home, as the Times reports.

"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts," said the company's CEO, George Kurtz, in a tweet. "Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack."

One of the internet's most hated and annoying bits of software, and one that endlessly needs updating due to security holes being endlessly exploited by bad guys, is finally going to die a long and slow death over the next three years. Adobe, the makers of the Flash software that first allowed the internet to sparkle and move about two decades back, will no longer be updating or distributing Flash as of 2020, as they announced here on Tuesday.

This of course means you'll still be dealing with it as a browser extension for a while now, but perhaps fewer and fewer advertisers and developers will use it for anything. Adobe itself acknowledges that the software is all but obsolete because of several other developments in recent years.

"As open standards like HTML5, WebGL and WebAssembly have matured over the past several years, most now provide many of the capabilities and functionalities that plugins [like Flash] pioneered and have become a viable alternative for content on the web."

The reason, as many in the development and IT communities know, is that Flash has been a special favorite of hackers, which is part of the reason we end up being prompted to update it so often on various browsers — though apparently, as Wired explains, Microsoft's Internet Explorer is really the only browser that still fully supports and relies on Flash.

Apple famously decided not to include Flash as part of its iOS for the iPhone because Steve Jobs himself hated it, despite the company's long relationship with Adobe. And Google's Chrome has long included Flash within its software, rather than as an extension, making it "a bit more secure" according to OSX Daily, with updates happening automatically whenever you restart Chrome.

As Consumerist notes, Flash lovers (whoever they are!) still have some time to use the tool and migrate stuff to those other, open-source tools.

And then they post this joke, which of course I do not get, but perhaps some of you will.

As Gizmodo notes today, "John McAfee is basically liveblogging his jail stint on a Central American murder rap from the personal computer of a Guatemalan jail warden." Yep. McAfee was detained yesterday in Guatemala on charges that he entered the country illegally. Meanwhile, Vice has been following him around and got exclusive footage of him getting detained, and talking crazy about how "they" would have come and killed him in his hotel room at 2 in the morning with no one watching, with they being the Belize government.

He got nabbed in Guatemala yesterday, possibly because Vice called attention to his location, and he's already taken up blogging from the jail where they're holding him, writing things like "I enjoy living, and suicide is absurdly redundant. The world, from the very begining, hurls viruses, accidents, hungry animals, defective DNA — and uncountable more — in an attempt to kill us. It always succeeds. Suicide is simply aiding and abetting." As of today, Guatemala has refused to grant him asylum, and he may be sent back to Belize.

As we told you the other week, McAfee has been engaged in a weeks-long media deluge as he was wanted as a person of interest in the murder of a neighbor on the Belizean Island where he lives. There's still no warrant for his arrest in Belize, but he's been on the run and madly blogging the whole thing, insisting that he doesn't trust the Belizean authorities and says he's scared for his life "because he has sensitive information about official corruption and refused to donate to local politicians."

Also, he may or may not have been manufacturing meth.

The eccentric and very garrulous millionaire once had a $100 million fortune (it's probably considerably smaller now), and has been cavorting in recent years with various young women in Central America, some of whom are probably prostitutes.

Below, the video Vice put up yesterday, featuring McAfee, hair and beard freshly dyed, nonchalantly surrendering to authorities in Guatemala. It was suggested earlier this week that it's actually Vice's fault for blowing McAfee's cover, because they took an iPhone photo with McAfee that had GPS data attached, pinpointing his location in Guatemala.

[Gizmodo]
[Chron]

Although their mapping technology has much improved since the release of iOS6, Apple has gone and fired the man responsible for making the troubled software. Richard Williamson, the employee who managed the mapping team, was reportedly pushed out by Senior Vice President Eddy Cue, according to sources at Bloomberg.

Bloomberg goes on to report that "[i]n removing Williamson, Cue wants to install a new leadership team for the group," adding that a "replacement for Williamson wasn’t immediately known."

This reorganizing comes on the heels of Google's (arguably superior) mapping technology that, as of Tuesday, now lets you view "Indoor Maps" of locations across the globe. (Google should have a map app ready for iOS at the end of the year, provided Apple approves it.) Most iPhone users will recall that the phone's map app was Google-based until iO6 came out using Apple's own maps. The Cupertino, Calif. company's software, however, left much to be desired at the time, including such issues faulty landmark searches and "routes that get users lost and lack of public transit directions."

Apple's mapping snafu even prompted the company to make a rare public apology.

Trying to figure out if that guy in your office was born a homosexual? (Hint: he probably wasn't, you stalker.) Well, a few clever AP-wads at MIT have developed software that, using Facebook technology, can figure out if he prefers penis or vagina.

By using only his friends list, according to Valleywag (via Boston Globe), they can determine his sexual orientation. "In the students' test, which examined 947 profiles, the program identified all 10 of 10 men the students knew to be gay, but who had not declared so on Facebook."

This software, which has yet to be released, will come in handy -- especially in the Bay Area where most men, specifically, tend to look/act gay. (Or so we hear. Or... who knows. We have terrible gaydar.)

Beginning today, UCB will offer free downloads of a new software program for your cell that will help "unjam" traffic congestion. The program, which uses a global positioning system, is part of a project called Mobile Millennium. Berkeley researchers claim the new phone program will "provide live traffic conditions" and "tell people how long their commute will take and help them avoid traffic by steering them to less congested roads." The futuristic new app will also tell you when you how late you will be to a specific destination. Cool. The software program is only available to those of you with GPS-equipped cellphones. (CBS 5)