Starlink users reported they couldn’t connect to SpaceX’s satellite internet service for a few hours on Thursday afternoon before service was eventually restored. Widespread Starlink outages, like the ones we reported on in 2022 and 2023, have been rare, and this appears to be the first one in 2025.

The outage began around 3:15PM ET or so, with users receiving error messages saying there is “no healthy upstream.” Starlink posted a message on X at 4:05PM ET: “Starlink is currently in a network outage and we are actively implementing a solution. We appreciate your patience, we’ll share an update once this issue is resolved.”

At 6:23PM ET, Starlink engineering VP Michael Nicolls followed that up with a message saying that after a 2.5-hour outage, the network has “mostly recovered.” “The outage was due to failure of key internal software services that operate the core network,” writes Nicolls, without going into specific detail.

According to The Kyiv Independent, the outage affected Ukrainian troops who rely on Starlink terminals, citing a Telegram message from the military saying Starlink is down across the entire front. The military now says its connections are back online after going down for about 150 minutes, “the longest in the war.”

T-Mobile just opened its Starlink-powered T-Satellite messaging service to everyone yesterday, but we haven’t seen any updates on its status. During the outage, the global connectivity trackers at NetBlocks reported that overall Starlink connectivity dropped to “16 percent of ordinary levels.”

Update, July 24th: Added information from the Ukrainian military and NetBlocks, and updated to note that service has been restored.

One thing that has been missing from Bluesky until now was the ability to turn on notifications for specific accounts, but now Activity Notifications are live. If you want to know every time The Verge or ESPN, or one of your friends posts, you can, just by toggling the bell icon on their profile page, along with an option to see notifications for just new posts or with replies included too.

It’s the kind of feature I’ve gotten used to on other platforms, especially Twitter, where news breakers have been able to keep their audiences updated from minute to minute, making it easier to follow interesting topics or developing stories.

That goes double for sports, and Bluesky has called growing its presence in sports discussions “a top priority.” So far, ESPN reporter and Woj heir Shams Charania hasn’t brought his free agency coverage to the platform yet (to go with X, Threads, and the ESPN app), but now that it has push notifications for specific accounts, maybe he will.

Another small change is that it can also notify people if someone likes or reposts something they have reposted.

Of course, if your problem is that you’re getting too many notifications, the updates that rolled out on Monday also have something for you. There’s been an explosion in the amount of granular controls available to decide if you’ll get updates about reports, likes, new followers, or other activity, and if you want to receive them from activity by anyone, no one, or just people you follow. According to a blog post, the simple “priority notifications” toggle that was available previously has been migrated to the new setup, so anyone who had it turned on will still only get notifications from people they follow.

Late Wednesday night at about 11PM CT, SpaceX was about to perform a static fire test of Ship 36, ahead of a planned 10th flight test for its Starship, when there was suddenly a massive explosion at the Massey’s Testing Center site. SpaceX says “A safety clear area around the site was maintained throughout the operation and all personnel are safe and accounted for,” and that there are no hazards to residents in the area of its recently incorporated town of Starbase, Texas.

“After completing a single-engine static fire earlier this week, the vehicle was in the process of loading cryogenic propellant for a six-engine static fire when a sudden energetic event resulted in the complete loss of Starship and damage to the immediate area surrounding the stand,” according to an update on SpaceX’s website. “The explosion ignited several fires at the test site which remains clear of personnel and will be assessed once it has been determined to be safe to approach. Individuals should not attempt to approach the area while safing operations continue.”

The explosion follows others during the seventh, eighth, and ninth Starship flight tests earlier this year. “Initial analysis indicates the potential failure of a pressurized tank known as a COPV, or composite overwrapped pressure vessel, containing gaseous nitrogen in Starship’s nosecone area, but the full data review is ongoing,” SpaceX says. On X, the company called the explosion a “major anomaly.”

Fox 26 Houston says that, according to authorities, there have been no injuries reported. SpaceX also says no injuries have been reported.

This flight test would’ve continued using SpaceX’s “V2” Starship design, which Musk said in 2023, “holds more propellant, reduces dry mass and improves reliability.” SpaceX is also preparing a new V3 design that, according to Musk, was tracking toward a rate of launching once a week in about 12 months.

Update, June 19th: Added information from SpaceX.

TikTok is back online after a brief outage last night. Many people started reporting problems with the platform just after 11PM ET, noting that while TikTok wasn’t completely offline, it was definitely dealing with some kind of technical issues that impacted users trying to access the service and view video comments.

Based on reports from Reddit, Twitter, Bluesky, and looking at our own devices, some videos were able to load in TikTok’s mobile apps, but accessing other features like comments or switching between accounts wasn’t working reliably, leading some users to wonder if their accounts were banned. Trying to pull up the TikTok website, or even its support pages, displayed a message saying “An error occurred while processing your request” along with a reference code.

TikTok didn’t make any public acknowledgement about the outage or what was causing it. At the time, status pages for some of its service providers, like Akamai and Oracle, didn’t indicate any wider problems. Downdetector listed 44,000 reports at our last check before regular service was restored at around 12AM ET, so while it’s unclear what was behind the technical issues, at least everything was restored swiftly.

Update, June 3rd: The TikTok outage has now been resolved.