Bluesky, the social media app popular with X expatriates, suffered a widespread outage on Thursday, April 16.

And in a thread posted on the official Bluesky profile, the app's leaders revealed the cause of the outage — a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.

"Our team received a report of intermittent app outages at about 11:40pm PDT on April 15, 2026," the post read. "They worked through the night to mitigate a sophisticated Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which intensified throughout the day."

Fortunately, Bluesky also said there was no evidence that any user data had been compromised in the attack, which affected the Bluesky app, feeds, notifications, and search. The company said it would provide further information by 1 p.m. ET Friday.

The Bluesky status page indicated the app was fully online as of this writing; the app reports a 99.983 percent uptime over the past 90 days.

A DDoS attack is relatively simple and low-effort for cybercriminals. In this type of attack, hackers send a massive number of requests to overwhelm servers. DDoS attacks have been around since the early days of the World Wide Web, and as the Bluesky outage shows, they can still cause problems.

The Bluesky outage began affecting users in the early morning hours, with the service DownDetector recording thousands of user error reports. (Disclosure: DownDetector and Mashable are both owned by the same parent company, Ziff Davis.)

Bluesky saw massive growth after Elon Musk took over Twitter, and again following the second election of President Donald Trump. However, its growth has stalled more recently, and data shows that daily active users on Bluesky have declined.

Mashable reached out to Bluesky with questions about the attack, and we'll update this story if we receive a response.

We're still several months away from Apple showing us the iPhone 18, but we can still bask in leaks until then.

This week, we've got a pair of leaks involving the cameras and colors for the upcoming flagship iPhone.

On the camera side, Korean outlet ETNews (via MacRumors) reports that Apple will debut a new variable-aperture rear camera system on the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max in September. Prior to this year, all iPhones had fixed-aperture cameras, meaning the lens remained completely open during image capture. A variable aperture will allow the lens to open and close gradually depending on the situation, letting in more light in darkness or keeping excess light out in bright settings.

That would give iPhones an even greater level of flexibility in photography, and this report is backed up by prominent Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who said Apple would incorporate a variable aperture in the iPhone 18 all the way back in 2024.

What do the latest iPhone rumors have to say about colors?

Macworld claims to have received some information about Apple's chosen colors for 2026. According to their sources, the headline color this year will be "Dark Cherry," a dark red that will replace the controversial cosmic orange color from the iPhone 17 Pro. Macworld also said that light blue, dark gray, and silver options are also possibilities for the iPhone 18 Pro. A previous leak also suggested Apple would ditch black for the iPhone 18 Pro, which may not go over well if it proves true.

All will be revealed in September, though the iPhone Fold may get most of the attention.

TL;DR: The MacBook Neo is sold out at Apple (shipping dates have slipped into May), but you can still buy right now for Amazon's best-ever price of $589.99.

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If you thought Apple’s MacBook Neo was just a niche product for students, think again. The demand for Apple's latest entry-level laptop has been staggering. Don't believe us? Shipping dates have slipped into May if you order direct from Apple.

That's the bad news. The good news is that whether you want the 256GB base model or the upgraded 512GB version, Amazon has you covered. And better yet, you can order right now for Amazon's best-ever price of $589.99.

So how did we get here? Global RAM shortages have jacked up the prices of Windows laptops, making the sub-$600 MacBook Neo with the A18 Pro chip the most logical purchase on the market. In Mashable's review of the MacBook Neo, Timothy Werth sums it up: "For students, young people, and casual users, there's nothing else like it at this price."

We're not rushing you into any decision here, but if you were already contemplating a purchase, consider this a warning. The popularity of the MacBook Neo is surging, and Amazon's record-low price might not stick around forever.