Looking to finally get your company's Facebook Page or Instagram business account verified? Well, the

The European Union is planning to unveil measures to help its ailing wind sector next month, after supply-chain

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(Reuters) -The European Union is examining alleged anticompetitive abuses in chips used for artificial intelligence, a market which Nvidia dominates,

Wesleyan University is joining a select group of colleges that is ending preferences in admissions that favor children

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Footage has claimed to show an odd figure knocking about on the surface of the Moon. In a video first shared in 2014, which has now accrued almost 7 million views, one YouTube user claimed there was a shadow caused by an "odd figure" on the surface, The video was made using Google Moon, a collection of millions of NASA images made public. Odd figure on the Moon? www.youtube.com The "figure" looks like a shadow created by any number of geological formations on the moon's surface. It certainly looks like a person, but the reason why people are seeing a figure is because of pareidolia, our tendency to see faces or other recognisable shapes in random formations. We have this trait as evolution has made us conscious of potential threats from dangerous animals. Either this, or the power of suggestion really is that powerful. So it probably isn't an alien, or some space tourist that has got up there without us knowing. But still, it is pretty freaky. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

If there’s one thing the Covid pandemic taught us, it’s that viruses shouldn’t be underestimated. People are, therefore, taking note after scientists discovered a whole new range of giant virus-like particles (VLP) that have taken on “previously unimaginable shapes and forms.” The microscopic agents, resembling everything from stars to monsters, were found in just a few handfuls of forest soil. The sample was collected from Harvard Forest, near Boston in the US back in 2019, and flown over to Germany’s Max Planck Institute. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter There, its contents were carefully examined and, at the end of last month, the findings were finally released. The team of researchers behind the investigation said that their discoveries “question our current understanding of the virosphere” and “imply that giant viruses employ a much wider array of [...] structures and mechanisms to interact with their host cells than is currently known.” In other words, the results prove how little we actually know about the universe of viruses that exist here on Earth. They also noted that the origins and functions of the different viral structures they found remain unknown – so there’s still plenty of mystery left to solve. The team at the Max Planck Institute, led by Dr Matthias Fischer, were amazed to find “an astounding diversity of virus-like particles (VLP)," in such a small sample. "Amazingly, we found that a few hundred grams of forest soil contained a greater diversity [of the structures] than that of all hitherto isolated giant viruses combined," they wrote. These included one type that resembled a supernova: Another that the teamed named the “haircut”: Another called the “turtle” morphotype: Another christened the “Christmas star”: And another called the “Gorgon” – named after the sisters with snakes for hair from Greek mythology: To clarify, VLP are molecules that closely resemble viruses, but they differ from them in one crucial way: they are non-infectious. This is because they contain no viral genetic material. Still, as virus-host systems, they are key to better understanding their potentially noxious counterparts. “[Our] findings imply that giant viruses employ a much wider array of [...] structures and mechanisms to interact with their host cells than is currently known,” the authors wrote. They ended their paper: “This fascinating window into the complex world of soil viruses leaves little doubt that the high genetic diversity of giant viruses is matched by diverse and previously unimaginable particle structures, whose origins and functions remain to be studied.” Clearly, there’s still plenty of work to be done. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Netflix is a popular streaming platform with over 250 million subscribers, but there's one feature that the majority of users do not use at all. The streaming services are not only home to thousands of TV series and films, but there are also plenty of video games to play. Gaming studios such as Night School Studios, which developed the Oxenfree games were acquired by the company. Despite the development of Oxenfree 2 exclusively for Netflix, the statistics show that most subscribers are not aware of or just don't use this feature that comes free with their subscription. There are up to 70 games on the app which are on the Netflix app under the 'Mobile Games' section, where there are games based on the most popular shows such as Squid Game, Stranger Things, The Queen's Gambit, Black Mirror, and reality shows such as Love Is Blind and Too Hot To Handle. Other award-winning titles also include Immortality, Kentucky Route Zero and Before Your Eye. Only 2.2 million Netflix subscribers (0.88 per cent approximately) play one of the streamer’s games daily, as per a CNBC report. But it appears there is a struggle to get subscribers to return to the video games after trying them, since more than 70 million subscribers at some time have downloaded a game. Perhaps, this issue could be due to games taking up more download space, and commitment for users. Although stats show subscribers are not playing video games, the streaming giant has been splashing the cash in this area since in the last year, the quantity of games available has tripled. But Co-CEO Greg Peters, says this is all part of the "crawl, walk, run" strategy that has successfully worked in the past. “This trajectory is not dissimilar from what we’ve seen before,” Peters said on the company’s prerecorded earnings call on Wednesday, CNBC reported. “When we’ve launched a new region, or when we launched new genres, like unscripted” we had to “crawl, walk, run, but we see a tremendous amount of opportunity to build a long-term centre value of entertainment.” How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Yelp is suing Texas to ensure it can continue to tell users that crisis pregnancy centers listed on its site do not provide abortions or abortion referrals, opening a new front in the fight between states and the tech industry over abortion restrictions.

The top lobbying group for US electric utilities is taking aim at the Biden administration’s plan for stifling

Online privacy is in short supply, but that doesn't make it any less important. Your