The official account for Elon Musk’s X app has switched from @Twiter to @X, after the previous owner of the account moved to a new one. The single-letter username had been registered to Gene X. Hwang, the co-founder of photo firm Orange Photography, for more than 16 years before Twitter’s sudden rebranding on Monday brought the account under scrutiny. On Tuesday, Mr Hwang said that neither Mr Musk nor X had reached out to him, however by Wednesday the account was under the control of the tech billionaire’s company. “Alls well that ends well,” Mr Hwang posted from a new account, @x12345678998765. It is unclear how much Mr Musk or X paid for the one-letter account, if anything at all. The Independent has reached out to both X and Mr Hwang for further information. Mr Musk has reportedly taken over other accounts without permission since he took over the platform in October 2022. According to Platformer editor Zoe Schiffer, the world’s richest person took over the username @e shortly after acquiring the company for $44 billion, despite the original owner of the account being unwilling to part with it. The @e account remains inactive, featuring the name ‘John Utah’ – the same as the protagonist of the 1991 film Point Break – and following just three accounts: Elon Musk, LAist and Nasa. X has also changed its other official accounts to ditch the Twitter branding, renaming its subscription service to @XBlue, and @TwitterSupport to @Support. The company’s Twitter signage was also removed from its San Francisco headquarters on Monday. The website domain X.com also now redirects to Twitter.com, while all of the site’s blue bird logos have been replaced with a crowd-sourced X logo. The hasty switch from one brand to another may result in legal difficulties for Mr Musk, according to trademark lawyers, after it was revealed that the billionaire does not own the intellectual property rights for the letter X when it relates to social networking. Tech rivals Meta and Microsoft both own trademarks for ‘X’ in different domains, with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg currently controlling the federal trademark for a blue-and-white letter ‘X’ for “social networking services”. “There’s a 100 per cent chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody,” one US-based IP lawyer said on Tuesday. Read More What is Elon Musk’s ‘everything app’ X? What is Elon Musk’s ‘everything app’ X? Elon Musk red-faced as police halt Twitter sign removal leaving firm called ‘ER’ Twitter to X: Why Elon Musk rebranded the social networking platform

Nasa has “inadvertently” lost contact with Voyager 2, its pioneering spacecraft. The space agency said that it had sent a series of planned commands to the probe on 21 July. But those moves left Voyager 2 pointing in the wrong direction: its antenna is now pointing two degrees away from Earth, and so it has lost contact with its engineers. It cannot either receive commands or send back data, Nasa said. Ordinarily, it would do so by establishing contact with the Deep Space Network, or DSN, which is a set of ground-based antennas that allow for communications with distant spacecraft. But the data being sent by Voyager 2 is not reaching that network. Voyager 2 is now floating on its own, almost 20 billion kilometres from Earth. Nasa still hopes to be able to re-establish contact with the probe, however. It is programmed to automatically reset its orientation a number of times each year, to push its antenna back to Earth. The next reset is expected to happen on 15 October, Nasa said. Until then, the space agency expects the probe to “remain on its planned trajectory during the quiet period”, it said. As its name suggests, Voyager 2 was part of a pair, both of which were launched in 1977. Voyager 1 is floating even further from Earth – at 24 billion kilometres – and Nasa says it is continuing to operate as normal. The Voyager programme brought with it a host of records: Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune, and together they are the only spacecraft made by humans to ever have entered interstellar space. Even almost 50 years since they were launched, the pair of Voyager spacecraft have continued to send back useful and important information to Nasa for examination by scientists on Earth. They have contributed to a host of new findings about the very distant edges of our solar system. Read More How to take the perfect picture of tonight's supermoon Elon Musk installs huge, glowing letter on top of his office A game where you go to sleep in real life is one of the most popular in the world

Every PC needs antivirus protection, but you get significantly more protection from a full-on security

NORTH VENICE, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 6, 2023--

Scientists have found material from outside of our solar system for the first ever time, according to a controversial Harvard Professor. The “spheres” were found in the Pacific Ocean in June. But early analysis has now indicated that the material came from outside of our solar system, carried by an interstellar object that crashed into the Earth in 2014, according to Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard University. The material could even be of “extraterrestrial technological origin” because of some unusual characteristics of the material, he said. Professor Loeb has previously claimed that the asteroid may have been artificial, such as an alien spacecraft. “This is a historic discovery because it represents the first time that scientists analyze materials from a large object that arrived to Earth from outside the solar system,” Professor Loeb wrote in his announcement. Professor Loeb has made a number of claims about potential extraterrestrial life and visitors from other solar systems. While has made a number of contributions to astrophysics, he is perhaps best known for his suggestions that Oumuamua, the first interstellar object to visit our solar system, could have been an “alien probe”. His regular and often unusual claims have led to some censure from fellow scientists, who say that he is given to sensationalism and is damaging the usual process of discovery. His pronouncements can be attention-grabbing and undermine the usual work of science to check extraordinary claims with extraordinary evidence, they have said. “People are sick of hearing about Avi Loeb’s wild claims,” Steve Desch, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University, told The New York Times in July, when Professor Loeb revealed details of his search. “It’s polluting good science — conflating the good science we do with this ridiculous sensationalism and sucking all the oxygen out of the room.” Professor Loeb made the most recent claims on Medium, where he has been documenting his trip to the Pacific Ocean to collect materials. In recent years he has been taken with a fireball that fell to Earth in 2014 – and has been looking to collect any fragments from it. He has claimed that details about the fireball indicate that it had come from outside of our solar system. Those claims have proven controversial – though they have been accepted for publication in the prestigious Astrophysical Journal, after initially being rejected – because scientists have argued there is not significant enough proof to indicate it really was an interstellar visitor. Nonetheless, in recent months Professor Loeb and his team have been scouring the Pacific Ocean for any fragments from that object, and in June they announced that they had successfully gathered some examples. Those samples have since undergone testing by scientists. Now Professor Loeb says that analysis shows that the materials are “from a meter-size object that originated from outside the solar system”. A number of details about the material indicated that it was of interstellar origin, he said. He pointed particularly to the amount of beryllium, lanthanum and uranium (or BeLaU) in the objects. That set them apart from other samples not found in the path of the object – and also from objects that would normally be expected to have been formed on the Earth, the Moon or Mars, he said. Professor Loeb said he he was confident that more objects would be found like “IM1”, the name he has given to that object he claimed to be an interstellar visitor. He suggested that there could be “a few million such objects reside within the orbit of the Earth around the Sun at any given time” and that “some of them may represent technological space trash from other civilizations”. He also criticised those many scientists who have expressed scepticism about his claims, joking that he was “running away from colleagues who have strong opinions without seeking evidence, and I am running towards a higher intelligence in interstellar space” and saying that he wishes his critics “happiness and prosperity”. Read More We just received the first ever pictures taken near the Moon’s uncharted south pole Rare blue supermoon brightens the night sky this week India set to launch spacecraft to Sun after successful moon landing Rare blue supermoon brightens the night sky this week India set to launch spacecraft to Sun after successful moon landing Japan forced to suspend launch of historic first Moon lander

A YouTuber stunned the internet after discovering a massive deep hole in a New York City sidewalk. Internet personality Casey Neistat shared his shocking discovery in a video that has gone viral across social media. Text overlaying the video read: “Gotta watch out on New York City sidewalks”. In the clip, Neistat was filming on a New York City street when the camera of his phone panned to reveal a corner of a paving slab that was crumbling and appeared to be sagging downwards. Neistat pressed his foot into the crumbling part of the slab which dramatically fell away leaving a fairly sizeable and dangerous-looking hole. He put his arm holding the phone down the hole, with the camera revealing just how deep it went into the ground. Various rusted pipe work could be seen occupying the space. The 20-second video has been viewed almost 26 million times on TikTok and has also been shared across other social media platforms, sparking quite a reaction. @caseyneistat ⚠️ Other TikTokers took to the comments, where they joked that the hole would probably soon be rented out as an apartment. “That’s someone’s studio apartment. $2,300 a month plus utilities,” someone joked in the comments section. Another said: “Bro found Old York.” One concerned viewer wrote: “Casey, I hope you called someone.” “Bro out here wasting injury lawsuits,” someone else quipped. Someone else suggested: “Mans found the entrance to Super Mario World.” Along the same lines, another person asked: “Are the ninja turtles in there?” 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.

X has suspended an account that posted numerous anti-gay and antisemitic posts and was used by the man accused of killing store owner Lauri Carleton over her display of a Pride Flag.

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 20, 2023--

The UK made last-minute amendments toughening up its sweeping, long-awaited Online Safety Bill following scrutiny in Parliament’s upper

The U.S. Department of Education has opened an investigation into Harvard University’s policies on legacy admissions, which give an edge to applicants with family ties to alumni

TROY, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 6, 2023--

Don't even think of introducing Claes Bang at an awards show until you read this.