BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 11, 2023--

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Apollo, a popular client app for Reddit, is shutting down. Reddit had required that Apollo pay an unsustainable amount of money to be able to access the data required to make the app run, according to its developer Christian Selig. In recent weeks, Reddit announced that it was making changes to its API, the technology that allows other apps to communicate with its forum. It said that it had been required to make the move because providing that data was proving too expensive, and that it was currently unfair for Reddit to be paying for busy apps. Shortly after, it announced that it would be pricing access to that API at such a rate that it would cost the developer of Apollo some $2 million per month, and that the new rates would go into effect in 30 days. Mr Selig said that would make running the app impossible. That led to outcry across Reddit, with many forums on the site announcing that they would go dark in protest against the company’s actions. Some of the most popular subreddits on the site joined the boycott, and some indicated they would never come back if the company did not change the terms of access on the pricing. Now, Mr Selig has announced that the situation has become untenable and that the app will shut down at the end of June. “It’s been an amazing run thanks to all of you,” he wrote in a long post on Reddit. In that same post, Mr Selig gave a long explanation of the situation with the site, and how he had come to the decision to shut down the app. He also included recordings of conversations with Reddit, which he said contradicted some of the site’s public statements about how it had behaved. He said that he had considered a host of other options, including increasing the price and changing the way the app works. But many users are already subscribed for a year, he said, and it would not be possible to alter the app enough in the time before the new terms go into effect. Mr Selig also noted that many users had asked whether he would build an alternative to Reddit. “While I’m very flattered, that’s not something I’m interested in doing,” he wrote. And he said that he supported the protests “abundantly”, noting that Reddit is largely run by people who moderate the site for free and so he understood their “anger and frustration”. “While I haven’t personally mobilized anyone to participate in the blackout out of fear of retaliation from Reddit, the last thing I want is for that to feel like I don’t support the folks speaking up. I wholeheartedly do,” he wrote. Apollo was previously one of the most well-regarded apps in the App Store. It was even featured in Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote this week, where it was mentioned by software boss Craig Federghi and included on a list of apps that would work on the company’s upcoming Vision Pro headset. Mr Selig said that was likely a “coincidence” given the amount of preparation that was required for those keynotes. The app should keep working until 30 June, he said, when the new pricing goes into effect and the app will be switched off from Reddit. He said that he would release an explanation and a tool to export data from the app before then. In recent months, Twitter has also made changes to its API that have led to prohibitive costs for access to its data and the closure of a number of well-respected Twitter clients. Mr Selig has suggested that those changes at Twitter could have helped inspire Reddit’s decisions around its own pricing. Read More Millions of Reddit users face a blackout over pricing revolt Mark Zuckerberg reveals what he thinks about Apple’s headset – and it’s not good Can Apple make us love virtual reality? | You Ask The Questions Mark Zuckerberg reveals what he thinks about Apple’s headset – and it’s not good Can Apple make us love virtual reality? | You Ask The Questions Instagram has stopped working properly

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Fugitive cryptocurrency chief Do Kwon, the entrepreneur sought by the US and South Korea in connection with a $40bn crash, was sentenced to four months in prison by a court in Montenegro. The 31-year-old South Korean national and Terraform Labs founder was found guilty of attempting to travel with a forged passport. He was arrested by the Montenegrin police in March as he tried to board a flight to Dubai at Podgorica Airport. Han Chang-joon, the former chief financial officer of Terraform Labs, was convicted of the same crime and handed a four-month sentence. The two were charged with forging official documents and placed in 30-day pre-trial detention. Police said they recovered doctored Costa Rican passports and a separate set of Belgian passports. Kwon and Chang-joon had pleaded not guilty at their first court hearing in May. The crypto boss reportedly told the court last week that he obtained the documents in Singapore through an agency selling citizenships of various countries and believed the passports to be genuine. Time spent in detention is included in the prison terms, and the pair can appeal the verdict, the Basic Court in Podgorica said. “Once we receive the verdict in writing, we will consult with our clients about possible appeal,” defence lawyer Goran Rodic told Bloomberg. The court has up to 30 days to officially notify the defence as well as the prosecutor’s office, the lawyer added. Both South Korea and the US have requested his extradition from Montenegro, while the courts in the country are yet to decide on those requests in separate proceedings. Kwon and five others connected to Terraform Labs are wanted due to allegations of fraud and financial crimes in relation to the implosion of its digital currencies in May 2022. The TerraUSD was designed as a “stablecoin", which are pegged to stable assets like the US dollar to prevent drastic fluctuations in prices. However, around $40bn in market value was erased for the holders of TerraUSD and its floating sister currency, Luna, after the stablecoin plunged far below its $1 peg in May. South Korea asked Interpol in September to circulate a “red notice” for Kwon across the agency’s 195 member nations to find and apprehend him. US regulators in February charged Kwon and his company Terraform Labs with “orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud”. Read More Crackdown on firms marketing cryptoassets to be introduced by City regulator Singapore punishes state fund managers who invested in FTX Police: Crypto firm founder Do Kwon arrested in Montenegro North Korea ‘bitterly criticised’ officials for failed spy satellite launch Families in North Korea ‘starving to death’ due to lack of supplies – report MeToo: Taiwan rocked by wave of sexual harassment allegations sparked by Netflix show

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There’s a “runaway” black hole which has been speeding through the universe and mystifying the scientific community – or so we thought. Now, a possible explanation has been found that could explain the unusual, long star structures which have been observed over recent weeks. Last month, scientists thought they’d discovered something very unusual, with a trail of stars observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Some believed then that they were the result of a black hole creating eye-catching formations. Yale University researchers also posited the theory that the formation after two galaxies merged together millions of years ago. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter However, a new possible explanation from scientists at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) suggests that it is in fact just a flat or thin galaxy. “The motions, the size, and the quantity of stars fits what has been seen in galaxies within the local universe,” said Jorge Sanchez Almeida, an IAC researcher who is the first author of the article, in a statement. “It’s a relief to have found the solution to this mystery, the new proposed scenario is much simpler. In one sense it is also a pity, because the existence of fleeing black holes is expected, and this could have been the first one to be observed.” The team published its findings in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics under the title “Supermassive black hole wake or bulgeless edge-on galaxy?”. They compared the unusual feature to a galaxy IC5249 and found it to be similar. They found that it was surprisingly similar. The stars were moving in similar ways to those found in closer, comparative galaxies, researchers said. “We also looked at the relation between the mass of the assumed galaxy and its maximum velocity of rotation, and discovered that indeed it is a galaxy which behaves like a galaxy,” said Ignacio Trujillo, an IAC researcher who worked on the study. “It is an interesting object, because it is quite a large galaxy at a very large distance from Earth, where the majority of the galaxies are smaller.” 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.

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Dubai’s financial regulator warned that global watchdogs need to step up talks with each other to avoid “bad