Sick of ads on Instagram and Facebook? Meta might do away with them — if

For many of us, flip-flops are synonymous with sunny days, whether we’re by the pool or meeting friends at the pub. But an expert has rained on the parade of summer’s most ubiquitous footwear by pointing out the significant flaws in their design. Taking to TikTok, Singapore-based podiatrist Paul Macaulay, explained why he, personally, would never wear the thonged slip-ons. However, he also had unfavourable things to say about a number of alternatives – so don’t ditch your flops for Crocs just yet. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter In the clip, he singled out sandals made by the popular brand Havaiiana for featuring a number of red flags. “They’re very flat and very thin, they don’t offer much foot support,” he explained, adding that in order for a flip-flop to get his particular seal of approval they’d need to have “a bit of a heel cup”. He also criticised flip-flops that don’t have built-in arch support, and pointed out that the standard strap offers “no security to the foot”. “We want to see something with a strap around the heel, which will give more stability to the ankle and hold the foot in place, or even the style that has a strap coming over the front, which holds the foot down,” he said (so, good news for slider-fans). @paulthepodiatrist Macaulay also pointed out that the lack of support offered by classic flip-flops means that many people have to grip hold of the shoe with their toes to keep them on. “If you wear it for prolonged periods of time over many years, [your feet] can start to stiffen and claw up, and then that can be hard to reverse,” he warned. Finally, he warned that because they’re so open, flip-flops can dry out your feet. This can be particularly “high risk” for diabetics, he said, because “dryness can open to cracks, and those cracks can turn to wounds.” Still, he insisted, there’s a time and a place for the sandals – namely, for wearing on a trip to the beach or the pool. “If you're only walking, say like 500 to a thousand steps and you're not going to be massively physically active, then I'm all for it,” he said in a second TikTok. “But then for something like [...] you're going to walk like five miles, I'm not for it.” Macaulay’s also “not for” the following four shoe types, which he insisted he’d “never wear” as a podiatrist: slip-on loafers; stilettos; ballet pumps and strapless shoes. He didn’t explain why he wouldn’t wear them, however, so maybe it’s just a taste thing… @paulthepodiatrist Save yourself some problems and avoid these shoes! Podiatrist has warned you! There are better shoe options out there for you! #fypsg #foryoupage #fashion #shoes #feet #footpain #podiatrist And for anyone wondering what shoes they should wear, especially when the sun’s out, he has you covered there, too. In another TikTok, captioned: “Don’t regret your footwear choices this holiday”, he said “People don't realise that when you go on holiday you actually rack up so many steps, so it's really important this holiday season to get yourself a good pair of shoes.” His first recommendation was a sandal made by the company Keen which is made for “multi-terrain”. “You can wear these in a concrete jungle style city, somewhere like New York or Singapore, you can even wear these in a mountainous area, maybe like Snowdonia National Park or in the hills of Hong Kong,” Macaulay said. “What I like about it is the straps – it keeps your foot nice and tightly secure.” His second endorsement was for adidas’s Adilette adventure sandals, which he noted were cheaper and softer than his two alternatives. And finally, he gave a big thumbs up to Dr. Martens’ popular Voss sandals which he said he particularly liked because of their “thick, durable sole,” and “ideal” straps, coviering the foot, ankle and back of the heel. @paulthepodiatrist You dont want to end up with sore feet this holiday season! Check out my three top recommendations to stop blisters and painful feet this summer! #fypsg #fashion #shoes #sandals #summeroutfit #podiatrist #feet He wrapped up his video by reinforcing his point that: “These three options would make great additions to your holiday wardrobe for this summer.” So, in the end, it looks as though it’s time to trade in your flops for Docs, people. 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.

PewDiePie, a self-proclaimed introvert, turned to video games for comfort as a way to cope with the demands of daily life

Welcome to Money Diaries where we are tackling the ever-present taboo that is money. We’re asking real people how they spend their hard-earned money during a seven-day period — and we’re tracking every last dollar.

When you think of Apple, it's likely that what first springs to mind is a conveyer belt of revolutionary tech rather than a pair of sneakers.

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Omegle, a popular website used to video chat with strangers, is shutting down after almost 15 years. The closure comes amid increasing criticism that the site endangered its users, with reports of child sexual abuse and other crime on the platform. Omegle allowed users to sign up and then be launched into a video chat with another stranger using the site. The two could chat for as long as they wished – until they ended that conversation and embarked on a new one. The app was launched in 2009, and became popular almost straight away. Its founder said that its popularity was a result of “meeting new people being a basic human need”. Quickly, however, it became known for explicit and other criminal content. Leif K-Brooks, the company’s founder, admitted that Omegle had been misused, “including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes”. The site attempted to introduce new features to stop that misuse, such as “monitored chats” that would allow moderators to try and stop criminals using the site. But they did not work, and the site continued to receive criticism for its lack of safety. Now Mr K-Brooks has said that the criticism has become too much, and Omegle will shut down. The intensity of the fight over use of the site had forced him to decide to shut it down, he said, and it will stop working straight away. “As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much. Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s,” wrote Leif K-Brooks, who has run the website since founding it. Omegle saw a huge surge in popularity during the pandemic, as people not only flocked to the site but recorded their interactions and shared them on social media. But that popularity also brought more awareness of the problems on the site, and increased criticism of it. Mr K-Brooks acknowledged that criticism. But he also suggested that at least some of it was in bad faith, and that it was intended to force the site to shut down. “In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. Maybe that has something to do with the pandemic, or with political disagreements. Whatever the reason, people have become faster to attack, and slower to recognize each other’s shared humanity. One aspect of this has been a constant barrage of attacks on communication services, Omegle included, based on the behavior of a malicious subset of users,” he wrote. He said that the site had been shut down on the basis of “fear”. “If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next?”, he wrote, comparing the end of Omegle to “shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there – or perhaps more provocatively, destroying the universe because it contains evil”. The decision to shut down Omegle comes amid increasing concern about regulation of the internet and how best to protect its users. It comes just days after the introduction of the UK’s Online Safety Act, for instance, which aims to hold platforms to account for crimes on their platform, including online grooming.

A rare planet has been discovered hundreds of light years away, and it could prove key to our understanding of planetary formations out there in the universe. There have been more than 5,300 exoplanets discovered, but few match the description of the newly recorded TOI-733b. Found 245 light-years away, TOI-733b is almost twice the size of Earth and orbits a sun slightly smaller than our Sun. While there are many exoplanets, there are a surprisingly small number which sit between one and a half and two times the radius of the Earth, and it's the size that makes it so interesting to scientists. Sign up to our new free Indy100 weekly newsletter The research was conducted by a team of astronomers led by Iskra Georgieva of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. It was accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. The team focused on TOI-733b after data on the planet was collected by NASA's telescope TESS. The density of the planet suggests two things – it’s either totally covered in water, or it’s lost its atmosphere altogether. Clues point to the idea of TOI-733b’s atmosphere slowly depleting. That’s due to the proximity of the planet to its star, which it orbits in the space of just 4.9 days. If the atmosphere is being burned away, it means it could soon be transformed into a rock planet. The other possibility points to the planet having lost its hydrogen and helium, while retaining an atmosphere packed with water vapour. "Answering the question of whether TOI-733b has a secondary atmosphere or is an ocean planet boils down to differentiating between a Neptune-like planet that lost its ∼10 per cent of H/He to leave behind a steam atmosphere of heavier volatiles, and one that formed and remained relatively the same throughout its evolution," the research reads. "While being beyond the scope of this paper, finding an answer to this question will have broad implications on our understanding of exoplanets." The team went on to write: "By all accounts TOI-733 b looks to be an interesting planet and holds the potential of being a small but key piece to solving big puzzles in exoplanet science. "With ever increasing in-depth theoretical analyses and the promise of high-precision follow up by present and upcoming facilities, we seem to be well on the way to finding answers to major questions relating to planet formation and evolution." 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.

European Union member states have given final approval for the bloc’s master plan to expand semiconductor production

All major social media platforms do poorly at protecting LGBTQ+ users from hate speech and harassment — especially those who are transgender, non-binary or gender non-conforming, the advocacy group GLAAD said on Thursday