List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

Astronomers have just found out what planet in the universe is most dazzling and it is probably one you have never heard of. Looking at how much planet's clouds reflect sunlight back into space, astronomers have found a planet called exoplanet LTT9779b which reflects 80 per cent of the starlight it receives, making it the shiniest known planet in the universe. LTT9779b is slightly heavier and slightly larger than Neptune, and it is reflective because of the metallic glassy clouds that make up its atmosphere. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “Imagine a burning world, close to its star, with heavy clouds of metals floating aloft, raining down titanium droplets,” co-author James Jenkins, an astronomer at Diego Portales University and CATA (Santiago, Chile), said in a statement. Vivien Parmentier, a researcher at the Observatory of Côte d’Azur (France) and co-author of the study added: "LTT9779 b can form metallic clouds despite being so hot because the atmosphere is oversaturated with silicate and metal vapours.” So there you have it. Shame it doesn't have a very catchy name. 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.

The Battle of the Boyne has arrived – a moment greeted with incredible significance by some people in the UK, and confusion by others. The event is a public holiday in Northern Ireland and marks one of the most controversial and important parts of British history. And it is marked by a message in people's iPhone calendar, which has the tendency to confuse some people who see it. For people in Northern Ireland, that fact is obvious: they have the day off, and the controversial celebrations are hard to miss. But for the rest of the UK, the only reminder might be a cryptic note inside their iPhone calendar. What is the Battle of the Boyne? Historically, the name refers to the 1690 event where the Catholic King James II's troops were defeated by the Protestant William III. Nowadays, it is an annual bank holiday that commemorates the same battle. The original battle was of incredible significance not only to the history of Ireland but across Europe. It brought about the conclusion of a fight for the throne in England and is a key part of the ascendency of Protestants in Ireland. Now each year, the holiday takes place on 12 July, an event known as "The Twelfth". It is commemorated by the Protestant community, and it is often marked by confrontations in Northern Ireland. Why is it in my iPhone? The iPhone keeps a full log off all the public or bank holidays in the UK, or wherever else your phone happens to be. That can be very useful because Except sometimes it will throw up strange examples, such as the Battle of the Boyne. The reminder might be very useful for people in Northern Ireland – but for the rest of the UK, where people don't have the day off, it probably mostly useless. That's because the calendar counts every holiday in the UK, even if it does not apply to you. The different parts of the UK have different holidays, and each of them show up in the calendar. It doesn't just include the Battle of the Boyne. The calendar will also show all of the Scottish bank holidays – such as the extra day off at New Year, and the different summer bank holiday – as well as St Patrick's Day, for which people in Northern Ireland are given a holiday too. How do I get rid of it? In short, you can't. The calendar isn't really yours, but is created by Apple, meaning that you can't change it either. You can get rid of the calendar entirely – that is done by clicking the "Calendars" button at the bottom of the screen and deleting or hiding the UK bank holidays one – but that will mean you'll also lose the entire calendar along with it. You could of course recreate the functionality by adding the dates yourself, but that is difficult since some bank holidays tend to move around depending on how days line up. You can add and subscribe to custom calendars on your iPhone, using links that can be found on the internet. The trouble is that all of the examples for bank holidays – such as the one provided by the UK government – also include the Battle of the Boyne. You can make the event slightly less irritating, by turning off any alarms that are associated with it. That is done by clicking on the event on your iPhone and pressing the "alert" button, where you can choose "none". But either the event stays, or you lose all the other bank holidays. Read More New iPhone software stops hackers getting into handsets through USB Why the Battle of the Boyne has made its way into your iPhone Twitter gets strange endorsement from Taliban over rival Threads Instagram Threads hits 100 million users

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Twitter has received an unlikely endorsement from a Taliban leader amid woes as the number of users of the Elon Musk-owned platform is “tanking” following the release of Meta’s rival app Threads. Taliban leader Anas Haqqani tweeted his approval of Twitter over other social media platforms, highlighting what he thought were some advantages of the Musk-owned site. “Twitter has two important advantages over other social media platforms,” Mr Haqqani tweeted. “The first privilege is the freedom of speech. The second privilege is the public nature & credibility of Twitter. Twitter doesn’t have an intolerant policy like Meta. Other platforms cannot replace it,” he said. Twitter has been facing major hurdles since the Tesla and SpaceX chief took over the company last year with further hardship after Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg launched the Threads app. It appears that the number of Twitter users may also be “tanking” following the release of Threads, according to Cloudflare’s chief executive Matthew Prince. Mr Prince showed a graph last week highlighting an apparent decline in Twitter’s popularity since Mr Musk’s takeover of the company, along with a steep drop after the launch of Threads. A record number of users have flocked to Mr Zuckerberg’s Twitter-clone with the app gaining over 100 million sign ups within days of its launch. “That’s mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet. Can’t believe it’s only been five days!” the Meta boss said. While Twitter appears to have fallen out of favour with many users, The Taliban, however, still seems to prefer it over Threads. After “free-speech absolutist” Mr Musk took over Twitter and fired over three-fourths of the company’s workforce, including entire teams behind content moderation, social media experts expressed dissatisfaction over the rise of hate speech on the platform and advertisers as well as regular users have exited the site. But according to Mr Haqqani, a Taliban thought-leader, the biggest draw of Twitter – where the militant group continues to post updates – is the site’s flexible moderation policy. This is in contrast to Meta’s Facebook which views the Taliban as a terrorist organisation and disallows it from posting on the platform. Read More Who are the key members of the Taliban’s new all-male government? It’s wishful thinking to believe in a more moderate Taliban Taliban rename women’s ministry as office for group’s moral police $44 billion and eight months later. It’s finally all over for Elon Musk Instagram Threads hits 100 million users, becoming easily the fastest growing app ever Twitter traffic ‘tanking’ after record-breaking Threads launch

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The number of Twitter users is “tanking” following the release of rival app Threads, according to the head of an internet services company. Cloudflare chief executive Matthew Prince shared a graph showing an apparent decline in Twitter’s popularity following Elon Musk’s takeover of the social network late last year, with a steep drop appearing at the start of July when tech rival Mark Zuckerberg launched his text-based app. Separate figures from data intelligence platform Similarweb showed that traffic to Twitter was down 5 per cent in the first two full days that Threads was available, compared with the previous week, while user retention has also declined. In a report on the trend, Similarweb noted that the drop in user retention is “a bad sign for app user loyalty” for Twitter. The metric only accounts for people visiting Twitter’s website and not those using the app, with other measures suggesting the number of daily active users steadily increased in the nine months following Mr Musk’s takeover. Twitter does not publish up-to-date user data and did not respond to a request from The Independent for the latest figures. The launch of Threads last Thursday saw a record number of users flock to the app in its first few days, with Mr Zuckerberg revealing that the app had reached 100 million sign ups on Monday. “That’s mostly organic demand and we haven’t even turned on many promotions yet,” the Meta boss posted on Threads. “Can’t believe it’s only been five days!” Recent estimates published by Statista put the number of monthly active Twitter users at around 436 million. The arrival of Threads comes at a difficult time for Twitter, with Mr Musk recently announcing a limit to the number of tweets users can view after issues with data harvesting on the platform. Twitter has threatened to sue Threads’ parent company Meta, claiming former Twitter staff were hired to create a “copycat” platform. “Twitter intends to strictly enforce its intellectual property rights, and demands that Meta take immediate steps to stop using any Twitter trade secrets or other highly confidential information,” Mr Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro wrote in a letter to Mr Zuckerberg, as reported by Semafor. “Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta.” The Independent has reached out to Mr Spiro for further information about any potential legal action. Read More Musk, Zuckerberg and the bitter battle for the future of social media Account tracking Elon Musk’s jet is now on Threads after Twitter suspended it Elon Musk says ‘Zuck is cuck’ as Threads inches closer to 100m users Instagram’s boss has said it will fix some glaring issues with Threads

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Commission announced a new data transfer pact with the United States on