We didn’t think it was possible, but Elon Musk’s tenure at Twitter took an even stranger turn this week after he rebranded the social media platform to “X” out of the blue. It turns out Musk has been obsessed with naming things after the letter all his career, but it still came as a big surprise that he decided to change the name of an internationally recognised brand overnight to something that sounds more like a porn site or gentleman’s club. The logo is a pretty generic graphic, which replaced the famous blue Twitter bird after Musk crowdsourced ideas from users last weekend. It’s left people with more questions than answers at this point – one of them surrounds the issue of Microsoft and potential disputes over the letter “X” as a trademark. “X” is pretty common in names of companies and organisations and the likes of Meta and Microsoft reportedly have intellectual property rights around the letter “X”. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter In fact, as Reuters reports, the likelihood is that Twitter – now "X" – could well face legal action over the name change. "There's a 100 per cent chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody," said trademark attorney Josh Gerben. According to Gerben, there are close to 900 active U.S. trademark registrations surrounding the letter “X”. Microsoft does indeed have an X trademark which it’s held since 2003. However, it’s related to communications about its Xbox video game system. Meta Platforms also owns a trademark for an “X”, which is related to software and social media. According to Gerben, the two companies are unlikely to sue over the Twitter name change unless they believe the move encroaches on their brand equity. Douglas Masters, who is a trademark attorney at law firm Loeb & Loeb, said [via Reuters]: "Given the difficulty in protecting a single letter, especially one as popular commercially as 'X', Twitter's protection is likely to be confined to very similar graphics to their X logo. "The logo does not have much distinctive about it, so the protection will be very narrow." Social media user Keith Edwards posted on the topic by uploading a screen grab of Microsoft’s 2003 patent for “X”, writing: “Microsoft owns the trademark for X. This is just too good.” A community note was added to the post which read: Microsoft only holds this trademark for videogame-related services; this wouldn't affect Twitter. “However, Meta holds the ‘X’ trademark for ‘online social networking services... social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming and application development…’” 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.

By Abhirup Roy SAN FRANCISCO California Governor Gavin Newsom late on Friday vetoed a bill to prevent heavy-duty

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

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 24, 2023--

At least a dozen Armenian journalists, NGO workers and officials had their phones hacked with the notorious Pegasus spyware while the country fought with Azerbaijan...

By Medha Singh Nvidia shares rose about 2% on Wednesday on growing expectations that the chip designer will

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 22, 2023--

Sam Altman says government regulation is "critical" to control the risks of artificial intelligence.

Nostalgic internet users have been left divided over whether fitness icon Richard Simmons wore a headband back in his heyday. Sometimes, the way we remember things from our younger days which turn out to be completely different from how they actually were, and people are finding that their memory of Simmons always wearing a headband is totally wrong. Simmons was well-known for his aerobics videos back in the 80s and was often styled in legwarmers, short shorts and vest tops. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter But, debate has erupted online about whether he wore a headband or not, after image searches of the fitness guru consistently show him without one despite people's differing memory. Did Simmons wear a headband? The debate was recently sparked by TikToker Kelly Manno who posted a now-viral video responding to a fan who said: “What until she finds out Richard Simmons never wore a headband.” Initially, Manno suggested the statement was ridiculous before revealing that every picture she found of Simmons showed him without one. She joked: “What do they think they did? Went through the whole internet and scrubbed every photo of Richard Simmons ever wearing a headband?” @kellymanno They’re trying to make #GenX look like we are crazy. And its gonna work!!! #genx #boomer #millennial #mandellaeffect #richardsimmons #headband #conspiracytherory #80skid #90skid On TikTok, one baffled user commented: “He definitely had a headband! The wrist bands and all!” Another said: “HE WORE A HEADBAND!! I’m positive!!!” But, it would appear that Google Images does not return a single image with Simmons himself sporting a headband. On Reddit, someone referred to the phenomenon as a case of the Mandela effect – this describes when a large part of the population people believes that an event happened when it didn’t. They wrote: “I'm 100 per cent sure Richard Simons wore a headband. You cannot find even ONE picture of him wearing one on Google Images. This one is the most powerful Mandela effects I've ever experienced.” 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.

Amy Slaton has long been criticized for using beauty filters in her social media photos

BEIJING (AP) — Winking, grimacing or nodding their heads, robots mimicked the expressions of visitors at a robot expo in Beijing.

TL;DR: Through Sept. 4, this refurbished 2012 Apple MacBook Pro is just $255.97 (reg. $536.99)