WIXOM, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 12, 2023--

The New York Times found instant success with Wordle. Now it might have a new hit on its hands.

Fall is shaping up to be a fantastic month for gaming (and maybe not so

New ick unlocked: People are paying for blue ticks on Instagram. Avid Instagrammers will have noticed the surge of blue ticks taking over the platform, leaving people confused as to how their friend become an overnight internet sensation. As exciting as that would be, it's sadly not the case. Instead, people are using their hard-earned money for a blue badge. For the blissfully unaware, Instagram followed in the footsteps of Twitter recently by offering a monthly subscription service from £9.99 a month. Let's break this down: Public figures Instagram offer free blue tick verification to public figures including professionals, journalists, influencers, celebrities and brands who meet the platform's account and eligibility requirements. Their accounts must be authentic, unique, complete and notable, meaning they "must represent a well-known, highly searched for person, brand or entity". "We review accounts that are featured in multiple news sources, and we don't consider paid or sponsored media content as sources for review," Instagram said. Once verified, public figures, celebrities and brands that meet certain account and eligibility requirements may not change their username on their account – nor can it be transferred to a different account. On the flip side, there's 'Meta Verified', the new subscription model that allows any Instagram user to pay monthly for a tick. As it stands, Instagram has used the same colour and design for both paying users and notable figures, making it difficult for users to set the two apart. Whether or not they will make the two more identifiable in the future is unclear. Meta Verified / paying subscribers Now, anyone can apply to be verified using their ID and a spare £10 a month. Meta suggests it's to help people have more protection from impersonation and give them access to a "real person" if they encounter any issues. Indy100 reached out to Instagram for comment. 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.

Power grids serving more than 70 million customers warned of possible blackouts Thursday as a blistering heat wave

To turn off jump scares in Warzone's The Haunting, players must disable them from the Battle Pass prompt or avoid maps like Vondead and nighttime Al Mazrah.

Scientists have found a new planet they shouldn’t exist, after it seemed to miraculously survived the violent death of its star. Many planets, including our own, face almost certain doom when their stars reach the end of their lives and engulf them. When our own Sun dies, for instance, it will expand to 100 times and swallow the Earth. But the new study offers hope that at least some of those planets are able to survive. The newly discovered world, a Jupiter-like planet known as Halla, managed to survive the demise of its star Baekdu, in what should have been certain death. Astronomers found the planet and discovered through follow-up observations that Baekdu had previously expanded into a red giant. When it did, it would have inflated up to 1.5 times the distance between it and Halla, engulfing the star, and then shrunk back down to its current size. Despite that dramatic and violent event, Halla has managed to persist, sticking around so that astronomers could see it using telescopes in Hawaii. “Planetary engulfment has catastrophic consequences for either the planet or the star itself - or both. The fact that Halla has managed to persist in the immediate vicinity of a giant star that would have otherwise engulfed it highlights the planet as an extraordinary survivor,” said Marc Hon, the lead author of the study. The findings are published in a new paper, ‘A close-in giant planet escapes engulfment by its star’, in the journal Nature today. Halla was found in 2015, using what scientists call the “radial velocity method”, which monitors how stars move and uses that to understand how they might be tugged around by the planets that orbit them. In the years since, scientists found that the planet must have been engulfed by the star, and conducted follow-up observations to better understand the planet. Those observations confirm that the planet had been in its stable orbit for over a decade, and that it really existed. “Together, these observations confirmed the existence of the planet, leaving us with the compelling question of how the planet actually survived,” said IfA astronomer Daniel Huber, second author of the study. But scientists still do not know how it survived. One possibility is that it started on a larger orbit before moving closer to its star, but astronomers believe that is unlikely. Another is that Baekdu was actually once two stars. They may have merged during their death, sparing Halla from being merged at all, by stopping them getting big enough to engulf it. And a separate possibility is that Halla was actually born out of the collision of the two stars. That might have produced a gas cloud that actually gave birth to Halla, and so it may be the result of the demise of its star rather than a survivor of it. Read More Nasa rover spots bizarre donut shaped rock on Mars Strange alien planet could be trapped in edge of the Solar System SpaceX Starship completes six-engine static test fire at base in Texas

TL;DR: As of June 9, get a refurbished iPad Pro 9.7" for just $269.99 —

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 19, 2023--

By Chibuike Oguh NEW YORK Shares in Viasat plunged by as much as 36% to about a one-year

Palantir Technologies Inc. expects to be profitable every quarter this year and described demand for its new artificial

The new iPhone 15 is widely rumoured to have a mysterious button on its side – and we might finally know what it does. Apple rumours have long suggested that the new iPhone 15 could swap the current mute switch on the side of the phone for a single button. But it was unclear what the button would actually do. The Apple Watch Ultra has a very similar feature, named the action button, which can be programmed for a variety of features. It can be used to open a workout or turn on the torch, for instance. The iPhone 15’s button appears to be designed to do the same, according to the latest leak, but with features that are more aimed at how people use their phone. That is according to Macrumors, which reported that it had found new code in the latest iOS 17 beta that included a list of names that seem to indicate what the button could be used for. The features are: accessibility, shortcuts, silent mode, camera, flashlight, focus, magnifier, translate and voice memos, Macrumors reported. Many of them appear to refer to individual apps that would presumably be opened with a press of the button. The camera and voice memos already have their own apps, and flashlight and magnifier are features that can be opened from other parts of the iPhone already. Accessibility would presumably open shortcuts that are currently available to allow people to adjust the iPhone to their needs. That would most likely allow people to switch on tools such as VoiceOver, which narrates what is happening on the screen, for instance. Silent mode would seem to replicate the mute switch that is currently in the place of the action button. And shortcuts and focus would presumably allow for users to open the quick programmable shortcuts and focus modes that currently allow users to streamline the software experience on the iPhone. Apple is rumoured to be preparing four new iPhones for release in September, though recent reports have suggested that the release of at least some of them could be pushed into October. The company is once again planning two sizes of both the Pro and normal models of the iPhone 15, but only the Pro version is expected to have the new button. Read More iPhone users urged to check their photo library amid fears they could be deleted Rumours are growing about some bad iPhone news Apple ‘secretly working on its own AI chatbot’