Recently, Joe Rogan raged against cancel culture, voicing his support for free speech

Here's some information about each playable character in the upcoming Bluey video game.

SYDNEY Australia said on Wednesday it would spend A$26.2 million ($17 million) to establish "rapid assistance" teams to

Slack has been hit by unusual errors that have seen messages disappear and duplicate. Problems have been reported by a “small percentage” of users, according to the office chat app. Those affected said they were seeing messages duplicate or not send, especially in groups. The company acknowledged the problem and said that it was investigating. “We’re receiving reports that a small percentage of users are experiencing issues with loading and sending messages,” it said in a post to its status page. “We’re actively looking into this, and we’ll report back as more information becomes available.” Tracking website Down Detector confirmed the issues, with a relatively small number of reports from users that the app was not working as expected. It was unclear why the problems were only affecting some users, and what marked out those who were hit by it. It was also unclear whether there was any easy way for those affected to make the app work as normal again. The outage comes just a few days after another major outage at the office chat app. This time around, the problems came at the end of the working day in the UK, and before lunchtime in the US. Read More Slack is down Photoshop unveils ‘extraordinary’ AI that transforms your pictures with a text prompt ChatGPT creator issues stark warning on AI

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

Move over, Spotify Wrapped. You can get all your TikTok stats and data with a

When the Apple Watch first launched back in 2015, there were 10 Watch faces. Now, there are more than 50. The newest among these is the Snoopy Watch face, designed in conjunction with the Charles Schulz Studio. The Independent sat down to talk to Gary Butcher, human interface designer at Apple, Eric Charles from Apple Watch product marketing and Paige Braddock, chief creative officer at Charles M Schulz Creative Associates to discover everything about the new Watch face. This is not the first time Snoopy has been on watches and he’s even appeared on high-end models like the Omega Speedmaster. As Eric Charles explains, “There’s a deep horological legacy of Snoopy appearing on watch faces from his early as the 1950s, and on Apple Watch, we’ve been able to bring Snoopy to life in whole new ways.” There 148 different animations for the Watch, which would run for 12 minutes if you played them one after the other; it’s tempting to try. They were all developed from an intense brainstorming session. Braddock, who was hired back in 1999 by Charles Schulz himself to work as an illustrator at the studio, reveals the creative dynamic: “Both Apple and peanuts have strong identities and a strong desire to connect in an authentic way with fans. “At the Schulz studio, we wanted to be authentic to Snoopy’s DNA and simultaneously explore the Apple Watch technology. Everyone knows that Peanuts is a comic strip that exists in a different decade: there are no smart phones or iPads in the comic strip. “But with mutual respect, it is possible to coexist as a modern tech company and a comic strip with a rich historic legacy. I always feel like a true collaboration is not one thing eclipsing the other, it’s finding a balance and working with contributors’ strengths.” As Braddock points out, there’s something about Snoopy for the Watch that’s a great fit. “If you look at a comic strip like this, it’s basically a four-panel storyboard. Even the aspect ratio from the comic to the watch face is almost the same. We sourced numerous animated sequences directly from Schulz’s original comic strips.” Snoopy’s look has evolved over the decades, from the fifties when he walked on all fours, to the sixties when he discovered he could do it on two legs. The shape of his canine head also changed. The collaborators had to decide whether the animation should be two-dimensional like the comic strip or 3D like the Snoopy Show. This led to a style that looks anything but electronic. Braddock again: “Ultimately, we chose to keep the watch animations as close as possible to the original Schulz drawings. Charles Schulz had a very specific and rare pin nib that he used. It was a nib that you had to dip in the ink bottle each time to fill it with ink and it meant he could create a varied line from thin to thick. “This sort of active drawing gives the character life. It’s obvious when you see these drawings that they’re handmade and not digital, and this is the feel that we wanted to preserve in the Watch animations.” But then Apple’s engineering kicks in. When you look at Snoopy on the Watch face, there’s a level of subtlety that you only notice after a while. Sometimes his activity is based on the weather, sometimes on what you’re doing. For instance, when you go swimming, so does Snoopy. Sometimes he even interacts with the Watch face itself, specifically with the minute hand. Gary Butcher expands on this: “One of the things we were especially excited to do is to have Snoopy and Woodstock interact with the minute hand of the watch. He can lean on it, He can throw things that bounce off of it. He can kick it when he wants to be fed. And he can jump up on it to wave to Woodstock on the other side.” This is one of the things that might mean you find yourself checking the time more than you actually need to. One time, he’ll peep out from behind the minute hand, his body magically hidden. Next, he’ll be skating and bounce off the minute hand because it’s in just the wrong place. Another time, a flying Woodstock will drop a bone for a recumbent Snoopy, which will bounce off the minute hand into his mouth. Then… look, you’re going to have to discover these things for yourself. On your birthday, Snoopy will celebrate. He’ll decorate his dog house for Christmas, or dress up for Halloween. In the creative process, they realised that with a little ingenuity, they could make these animations appear at different times. “To maximise the chances you’ll see those animations,” Butcher says, “we figured out we could simply rotate certain animations. I say simply rotate but under the hood is a really sophisticated scene layout engine being driven by an equally sophisticated decision engine.” Sometimes the rotation only needs to affect certain frames of the animation. If Snoopy is standing on the minute hand, he’s affected only when he’s up top, and his free fall into leaves below is unchanged and he falls naturally downwards, otherwise he’d shoot off sideways. “Each animation is only five seconds long, but by looping the whole animation or even just a few frames at the end, We’re able to keep certain scenes alive for much longer,” Butcher says. There’s more detail yet. Look closely and you’ll see the backgrounds are made up of dots – just the way it used to look in newsprint. Monday to Saturday has a half-tone dot background, but then bursts into colour for Sundays, again, just like it appeared in newspapers. This is called the Sunday Surprise. Eric Charles comments, “What I love about the way we’ve designed this watch face is that you may never see all of them. Because I live in California, I may not see the winter animations. I may never see the icy ones. I hopefully will never see the stormy ones either.” The team wanted to surprise and delight. Charles goes on to explain that they sought to find more and more content, all day long: “Those two words, surprise and delight, were basically the mantra of how we looked at this project. A certain animation can show up at 10.09 but when you raise your wrist again and it is still 10.09, what else can we serve you? What else can we present to you?” The mission to present Snoopy to the world was key to the endeavour, it seems. Paige Braddock says, “I don’t want the generation that uses modern devices to miss out on this really fantastic character. And I think Apple Watch is a bridge for some of those fans to discover – or rediscover – Snoopy.” Read More The Apple Watch has a major issue but Apple is working on a fix Don’t believe your eyes: how tech is changing photography forever Police to trial use of drones as first responders to emergencies Don’t believe your eyes: how tech is changing photography forever Police to trial use of drones as first responders to emergencies SpaceX launches world’s most powerful rocket – and then it disappears

The Twins’ relatable personalities and their ability to connect with their followers make them a force to be reckoned with in the social media world

Saying goodbye to your family and going off to college for the first time is an extremely daunting and intimidating experience — even more so if you’re the first person in your family to do so and are trying to navigate an academic system that wasn’t made with you in mind. For Latine students across the US, Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) might help bridge the cultural gap that emerges between Latine students entering higher education and institutions that have historically excluded non-white students.

Have you ever sat back and actually considered how many streaming platforms we have to

The Wisconsin Senate has passed a bill designed to prevent Milwaukee from going bankrupt

Three quarters of the Irish data watchdog’s GDPR decisions were overruled by European regulators, a report has found. The report indicates that 75% of the Data Protection Commission’s decisions in EU cases over a five-year period were overruled by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB). The EDPB had demanded tougher enforcement action in these cases, the report by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) said, with only one other country in one other case overruled in such a manner. The figures include final decisions from January 2023 that are not yet included in the EDPB register of final decisions, from which the figures are based. If these three cases are not included, the figure is 88% of DPC decisions overruled. The report said that the DPC tends to use its discretion under Irish law to choose “amicable resolution” to conclude 83% of the cross-border complaints it receives, instead of using enforcement measures. The ICCL report claims that Ireland remains “the bottleneck of enforcement” for major cross-border cases in Europe. “When it does eventually do so, other European enforcers then routinely vote by majority to force it to take tougher enforcement action,” it said. As Google, Meta, Apple, TikTok and Microsoft have headquarters in Ireland, the Data Protection Commission is the lead authority investigating data privacy complaints about tech giants in Europe. Some 87% of cross-border GDPR complaints to Ireland’s DPC also involve the same eight companies: Meta, Google, Airbnb, Yahoo!, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, and Tinder. On EU-wide cases, the ICCL report found that since May 2018 – when GDPR laws came into effect – and late 2022, 64% of the 159 enforcement measures were reprimands, stating that enforcement against tech giants in Europe “remains largely paralysed”. The EDPB register of EU-level decisions shows there were 49 compliance orders issued over four and a half year years. The report called on the European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders to “take serious action” to enforce GDPR laws across Europe. Last summer, the Irish Government announced that two additional data protection commissioners would be hired, and that Helen Dixon would be promoted to chairwoman of the DPC – in an attempt to better resource the watchdog in recognition of its growing workload. The DPC has been carrying out a review of its governance structures, staffing arrangements and processes since last summer. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Kate Winslet calls on Government to ‘criminalise harmful content’ Humans could be controlled by robots, AI firm’s founder warns AI pioneer warns UK is failing to protect against ‘existential threat’ of machines