Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, slowed down access to rivals and news organisations, according to a new report. The company seemingly added a delay of as long as five seconds when people clicked on links to go elsewhere on the web, according to a Washington Post report. The delay was applied to a host of rival websites, including Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky. It was also used on the websites of news organisations that have been critical of Mr Musk, such as Reuters and the New York Times. Clicking a link on X to one of the affected websites resulted in a delay of about five seconds before the webpage loaded, the Washington Post reported, citing tests it conducted on Tuesday. Reuters also saw a similar delay in tests it ran. By late Tuesday afternoon, X appeared to have eliminated the delay. When contacted for comment, X confirmed the delay was removed but did not elaborate. Billionaire ElonMusk, who bought Twitter in October, has previously lashed out at news organizations and journalists who have reported critically on his companies, which include Tesla and SpaceX. Twitter has previously prevented users from posting links to competing social media platforms. Reuters could not establish the precise time when X began delaying links to some websites. A user on Hacker News, a tech forum, posted about the delay earlier on Tuesday and wrote that X began delaying links to the New York Times on Aug. 4. On that day, Musk criticized the publication’s coverage of South Africa and accused it of supporting calls for genocide. Reuters has no evidence that the two events are related. A spokesperson for the New York Times said it has not received an explanation from X about the link delay. “While we don’t know the rationale behind the application of this time delay, we would be concerned by targeted pressure applied to any news organization for unclear reasons,” the spokesperson said on Tuesday. A Reuters spokesperson said: “We are aware of the report in the Washington Post of a delay in opening links to Reuters stories on X. We are looking into the matter.” Bluesky, an X rival that has Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey on its board, did not reply to a request for comment. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Additional reporting by Reuters Read More Twitter turning Tweetdeck into paid service after slowing down access to rivals The last parts of Twitter are being removed Musk pledges to fund legal bills of X users ‘unfairly treated’ by employers for posts Musk’s Twitter takeover sparks mass exodus of climate experts Snapchat experiences ‘temporary outage’ as My AI chatbot posts own Story WhatsApp rolls out AI tool for creating custom art

The office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has completed an implementation plan that will allow funds to

Elon Musk has replaced Twitter’s bird logo with an “X”. The Tesla and SpaceX founder, who bought the social media platform in October, set the new logo live on Monday 24 July. It is the latest move in a series of major alterations to Twitter since Musk’s takeover. “Soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds”, he tweeted, 24 hours before the change went live. “Larry the Bird” had been Twitter’s emblem since its creation in 2006. The “X” has long been an obsession of Musk’s and is his name for an “everything app” that he has pledged to launch at some point in the future. Read More ‘What a 24 hours it’s been’: Shaka Hislop gives health update after on-air collapse Twitter blue bird sign taken down from San Francisco HQ Elon Musk provides first glimpse of new Twitter logo in X rebrand

Although “Careless Whisper” just might be George Michael's most enduring hit, the singer (who also wrote it) wasn’t a huge fan of the song.

Chinese tech giant Baidu is officially taking on GPT-4.

A study suggests that convincing yourself that food has a higher calorie content may suppress your appetite and help you lose weight. Alia Crum and her colleagues at Yale University gave 46 healthy volunteers the same 380-calories milkshake. However, some participants were told it was a low-calorie choice, whilst others were told it was high in calories. The 'low-calorie' bottle of the shake claimed it to have zero percent fat, zero added sugar and be only 140 calories. Whilst the 'high-calorie' bottle was labelled as 'indulgent' and accounted to 620 calories. The team measured levels or ghrelin before and after volunteers drank the shake. Ghrelin is a hormone released by the stomach when we are hungry. "It also slows metabolism," Crum said, "just incase you might not find that food." Once you have a big meal after you ghrelin rises, your level proceed to drop again, telling your brain that you've had enough to eat and it's time to start metabolising, in order to burn the calories ingested. Meaning that when we have something like a small salad, ghrelin levels don't drop as much, and metabolism isn't triggered in the same way. For a while, scientists believed that ghrelin levels change in response to the nutrients in your stomach. But Crum's study pushed back on that belief. If participants believed they were drinking the high-calorie shake, the body responded as though the participants had consumed more than they actually had. "The ghrelin levels dropped about three times more when people were consuming the indulgent shake (or though they were consuming the indulgent shake)," Crum said. However, it doesn't mean the nutrients doesn't matter, but Crum suggests that the metabolic model may need to be rethought. "Our beliefs matter in virtually every domain, in everything we do," Crum says. "How much is a mystery, but I don't we've given enough credit to the role of our beliefs in determining our physiology, our reality." Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter 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. How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

When Tesla Inc. hands over the first of its Cybertruck electric pickups to customers on Nov. 30, it

Elon Musk’s plan to build an “everything app” is underway. After rebranding Twitter to X, the tech billionaire encouraged users to rethink the “whole concept” of what the platform is. Before he even purchased Twitter in October 2022, Mr Musk said that buying the site was an “accelerant” to creating a super app akin to China’s WeChat, India’s PayTM and Indonesia’s GoJek. These apps offer users the ability to not just make posts, but also send and receive payments, watch and listen to content, and even access services like booking taxis or ordering food deliveries. Earlier this month, Mr Musk reportedly secured money-transmitting licenses in three US states, suggesting it is already preparing to become a payments business. Linda Yaccarino, who took over as the chief executive of Twitter last month, gave more details about what the new X app will become, tweeting on Sunday that the rebranding was part of the company’s goal to “transform the global town square” beyond a social network. “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centred in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine,” she tweeted. “For years, fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger, to innovate faster, and to fulfil our great potential. X will do that and more. We’ve already started to see X take shape over the past 8 months through our rapid feature launches, but we’re just getting started.” X did not respond to a request for further information from The Independent about when such changes might take place. Shortly before his takeover of Twitter was complete, Mr Musk tweeted: “Twitter probably accelerates X by three to five years, but I could be wrong.” Mr Musk has had access to the X.com domain since 2000, during which time he was working on PayPal. Before rebranding Twitter, the website simply showed the letter ‘X’, but now redirects to Twitter.com. Earlier this year, Twitter changed its business name to X Corp to align with Mr Musk’s “everything app” vision, but social media experts have questioned whether such a concept could ever work outside of Asia. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” industry commentator Matt Navarra said at the time of Mr Musk’s takeover. “Super apps, as they are known in the industry, are not a new thing. They’ve been hugely successful in Asia, but have not really caught on elsewhere. Could Twitter form part of a super app that lets you buy goods, chat to friends, get news updates, book a taxi etc.? Sure. Can Elon Musk make it work? Possibly. Will Elon actually do it? Who knows. He seems to have commitment issues.” Others have raised concerns about whether ditching the Twitter brand and associated bird logo could further damage the platform’s reputation, which has been under heavy scrutiny since Mr Musk’s takeover last year. “By changing Twitter’s app name, Elon Musk will have single handedly wiped out over fifteen years of a brand name that has secured its place in our cultural lexicon,” Mike Proulx, a research director at advisory firm Forrester, told The Independent. “This is an extremely risky move because with ‘X,’ Musk is essentially starting over while its competition is afoot.” Read More Twitter rebrands to X as part of Elon Musk’s plan to create an ‘everything app’ Twitter no longer exists as a company Twitter rebrands to X as part of Elon Musk’s plan to create an ‘everything app’ DMs may come to Threads soon as app’s user base grows to one-fifth of Twitter’s Twitter in negative cash flow due to 50% drop in advertising revenue, says Elon Musk

WASHINGTON The U.S. Energy Department on Thursday said it intends to loan a joint venture of Ford Motor

There's nothing quite like playing your PlayStation 5 on a big TV from the couch.

Gifting season is right around the corner, but many people also forget that it’s also

A group of teenage hackers managed to breach some of the world's biggest tech firms last year by exploiting systemic security weaknesses in US telecom carriers and the business supply chain, a US government review of the incidents has found, in what is a cautionary tale for America's critical infrastructure.