Google’s decision to delete millions of inactive Gmail accounts could erase millions of photos and other irretrievable memories, users have warned. The purge, which comes into effect next month and will hit any account that has not been used for more than two years, could impact parents who have set up email addresses for young children in order to share and mark milestones with them. It could also inadvertently affect people who continue to manage the online accounts of deceased relatives. Googleannounced the policy in a blog post earlier this year, claiming that the move aims to protect active users from security threats like phishing scams and account hijacking. The mass closure will also free up significant amounts of server space, which will also save the US tech giant money and resources. Google warned that the new policy applied to personal Google accounts, which includes content within Google Photos and Google Workspace tools like Docs, Drive, Gmail, Meet and Calendar. Nicholas Worley, founder and chief executive of digital archiving platform Inalife, urged people to take action immediately in order to risk losing access to the accounts. “If you have a Google account set up for your kids and have been emailing them, or if you manage the account of a deceased loved one... Login, save or backup any important memories and stories,” he wrote on LinkedIn. Mr Worley told The Independent that he began recording memories when he learnt he was having his first child in 2019. “I have friends and now Inalife users who had set up emails for their kids and hadn’t known about the deletion issue before being told,” he said. The Independent has reached out to Google for further information about whether any impacted accounts will be retrievable once the purge has taken place, and the exact number of accounts potentially impacted. In its May blog post, Google’s vice president of product management Ruth Kricheli said that users would be able to keep their account active by reading or sending an email, using Google Drive, watching a YouTube video while logged in, downloading an app on the Google Play Store, or using Google Search. “[The] update helps us continue our advancements in account security, and helps reinforce our commitment to keep your private information private,” she wrote. “This update aligns our policy with industry standards around retention and account deletion and also limits the amount of time Google retains your unused personal information.” Google has already begun sending notifications to both the main email addresses and recovery emails of any accounts at risk of deletion. Read More Google is about to ditch passwords forever Google issues three-week warning to Gmail account holders One of the world’s most hyped tech products just launched – and made a big mistake ‘Is AI dangerous?’ UK’s most Googled questions about artificial intelligence

Coinbase Global Inc. is offering to buy back some of its outstanding junk bonds as the world’s largest

By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON A 2018 privacy lawsuit brought by Washington, D.C., against Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc

Sony is set to launch a sleeker version of the PlayStation 5 console.

SHANGHAI/BEIJING BYD Co Ltd may be China's biggest electric vehicle maker by a country mile but it knows

Meta will launch a paid-for, subscription-based version of Facebook and Instagram. The company will allow people to pay up to €13 to have no ads appear on those apps. The change has been made to comply with European Union regulations, it said. As such, it will only be available to people in the EU, the European Economic Area and Switzerland. The monthly subscription plans for users in the EU, European Economic Area and Switzerland, will cost 9.99 euros ($10.58) for web users, while iOS and Android users will have to shell out 12.99 euros a month. The difference is to account for the fees taken by Apple and Google for payments on its platforms, Meta said – a move that follows a similar price difference for Twitter’s premium offering. The EU regulations threaten to curb Meta’s ability to personalize ads for users without their consent and hurt its major revenue source. Users across the world will continue to be able to use the site for free, and will see no change to their experience as a result, Meta said. But offering the paid-for subscription version allows Meta to comply with “the requirements of European regulators”, the company said, after a recent ruling. Having the option of paying for a version of Facebook and Instagram with no ads means that people will have more clearly consented to having their data used for marketing, Meta suggested it in its announcement. That in turn means it will better comply with European regulations, it said. The world’s most popular social media network has been under antitrust pressure in the EU. In July, it lost its fight against a German data curb order as Europe’s top court backed the German antitrust watchdog’s power to also investigate privacy breaches. Offering a choice between a free, ad-supported plan and an ad-free paid subscription might lead to users opting for the former, helping Meta to comply with the regulations without affecting its ad business. Meta was fined 390 million euros earlier this year by Ireland’s Data Privacy Commissioner, and was told it cannot use the so-called “contract” as a legal basis to send users ads based on their online activity. The company later said it intended to ask users in the EU for their consent before allowing businesses to target ads in order to address evolving regulatory requirements in the region. Additional reporting by agencies Read More Threads is not dying, Mark Zuckerberg insists Letitia James and 32 other attorneys general sue Meta for ‘harming youth’ People’s Instagram posts are showing where they are not expected

For most teenagers Minecraft remains just a hobby, but one Ukrainian schoolboy’s love for the game has meant he can now afford to buy his homeless mother a house. Lomond School pupil Maksym Gavrylenko has made a “substantial” sum after selling the server he ran from his bedroom, which allows gamers from all over the world to connect to and play together on, with friends. The 17-year-old boarding school pupil said: “I am very proud that I was able to turn my passion into a profitable business and I plan on treating my mother. “As a result of the war, she was forced to flee her home, leaving her homeless, so to buy her a property will make all the hours spent on this project worthwhile.” She is currently staying with friends in Portugal, but intends to settle close to her son. Other family members of Maksym’s remain in his war-torn homeland. His grandparents would not leave Kyiv, having lived there their whole lives, and his sister stayed in the country as her partner had to sign up to defend Ukraine. Making enough money from selling the gaming company he set up to buy his mother a house was something he never expected, the teenager said, with he and his friends embarking upon the project for fun. “We never imagined it would develop into a viable business opportunity, but with guidance from my brother who works in tech, and the school, I was encouraged to explore the possibilities to turn it into something bigger,” Maksym said. His success comes after he moved from Ukraine to Scotland in 2021 and bought a little-used Minecraft server for £1,000, and in the years that followed he and two friends made changes which resulted in a huge rise in players. Along with this, advertisers were attracted to the server, and its value increased. And because of the influx, Lomond School said a lucrative offer was made by a tech firm, which was accepted in May this year. I have no doubt that this won’t be the last we hear about one of Maksym’s business ventures Johanna Urquhart, Lomond School principal Now with one business success under his belt, Maksym wants to expand on his knowledge by going to university and has applied to a mixture of UK and overseas universities. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I’ve always had an interest in business having worked as a part-time translator and a writer in Ukraine,” said the student, who studies at the school in Helensburgh, in Argyll and Bute. “As well as having a passion for gaming, I really enjoyed the entrepreneurial side of our project, and I have applied to universities around the world to study business management.” His preferred choice for university is south of the border in England. Johanna Urquhart, Lomond School principal, said what Maksym had achieved was “absolutely incredible”. “I have no doubt that this won’t be the last we hear about one of Maksym’s business ventures,” she said. Read More Ukraine-Russia war news – latest: Putin’s troops ‘swept away’ in flooding from dam collapse, says Kyiv Watch live view of flooding in Kherson after destruction of Dnipro river dam Massive destruction after Ukraine dam collapse revealed in new satellite images

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A group of scientists and philosophers claim to have identified a “missing law of nature”, in a discovery which has huge implications for our understanding of how, basically, everything works. Most of us are familiar with the names – if not the intricacies – of many of the physical laws which govern the world and beyond, such as gravity and thermodynamics. And yet, no established physical law has been able to describe the behaviours of countless complex systems that exist across the universe – until now. In a paper published in the PNAS journal on 16 October, a multidisciplinary team from some of the US’s top institutes and universities, unveiled a new law claiming to do just that. In a nutshell, their law states that evolution is not limited to life on Earth, it also occurs in other massively complex systems – from planets to atoms. This means that these systems naturally “evolve” to states of greater diversity, and complexity. In other words, the researchers found evolution to be a common feature of the natural world's complex systems which, according to the Carnegie Institution for Science, comprise the following characteristics: “They are formed from many different components, such as atoms, molecules, or cells, that can be arranged and rearranged repeatedly “Are subject to natural processes that cause countless different configurations to be formed.” Only a small fraction of these configurations survive via a process of natural selection called “selection for function”. According to the researchers, regardless of whether the system is living or nonliving, when a new configuration works and function improves, evolution occurs. The authors' new law – which they have christened "the Law of Increasing Functional Information" – states that the system will evolve "if many different configurations of the system undergo selection for one or more functions." "An important component of this proposed natural law is the idea of 'selection for function,'" the study’s lead author, astrobiologist Dr Michael L. Wong, explained. The team’s research builds on Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which suggests the function exists to ensure the “survival of the fittest”. For their work, Dr Wong and his team expanded on this perspective, pointing to the existence of three types of this selection for function in nature. The first, most basic type, they claim, is stability – the stable arrangements of atoms or molecules which are selected to continue. Second, are dynamic systems which are selected for their ongoing supplies of energy. And the third, and most intriguing, function is "novelty" – the tendency of evolving systems to explore new configurations which can lead to surprising new behaviours or characteristics. Novelties are, ironically, nothing new. Indeed, life’s evolutionary history is rich with examples: photosynthesis evolved when single cells learned to harness light energy; multicellular life evolved when cells learned to cooperate; and species evolved thanks to advantageous new behaviours such as walking and thinking. The same type of evolution happens in the mineral kingdom, as the Carnegie Institution for Science notes in a release published by Phys.org. Indeed, Earth's minerals, which began with about 20 at the dawn of our solar system, now number almost 6,000 known today. This is thanks to the ever more complex physical, chemical, and biological processes which have occurred over the past 4.5 billion years. The paper also notes that just two major elements – hydrogen and helium – formed the first stars shortly after the big bang. Those earliest stars then used this hydrogen and helium to create around 20 heavier chemical elements, which was built upon by the next generation of stars. "Charles Darwin eloquently articulated the way plants and animals evolve by natural selection, with many variations and traits of individuals and many different configurations," co-author and research lead Robert M. Hazen explained. "We contend that Darwinian theory is just a very special, very important case within a far larger natural phenomenon. “The notion that selection for function drives evolution applies equally to stars, atoms, minerals, and many other conceptually equivalent situations where many configurations are subjected to selective pressure." The new law has a number of exciting implications, including a deeper understanding of how the Universe itself came to exist. It could also help explain how life differs from other complex evolving systems, and could help aid the search for life elsewhere. Furthermore, at a time when increasingly autonomous AI systems are of increasing concern, it’s very handy to have a law that characterises how both natural and symbolic systems evolve. It also offers insights into how we could artificially influence the rate of evolution of some systems which, again, could prove invaluable. The key point to remember, as Dr Wong put it, is that whilst life is the “most striking example of evolution”, it’s not the only one. Evolution, it transpires, is everywhere. Sign up for 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.

Pokimane was the most recent victim of a 'hot mic' issue in Valorant's 6.11 patch upgrade, which resulted in both hilarious and horrifying encounters