This content originally appeared on Mashable for a US audience and has been adapted for

By Sheila Dang Messaging platform X on Monday sued media watchdog group Media Matters, alleging the organization defamed

Fortnite Jujutsu Kaisen skins have been leaked for Megumi Fushiguro, Nobara Kugisaki and Satoru Gojo.

Britain’s national forecaster warned of “tropical nights” this week as heat builds again across much of Europe. UK

The Seagate FireCuda 540 (starts at $179.99 for 1TB; $299.99 for 2TB as tested) isn't

TL;DR: The Apple 2020 MacBook Air is on sale for £779 this Prime Day. This

Scientists have found that one of the key pillars of theory around how life works – that it depends on carbon – may not be the case on other planets. Here on Earth, life depends on organic compounds which are composed of carbon, and often involve other elements such as sulphur, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and phosphorus. With organic compounds, life is partly sustained by chemical interactions called autocatalysis, which are self-sustaining. That means they produce molecules which then enable the reaction to happen again, and do not need any outside influence to keep going on. In the new study, scientists looked for autocatalysis in non-organic compounds. The theory is that if autocatalysis helps drive a process called abiogenesis – the origin process for life – then this origin process could also come from non-organic matter. Betül Kaçar, an astrobiologist, bacteriologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told news outlet Space.com: “It's important to explore these possibilities so that we have an idea of what all forms of life can look like, not just Earth life.” "One of the major reasons that origin-of-life researchers care about autocatalysis is because reproduction — a key feature of life — is an example of autocatalysis. “Life catalyses the formation of more life. One cell produces two cells, which can become four and so on. “As the number of cells multiply, the number and diversity of possible interactions multiplies accordingly.” The scientists searched in a huge trove of existing scientific documents for examples of autocatalysis, and found 270 different cycles of the reactions. Most of the 270 examples did not feature organic compounds, but rather elements which are rare in life forms such as mercury, or the radioactive metal thorium. “It was thought that these sorts of reactions are very rare,” Kaçar said in a statement. “We are showing that it's actually far from rare. You just need to look in the right place.” Now, it means scientists can test these cycles to get a better understanding of how autocatalysis can work. “The cycles presented here are an array of basic recipes that can be mixed and matched in ways that haven't been tried before on our planet,” said study author Zhen Peng, also an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “They might lead to the discovery of completely new examples of complex chemistry that work in conditions where carbon- or even silicon-based cycles are too either combusted or frozen out.” The scientists published their findings in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. 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.

Reddit is not backing down from its controversial new fees, its chief executive has said as protests against the decision continue. Those behind the protests could be removed from the forums they administer, even in cases where the communities inside of them have supported the action, the company has suggested. Reddit has fallen into chaos in recent days after the moderators of many of its most popular communities took those subreddits “dark” in protest. It has meant that users have been unable to see posts from those communities for days. The action was a response to new plans from Reddit to charge for access to its API, which allows developers such as those behind third-party apps to see data from Reddit. Many developers have said those charges would make their apps unsustainable, and the most popular ones including Apollo have announced they will shut down. Even before that happened, moderators on the site had committed to take their forums offline in protest against the changes, which they said would make Reddit harder to use. Reddit is largely administered by unpaid volunteer moderators, who are able to make changes to those forums without needing permission from Reddit’s staff or management. Since the changes were announced, Reddit’s chief executive Steve Huffman has stayed committed to them. He has repeatedly claimed that it is unfair for developers to have access to that data for free since it costs Reddit money to host the site. Now Mr Huffman has undertaken another round of interviews in which he has shrugged off the protest, argued that it will pass, and claimed that only a small group of users are upset about the change. “It’s a small group that’s very upset, and there’s no way around that. We made a business decision that upset them,” he told NPR. “But I think the greater Reddit community just wants to participate with their fellow community members.” He said that the protest was affecting “everyday users” but that most of them were not involved in the changes. He also indicated that the protest had not cost much in financial terms, but had created “a fair amount of trouble”. He said that 80 per cent of the top 5,000 subreddits have gone back online. But many other communities have committed to continuing the protests indefinitely, and may go back offline if Reddit does not respond to their complaints. Reddit has also suggested that moderators who are involved in the protest could be removed from their position, and presumably replaced with new users who would bring the forums back online. In a post on Reddit’s support forum for moderators, an administer pointed to “rule 4”, which requires that moderators are active in the communities that they run. While the company refused to explicitly link its mention of that rule with the protest, it has also refused to rule out the fact that it could be used to remove those protestors from their position. Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt told The Vergethat such a move would not be to do with the protest – but that those involved in it could be breaking the rule nonetheless. Read More Reddit hit by more outages as the fight over its future escalates Reddit just went ‘dark’, and the site is in chaos Reddit is in chaos – and it’s CEO has finally responded Reddit’s blackout protest is set to continue indefinitely Reddit down amid major protest Popular Reddit app Apollo shuts down as site’s users revolt against it

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 17, 2023--

Cameron Monaghan aka Cal Kestis, has confirmed there are ongoing discussions about a third game in the series.

LinkedIn is laying off 668 people across its engineering, product, talent and finance teams as part of a broader restructuring, the social media platform announced Monday.

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 25, 2023--