I put off buying AirPods for a long time because despite knowing I'd love them,

US investigators say they’ve dealt a serious blow to the ransomware scourge by taking down

Coinbase Global Inc. knew all along that it could be courting trouble with regulators. More than two years

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -California's autos regulator said on Friday it is investigating "recent concerning incidents" involving autonomous vehicles operated by

Since Instagram’s text-based alternative to Twitter, Threads, rolled out last week, a handful of memes and conspiracy theories have surfaced around the app’s unusual ‘at symbol’-like logo – from the inaccurate suggestion it was predicted by The Simpsons (it wasn’t), and now, to claims it’s actually linked to the devil (it isn’t). The baseless theory - seemingly backed by Twitter owner Elon Musk himself, if his public tweet likes are anything to go by – suggests the swirly icon secretly contains the number ‘666’, often referred to as “the number of the beast” and considered a link to the Antichrist. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Claiming they “can’t stop seeing it”, one Twitter user asked: “Does anyone else think the Threads logo just looks like 666? The first 6 is forward and white, then the second one is smaller and backwards, and the third one is the black space inside.” “How to put 666 ‘the number of the beast’ into a logo,” wrote another, in a tweet liked by Musk. Several other accounts have branded Threads “satanic” over the supposed link. In fact, the baseless claim became so popular that Instagram boss Adam Mosseri shared a thread on Friday explaining the real meaning behind the logo. “The Threads logo, in Instagram Sans, is inspired by the @ sign, which stands for someone’s username, the individual, and voice. “It’s a single unbroken line, inspired by the loop seen in the app when a thread is started,” he wrote. When one user commented that it “would have been entertaining” if Mosseri jokingly confirmed the conspiracy to be true, the exec replied: “It was tempting, but I feel like that kind of sass would just blow up in my face.” Sensible. Of course, this is just one fact which dispels this conspiracy theory as nonsense and baseless, but one lesser-known bit of historical trivia also exposes just how outlandish the claim is. All the way back in 2005, it was reported that a newly discovered fragment of the oldest version of the New Testament – the second part of the Bible – from the third century gave a different number entirely for the number of the beast. Found in historic dumps near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, the text from the Book of Revelation indicates it’s not 666 which is the fiendish number we should all be fearing, but the far less aesthetically pleasing 616. Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Paleography at the University of Birmingham, said: “This is an example of gematria, where numbers are based on the numerical values of letters in people’s names. “Early Christians would use numbers to hide the identity of people who they were attacking: 616 refers to the Emperor Caligula.” This is in contrast to the far more popular 666, which is understood to have referred to Emperor Nero. 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.

Combined deliveries for NIO, XPeng, and Li Auto came in at almost 67,000 vehicles for September, the second-best month ever.

Amouranth decided on April Fool's Day to play a joke on her followers by claiming she was pregnant

Many TikTok users are participating in the 'Singing the Blues' trend by uploading their 'glow up' videos

Scientists have discovered an ancient skull in China, like no other they've seen before. The 300,000-year-old child skull was first discovered in Hualongdong back in 2019 alongside other fossil remains. The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have struggled to match them to a known lineage. The discovery left researchers baffled as it did not resemble Neanderthals or Denisovans, according to Science Alert. It led them to believe we are either missing a branch from the human family tree or need to add to it. While the skull had similarities to early modern humans, there is a lack of chin and was likened to an extinct species of human in Asia known as a Denisovan. This shape has "never been recorded in late Middle Pleistocene hominin fossil assemblages in East Asia," scientists said in a recent analysis. They believe the remains, known in the science world as HDL 6, could possibly be a combination of modern human and unknown hominin that existed in China, according to the outlet. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter In other scientific news, archaeologists are too afraid to open the tomb of Qin Shu Huang, who ruled from 221 BC to 210 BC. The tomb is guarded by a terracotta army of soldiers and horses and was found by farmers back in 1974 in the Shaanxi province of China. Not only do archaeologists believe it will cause damage, but there are rumours of deathly booby traps that could kill curious intruders, according to IFL Science. Writings by Chinese historian Sima Qian 100 years after Qin Shu Huang's death claim "Palaces and scenic towers for a hundred officials were constructed and the tomb was filled with rare artifacts and wonderful treasure." He continued: "Craftsmen were ordered to make crossbows and arrows primed to shoot at anyone who enters the tomb. Mercury was used to simulate the hundred rivers, the Yangtze and Yellow River, and the great sea, and set to flow mechanically." 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.

By Sruthi Shankar and Medha Singh A "special rebalance" of the Nasdaq 100 index will take place later

Apple Inc. has room to rally another 30%, according to Citigroup Inc., even after a surge that’s sent

Schroders Plc said it has a way to score sovereign debt that corrects for the rich-world biases inherent