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MUNICH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 28, 2023--

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ROME Italy's antitrust agency AGCM said on Thursday it had opened a probe into U.S. technology giant Apple

Microsoft on Tuesday reported fiscal fourth-quarter profit of $20.1 billion, or $2.69 per share, beating analyst expectations for $2.55 per share

By Stephen Nellis and Max A. Cherney Intel said on Tuesday that a new chip due in December

A baffling clip of a woman on a TikTok live stream licking the air and saying “Ice cream so good” while using a straightener to pop single kernels of popcorn has gone viral and people are confused. By now, we all know the internet is filled with weird and wonderful things, but sometimes there are viral videos that are particularly odd and require an explanation. One such video includes a TikTok live video made by @pinkydollreal, who appears to be a 19-year-old Montreal-based user. In it, she appeared to be repeating words like, “yes, yes, yes”, “slay” and “ice cream so good”, while also receiving payments, or “gifts”, from users watching in real-time. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The bizarre clip was shared on Twitter along with the caption, “Any time I accidentally happen upon a TikTok live, I feel like I am watching the world end” and was viewed millions of times, before the person deleted it, explaining they didn’t want @pinkydollreal to receive hate. But, other people have also been sharing the TikToker's content, with one person calling it the “weirdest thing I’ve seen [on TikTok] by far”. What is @pinkydollreal’s content and why does it appear “weird”? The content that TikToker is producing is part of a genre called NPC, or non-playable character. The reference comes from video games and refers to characters that feature but are unable to be controlled by the person playing the game. The niche genre on TikTok sees users like @pinkydollreal imitating an NPC by repeating many of the same phrases and movements in a way that appears programmed and looped. Their behaviour has set patterns and the person rarely deviates from a handful of sayings or actions to imitate a programmed character. Some people pay NPC TikTokers because the content can be considered a fetish. While the content is not overtly sexual, with no nudity or sexual langue, some who are attracted to certain things may find it arousing. Instagram sexual educator Emerson Karsh explained to InsideHook: “A fetish is a little bit more specialized. It’s attraction or arousal or sexual stimulation to certain stimuli, especially if it’s non-sexual. So, like non-sexual body parts, or inanimate objects or non-sexual situations.” 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.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has portrayed Google as a ruthless bully that resorts to shady tactics to protect a predatory payment system

SAVE 49%: Livestream the Tour de France for free with ExpressVPN. A one-year subscription to

Bumble users who link their Spotify account will now be able to check out who's

Last month was the warmest June of the past three decades globally, with several places in western Europe

Electric car maker Tesla’s profits took a dive in the third quarter, according to an earnings call on Wednesday in which the company’s chief Elon Musk blamed staff working from home for being “detached from reality”. Tesla’s profits in Q3 of 2023 have plunged by over 40 per cent compared to the gains it made in the same period last year after the company slashed its car prices by around 25 per cent in an attempt to compete with other EV makers. The EV manufacturer reported a net profit of about $1.9bn for the time between July through September, which is a 44 percent drop from the $3.3bn it made in the same three-month period last year. While the company has seen a small increase in overall revenue of about $23bn from the $21bn the same time last year, the figures are still lower than Wall Street expectations. Mr Musk also dampened hopes of the company’s anticipated Cybertruck reviving profits in the near future, announcing that it would take at least 18 months for the truck to become profitable as it could go on sale only by the end of November. “There will be enormous challenges in reaching volume production with Cybertruck and making the Cybertruck cash flow positive,” the Tesla titan told investors and analysts in the earnings call. “The blood, sweat and tears that will be required to achieve that is just staggering,” he added. Over the last year, Tesla has slashed the prices of its cars by quarter to boost sales. Growing competition with the introduction of EVs by other car makers in the US, including BMW, Toyota, Mercedes, GM and Hyundai, has also coincided with Tesla’s share of vehicles in the EV market reducing in the last quarter. In the earnings call, Mr Musk also said staff working from home are taking advantage of those who cannot work from home. “Like... what about all the people that have to come to the factory and build the cars?” he asked. “Why did I sleep in the factory so many times? Because it mattered,” the Tesla chief said. Mr Musk echoed the statements he made in an interview with CNN earlier this year in which he called remote work “morally wrong”, arguing that it is unfair to those who cannot have the option. “Get off the goddamn moral high horse with the work-from-home bullshit,” he said. Tesla also pointed fingers at its reduction in production while it upgraded its factories as one of the factors behind the profit slump. It said it has also been making big investments in AI and “commissioned one of the world’s largest supercomputers.” “We have more than doubled the size of our AI training compute, accommodating for both our growing data set & Optimus, which is currently being trained for simple tasks through AI rather than hardcoded software, while its hardware continues to improve,” Tesla said. But all is not gloomy as the company says the first deliveries of its Cybertruck are scheduled for 30 November and Tesla’s Model Y remains the “best-selling vehicle of any kind” in Europe. Read More X begins charging new users to post as part of trial EU asks Elon Musk to ‘walk the talk’ on X/Twitter disinformation over Hamas attack AOC wants to ‘trade in’ her Tesla for union-made electric vehicle amid historic auto workers strike Amazon to start dropping packages into people’s gardens using drones in the UK Facebook has stopped working Facial recognition firm Clearview AI overturns UK data privacy fine