List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

Blue eyed people listen up. Ever wondered why your eyes are the colour they are? Well wonder no more. Every blue eyed person is descended from a single European who lived around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, according to scientists. How did they work it out? Originally, all humans had brown eyes in various shades until there was a specific mutation that made the change. The mutation is a gene called HERC2 and it switches off OCA2, the gene that determines how much brown pigment we make. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter So that's why eyes become blue. As for being descended from the same person, the evidence for this is because every blue eyed person alive today has this same mutation. Scientists reckon only 8 to 10 per cent of the population have blue eyes and eyes don't fully develop in childhood meaning the brown pigment can kick in later, causing blue eyed children to end up with brown eyes in adulthood. So if you have blue eyes, now you know - your family is a lot bigger than you might have thought previously. 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.

Facebook-parent Meta is the subject of four new complaints from human rights groups in Europe alleging that the algorithm it uses to target users with companies' job advertisements is discriminatory. Nonprofit Global Witness shared new research with CNN that it says shows the algorithm distributing job ads is based on gender stereotypes, and that it appears to be a global issue.

Entities backed by Singapore's Temasek and Chinese investment firm HighLight Capital agreed to a deal worth 1.06 billion

By Ludwig Burger and Patricia Weiss HAMBURG BioNTech will go to court on Monday to defend itself against

Energy drinks could be the secret to a long life - here's why. The drinks contain a substance called taurine, a naturally occurring amino acid that scientists have been testing on mice and worms and working out that it is increasing their life spans. The study saw some mice at around middle-age given taurine, whereas others weren’t. Mice of both sexes saw increased life span by around 10 to 12 per cent, whereas life expectancy at 28 months was 18 to 25 per cent higher. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter They also had healthier bone, muscle, immune system, fat, pancreas, brain, and gut functioning. In the journal Science, the team wrote: "Taurine abundance decreases during aging. "A reversal of this decline through taurine supplementation increases health span and life span in mice and worms and health span in monkeys. “This identifies taurine deficiency as a driver of aging in these species." They added: "Given that taurine has no known toxic effects in humans (though rarely used in concentrations used here), can be administered orally, and affects all the major hallmarks of aging, human trials are warranted to examine whether taurine supplementation increases healthy life span in humans." However, scientists aren’t advising anyone to change their taurine intake, as research is still in its early days, and energy drinks have other ingredients that may not be as positive. Prof Henning Wackerhage, from the University of Munich, said: "What we really need now is a human intervention study. “We are raring to go." 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.

Twitter has been a powerful tool for social movements. But since Elon Musk acquired the platform last year, some organizers and digital media experts have been bracing for the impact that his controversial policy changes and mass layoffs may have on social activism.

Twitter has refused to pay its Google Cloud bills as its contract comes up for renewal this month,

Three years after Silicon Valley companies led the charge for embracing remote work in the early days of the pandemic, the tech industry is now escalating the fight to bring employees back into the office -— and igniting tensions with staff in the process.

When Apple unveiled its ambitious and very pricey new mixed reality headset earlier this week, executives ticked through a long list of impressive specs, teased big name partnerships and showed off a perfectly produced promo video.

By Dietrich Knauth NEW YORK Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX received court permission on Friday to remove customer names

Days after Apple unveiled its $3,499 mixed reality headset, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared to take a jab at the company's pricing and vision for the product.

Apollo, a popular client app for Reddit, is shutting down. Reddit had required that Apollo pay an unsustainable amount of money to be able to access the data required to make the app run, according to its developer Christian Selig. In recent weeks, Reddit announced that it was making changes to its API, the technology that allows other apps to communicate with its forum. It said that it had been required to make the move because providing that data was proving too expensive, and that it was currently unfair for Reddit to be paying for busy apps. Shortly after, it announced that it would be pricing access to that API at such a rate that it would cost the developer of Apollo some $2 million per month, and that the new rates would go into effect in 30 days. Mr Selig said that would make running the app impossible. That led to outcry across Reddit, with many forums on the site announcing that they would go dark in protest against the company’s actions. Some of the most popular subreddits on the site joined the boycott, and some indicated they would never come back if the company did not change the terms of access on the pricing. Now, Mr Selig has announced that the situation has become untenable and that the app will shut down at the end of June. “It’s been an amazing run thanks to all of you,” he wrote in a long post on Reddit. In that same post, Mr Selig gave a long explanation of the situation with the site, and how he had come to the decision to shut down the app. He also included recordings of conversations with Reddit, which he said contradicted some of the site’s public statements about how it had behaved. He said that he had considered a host of other options, including increasing the price and changing the way the app works. But many users are already subscribed for a year, he said, and it would not be possible to alter the app enough in the time before the new terms go into effect. Mr Selig also noted that many users had asked whether he would build an alternative to Reddit. “While I’m very flattered, that’s not something I’m interested in doing,” he wrote. And he said that he supported the protests “abundantly”, noting that Reddit is largely run by people who moderate the site for free and so he understood their “anger and frustration”. “While I haven’t personally mobilized anyone to participate in the blackout out of fear of retaliation from Reddit, the last thing I want is for that to feel like I don’t support the folks speaking up. I wholeheartedly do,” he wrote. Apollo was previously one of the most well-regarded apps in the App Store. It was even featured in Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference keynote this week, where it was mentioned by software boss Craig Federghi and included on a list of apps that would work on the company’s upcoming Vision Pro headset. Mr Selig said that was likely a “coincidence” given the amount of preparation that was required for those keynotes. The app should keep working until 30 June, he said, when the new pricing goes into effect and the app will be switched off from Reddit. He said that he would release an explanation and a tool to export data from the app before then. In recent months, Twitter has also made changes to its API that have led to prohibitive costs for access to its data and the closure of a number of well-respected Twitter clients. Mr Selig has suggested that those changes at Twitter could have helped inspire Reddit’s decisions around its own pricing. Read More Millions of Reddit users face a blackout over pricing revolt Mark Zuckerberg reveals what he thinks about Apple’s headset – and it’s not good Can Apple make us love virtual reality? | You Ask The Questions Mark Zuckerberg reveals what he thinks about Apple’s headset – and it’s not good Can Apple make us love virtual reality? | You Ask The Questions Instagram has stopped working properly