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The company claims that over 1.5 billion matches have been created in the 20 countries where the feature is available.The service is opt-in within the main Facebook app, with a separate profile created that’s shared with prospective matches. Its main feature, called Secret Crush, allows users to discover if they have any secret admirers among their Facebook friends.Read moreUsers select up to nine Facebook friends that they would want to date, and those selected receive an anonymous notification telling them that they have been chosen. if that person also adds their secret admirer to their Secret Crush list the pair will be matched together, revealing both names.As well as Facebook friends, users are able to select their Instagram followers as potential secret crushes.Users can also choose to let other people see similar interests by adding events and groups to their dating profile. During the coronavirus pandemic, when real-life dates are scarce due to social distancing, Facebook is rolling out a video call feature so users can attend virtual dates.“Starting the call will send an invitation, and once they accept , they will join your video call and you can get to know each other better. Your first name and Dating profile photo will be displayed when starting the call”, Facebook said in its announcement. Facebook will not suggest current Facebook friends as potential matches or notify them that a user has joined its Dating service.“This is going to be for building real, long-term relationships – not just for hookups”, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said when Dating was launched. Facebook Dating is rolling out to Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Slovenia, Slovakia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Facebook has recently taken steps to unify its services with regards to its subsidiary Instagram and its VR platform. Faceobok is also demanding that owners of its Oculus virtual reality headset will be required to link their Facebook account, making it compulsory for all new buyers and linking full functionality of the headset to pairing Facebook accounts.“We will take steps to allow you to keep using content you have purchased, though we expect some games and apps may no longer work”, the company said in August.

Nasa is preparing to grab a piece of asteroid and bring it back to Earth.The dramatic manoeuvre will be the culmination of two years that a Nasa spacecraft has spent orbiting and examining an asteroid known as Bennu, hundreds of millions of miles away.The Osiris-Rex mission will see the spacecraft drop onto the asteroid, scoop up a piece of rubble, and stash it away so that it can be brought back down to Earth.The drama will unfold on Tuesday as the US has its first go at collecting asteroid samples for return to Earth, a feat accomplished only by Japan so far.Nasa is looking to bring back at least two ounces (60 grams) worth of asteroid Bennu, the biggest such haul from beyond the moon.The van-sized spacecraft is aiming for the relatively flat middle of a tennis court-sized crater named Nightingale – a spot comparable to a few parking places here on Earth. Boulders as big as buildings loom over the targeted touchdown zone.Read more”So for some perspective, the next time you park your car in front of your house or in front of a coffee shop and walk inside, think about the challenge of navigating Osiris-Rex into one of these spots from 200 million miles away,” Nasa’s deputy project manager Mike Moreau said.Once it drops out of its half-mile-high (0.75 km-high) orbit around Bennu, the spacecraft will take a deliberate four hours to make it all the way down, to just above the surface.Then the action cranks up when Osiris-Rex’s 11-foot (3.4-metre) arm reaches out and touches Bennu.Contact should last five to 10 seconds, just long enough to shoot out pressurised nitrogen gas and suck up the churned dirt and gravel.Programmed in advance, the spacecraft will operate autonomously during the unprecedented touch-and-go manoeuvre. With an 18-minute lag in radio communication each way, ground controllers for spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin near Denver cannot intervene.If the first attempt does not work, Osiris-Rex can try again. Any collected samples will not reach Earth until 2023.While Nasa has brought back comet dust and solar wind particles, it has never attempted to sample one of the nearly one million known asteroids lurking in our solar system until now.Japan, meanwhile, expects to get samples from asteroid Ryugu in December – in the milligrams at most – 10 years after bringing back specks from asteroid Itokawa.Bennu is an asteroid picker’s paradise. The big, black, roundish, carbon-rich space rock – taller than New York’s Empire State Building – was around when our solar system was forming 4.5 billion years ago.Scientists consider it a time capsule full of pristine building blocks that could help explain how life formed on Earth and possibly elsewhere.The mission’s principal scientist, Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, said: “This is all about understanding our origins.”Additional reporting by AP

Nasa will hold a major event to announce an “exciting new discovery” about the Moon, it has said.The space agency did not reveal details about the discovery but suggested that it “contributes to Nasa’s efforts to learn about the Moon in support of deep space exploration”.It also said that the discovery had come from the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, or Sofia.Sofia is a modified Boeing 747 that flies in the high the atmosphere, allowing a built-in, 9-foot telescope to get a view of our solar system and the broader universe.Because it goes above 99 per cent of the water vapour in the atmosphere, which normally obscures our view of space, the flying observatory is able to “pick up phenomenon impossible to see with visible light”, Nasa noted in its announcement.Read moreNasa’s notice of the event made heavy reference to the Artemis programme, which hopes to send the first woman and next man to the Moon in 2024, with the hope of using it as a base to launch missions to Mars from the 2030s. They will be the first people to set foot on the Moon since 1972.The briefing will also be attended by Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at Nasa’s Headquarters, further suggesting that the discovery is at least applicable to the space agency’s plans to travel to – and live on – the Moon.As well as Dr Bleacher, the event will be attended by Paul Hertz, astrophysics division director at NASA Headquarters; Casey Honniball, postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; and Naseem Rangwala, project scientist for the SOFIA mission.The event will take place at noon eastern time, or 5pm in the UK, on Monday, 26 October, Nasa said.

Microsoft has launched its cloud computing capabilities, Azure, into space by partnering with Elon Musk.The company developed Azure Space so that it might be used to simulate space missions, or analyse satellite data.It says that as well as the space industry, the fields of agriculture, energy, telecommunications, and government will also benefit from the project.“Our global network of over 160,000 miles of subsea, terrestrial, and metro optical fiber helps billions of people connect all around the world.  However, many of our customers also operate in remote, rugged environments and find it hard to keep pace with their increased need for access to data and bandwidth”, wrote Tom Keane, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President of Azure Global in a blog post.Read more“A thriving ecosystem of satellite providers is needed to meet the world’s growing network needs, and we are excited to partner with industry leaders to bring these capabilities to our customers faster.”Microsoft says that it will supply a “multi-orbit, multi-band, multi-vendor, cloud-enabled” service. Alongside its space endeavours, Microsoft revealed the Azure Modular Datacenter (MDC), which is portable and able to be used in areas which do not have reliable cloud computing capabilities.The MDC can operate in a wide range of climates and harsh conditions, housing its servers in a rugged unit which also protects it from radio frequencies. “You have a centre, a capability, you put anywhere on Earth. You need to get that data somewher eels, and having a satellite-based system, you can get there without fibre, you don’t need fibre,” SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell said in a video.“You basically talk to the satellites we have in orbit, the satellites will talk to each other, and get that data to the other point on Earth where it’s needed.”Microsoft also launched the Azure Orbital Emulator, an emulation environment which allows satellite developers to train AI algorithms and networking before launching any crafts.“Azure can emulate an entire satellite network including complex, real-time scene generation using pre-collected satellite imagery for direct processing by virtualized and actual satellite hardware”, Keane says.It works with NASA, the US military, and private space companies including Lockheed Martin. Amazon also has a plan to launch thousands of satellites into space to establish a global internet network called Project Kuiper, alongside the developments made by Jeff Bezos-owned space company Blue Origin.

An asteroid is heading towards Earth ahead of election day – but is almost certain to skip actually paying a visit, let alone posing any danger.Excitement has increased over the object known as 2018VP1 in recent days. The asteroid will pass by on 2 November, the day before the presidential election in the US.That has led many to fear that the passage could be some kind of portent, or that it could be just one of a sign of major incidents that could happen that week.But the object will almost certainly decline to visit our planet. If it did, it would barely register at all, disintegrating in the atmosphere before it got a chance to get close to Earth.Recent interest in the asteroid has been piqued by a post from Neil deGrasse Tyson, who shared the news that the object would be coming past Earth.”Asteroid 2018VP1, a refrigerator-sized space-rock, is hurtling towards us at more than 40,000 km/hr,” he wrote on Instagram and Twitter.Read more”It may buzz-cut Earth on Nov 2, the day before the Presidential Election.“It’s not big enough to cause harm. So if the World ends in 2020, it won’t be the fault of the Universe.”He is correct that the object is far too small to do any harm. The object is only 6.5 feet in size.At such a small mass, it might cause some minor effects on Earth, such as the rattling of windows or the dropping of very small meteorites. But even if it hit our planet, it could go entirely unnoticed.For something to be classified as a “potentially hazardous object” by Nasa, it must be far bigger, at least 140 meters in diameter. Nasa knows of more than 2,000 of those objects, so there are many more realistic asteroids and comets to be worrying about.But any suggestion that there is any real likelihood that it could touch the Earth is mostly misleading, too.Nasa says the asteroid only has a 0.41 per cent chance of entering Earth’s atmosphere at all, and it will almost certainly fly straight past. The slight uncertainty is a result of the fact that the asteroid has not been observed for two years and so its location cannot be predicted precisely.Instead, its orbit will take it within a very safe distance of 260,000 miles, passing over the Pacific Ocean, according to predictions from Nasa.One unusual thing about the asteroid is that it has lined up with election day before. As its name indicates, it was first discovered in 2018 – on 3 November of that year, just three days before the midterms.

Earth could be visible to alien civilisations on planets outside our solar system, scientists have found.One of the major projects of astronomers in recent years is looking for exoplanets, or other worlds beyond our solar system. When they are found, the key question is whether they might support life, and so whether we might be able to spot habitable planets at this distance.Now astronomers have reversed that question, and explored whether we might also be visible to other civilisations that are outside of our solar system. They found that they were – and that we could be seen in all of the required detail.In the study, astronomers took more than 1,000 main-sequence stars, those similar to our Sun, which might have Earth-like planets orbiting in their habitable zone, neither close enough to be too hot or far away enough to be too cold. All of the planets were within about 300 lightyears of Earth, and were spotted as part of Nasa’s TESS catalogue, which lists exoplanets.They found that many of them would be able to see us – and, if they had the right technology, be able to see the chemical traces that life leaves on our planet.Watch moreAn article describing the research, ‘Which Stars Can See Earth as a Transiting Exoplanet?’ is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Transiting exoplanets are those worlds we can see from Earth, spotting them when they move in front of their star and register as a dip in the light that makes it to Earth.“Let’s reverse the viewpoint to that of other stars and ask from which vantage point other observers could find Earth as a transiting planet,” said Lisa Kaltenegger, associate professor of astronomy at Cornell University and director of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute, in a statement.“If observers were out there searching, they would be able to see signs of a biosphere in the atmosphere of our Pale Blue Dot,” she said, “And we can even see some of the brightest of these stars in our night sky without binoculars or telescopes.”Professor Kaltenegger led the research alongside Joshua Pepper, associate professor of physics at Lehigh University.The key question to answer when understanding how visible we might be is the Earth’s ecliptic, or the plane on which it orbits around the Sun. To be able to see our world – and explore its atmosphere and signals of life – Earth, our Sun and the other planet would have to line up correctly.The researchers found that many of them were, and that any civilisations should therefore be able to get a good view of our Earth.“Only a very small fraction of exoplanets will just happen to be randomly aligned with our line of sight so we can see them transit.” Pepper said. “But all of the thousand stars we identified in our paper in the solar neighborhood could see our Earth transit the Sun, calling their attention.”“If we found a planet with a vibrant biosphere, we would get curious about whether or not someone is there looking at us too,” Kaltenegger said.“If we’re looking for intelligent life in the universe, that could find us and might want to get in touch” she said, “we’ve just created the star map of where we should look first.”

Netflix will give away two days of free subscriptions to everyone in India as it experiments with new ways to encourage people to sign up.The promotion comes after it stopped offering free trial periods and instead committed to try a number of different ways of finding new subscribers.The offer will come as part of a “StreamFest” event that will only be available in India for now, though it is not clear if the same or similar promotions will launch anywhere else.The aim is for the two day offer to be something that “could really create an event”, according to Greg Peters, Netflix’s chief operating officer. Mr Peters announced the change during the company’s earning call.“And so an idea that we’re excited about and we’ll see how it goes, but we think that giving everyone in a country access to Netflix for free for a weekend could be a great way to expose a bunch of new people to the amazing stories that we have, the service, how the service works, really create an event, and hopefully get a bunch of those folks to sign up,” Mr Peters said in response to response to questions about why the company had brought an end to free trials.Read more“So we’re going to try that in India and we’ll see how that goes. And that’s just an example of the kind of innovation that we seek to do in this space.”Mr Peters also gave more information on the company’s decision to stop offering free trials in the US. While he did not say why exactly the decision had been made, he indicated it had come after “constantly assessing and testing and trying to understand what’s working, what’s working best, how do we improve”, and that it had “shifted those tactics” in response to testing.The free weekend is just one of the many different strategies that Netflix has tried to keep new subscribers coming to the service, as it attempts to find ways to continue its recent rapid growth.Those have also included taking some shows out from behind its paywall, offering the first episodes of shows such as Stranger Things and films such as Bird Box for free and then asking customers to sign up if they want to see more.

The price of bitcoin hit a record high for 2020 on Wednesday, after PayPal announced plans to integrate cryptocurrency into its online payment platform.Bitcoin’s price rose by more than 5 per cent following the news, taking its total gains since last week above $1,000. It is currently trading above $12,400.PayPal said customers will be able to pay using bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies at the 26 million merchants on its network from next year.As the world’s number one online payments platform, bitcoin’s reach will extend to its roughly 346 million customers worldwide.“Our global reach, digital payments expertise, two-sided network, and rigorous security and compliance controls provide us with the opportunity, and the responsibility, to help facilitate the understanding, redemption and interoperability of these new instruments of exchange,” said PayPal CEO Dan Schulman.Read moreBitcoin remains a long way off the all-time price highs seen in late 2017, when its value briefly rose to $20,000, but the latest gains come just seven months after bitcoin was trading below $5,000.Some analysts have attributed price gains since March to global economic uncertainty brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. “Ongoing – and heightening – global political, economic and social turbulence suggests that there will be a price surge before the end of the year,” Nigel Green, CEO of financial advisory firm deVere Group, told The Independent.“Like gold, bitcoin can be expected to retain its value or even grow in value when other assets fall, therefore enabling investors to reduce their exposure to losses. Investors will increase exposure to decentralised, non-sovereign, secure digital currencies, such as bitcoin, to help shield them from the potential issues in traditional markets.“There’s a growing sense that we’re set to experience a mini-boom similar to that seen at the end of 2017.”Other analysts warned that bitcoin’s volatile nature means investors should remain weary of any sudden price jumps.Simon Peters, a multi-asset analyst at online trading platform eToro, told The Independent: “Emphasis will be on how the price reacts at $12,000, given we haven’t convincingly stayed above the threshold this year. Before investors look to the next bull run, we need to see the price remain above $12,000 for an extended period of time.”

TikTok videos that promote false antisemitic conspiracy theories about George Soros and the Rothschilds have been watched by million and remain easy to find on the platform, despite the company saying it is cracking down on racist and misleading content.Such antisemitic and conspiratorial content is untrue. The notion that wealthy Jewish figures exert some form of malicious control over world events is a well-documented myth.One account with over 26,000 followers, which also posts transphobic and antivax videos, claims that the Black Lives Matter movement “was given to us by George Soros”. Another showed an edited clip of political commentator Bill O’Reilly which discusses the organisations Mr Soros has donated to, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the NAACP.“That is why you are seeing the collapse of our criminal justice system…. George Soros, in my opinion, has funded the worst Bolshevik elements he could support. I’ve never seen anyone do as much damage to the United States of America,” the video states.Read moreOther videos place Soros at the centre of “every conspiracy on the leftist side”, and has been “funding everybody that hasn’t been going to work, blocking traffic, for the past year and a half”.In one video a supporter of president Donald Trump talks about the “top three people she would like to snipe right now”, mentioning both George Soros and Hillary Clinton.The hashtags #rothschild and #rothschildfamily, which have over five million views and 450,000 views, respectively, feature numerous conspiracy theories that the Rothschilds “won’t stop until they have everything” and that they funded the Nazis. In fact the Nazis used the Rothschilds as political propaganda, such as the film The Rothschilds’ Shares in Waterloo which can be read on many antisemitic websites. Other conspiracy theories linked to from these videos include the “depopulation agenda” and Agenda21 (11.2 million views). Agenda21 was a nonbinding UN resolution from 1992 about sustainable development, but is popular among conspiracy theorists because of the myth that it is a plot to impose a totalitarian world government.TikTok also recently updated its Community Guidelines in order to take a stronger stance against antisemitism on its app.“As many monitoring organisations are reporting that antisemitic sentiment is increasing in the world, we’re proud that we have already taken steps to keep our community safe, for example, by not permitting content that denies the Holocaust and other violent tragedies”, the company wrote in a blog post. “We know there’s always more we can do which is why we are taking further action to remove misinformation and hurtful stereotypes about Jewish, Muslim and other communities. This includes misinformation about notable Jewish individuals and families who are used as proxies to spread antisemitism.”However, TikTok has seemingly not removed numerous videos that promote antisemitic themes related to George Soros, the Rothchilds, or the Bilderberg group.TikTok has previously taken action against other harmful content. Searching for popular Nazi code words surfaces no results, with TikTok telling users that the phrase “may be associated with hateful behaviour”.Similarly, the hashtag #savethechildren, which is popular among QAnon believers, also has no videos related to it. TikTok tells users that the phrase “may be associated with behaviour or content that violates our guidelines” following the company’s crackdown on the conspiracy theory. “Hate has no place on TikTok. That’s why we are building on the work we already do to tackle antisemitism by taking further action to remove misinformation and hurtful stereotypes about the Jewish Community”, a TikTok spokesperson said.”We have removed the violating videos and blocked a number of the hashtags brought to our attention. We’ve always been open about the fact that we won’t catch every instance of inappropriate content or account activity, and we recognise that we have more to do to meet the standards we have set for ourselves today. This is why we continue to invest at scale in our Trust and Safety operations, which includes both technologies and a team of thousands of people around the world.”Many other social media companies have also taken action against conspiracy theories and antisemitism on their platforms.

The Independent has been given an exclusive look at the first-ever series filmed using Snapchat Spectacles.The docuseries, First Person, follows young people around the world solving environmental problems and tackling the climate crisis with innovation.The10-episode series premieres this Saturday on Snapchat’s Discover page with an episode on a young innovator who is revolutionising how toilets are used in Zimbabwe in the face of increased drought.The Spectacles are augmented reality glasses with steel frames and dual HD cameras that are “inspired by the human eye”. The product allows users to capture images and video to post to the social media site.Read moreOther episodes explore methods to build houses using human urine, making synthetic hair out of plants and training rats to sniff out landmines.Another, titled Rhino Wars, looks at how conservationist groups’ adopted the radical idea of cutting off rhinos’ horns to protect them from poachers who kill the endangered species for the highly-trafficked part.First Person was created by Yusuf Omar, journalist and co-founder of Hashtag Our Stories with his wife Sumaiya. The couple have spent the past two years training more than 3,000 people in 140 countries to tell stories via their phones. In the US, 90 per cent of 13-24 year olds use Snapchat, according to the company’s own figures, while 3.5 billion Snaps are shared every day around the world.