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Running a bath took on a whole new meaning thanks to a bizarre race in which participants use bath tubs to compete against one another on the slopes of Stoos in central Switzerland.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates shockingly opened up in a rare interview, sharing that his 'biggest regret' in life is his divorce with his now ex-wife, Melinda French Gates.

A porn star who is the great-great granddaughter of Henry Clay went from being lauded as the most stunning performer in adult entertainment to spiralling into drugs and prostitution.

It could carry on for a while yet, with the trigger for the next downturn being a wider retreat on the markets.

An anonymous reader shared this report from TechCrunch: The developer behind Pixelfed, Loops, and Sup, open source alternatives to Instagram, TikTok, and WhatsApp, respectively, is now raising funds on Kickstarter to fuel the apps' further development. The trio is part of the growing open social web, also known as the fediverse, powered by the same ActivityPub protocol used by X alternative Mastodon... [and] challenge Meta's social media empire... "Help us put control back into the hands of the people!" [Daniel Supernault, the Canadian-based developer behind the federated apps] said in a post on Mastodon where he announced the Kickstarter's Thursday launch. As of the time of writing, the campaign has raised $58,383 so far. While the goal on the Kickstarter site has been surpassed, Supernault said that he hopes to raise $1 million or more so he can hire a small team... A fourth project, PubKit, is also a part of these efforts, offering a toolset to support developers building in the fediverse... The stretch goal of the Kickstarter campaign is to register the Pixelfed Foundation as a not-for-profit and grow its team beyond volunteers. This could help address the issue with Supernault being a single point of failure for the project... Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochko made a similar decision earlier this month to transition to a nonprofit structure. If successful, the campaign would also fund a blogging app as an alternative to Tumblr or LiveJournal at some point in the future. The funds will also help the apps manage the influx of new users. On Pixelfed.social, the main Pixelfed instance, (like Mastodon, anyone can run a Pixelfed server), there are now more than 200,000 users, thanks in part to the mobile app's launch, according to the campaign details shared with TechCrunch. The server is also now the second-largest in the fediverse, behind only Mastodon.social, according to network statistics from FediDB. New funds will help expand the storage, CDNs, and compute power needed for the growing user base and accelerate development. In addition, they'll help Supernault dedicate more of his time to the apps and the fediverse as a whole while also expanding the moderation, security, privacy, and safety programs that social apps need. As a part of its efforts, Supernault also wants to introduce E2E encryption to the fediverse. The Kickstarter campaign promises "authentic sharing reimagined," calling the apps "Beautiful sharing platforms that puts you first. No ads, no algorithms, no tracking — just pure photography and authentic connections... More Privacy, More Safety. More Variety. " Pixelfed/Loops/Sup/Pubkit isn't a ambitious dream or vaporware — they're here today — and we need your support to continue our mission and shoot for the moon to be the best social communication platform in the world.... We're following the both the Digital Platform Charter of Rights & Ethical Web Principles of the W3C for all of our projects as guidelines to building platforms that help people and provide a positive social benefit. The campaign's page says they're building "a future where social networking respects your privacy, values your freedom, and prioritizes your safety."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A spokesperson for the agency said on Saturday that they now favor the lab theory after years of saying they didn't have enough information to conclude on its origins.

Speaking with The Wall Street Journal in a wide-ranging interview, the 69-year-old made the bombshell revelation and spoke about his relationship with President Donald Trump.

Greta Marie Otteson, 33, and her fiance Arno Els Quinton, 36, were found dead on Boxing day in a Vietnamese hotel after drinking contaminated alcohol.

Gemma Collins hopes that dropping two dress sizes thanks to weight loss jabs will free her from the pressure of trying to shift excess pounds

The Brits reportedly smoked cannabis - now legal in the country - as they held a raucous overnight party at the luxury property on the island Phuket on January 22.

CleanTechnicareports that last year Americans "bought 37% more air source heat pumps than the next most popular heating appliance — gas furnaces." And Americans bought 21% more heat pumps than they did in 2023. Canary Media is quick to point out that in many homes, more than one heat pump is required, so that data should be interpreted with that in mind. Typically, a home uses only one furnace. Nevertheless, the trend for heat pumps is up. Russell Unger, the head of decarbonizing buildings at RMI, said, "There's just been this long term, consistent trend." It's easy to understand why heat pumps are gaining in popularity. In addition to providing heated air in the winter and cool air in the summer, they are far more efficient than conventional heat sources — delivering three to four times more heat per dollar spent than oil- or gas-fired heating equipment or old fashioned electric baseboard heat. They also create far less carbon pollution. How much less depends on the source of electricity in the local area, Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Former Buffalo Bills cheerleader Shana Klimeczko said there were severe regulations that controlled everything from how she kept her hair to what color her nails were.

This week, leading money educator Vanessa Stoykov helps a concerned mother and wife who has a blended family protect her daughter's inheritance.

Jeff Bezos' fiancée, 55, has seemingly responded to the negativity surrounding her risqué look.

Despite multiple referrals to the government's counterterrorism programme, Prevent, Rudakubana's growing obsession with mass violence was not appropriately addressed.

Bridge access was saved by locals twice

Ripley Castle in North Yorkshire has been owned by the Ingilby baronets for 28 generations and once homed evacuees during World War II.

The owners of secret hairdressers erected the large outbuilding, overlooking a swimming pool, back in 2011 and did not tell the council.

The actress's famous family also includes a mother who has featured in Coronation Street for almost 40 years, a father who has written Emmerdale episodes and a TV star grandmother.

ZDNET's senior editor sees an "overwhelmingly negative" response to Microsoft's surprise price hike for the 84 million paying subscribers to its Microsoft 365 software suite. Attempting the first price hike in more than 12 years, "they made it a 30% price increase" — going from $10 a month to $13 a month — "and blamed it all on artificial intelligence." Bad idea. Why? Because... No one wants to pay for AI... If you ask Copilot in Word to write something for you, the results will be about what you'd expect from an enthusiastic summer intern. You might fare better if you ask Copilot to turn a folder full of photos into a PowerPoint presentation. But is that task really such a challenge...? The announcement was bungled, too... I learned about the new price thanks to a pop-up message on my Android phone... It could be worse, I suppose. Just ask the French and Spanish subscribers who got a similar pop-up message telling them their price had gone from €10 a month to €13,000. (Those pesky decimals.) Oh, and I've lost count of the number of people who were baffled and angry that Microsoft had forcibly installed the Copilot app on their devices. It was just a rebranding of the old Microsoft 365 app with the new name and logo, but in my case it was days later before I received yet another pop-up message telling me about the change... [T]hey turned the feature on for everyone and gave Word users a well-hidden checkbox that reads Enable Copilot. The feature is on by default, so you have to clear the checkbox to make it go away. As for the other Office apps? "Uh, we'll get around to giving you a button to turn it off next month. Maybe." Seriously, the support page that explains where you can find that box in Word says, "We're working on adding the Enable Copilot checkbox to Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint on Windows devices and to Excel and PowerPoint on Mac devices. That is tentatively scheduled to happen in February 2025." Until the Enable Copilot button is available, you can't disable Copilot. ZDNET's senior editor concludes it's a naked grab for cash, adding "I could plug the numbers into Excel and tell you about it, but let's have Copilot explain instead." Prompt: If I have 84 million subscribers who pay me $10 a month, and I increase their monthly fee by $3 a month each, how much extra revenue will I make each year? Copilot describes the calculation, concluding with "You would make an additional $3.024 billion per year from this fee increase." Copilot then posts two emojis — a bag of money, and a stock chart with the line going up.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.