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PayPal No Longer Available for Steam Purchases Outside Major Currency Zones

2 months 4 weeks ago
PayPal payment processing has been unavailable for Steam purchases in most countries since early July 2025, Valve has confirmed, with functionality limited to transactions in U.S. dollars, Euros, British Pounds, Japanese Yen, Australian dollars, and Canadian dollars. In a statement to RockPaperShotgun, the company said one of PayPal's acquiring banks terminated all Steam transaction processing. Valve linked the bank's decision to previous Mastercard-related content restrictions. The disruption began in early July 2025 when PayPal notified Valve of the immediate termination, leaving millions of users in affected regions without PayPal access and no certain timeline for resolution.

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New Type of Supernova Detected as Black Hole Causes Star To Explode

2 months 4 weeks ago
An anonymous reader shares a report: Astronomers have observed the calamitous result of a star that picked the wrong dance partner. They have documented what appears to be a new type of supernova, as stellar explosions are known, that occurred when a massive star tried to swallow a black hole with which it had engaged in a lengthy pas de deux. The star, which was at least 10 times as massive as our sun, and the black hole, which had a similar mass, were gravitationally bound to one another in what is called a binary system. But as the distance separating them gradually narrowed, the black hole's immense gravitational pull appears to have distorted the star -- stretching it out from its spherical shape -- and siphoned off material before causing it to explode. An AI algorithm detected the event in real time, enabling astronomers to conduct comprehensive observations. Data from four years before the supernova showed bright emissions as the black hole consumed its companion's outer hydrogen layer. The exact mechanism remains uncertain -- either gravitational distortion triggered the star's collapse or the black hole completely tore it apart first. Following the explosion, the black hole consumed residual stellar debris, growing more massive.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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