Internet & Websites News - Page 3

Since the dawn of the internet and digital social interaction, typing "lol" has meant that you found something so funny - you're laughing out loud. At least, that's the idea. In 2023 it's become shorthand for amusement on any level, and "lol" has become a part of everyday conversation.

You've probably said or typed "lol" when you thought something was slightly amusing without actually laughing. We've all done it. The same sentiment applies to the rise of laughing emojis and social media platforms. There's nowhere near as much laughing as we all imply.

This raises the question - who's out there laughing out loud?

Chess has been popular for hundreds of years, long before the first home computer arrived. And if we look back to the early days of PC gaming, there have always been chess games. In the age of the smartphone and always-online social interaction, chess.com is proving to be one of the most popular gaming destinations on the planet.

Thanks in part to lockdowns and shows like The Queen's Gambit on Netflix, and fun things like soccer stars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo playing chess on social media, chess, and Chess.com is seeing a massive surge in interest and players. We're talking over one million games per hour and a record-breaking 31,700,000 games played on January 20 alone. These are incredible numbers, but it has also led to issues keeping servers up and running.

Traffic on Chess.com has nearly doubled since the beginning of December, and our servers are struggling, especially during peak hours, typically around noon to 4 p.m. ET. We are very sorry for the issues; we know it's super frustrating. We are all hands-on deck to address these challenges, but sadly there isn't (yet) a simple button we can press to resolve these issues.

Google Chrome, first released in 2008, and has since become one of the most popular web browsers in the world and now Google is rolling out new updates to reduce battery strain and improve system memory.

These updates were designed to improve the browser's performance and make it more efficient, especially when it comes to how much it impacts battery life and its system memory usage. The updates rolled out two new modes, Memory Saver mode and Battery Saver mode. According to reports, Memory Saver mode reduces memory usage by up to 30% on desktop.

By optimizing the way that the browser allocates and uses memory, Google was able to reduce the amount of memory that Chrome consumes, freeing up more performance for your PC to allocate to different tasks while also making the browser faster and more responsive.

Google's Year in Search 2022 has revealed that the most searched terms of the year were "Worlde", "World Cup," "Ukraine," and "Queen Elizabeth". These terms reflect the major events and trends that have shaped the year, offering insight into the interests and concerns of people around the world.

The search term "Worlde" game likely reflects the popularity of online gaming, which has grown significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. With many people spending more time at home, they have turned to games as a way to stay entertained and connected with friends and family.

The term "World Cup" likely relates to the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which is happening in Qatar. As the event continues, many people are likely using Google to find out more about the teams, players, and schedule.

The German Volkswagen Group has confirmed it is pausing advertising on Twitter and has urged its own brands to see what happens with Elon Musk's turbulent takeover of Twitter. Major companies that advertised on Twitter are sorting out what they want to do now that Musk is in control - and automakers could be jumping ship.

Here is what Volkswagen told Reuters: "We are closely monitoring the situation and will decide about next steps depending on its evolvement."

As part of the Volkswagen group, brands such as Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, and Ducati could also see their ads temporarily vanish from Twitter. General Motors moved quickly to pause Twitter advertising, with the company taking a wait-and-see approach.

Millions of people have taken to alternative social media platforms to report a glitch with Facebook's news feed.

In the early hours of August 24, thousands of people have taken to Twitter to report a strange bug in their Facebook news feed, with many Twitter posts featuring screenshots or screen recordings of their entire news feed being memes random Facebook users have posted to celebrity Facebook pages such as Joe Rogan, President Joe Biden, Harry Styles, Eminem, Ariana Grande, The Weekend and more.

It seems that the homepage has glitched for a certain percentage of users, as I can personally report no changes in my Facebook news feed. However, the glitch does seem to be widespread and is affecting a large percentage of people with hashtags such as "#Facebook" growing on Twitter. According to Down Detector, the problems are spread across desktop and apps, with 76% of the bug-reporting participants indicating problems with the News Feed, 18% with the app, and 6% with the website.

Google is down right now, I repeat: Google is DOWN.

I use the search engine hundreds of times per day for my job, so the very nanosecond that there was a blip in the Google radar, I felt it. Google seems to be down in some parts of the world, after a quick search on Twitter I noticed that #GoogleDown was in the top tweets, so I knew it wasn't just me.

People are getting "500. That's an error" that continues "the server encountered an error and could not complete your request. If the problem persists, please report your problem and mention this error message and the query that caused it. That's all we know", explains one of the largest companies in the world. Google.

The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has announced that Instagram is testing a new subscription service that allows creators to monetize their followers.

Mosseri took to his personal Instagram account to announce that the new subscription service that has been in testing since January 2022 will be getting an expansion of features. For those who don't know, Instagram has tested a subscription service similar to OnlyFans or Patreon, where followers can pay for access to a creator's exclusive content. In January, the service was only being tested on ten creators but has now rolled out to more than 10,000 creators.

Twitter is experiencing some issues across the world right now, with users in multiple countries including the US, UK, Mexico, Brazil, and Italy experiencing issues accessing Twitter.

Down here in Australia, I've got no problems on both accessing Twitter.com on my desktop PC, or on my Android smartphone. But there are over 50,000+ people with issues in the US along according to DownDetector. The outage kicked off at around 8AM ET, where people were having issues logging into the site, or accessing it from their phone.

Some users are getting error messages like "Tweets aren't loading right now. Try again" while others have no issues at all. Twitter doesn't get outages often, so when they happen they are headlines across the world. I'm sure that once you even read this news, Twitter will be back and operational.

The iconic music livestream stopped on July 10th, 2022.

The stream had amassed over 688 million views after starting on February 23rd, 2020. The Lofi Girl channel received a DMCA takedown request by FMC Music, a Malaysian company, leading YouTube to take the video down and issue one copyright strike to the channel. A second stream by the channel was also taken down on the same day, which had amassed 129 million views, and began streaming only three days after the other, back in 2020.

Lofi Girl claims they are "false copyright strikes," marking another episode in the ongoing saga of abuse of YouTube's copyright system. YouTube confirmed on July 11th that the takedown requests were malicious and subsequently terminated FMC Music's account. Though the strike has been removed from Lofi Girl's channel, and the videos will be reinstated, a new stream will need to begin, marking the end of an era for one of the platform's biggest ongoing livestreams. The new live stream will be going live here, if you're interested.