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It's being reported that Facebook is looking to change its name with a massive rebrand set to be announced.

The founder of the company Mark Zuckerberg is expected to talk about the decision at an upcoming event but it's thought that the worlds worst kept secret could be unveiled even sooner.

The plans will mean that Facebook would change the name of the parent company, but not actually the social media platform that 1.9 billion people use every day.

That original app will fall under the new parent company name which will also include other major players in the social space including Instagram, WhatsApp and the popular home Virtual Reality devices Oculus who produce the Oculus Quest 2. 

It's believed that the name change is linked to the company building a "Metaverse" that has become the focus of large investment into the VR space.

This product would be a virtual and augmented reality environment that companies, creators and developers could live inside creating spaces for things like virtual concerts and even workspaces. 

This could be a gamechanger that eventually could be as popular as smartphones and even replace them to some extent. 

Facebook partnered with Rayban recently to reveal integrated sunglasses that can listen, and capture visions to share to your Facebook account.

It's all starting to sound a lot familiar, especially if you have read the book or seen the film for "Ready Player One".

Is this the future of social online entertainment and even more?

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211021-waste-header.jpg

And you thought you were having a crappy day!

WARNING: This story is truly repulsive. Proceed with caution (and potentially a bucket nearby).

While enjoying an afternoon in his garden, a man was 'splattered' with poop when a plane flying overhead illegally dumped it's toilet waste.

In a truly disgusting series of events, the man's entire garden - and his person - was covered with human excrement following the gag-inducing incident.

The understandably disgruntled Berkshire resident approached his local county Councillor, Karen Davies, about the mishap.

Davies brought the issue forward at a virtual meeting with the aviation forum of The Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead.

The minutes show that she had been 'contacted by a Windsor resident whose garden had had sewage from a plane discharged into it.'

The waste 'splattered' the resident 'in a very unpleasant way,' she noted. ‘He was out in the garden at the time, so a really horrible, horrible experience.’

According to Geoff Paxton, a member of the aviation committee and former airline employee, 'modern toilets on planes were vaccuum secured and were very reliable as they relied on pressure suction to work, so a situation such as this could only result from aircraft failure or a failure to adequately service it.'

The resident has decided not to pursue an insurance claim against the unnamed airline.

Unbelievably, this isn't the first time someone's day has been ruined by poop falling from the sky. In 2015, a Sweet 16 birthday party was also soiled when a plane dumped it's waste overhead.

Image (Brett Sayles / Pexels)

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dad struggles to put baby in child seat

New parents Ben and Lex have posted a hilarious video of their struggling efforts in getting their baby into a child seat. The video which has received over 14 million views has over 30K comments (at the time of writing), has amused the internet with the relatable struggle.

In the video captioned, "Light as a feather, stiff as a board!” the parents ask their followers for advice writing, "Any advice for getting your baby into their car seat?” As father Ben attempts to seat his son Bennett, he stiffs up and refuses to sit down comfortably resulting in both parents laughing at the situation. They then add, "Our baby goes full rigor mortis every time we put him in 😂 “ as the dad continues to try and adjust the baby to sit down. He eventually manages to get Bennett sitting down by the end of the video. No crying involved!

@benandlex

Light as a feather, stiff as a board! ##TargetHalloween ##carseat ##uppababy

♬ Monkeys Spinning Monkeys - Kevin MacLeod

Of course, capturing the attention of the internet, there were some hilarious responses to the situation. One person commented:

“I just karate chop mine right in the waist till they bend.”

Some compared the baby to food, suggesting that he just needed to be softened. One wrote, "Just add water, noodle should soften." “Put in the microwave for ten seconds so he softens up,” another added.

Others took more of a tech angle, suggested restarting the baby. They commented:

"Press control, alt, and delete at the same time. If that doesn’t work - unplug it for 30 seconds.”

A similar commenter wrote, "Have you tried switching it on and off again?"

"Push the belly button. It activates the folding mechanism."

"You have to lubricate the joints. Try WD-40 or apple sauce."

Another great suggestion that could actually work was the ’tickle method’ with one person writing, "TICKLE TILL THEY FOLD,” and another saying:

"I tickle them and once they go limp get them into place.”

The new parents definitely have a lot of great suggestions with over 30K comments on their hilariously relatable video. Hopefully one of the suggestions work, or maybe six-month-old Bennett will learn to take a seat on his own eventually!

Image Credit: (@benandlex / TikTok)

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For the first time, a pig kidney has been transplanted into a human without triggering immediate rejection by the recipient's immune system, a potentially major advance that could eventually help alleviate a dire shortage of human organs for transplant.

The procedure done at NYU Langone Health in New York City involved use of a pig whose genes had been altered so that its tissues no longer contained a molecule known to trigger almost immediate rejection.

The recipient was a brain-dead patient with signs of kidney dysfunction whose family consented to the experiment before she was due to be taken off of life support, researchers told Reuters.

For three days, the new kidney was attached to her blood vessels and maintained outside her body, giving researchers access to it.

Test results of the transplanted kidney's function "looked pretty normal," said transplant surgeon Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the study.

The kidney made "the amount of urine that you would expect" from a transplanted human kidney, he said, and there was no evidence of the vigorous, early rejection seen when unmodified pig kidneys are transplanted into non-human primates.

The recipient's abnormal creatinine level - an indicator of poor kidney function - returned to normal after the transplant, Montgomery said. 

In the United States, nearly 107,000 people are presently waiting for organ transplants, including more than 90,000 awaiting a kidney, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Wait times for a kidney average three-to-five years.

Researchers have been working for decades on the possibility of using animal organs for transplants, but have been stymied over how to prevent immediate rejection by the human body.

Montgomery's team theorised that knocking out the pig gene for a carbohydrate that triggers rejection - a sugar molecule, or glycan, called alpha-gal - would prevent the problem.

The genetically altered pig, dubbed GalSafe, was developed by United Therapeutics Corp's Revivicor unit and approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in December 2020.

Medical products developed from the pigs would still require specific FDA approval before being used in humans, the agency said.

Other researchers are considering whether GalSafe pigs can be sources of everything from heart valves to skin grafts for human patients.

The NYU kidney transplant experiment should pave the way for trials in patients with end-stage kidney failure, possibly in the next year or two, said Montgomery, himself a heart transplant recipient.

Those trials might test the approach as a short-term solution for critically ill patients until a human kidney becomes available, or as a permanent graft.

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