Instagram and Facebook users will now be able to pay for a blue tick verification, parent company Meta has announced.

Meta Verified will cost $11.99 (£9.96) a month on web, or $14.99 for iPhone users. It will be available in Australia and New Zealand this week.

Instead of buying new gadgets, a movement of volunteers wants people to repair their old ones to save them from landfill.

Repair centres, where people can learn repairing skills, have been springing up across the UK, and include the Fixing Factory on a high street in Camden, north London, which opened at the end of October, following the success of a centre in neighbouring Brent. In the backroom of the Camden branch there are shelves of faulty items awaiting careful attention.

League of the Lexicon is a beautifully designed game about words and language, ideal for language lovers, quiz fiends and the incurably curious. Susie Dent is a fan, as is Stephen Fry. On a chance visit to Waterstones, Britain’s largest book-chain, the branch game buyer was shown a prototype. Six weeks later, and with the game still unfinished, Waterstones secured exclusive rights to sell the game in the UK and ordered 5,000 copies for Christmas.

Consumer rights champion Justin Gutmann’s unprecedented lawsuit against Apple is moving forward. The hearing has now been set by the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) to commence from Tuesday 2 May 2023 until Thursday 4 May 2023 to determine whether the case should be certified as a collective action and proceed to a full trial.

Microsoft is fusing ChatGPT-like technology into its search engine Bing, transforming an internet service that now trails far behind Google into a new way of communicating with artificial intelligence.

The revamping of Microsoft’s second-place search engine could give the software giant a head start against other tech companies in capitalizing on the worldwide excitement surrounding ChatGPT, a tool that’s awakened millions of people to the possibilities of the latest AI technology.

Readly, the European leader in digital magazines and newspapers, has added New Scientist, the world’s most popular science and technology publication to its portfolio. New Scientist will sit within Readly’s science and tech category alongside other leading publications and is now available for Readly subscribers.

New Scientist covers the latest developments in science and technology that impact the world. It delivers international news from a scientific standpoint and asks big-picture questions about life, the universe and what it means to be human.