This is Bèr. He's going as Paddington Dog for Halloween. Distant cousin of Paddington Bear, but with a strikingly similar fashion sense. Prefers peanut butter to marmalade. 14/10

Now that he owns Twitter, Elon Musk has given employees their first ultimatum: Meet his deadline to introduce paid verification on Twitter or pack up and leave.

The directive is to change Twitter Blue, the company’s optional, $4.99 a month subscription that unlocks additional features, into a more expensive subscription that also verifies users, according to people familiar with the matter and internal correspondence seen by The Verge. Twitter is currently planning to charge $19.99 for the new Twitter Blue subscription. Under the current plan, verified users would have 90 days to subscribe or lose their blue checkmark. Employees working on the project were told on Sunday that they need to meet a deadline of November 7th to launch the feature or they will be fired.

Musk has been clear in the months leading up to his acquisition that he wanted to revamp how Twitter verifies accounts and handles bots. On Sunday, he tweeted: “The whole verification process is being revamped right now.”

Platformer’s Casey Newton first reported that Twitter was considering charging for verification. A spokesperson for Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/30/23431931/twitter-paid-verification-elon-musk-blue-monthly-subscription

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Hannah Pick-Goslar, one of Jewish diarist Anne Frank’s best friends, has died at age 93, the foundation that runs the Anne Frank House museum said.

The Anne Frank Foundation paid tribute to Pick-Goslar, who is mentioned in Anne’s world-famous diary about her life in hiding from the Netherlands’ Nazi occupiers, for helping to keep Anne’s memory alive with stories about their youth.

“Hannah Pick-Goslar meant a lot to the Anne Frank House, and we could always call on her,” the foundation said in a statement. It did not give details or the cause of her death.

Pick-Goslar grew up with Anne in Amsterdam after both their families moved there from Germany as Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party rose to power. The friends were separated as Anne’s family went into hiding in 1942 but met again briefly in February 1945, at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, shortly before Anne died there of typhus.

Before World War II, their families lived next door to one another in Amsterdam, and Anne and Hannah went to school together.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/10/29/world/anne-franks-friend-hannah-pick-goslar-dies-age-93/