MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 19, 2023--

WhatsApp has added “secret codes” for chats, allowing them to be locked and hidden. The feature is intended to let people have a chat that will not even be visible within the list of conversations. Instead, they can only be found by typing that code into the search bar at the top of the app. The feature is intended as “another layer of privacy for protecting your most sensitive conversations”. It has been built for those people who might need to keep important conversations entirely hidden, even from people who have access to their phone – such as people in abusive relationships. WhatsApp described the feature as a way to protect chats and “make them harder to find if someone has access to your phone or you share a phone with someone else”. It follows a similar feature, Chat Lock, which was announced earlier this year. When chats are locked, they are taken out of the inbox and put in their own “Locked chats” section, which requires a password or biometric authentication like a fingerprint to open. “We think this feature will be great for people who have reason to share their phones from time to time with a family member or those moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra special chat arrives,” it said then. Chats can be locked by long tapping on a conversation in the list and choosing the lock option. They can be found again by slowly pulling down on the inbox, which will bring up the prompt to open it. Secret code, however, means that they will not appear in that list at all. Instead, users will have to put the code into the search bar. As such, people will not even be able to find those hidden chats even if they know they might exist. Users create the code by locking it and then choosing the code option, when they are prompted to “use a word or emoji, but make it memorable”. Typing that word or emoji into the search bar will then bring up the chat, but it will otherwise not show at all.

Casey DeSantis' Mamas for DeSantis campaign seeks to promote her husband Ron DeSantis as the face of the parents' rights movement

DrLupo got an iconic Fortnite Chapter 1 prop from Dusty Diner from Epic Games ahead of the rumored Fortnite OG season launching on Nov. 3, 2023.

Apple's iPhone 15 Pro Max may come a month later than the other iPhone 15

Liberals deliver scathing dissents after the conservative majority ends race-based college admissions.

HERNDON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2023--

(Reuters) -Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co said on Friday that a cybersecurity incident involving one of its IT hardware suppliers has

Artificial intelligence has unrealistic and often dangerous ideas of what the “perfect” man and woman look like, according to a new study. Chiselled features, olive skin and eight-pack abs are among the features that kept cropping up when three leading AI image generators were tasked with creating “ideal” male and female bodies. The challenge was put to the popular programmes Dall-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney by eating disorder awareness group the Bulimia Project, which separated its request into two parts. First up, it asked the generators to come up with pictures of men and women based specifically on beauty standards set by social media. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Although it churned out quite a few different options, it showed a number of noticeable biases. Nearly all of the images featured petite women – with Midjourney named as the worst culprit – and all of the men looked like photoshopped versions of bodybuilders. The three AI favoured women with blonde hair and men with brown hair, and nearly half of the male images had facial hair. After analysing their findings based on social media, the Bulimia Project team broadened the scope of the task. This time, they asked the programmes to base their creations on images from across the internet. The main difference between the two categories was that the social media set was “far more sexually charged”, according to the study’s authors. The social media images also featured “largely disproportionate body parts”, which the Bulimia Project described as “unsettling”. “We can only assume that the reason AI came up with so many oddly shaped versions of the physiques it found on social media is that these platforms promote unrealistic body types, to begin with,” it said. “In the age of Instagram and Snapchat filters, no one can reasonably achieve the physical standards set by social media. So, why try to meet unrealistic ideals? It’s both mentally and physically healthier to keep body image expectations squarely in the realm of reality.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Four volunteers have entered a simulated Mars habitat as part of a year-long Nasa experiment to test astronauts’ resilience to isolation and other psychological stress factors. The CHAPEA (Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog) mission will see the participants live and work in a 158-square-metre (1,700-square-foot) habitat at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. It is the first of three one-year simulated Mars missions, which each aim to assess the health and performance of crew members when living in confinement with limited resources. Participants will take part in simulated spacewalks, science experiments and habitat maintenance, while also attempting to grow crops for food. “The simulation will allow us to collect cognitive and physical performance data to give us more insight into the potential impacts of long-duration missions to Mars on crew health and performance,” said Grace Douglas, CHAPEA principal investigator. “Ultimately, this information will help Nasa make informed decisions to design and plan for a successful human mission to Mars.” The four members of the CHAPEA mission are research scientist Kelly Haston, structural engineer Ross Brockwell, emergency medicine physician Nathan Jones and microbiologist Anca Selariu. Each were chosen after Nasa put out a call for “healthy, motivated” applicants in 2021. There have been several previous research projects involving simulated Mars habitats, with the Mars-500 missions between 2007 and 2011 seeing volunteers spend months locked inside a facility in Mosco, Russia. The HI-SEAS program in Hawaii also saw participants spend time living in isolation, though one mission lasted just four days after one of the crew members suffered an electric shock. Nasa plans to return humans to the Moon within the next three years as part of its Artemis missions, which the US space agency hopes to use as a foundation to eventually send astronauts to Mars. Private space firm SpaceX also plans to send people to Mars aboard its Starship rocket, which is currently under development at the company’s Starbase facility in Texas. SpaceX boss Elon Musk said a second attempt at an orbital flight test will be made before the end of August, after the first attempt in April ended in a large explosion just minutes after take off. The 480 million kilometre (300 million mile) journey to Mars is expected to take around seven months, with the planet’s orbit meaning that a travel window only opens up every 26 months. This means that any return mission would likely take close to four years to complete. Read More Elon Musk to launch biggest ever rocket after dramatic failure Elon Musk eyes ‘highly habitable’ planet that’s ‘practically next door’ Elon Musk eyes ‘highly habitable’ planet that’s ‘practically next door’ Apple releases urgent update to iPhone and iPad users Twitter hacker who took over Musk, Obama, Biden accounts gets prison sentence

LOUISVILLE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 26, 2023--

(Reuters) -Investigators at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's enforcement division have concluded that the co-founder of Voyager Digital broke