By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A California state agency on Monday said it is reviewing the privacy practices of automakers

WhatsApp users will be able to guard their “most intimate conversations” with a new password protected feature to hide messages, parent company Meta has said. Chat Lock will allow individuals to “lock and hide” private exchanges by removing them from the main inbox into a folder only accessible by password or biometric security, such as a fingerprint. Meta announced the development on Monday as the global launch began. Chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post: “New locked chats in WhatsApp make your conversations more private. “They’re hidden in a password protected folder and notifications won’t show sender or message content.” However the new privacy measures may intensify the stand-off between Meta and the UK government over the Online Safety Bill. In April, Meta protested against the legislation, which it said would undermine the end-to-end encryption used by WhatsApp where only the sender and intended recipient of a message are able to read it. The Government has denied the Bill would outlaw encrypted messaging, saying it aims to target child abuse content while retaining privacy online. Tech companies who refuse to comply with the Government’s demands to identify and remove such content from their platforms could face large fines. In response to this, Meta threatened to withdraw WhatsApp from the UK last March rather than submit to the proposed policies. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live

Sister Sledge was right, we are family. It's well-known that all humans share a common ancestor but according to researchers almost all Europeans can trace that back to one guy. That guy is Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor. In 2013, scientists Peter Ralph and Graham Cooper published a study indicating that all Europeans are descendants from the same people, mainly from the ninth century. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Charlemagne, who lived during the 800s allegedly produced eighteen children with seven different women. By number standards, this means that people of European decent are most likely related to Charlemagne in some way. Celebrities like Bill Hader and Brooke Shields have revealed that they share the common ancestor. Even Sir Christopher Lee is a descendant of the Holy Roman Emperor. And if you're European, you probably are too. According to Scientific American, "because Charlemagne lived before the isopoint and has living descendants, everyone with European ancestry is directly descended from him." Some Europeans who take a DNA tests can see even their lineage directly traced back to the common ancestor. But before you jump at the chance to see for yourself, more than likely it won't pop up- even if you are a descendant of the Roman Emperor. This is because bloodlines have been diluted and not all genes are passed on from parent to child. So while you may be vaguely related to Charlemagne, you may not carry any of the same genes. 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.

When night falls in the refugee camp outside Karachi, Shanawaz Khoso worries about snake bites. The 38-year-old and

An author is raising alarms this week after she found new books being sold on Amazon under her name — only she didn't write them; they appear to have been generated by artificial intelligence.

Even though her shoe collection has become the talk of the town, some fans seem to be missing the 'singer Katy'

By Fanny Potkin and Yelin Mo SINGAPORE/BEIJING Nvidia has told customers in China it is delaying the launch

New findings have revealed that time ran five times slower in the early universe, after scientists published new research into quasars. A quasar is a luminous active galactic nucleus and studying them has allowed scientists to measure time. The variation in brightness of quasars from the early universe has been measured to determine time dilation back to a billion years after the Big Bang. Experts have found that there was an era in which clocks moved five times slower than they do in the present day. The findings come as a relief to many cosmologists who have been perplexed by previous results that have come from studying quasars. The discovery that the universe is expanding led to the theorisation of “time dilation” – the idea that time moved slower the smaller the universe was. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Professor Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney, the lead author of a new study, said in a statement: “Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower.” He continued, explaining: “If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second – but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag.” To measure the extent of time dilation, scientists turned to quasars, as they are able to measure their change in brightness over a period they can estimate. The most distant quasar that is visible is 13 billion back in time and can still be seen despite its far distance. Their brightness varies due to turbulence and lumpiness in their accretion disks. Lewis explained the phenomenon as being “a bit like the stock market”. He said: “Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen there is a statistical pattern to the variation, with timescales related to how bright a quasar is and the wavelength of its light.” 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.

Twitter, recently rebranded as X, now sorts account posts based on their like counts, straying away from the platform’s historic approach to display them in the chronological order in which they were posted. This new change affects how logged-out users see other profiles and comes as the latest in the string of alterations made to the platform since Tesla titan Elon Musk took over the company last year. Before the platform was rebranded as X, Twitter blocked users without an account from accessing the site in any form, directing them instead to the login page – a move that was quickly ended. Now for logged-out users, X shows posts on other profiles sorted by their like counts. This new sorting method seems to be done based on likes, and not by the number of views garnered by individual posts as it can be seen that tweets with more views, but fewer like counts are showing up lower in the feed. For instance, if a logged-out user – or one who hasn’t signed up on the platform – now visits Elon Musk’s account, they would see on top his cheeky April 2022 tweet about “buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in” and not his most recent post. Some posts by users on the platform suggest this change was likely made towards the last week of July. It remains unclear why this change has been made as it could frustrate users who may want to see the most recent posts made by other profiles. Earlier this week, X also placed Tweetdeck into a paid service and placed it behind a paywall, and also slowed down access to rivals, and news organisations via the platform. The change makes accessing Tweetdeck, rebranded recently to “X Pro”, to require a subscription to the company’s premium service Blue. Those visiting Tweetdeck’s website without a Blue subscription are now being redirected to a page promoting signup to the premium service. X also seemed to have added a delay of about five seconds when people clicked on links to go elsewhere on the web. The delay was found to be applied to a range of rival social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky. Websites of news organisations that have been critical of Mr Musk such as Reuters and the New York Times also seemed to be slow to load. Read More Elon Musk’s Twitter slows down access to rival websites Twitter is turning Tweetdeck into paid service after slowing down access to rival sites Mark Zuckerberg says he’s ‘out of town’ as Elon Musk drives to his house to fight Snapchat experiences ‘temporary outage’ as My AI chatbot posts own Story Musk’s Twitter takeover sparks mass exodus of climate experts Elon Musk’s Twitter slows down access to rival websites

Darren Till took to Twitter last month to reveal his harrowing story of suffering a massive financial loss as a result of cryptocurrency

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 21, 2023--

TL;DR: As of May 15, you can get a free Ninja Dragon Blade X Pro