Welcome to Money Diaries where we are tackling the ever-present taboo that is money. We’re asking real people how they spend their hard-earned money during a seven-day period — and we’re tracking every last dollar.

WhatsApp has announced a new feature that it says will “protect your most intimate conversations”. Chat Lock will allow users of the messaging app to take a chat thread from their inbox and put it in a new folder that can only be accessed by a password or biometric information, such as a fingerprint. Meta, the company’s owner, on Monday, said this would keep users’ conversations behind “one more layer of security” and has already started rolling it out. The content of messages in notifications will also be automatically hidden, the tech behemoth said. In a press release, Meta said: “We believe this feature will be great for people who share their phones from time to time with a family member, or in moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra-special chat arrives. “You can lock a chat by tapping the name of a one-to-one or group and selecting the lock option. To reveal these chats, slowly pull down on your inbox and enter your password or biometric.” It comes after warnings from WhatsApp that it could face being banned in the UK under the government’s online safety bill. Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp parent company Meta, said in late March that the upcoming legislation could weaken the end-to-end encryption that secures messages on the service. He added that if the government told the company to weaken any security features it would resist, leading to the possibility it could be banned in the UK." width="500"> Just last month it signed an open letter with its competitors, including Signal, arguing that the bill poses “an unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every UK citizen”. The row is over end-to-end encryption, used by WhatsApp, which allows only the sender and recipient to access the contents of a message. However, police and law enforcement agencies argue this feature makes it harder to uncover serious wrongdoing, such as child sexual abuse, and want to weaken the feature. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Meta, said in a statement on Facebook: “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.” Read More Creepy WhatsApp update sparks fears users are being listened to through their phone Government faces years of strike action from nurses, warns RCN chief Creepy WhatsApp update sparks fears users are being listened to through their phone WhatsApp just fixed two of its most glaring quirks Scientist spends 74 days underwater and expects to lose an inch in height

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes may have again stalled the date by which she must report to prison by filing another appeal of her fraud conviction. Holmes was convicted by a federal jury of defrauding Theranos investors last year and was sentenced in November to just more than 11 years in prison. Holmes’s attorneys asked that she be allowed to remain free on bail while she appeals her conviction, but a judge declined that request and ordered her to report to prison on April 27. Now, though, it seems the disgraced tech star might not have to begin her prison sentence until June at the earliest. On Monday, her attorney filed a new motion of appeal of her conviction — after which Holmes was granted an immediate stay of her prison-report date, according to NBC Bay Area. The state has 21 days to respond to the appeal, after which Holmes’s defence team will have a further three weeks to file a final motion. After the final motion is filed, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will consider her legal fate. The appeal filed this week is considered a longshot, but while that process is ongoing it is believed that Ms Holmes will remain free unless a judge orders her to report to prison. Holmes was back in the news last week after The New York Times published a long-form profile of her that was panned by a number of readers for its tone and credulity. Some critics, including the poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib, noted that Black people convicted of felonies are rarely given the same space to pitch their reformations to the media that the profile gave Holmes. Much of the article focused in part on Holmes as a mother. The former CEO gave birth to her first child in 2021 and her second child sometime around the beginning of 2023. Holmes’s former romantic partner and business partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani was sentenced to just under 13 years in prison on conspiracy and fraud counts for his role in the Theranos situation. He began serving his prison sentence last month. Read More Elizabeth Holmes says actors are playing a ‘character I created’ in dramatisations of her downfall Elizabeth Holmes says she’s working on new inventions but admits ‘mistakes’ in first interview post trial OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI can go ‘quite wrong’ Regulation ‘critical’ to curb risk posed by AI, boss of ChatGPT tells Congress Sam Altman testifies before Congress saying there is ‘urgent’ need for regulation

REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 14, 2023--

(Reuters) -Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said on Wednesday it will sell its Russia business to newly-launched exchange CommEX, becoming the latest

Save $79.01: The ninth generation Apple iPad is back down to its record low price

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 11, 2023--

Uber's diversity chief is on leave from the company after criticism from some employees related to an internal panel called "Don't Call Me Karen."

A Redditor revealed they had received hate and death threats in xQc's chat room for using Trans Pride and Queer Pride emotes

SANTA ROSA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 12, 2023--

Many of the people who knew John Forsyth are at a loss to explain the Missouri emergency room doctor's death

Omegle, a popular website used to video chat with strangers, is shutting down after almost 15 years. The closure comes amid increasing criticism that the site endangered its users, with reports of child sexual abuse and other crime on the platform. Omegle allowed users to sign up and then be launched into a video chat with another stranger using the site. The two could chat for as long as they wished – until they ended that conversation and embarked on a new one. The app was launched in 2009, and became popular almost straight away. Its founder said that its popularity was a result of “meeting new people being a basic human need”. Quickly, however, it became known for explicit and other criminal content. Leif K-Brooks, the company’s founder, admitted that Omegle had been misused, “including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes”. The site attempted to introduce new features to stop that misuse, such as “monitored chats” that would allow moderators to try and stop criminals using the site. But they did not work, and the site continued to receive criticism for its lack of safety. Now Mr K-Brooks has said that the criticism has become too much, and Omegle will shut down. The intensity of the fight over use of the site had forced him to decide to shut it down, he said, and it will stop working straight away. “As much as I wish circumstances were different, the stress and expense of this fight – coupled with the existing stress and expense of operating Omegle, and fighting its misuse – are simply too much. Operating Omegle is no longer sustainable, financially nor psychologically. Frankly, I don’t want to have a heart attack in my 30s,” wrote Leif K-Brooks, who has run the website since founding it. Omegle saw a huge surge in popularity during the pandemic, as people not only flocked to the site but recorded their interactions and shared them on social media. But that popularity also brought more awareness of the problems on the site, and increased criticism of it. Mr K-Brooks acknowledged that criticism. But he also suggested that at least some of it was in bad faith, and that it was intended to force the site to shut down. “In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. Maybe that has something to do with the pandemic, or with political disagreements. Whatever the reason, people have become faster to attack, and slower to recognize each other’s shared humanity. One aspect of this has been a constant barrage of attacks on communication services, Omegle included, based on the behavior of a malicious subset of users,” he wrote. He said that the site had been shut down on the basis of “fear”. “If something as simple as meeting random new people is forbidden, what’s next?”, he wrote, comparing the end of Omegle to “shutting down Central Park because crime occurs there – or perhaps more provocatively, destroying the universe because it contains evil”. The decision to shut down Omegle comes amid increasing concern about regulation of the internet and how best to protect its users. It comes just days after the introduction of the UK’s Online Safety Act, for instance, which aims to hold platforms to account for crimes on their platform, including online grooming. Read More Omegle anonymous chat app shuts down after 14 years Setback for Ireland as EU legal adviser recommends revisit of Apple tax case New AI Pin clips ChatGPT to your clothes Setback for Ireland as EU legal adviser recommends revisit of Apple tax case New AI Pin clips ChatGPT to your clothes Google issues three-week warning to Gmail account holders