The world needs sugar from top producer Brazil more than ever to help ease global shortages. Congestion at

Meta has launched its new “Threads” app, widely thought to be an attempt to succeed Twitter. Threads is branded as an Instagram app and built by its team, but is focused on text updates, like Twitter. Users log into the separate app using their Instagram account and can then post up to 500 character text updates, which can also include photos and videos. Meta says that it has built the foundations of the app to be “open” and “interoperable” so that it can work alongside other social networks in the future. The company intends to support the ActivityPub technology that has been developed as a way of allowing other apps – such as Mastodon and Tumblr – to work together. Twitter was not mentioned in the announcement of Threads, despite its clear competition with the app. The launch of Threads comes at a difficult time for Twitter, which has faced serious technical issues and lost some of its central functionality in recent days. Threads is just the latest in a range of apps looking to take over from Twitter amid criticism of that service. Others, such as Mastodon and Bluesky, have struggled with technical issues and other problems. The launch also comes as Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg plots a mixed martial arts fight with Mr Musk. Meta said that Threads was intended to “take what Instagram does best and expand that to text, creating a positive and creative space to express your ideas”. “Just like on Instagram, with Threads you can follow and connect with friends and creators who share your interests – including the people you follow on Instagram and beyond,” it said in its announcement. A number of those influencers and celebrities had already signed up to post on Threads, Meta said. That included everyone from Netflix to Shakira, and from mixed martial arts champion Francis Ngannou to novelty song creators Ladbaby. For everyone else, Meta said the app had been built to be easy to get started with. While users must download the separate Threads app, they can use their existing Instagram account to log in, which will bring over their username and verification status, before their profile can be customised for Threads. Other data will be carried over from the main Instagram account, including profiles that have been blocked. Other safety features include the ability to block certain words or hide particular profiles. Like with Instagram, the Threads feed will push content from creators that people have not explicitly chosen to follow. The main Instagram app has received some criticism from users over its heavily algorithmic feed, with users arguing that the algorithm is pushing content that they would prefer not to see over updates from people they have actually opted to follow. The app is available in the US and UK at launch. It is not available in the European Union, apparently because of privacy concerns over the fact that data will be shared between different Meta apps. Perhaps the biggest departure from both rival services and other Meta apps is the decision to allow the app to be interoperable with other similar social platforms. By building on the ActivityPub protocol, Threads will allow users to take their posts into another app, for instance, or follow updates from different platforms. “Threads is Meta’s first app envisioned to be compatible with an open social networking protocol – we hope that by joining this fast-growing ecosystem of interoperable services, Threads will help people find their community, no matter what app they use,” Meta said in its announcement. The company has already announced that it plans to bring similar interoperable design to its existing, more popular apps, by integrating Instagram DMs with WhatsApp, for instance. Those tools are yet to be announced. Read More Meta to launch Threads app that will rival Twitter - live Judge blocks Biden agencies from communicating with social media platforms Meta’s Twitter alternative Threads to be launched this week Instagram and Facebook reveal how their AI decides what you see Celebrity impersonators banned from Facebook protest outside Meta offices Meta rejects accusation of censorship of language around female body

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NIJMEGEN, Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 20, 2023--

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In 2020, philosopher Toby Ord published The Precipice, a book on the risk of human extinction. The chances of "existential catastrophe" for humanity in the next century according to Ord? One in six. It was a shocking number that alarmed many. After years of being flooded with warnings over climate change, rogue AI, nuclear weapons and pandemics, it's hard to disagree that humans face worrying chances. In his book, Ord discusses a number of potential extinction events, some of which can be examined through history. His research involved looking at the number of space rocks that have hit the moon over its history to figure out the likelihood than an extinction-sized asteroid hitting Earth. This was, in fact, looked at in 2022 by French scientists Jean-Marc Salotti, he calculated the odds of an extinction-level hit in the next century to be roughly one in 300 million. By contrast, Ord estimated the risk to be one in a million, although he does point out a considerable degree of uncertainty. Probabilities can be hard to understand in this context. Traditional probability, for example, relies on observations and a collection of repeated events, but human extinction would be a one-off. But there is another way to think if, called Bayesianism, after the English statistician Thomas Bayes. It sees probabilities as a ranking system of sorts. Specific number predictions shouldn't be taken so literally, but rather compared to other probabilities to understand the likelihood of each outcome. Ord's book contains a table of potential causes of extinctions, accompanied by his personal estimates of their probability. From a Bayesian perspective, we can view these as relative ranks. Ord thinks extinction from an asteroid strike (one in a million) is much less likely than extinction from climate change (one in a thousand). However, even using Bayesianism traditionally requires the incorporation of observational evidence. So, what do we make of Ord's "one in six"? Well it's better to take it less literally but to think of it as a warning, to jump start action on issues such as climate change to hopefully reduce the risk of human extinction in the next century. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter 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.

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