List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

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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

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

For a few months in 2017, there were rumors that Sam Altman was planning to run for governor of California. Instead, he kept his day job as one of Silicon Valley's most influential investors and entrepreneurs.

MTN Group Ltd., Africa’s biggest mobile-phone operator, plans to build a $320 million inland fiber cable to connect

A scientist has broken the world record for living underwater after spending 74 days living in a habitat 30 feet (9 metres) below a Florida lagoon. Former naval officer Dr Joseph Dituri is the first person to live that long that far underwater without depressurisation, with plans to remain in Jules’ Undersea Lodge in Key Largo until 9 June as part of a 100 day mission dubbed Project Neptune 100. The mission combines educational outreach with medical and ocean research, with scientists keen to see what impact sustained exposure to such pressure will have on the human body. One hypothesis is that the increased pressure – roughly 1.6-times that of the surface pressure – will lead to improvements in health, while also potentially having an impact on key indicators related to disease and longevity. “We know for sure that when you’re exposed to about half the pressure that I am right now, you double the number of circulating stem cells,” Dr Dituri told The Independent via video chat in April. “I will have longer telomeres – potentially reversing ageing – and I will also gain bone density and muscle when I’m down here.” Scientists also estimate he may lose around an inch in height during the mission due to the pressure exerted on his body – in the same way that astronauts grow around 3 per cent taller after spending time in the weightlessness of space. Dr Dituri’s 74th day residing in the underwater lodge was similar to previous days spent there since he submerged on 1 March. The university professor, who also goes by the moniker “Dr. Deep Sea,” ate a protein-heavy meal of eggs and salmon prepared using a microwave, exercised with resistance bands, did his daily pushups and took an hour-long nap. Unlike a submarine, the lodge does not use technology to adjust for the increased underwater pressure. The previous record of 73 days, two hours and 34 minutes was set by two Tennessee professors – Bruce Cantrell and Jessica Fain – at the same location in 2014. “The record is a small bump and I really appreciate it. I’m honoured to have it, but we still have more science to do,” Dr Dituri said. “The idea here is to populate the world’s oceans, to take care of them by living in them and really treating them well.” While he says he loves living under the ocean, there is one thing he really misses. “The thing that I miss the most about being on the surface is literally the Sun,” he said. “The sun has been a major factor in my life – I usually go to the gym at five and then I come back out and watch the sunrise.” During his time underwater, Dr Dituri also claims to have discovered a brand new species. “We found a single-cell ciliate, a single-celled organism that we believe is a brand new species to science,” Dr Dituri said. “People have dived in this area thousands and thousands of times – it’s been here, we just didn’t look.” Additional reporting from agencies Read More Woman talks to past self in ‘trippy’ conversation after feeding childhood journals to AI Nearly half of all internet traffic is now bots, study reveals ChatGPT is finally connected to the web 75% of Irish data watchdog’s GDPR decisions since 2018 overruled – report

Nearly half of all internet traffic came from bots last year, according to new research. Figures from cyber security firm Imperva revealed a significant increase in automated and malicious web activity in 2022, with the proportion of human traffic falling to its lowest level in eight years. The company noted that so-called “bad bots” were at their highest level since it started tracking the trend in 2013. Bot activity is expected to increase even further this year, the researchers claimed, due to the arrival of generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. “Bots have evolved rapidly since 2013, but with the advent of generative artificial intelligence, the technology will evolve at an even greater, more concerning pace over the next 10 years,” said Karl Triebes, a senior vice president at Imperva. “Cyber criminals will increase their focus on attacking API endpoints and application business logic with sophisticated automation. As a result, the business disruption and financial impact associated with bad bots will become even more significant in the coming years.” Bad bot activity can include anything from spam that clogs up email inboxes, to advanced systems that carry out brute force attacks to hack into people’s emails or online accounts. Some bots even mimic human behaviour in order to avoid being detected by security software. Another worrying trend noted in the report was the rise of bots used in warfare, with a 145 per cent spike in automated attacks targeting Ukrainian web applications in early 2022. These were likely designed to disrupt the country’s critical infrastructure, ranging from energy and telecom, to transport and financial sectors. “Every organisation, regardless of size or industry, should be concerned about the rising volume of bad bots across the internet,” said Triebes. “Year-over-year, the proportion of bot traffic is growing and the disruptions caused by malicious automation results in tangible business risks – from brand reputation issues to reduced online sales and security risks for web applications, mobile apps, and APIs.” Read More Why tech bosses are doomsday prepping ChatGPT is finally connected to the web 75% of Irish data watchdog’s GDPR decisions since 2018 overruled – report Nasa’s AI gives ‘30 minutes of advance warning’ before solar superstorms strike Earth

It might sound more like the kind of idle daydream billionaires like Elon Musk would have, but could flooding the Sahara actually be the best way of tackling climate change in the future? The idea of creating a new “sea” in Africa is being discussed, and it’s not the first time that the notion of a great oasis in the Sahara has been discussed among the scientific community. As the ongoing climate crisis continues to worsen, the notion of flooding vast areas of the desert is being returned to once again [via IFL Science]. A new “sea” was first proposed following the study of the Messinian salinity crisis – which saw a dried-out area of the Mediterranean rejuvenated by the Zanclean flood, reconnecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean around 5.33 million years ago. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Given how the Mediterranean was transformed by the flood, the idea of flooding the Sahara to achieve similar results has been thrown around in the scientific community as far back as 1877, the Scottish engineer Donald McKenzie suggested flooding the El Djouf basin in Western Africa. The idea is now returning to popularity as the world looks for solutions to the climate crisis. One proposal centres on the Middle East’s Dead Sea and flooding the area using water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea Depression. A vast sea in Africa could represent a hugely innovative step towards tackling climate change and fostering a new hub of life – but even the people suggesting work such a project acknowledge just how expensive and dangerous it is. Even Y Combinator is a US startup accelerator who has described “desert flooding” as “risky, unproven, even unlikely to work”. Only time will tell whether the notion of a new sea in the Sahara coud ever work, or whether it’ll remain the stuff of dreams. 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.

Three quarters of the Irish data watchdog’s GDPR decisions were overruled by European regulators, a report has found. The report indicates that 75% of the Data Protection Commission’s decisions in EU cases over a five-year period were overruled by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB). The EDPB had demanded tougher enforcement action in these cases, the report by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) said, with only one other country in one other case overruled in such a manner. The figures include final decisions from January 2023 that are not yet included in the EDPB register of final decisions, from which the figures are based. If these three cases are not included, the figure is 88% of DPC decisions overruled. The report said that the DPC tends to use its discretion under Irish law to choose “amicable resolution” to conclude 83% of the cross-border complaints it receives, instead of using enforcement measures. The ICCL report claims that Ireland remains “the bottleneck of enforcement” for major cross-border cases in Europe. “When it does eventually do so, other European enforcers then routinely vote by majority to force it to take tougher enforcement action,” it said. As Google, Meta, Apple, TikTok and Microsoft have headquarters in Ireland, the Data Protection Commission is the lead authority investigating data privacy complaints about tech giants in Europe. Some 87% of cross-border GDPR complaints to Ireland’s DPC also involve the same eight companies: Meta, Google, Airbnb, Yahoo!, Twitter, Microsoft, Apple, and Tinder. On EU-wide cases, the ICCL report found that since May 2018 – when GDPR laws came into effect – and late 2022, 64% of the 159 enforcement measures were reprimands, stating that enforcement against tech giants in Europe “remains largely paralysed”. The EDPB register of EU-level decisions shows there were 49 compliance orders issued over four and a half year years. The report called on the European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders to “take serious action” to enforce GDPR laws across Europe. Last summer, the Irish Government announced that two additional data protection commissioners would be hired, and that Helen Dixon would be promoted to chairwoman of the DPC – in an attempt to better resource the watchdog in recognition of its growing workload. The DPC has been carrying out a review of its governance structures, staffing arrangements and processes since last summer. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Kate Winslet calls on Government to ‘criminalise harmful content’ Humans could be controlled by robots, AI firm’s founder warns AI pioneer warns UK is failing to protect against ‘existential threat’ of machines

China's Communist Party had "supreme access" to all data held by TikTok's parent company Bytedance, including on servers in the United States, a former employer who is bringing a wrongful termination lawsuit has alleged.

Google is adding two new features to its image search to reduce the spread of misinformation, especially now

BENGALURU (Reuters) -Apple Inc supplier Foxconn will invest $500 million to set up manufacturing plants in the southern Indian state