New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new feature to bring a ‘communities tab’ to iPad.

As shown in the screenshot shared by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is introducing the communities tab on the iPad app. This feature was previously unavailable on iPad, as it is considered a linked device and has some limitations.

“Users could explore communities within the chats list, but the experience was a bit inconvenient as they had to manually find all communities among other conversations,” the report said.

With the latest update, WhatsApp is addressing this limitation and improving the user experience by enabling iPad users to manage and navigate their communities directly from the app through a dedicated tab, it added.

Moreover, the report mentioned that with the communities tab on iPad, users can also create and manage communities directly from the app.

Earlier, it was limited to main devices, which restricted people with an iPad from fully using this feature.

A feature to bring a communities tab to iPad is available to some beta testers and will roll out to more people over the coming days, the report said.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new in-app dialer feature that will allow users to make calls directly from the app.

Users will not need to add contacts to their address book to make calls from the app. They will find a new floating action button located within the calls tab that will enable access to the in-app dialer.

–IANS

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New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) GIFT Nifty, which are traded on the National Stock Exchange (NSE), recorded a new milestone of achieving an all-time high monthly turnover of $95.55 billion (about Rs 7,97,714 crore) as on June 27.

This surpassed its previous record of $91.73 billion set in May. The benchmark achieved its highest-ever monthly turnover of 21,23,014 contracts in June.

“This milestone reflects the growing global interest and trust in the GIFT Nifty as a benchmark for India’s growth story,” NSE said.

“We are glad to witness the success of GIFT Nifty and express our sincere gratitude to all the participants for their overwhelming support and for making GIFT Nifty a successful contract,” it added.

Trading turnover on NSE IX has been growing exponentially since commencement of the full-scale operation of GIFT Nifty on July 3, 2023.

Since the first day of full-scale operations, GIFT Nifty has witnessed a total cumulative volume of over 21.06 million contracts with a total cumulative turnover of $881.26 billion till June 27, 2024.

–IANS

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Mumbai, June 29 (IANS) The development of ‘Made in India’ sovereign cloud infrastructure will enhance national security and resilience, industry experts have said, as the data centre capacity in the country is likely to double from 870 MW in FY22 to about 1,700-1,800 MW by FY25.

The country currently has more data in India than the US and China put together.

“Average data consumption which was just about 300 MB a few years back had already become 25 GB per month, and by 2028, we will become the largest in the world in terms of per user data consumption at almost 62 GB per user per month, said Sunil Gupta, Chair, Assocham National Council on Datacenter.

“The digital pervasiveness is only becoming bigger, making India a digital-first economy leapfrogging us beyond every single largest global economy,” he said.

From about 200 megawatts in 2013-14, India has grown to 1200 megawatt.

“By 2027 we are expected to go to 2,000 megawatt. A sovereign cloud ensures that data generated within India remains within the country’s borders and also protected completely by local law and regulation,” said Gupta, also the Co-Founder, MD and CEO of Yotta Data Services.

By 2025, the Indian software-as-a-service (SaaS) market is expected to grow to $35 billion, with data centres contributing to this growth.

“Growth is imperative as far as the country is concerned. The paradigm that we really need to focus on is to make the lives of individual Indians better,” said Niranjan Hiranandani, Past President Assocham and CMD, Hiranandani Group of Companies.

According to Surajit Chatterjee, Co-Chair, Assocham National Council on Datacentre, Mumbai is leading the pack in terms of the largest data cenrtre market share, followed by Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

“We are now moving into tier 2 and tier 3 markets,” he added.

–IANS

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Washington, June 29 (IANS) Denying that NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore are stranded on the International Space Station (ISS), the US space agency and Boeing officials have said they are currently “not in any rush to come home.”

Amid multiple reports claiming that the two astronauts, sent to the orbiting laboratory onboard Boeing Starliner spacecraft earlier this month, are stranded after suspected helium leaks, NASA and Boeing officials said they are using “the luxury of time” to learn more before the astronauts return to Earth.

“I want to make it real clear that we’re not in any rush to come home,” Steve Stich, NASA’s commercial crew programme manager, was quoted as saying during a press conference late on Friday (US time).

“The station is a nice, safe place to stop and take our time to work through the vehicle and make sure we’re ready to come home,’ he added.

NASA and Boeing continue to evaluate Starliner’s propulsion system performance before returning to Earth from the orbiting lab.

The US space agency said they are now targeting the end of July for the next spacewalk outside the space station.

This change allows teams on the ground to continue to troubleshoot and understand the water leak in the service and cooling umbilical unit that forced an early end to a spacewalk on June 24.

Originally slated to spend eight days on the orbiting space laboratory, the astronauts reached the ISS on June 6.

According to NASA, the spacecraft requires seven hours of time to perform a normal end-of-mission and it “currently has enough helium left in its tanks to support 70 hours of free flight activity following undocking.”

–IANS

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New Delhi, June 29 (IANS) Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Saturday said his social media platform X saw record usage as US President Joe Biden and his challenger, former President Donald Trump, attended their first presidential debate on TV.

According to X, the minute-by-minute conversation, about the US presidential debate spiked by “19 times from the start of the broadcast to its peak 90 minutes in.”

The company said the scale of the global conversation on X was staggering during the debate.

“We’ve tracked over 2 billion impressions with over 242 million video views and 2 million posts,” said the social media platform.

The tech billionaire stated that there was a “record usage of X during the US presidential debate.”

A user posted, “X was going crazy during the debate. X live streams during the debate also had huge audiences.”

“Amazing result of allowing people to speak about it freely, without the ban hammer of the ‘Censorship Complex’ hovering over them,” another X user commented.

Meanwhile, President Biden said he “did well” at the debate with ex-President Trump and dismissed the likelihood of him stepping aside, as being demanded by some Democrats disappointed by his performance.

“I think we did well,” President Biden told a reporter. Many Democrats, however, were concerned President Biden may not be able to beat former President Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

–IANS

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