The Swiss government could soon require service providers with more than 5,000 users to collect government-issued identification, retain subscriber data for six months and, in many cases, disable encryption. From a report: The proposal, which is not subject to parliamentary approval, has alarmed privacy and digital-freedoms advocates worldwide because of how it will destroy anonymity online, including for people located outside of Switzerland. A large number of virtual private network (VPN) companies and other privacy-preserving firms are headquartered in the country because it has historically had liberal digital privacy laws alongside its famously discreet banking ecosystem.

Proton, which offers secure and end-to-end encrypted email along with an ultra-private VPN and cloud storage, announced on July 23 that it is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland due to the proposed law. The company is investing more than $117 million in the European Union, the announcement said, and plans to help develop a “sovereign EuroStack for the future of our home continent.” Switzerland is not a member of the EU. Proton said the decision was prompted by the Swiss government’s attempt to “introduce mass surveillance.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over the past few years, we haven’t had to wait long for the launch of new ChatGPT features, and the latest upgrade pushed out by OpenAI is the ability to branch conversation. This means you can steer your chats with the language bot in a different direction, and then return to where you started to continue the main thread of the conversation.

According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the feature had been introduced by popular request, and it’s not difficult to imagine ways in which it could be useful. Think if it like being able to create threads on Slack or Discord—you can follow tangents and related ideas without cluttering up the main conversation.

How to branch conversations in ChatGPT

Branch conversations open up in a new tab.
Credit: Lifehacker

As of this writing, you can only create branch conversations in the ChatGPT web app (though they can be read and added to from any device). While they can be used by both paid and free users, you do need to be signed in to see the feature.

In any of your conversations with ChatGPT, click the three dots at the end of a response, then choose Branch in new chat. A copy of the current conversation will open up in a new browser tab, and you’ll see an extra chat in the navigation pane on the left, with “Branch” added to the start of its name.

You’re then able to keep both conversations going at the same time by switching between browser tabs (or clicking between the chats on the left). The two chats will be the same up until the point where you started the branch chat; from there, you can take the conversations in whatever direction you like.

OpenAI hasn’t implemented this in a particularly elegant way, and the chats you’ve opened can quickly get unwieldy if you’re doing a lot of branching. To help bring a bit of order you can rename chats, or delete them if you’re sure you don’t need them—click the three dots next to a chat in the navigation pane, or in the top right corner when a chat is open, to find these options.

You can also make use of ChatGPT Projects to put your chats in different folders that are kept separate from each other. Your branched conversations all stay in the same project, though you can create new projects and move chats between them as needed.

How branching chats can be useful

You’ll need to keep on top of all your branches.
Credit: Lifehacker

There are all kinds of ways branch conversations could be useful, and you may well find that different ideas for new threads come to you as you interact with ChatGPT. There’s no right or wrong way to use them, and if a thread doesn’t work out, you can simply delete it and go back to where you were.

Say you’re composing an email to your boss, telling them you can’t stand to work another second under their management—but in a polite way. You can use multiple branch conversations to test out the phrasing using different tones and approaches, without having the same text repeated again and again in one chat.

If you’re researching your favorite literary masterpieces, you can go off on a tangent about one particular book or play in different chats, and still keep your main central conversation concentrated on overarching themes and ideas.

There are also obvious use cases for coders. Branched conversations let you test out separate debugging strategies or design ideas simultaneously in different browser tabs—and there’s always the option of retracing your steps and going back to where the branches first started.

You could even use branches to supply ChatGPT with the same basic blocks of information, then get it to answer the same questions but in different tones, using different lengths of response, or with any other variation.

In one of the most unexpected announcements of today’s Nintendo Direct, Game Freak revealed Pokémon Pokopia, a game that is clearly inspired by the Animal Crossing series. When Pokopia is released sometime next year, you’ll assume the role of a Ditto determined to make a comfortable home for their friends. This Ditto has assumed the form of a human, and as they meet new Pokémon, they’ll learn abilities they can use to transform their community. In turn, this work will lead to more Pokémon coming to live in your home. The game features a beautiful tilt-shift art style that is reminiscent of Pokémon’s third generation of games that debuted on the Game Boy Advance. 

No word yet on an exact release date, but the game will be a Switch 2 exclusive. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/pokemon-pokopia-looks-like-animal-crossing-for-pokemon-fans-and-im-here-for-it-141239467.html?src=rss

An anonymous reader shares a report: An attempt to ban social media in Nepal ended this week in violent protest with the prime minister ousted, the Parliament in flames and soldiers on the streets of the capital. Now, the very technology the government tried to outlaw is being harnessed to help select the country’s next leader, as more than 100,000 citizens are meeting regularly in a virtual chat room to debate the country’s future.

More than 30 people were killed in clashes with the police during youth-led protests that convulsed the capital in a paroxysm of outrage over wealth inequality, corruption and plans to ban some social media platforms. After the government’s collapse on Tuesday, the military imposed a curfew across the capital, Kathmandu, and restricted large gatherings. With the country in political limbo and no obvious next leader in place, Nepalis have taken to Discord, a platform popularized by video gamers, to enact the digital version of a national convention.

“The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord,” said Sid Ghimiri, 23, a content creator from Kathmandu, describing how the site has become the center of the nation’s political decision making. The conversation inside the Discord channel, taking place in a combination of voice, video, and text chats, is so consequential that it is being discussed on national television and live streamed on news sites.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.