WhatsApp May Soon Allow Hiding Last Seen Status From Specific Individuals

While people are naturally more concerned about the double blue ticks, WhatsApp has another privacy feature in the form of the Last Seen status. Like the blue ticks, you can either let everyone see it, or no one at all. But the messaging app may be working to change that, allowing users to hide it from specific individuals.

WABetaInfo reports that the feature is currently in development. In an iOS screenshot, the privacy setting has a new option that reads “My Contacts Except…”. This is in addition to the existing three, which are Everyone, My Contacts, and Nobody.

By default, it would probably be rare that the basic My Contacts option sees any use. But with exceptions, you will at least have the option to, for example, hide your Last Seen status from professional contacts if you use the same number for work as you do your private life.

As is usually the case, there’s no indication as to when this new privacy option will go live. For what it’s worth, it will likely show up on both iOS and Android versions of WhatsApp. But again, it’s always possible that both platforms get the new option at different dates.

TSMC Warns Chip Shortage May Last Into 2022

Taiwanese chip manufacturing giant TSMC warned that the global semiconductor shortage could last into next year, even as it expects better supply for its automotive clients next quarter. According to Bloomberg, CEO C.C. Wei told analysts that the company expects the chip shortage as a whole to continue throughout 2021 and potentially into the next year.

“In 2023, I hope we can offer more capacity to support our customers. At that time, we’ll start to see the supply chain tightness release a little bit,” he said.

Prodded by the extraordinary demand for chips, TSMC previously announced that it would spend US$100 billion (~RM413.8 billion) over three years to boost the chip-making capacity of its plants.

Wei noted the strong demand for 5-nm and 3-nm chips as an impetus for additional capacity, Reuters said. The company is already enjoying the fruits of the chip shortage – a revenue increase of 25.4% to a record of US$12.92 billion (~RM53.32 billion) in the first quarter of this year.

Still, TSMC is keeping an eye on Intel, which recently announced plans to build new chip factories and dive into the chip contract manufacturing (“foundry”) business.

But at least in the short-term, there may be more than enough demand for both companies – just not enough supply for someone looking to buy a smartphone or graphic card or a next-gen console or a car or… well, the list goes on.

Resident Evil Village To Release On 7 May 2021 For PC, Last And Current Gen Consoles

Resident Evil Village, or RE8 canonically, has finally gotten a release date. It’s quite a bit earlier than one might expect, given the vagueness of the release window before this. And it will be quite widely available too, which is no surprise considering we’re still in the early days of the new console generation.

It came at the end of a new trailer that was released alongside its new showcase stream. It also contained a few drops of story elements, and a sprinkle of gameplay. In it we also see some of the grunt enemy types that will be appearing in the game.

But at the very end, we get to the more relevant, juicy details of the game’s release. Resident Evil Village will be released on 7 May 2021. It will be available on PC via Steam, as well as the PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.

All things considered, the release of Resident Evil Village is a little earlier than one might imagine. After all, the previous release window we got was a very vague year of 2021. The fact that it’s not getting released later is probably a good thing, since story spoilers are already floating around on the internet.