The Irish writer on a sumptuous Francis Ford Coppola film, swimming in winter and the thrill of using a dumb phoneWriter Nicole Flattery was born in Kinnegad, County Westmeath, in 1989. She studied theatre and film at Trinity College Dublin, followed by a master's in creative writing, and won the White Review short story prize in 2017. Her award-winning short story collection Show Them a Good Time was published in 2019, and her writing has appeared in publications including the Stinging Fly, the Guardian and London Review of Books. Her debut novel, Nothing Special, explores female friendship, fame and identity in 1960s New York; it is published in paperback by Bloomsbury on 28 March. Continue reading...
Company denies that Tim Cook deceived investors when he said iPhone sales were strong weeks before revenue warningApple has agreed to pay $490m to settle a class-action lawsuit led by the UK's Norfolk county council.The class action alleged chief executive Tim Cook misled investors about a steep downturn in iPhone sales in China that culminated in a jarring revision to the company's revenue forecast. Continue reading...
ChatGPT and Gemini discriminate against those who speak African American Vernacular English, report showsPopular artificial intelligence tools are becoming more covertly racist as they advance, says an alarming new report.A team of technology and linguistics researchers revealed this week that large language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini hold racist stereotypes about speakers of African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, an English dialect created and spoken by Black Americans. Continue reading...
The photographer was intrigued by where this man was going in the middle of New York with a dog and a paintingI hope this photo makesothers smile," photographer Erik S Lieber says. Where isaman in the middle ofNew York City goingwith a dog and apainting?" Lieber was heading home from a physical therapy session just around the corner of Lafayette Street and Spring Street in SoHo, when he saw his subject about to cross the street. I like the expression onhis face, the contrast of the two things in hishands," he says. The whole shot makes me curious: what is hedoing? What is he thinking? Who is he?" He shot using an iPhone 14 Pro Max and edited with the Hipstamatic app.I come from a filmand darkroom background as a photographer, so digitally processing my images isakin to going into the darkroom. I played around with the clarity, highlights and shadows, and applied some filters, including converting to black and white, which Ifind lends itself well tostreet photography." Continue reading...
Senators have indicated they will take their time to decide on the bill that would force China-based ByteDance to divest from the appUS senators want the chamber to take its time in deciding whether to back a House of Representatives bill that would force China-based ByteDance to divest from the short video app TikTok within six months or face a total ban.The House voted 352-65 on Wednesday, just eight days after the proposal was introduced. There is broad support in the Senate for taking action to address national security threats from foreign apps like TikTok but no agreement on the right approach. Continue reading...
by Dan Milmo, Jordyn Beazley and Amy Hawkins on (#6KC3X)
Fast food chain working to resolve problem but denies it has been hit by cybersecurity attackMcDonald's restaurants in multiple countries including the UK and Australia have been hit by a technology outage", which the fast food chain denied had been caused by a cybersecurity attack.Australia, the UK, Japan and China were among the markets where services were affected, with restaurant, drive-through and online orders hit. Continue reading...
Every child interviewed by media watchdog had watched violent material on the internetViolent online content is now unavoidable" for children in the UK, with many first exposed to it when they are still in primary school, research from the media watchdog has found.Every single British child interviewed for the Ofcom study had watched violent material on the internet, ranging from videos of local school and street fights shared in group chats, to explicit and extreme graphic violence, including gang-related content. Continue reading...
How does the bill define AI, how will it protect consumers from abuse, and what do the big tech companies think about it?The European Union's proposed AI law was endorsed by the European parliament on Wednesday, and is a milestone in regulating the technology. The vote is an important step towards introducing the legislation.It is now expected to be rubber stamped by a council of ministers, becoming law within weeks. However, the act will come into force in stages, with a cascade of deadlines for compliance over the next three years. Continue reading...
This Country star asks for more book recommendations as she returns in Educating Daisy. Plus: five of the best podcasts about scammers Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up here53 Minutes
CEO of China-based company says vote is disappointing' and that it will do all it can to protect the platformThe House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would require the TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States.The vote was a landslide, with 352 Congress members voting in favor and only 65 against. The bill, which was fast-tracked to a vote after being unanimously approved by a committee last week, gives China-based ByteDance 165 days to divest from TikTok. If it did not, app stores including the Apple App store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications. Continue reading...
Tech such as laptops, tablets and instant messaging has more positive effect on wellbeing, says thinktankExposure to new technologies including trackers, robots and AI-based software at work is bad for people's quality of life, according to a groundbreaking study from the Institute for the Future of Work.Based on a survey of more than 6,000 people, the thinktank analysed the impact on wellbeing of four groups of technologies that are becoming increasingly prevalent across the economy. Continue reading...
The Tesla CEO's suit says the company abandoned founding mission of openly sharing its technology to better humanityOpenAI denounced Elon Musk's lawsuit against the company in a legal filing on Monday, describing the Tesla CEO's claims as frivolous" and intended only to advance his commercial interests".The filing, a response to Musk suing OpenAI earlier this month over allegations that it abandoned its pledge to help humanity, rejects many of the core assertions in Musk's suit. The company denies that it ever broke what Musk calls its Founding Agreement", stating that no such contract ever existed. Continue reading...
More than 90% of new cars sold in Norway are electric. And it all started with some pop stars driving around in a jerry-built Fiat PandaI'm kneeling on the snow outside the king's house, impersonating a 1980s heart-throb, with a man named Harald and an electric car. It's a situation that probably needs some explanation.Harald isn't the king, although the king of Norway is also called Harald; we just happen to be outside the monarch's residence, a handsome red manor. I'm in Stavanger to find out how, in a world where transport contributes about 20% of CO emissions, Norway came to lead the world in electric car take-up. In 2023, 82.4% of private vehicles sold in the country were electric. In January, the figure was 92.1%. The goal is to hit 100% by next year. Continue reading...
Francesa Mani told her mother she would not be a victim after fake images were circulated around her New Jersey schoolIn October last year Francesa Mani came home from school in the suburbs of New Jersey with devastating news for her mother, Dorota.Earlier in the day the 14-year-old had been called into the vice-principal's office and notified that she and a group of girls at Westfield High had been the victims of targeted abuse by a fellow student. Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: Hear me out ... but the traffic-dodging app may have started a domino effect that will bring down the Tories Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereThere's a theory I've been floating around for a while that I want to try on you: Google's 2013 acquisition of Waze sealed the election for Keir Starmer.I know, but bear with me.If you want to read the complete version of the newsletter please subscribe to receive TechScape in your inbox every Tuesday. Continue reading...
The best way to stop children getting out of their depth? Talk to them - about everything from trivial beefs to misused emojisI got a message from an ex-colleague who used to be fun and is now an agitator preaching alt-right" nostalgia to the gerontocracy. Whatever it was he wanted, I would have told him to stick it, but it just so happened that I really disagreed with it: a cross-party group campaigning to restrict mobile phone use among children.As reliably as bad things will happen to kids, people will blame it on phone use. Maybe there is a crisis in their mental health, or someone has been bullied online, or blackmailed over an image they have sent, or they've joined a criminal gang or undertaken a murderous enterprise or self-harmed: it is almost inconceivable that, somewhere in the story, a smartphone won't have played a part. Those affected often wish they had limited phone use, or at the very least, they keenly regret how little they knew what was going on with their child, who was, of course, always on his or her phone. Then politicians and the commentariat get involved, leveraging the grief and trials of others for discursive advantage, preaching measures to schools that they're often doing already, lecturing parents to return to the dumb phone" or ban the devices altogether for their kids. Continue reading...
A simple and endearing game creation tool has me and thousands of others creating little shareable interactive games instead of pawing at the news on our phones
Ex-president's newfound support comes after Joe Biden said he'd sign legislation that could ban the app in the USDonald Trump, who flirted with a US ban on the Chinese owners of TikTok while president, has come out in favor of the popular phone app.There are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it," Trump told CNBC on Monday, saying that without it you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people". He said that, while he still believes TikTok is a national security risk, other apps are a risk as well, and singled out the Meta-owned platform: I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections." Last week, he said banning TikTok would help Facebook and Zuckerschmuck double their business", referring to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Continue reading...
Cryptocurrency rises as UK financial regulator says it will allow trading of crypto-backed securitiesBitcoin has reached a new record price of almost $73,000 (57,000), as the UK financial regulator said it would allow the trading of cryptocurrency-backed securities.The cryptocurrency hit a fresh high of $72,720 as of Monday evening having last week overtaken its previous November 2021 high of nearly $69,000. Continue reading...
Even after an overhaul of the Kids Online Safety Act brings it closer to passing, lawmakers, backers and critics are at oddsSharp divisions between advocates for children's safety online have emerged as a historic bill has gathered enough votes to pass in the US Senate. Amendments to the bill have appeased some former detractors who now support the legislation; its fiercest critics, however, have become even more entrenched in their demands for changes.The Kids Online Safety Act (Kosa), introduced more than two years ago, reached 60 backers in the Senate mid-February. A number of human rights groups still vehemently oppose the legislation, underscoring ongoing divisions among experts, lawmakers and advocates over how to keep young people safe online. Continue reading...
by Kalyeena Makortoff and Julia Kollewe on (#6K7RP)
Confronted by the huge salaries on offer in the US, London boardrooms are lobbying to be allowed to make their own bosses even wealthierThere was a sharp intake of breath last month when the pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca cemented chief executive Pascal Soriot's position as the best-paid FTSE 100 boss with a 17m pay package, up from 15.3m a year earlier. The latest award brings to 137m the amount he has earned since joining in 2012.While it drew the anger of corporate governance experts, Soriot's generous payout was just a fraction of the sums his counterparts at the biggest US companies take home. Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Google's parent company, stands as the highest-earning boss on the US-based S&P 500, with a $226m pay packet in 2022. Continue reading...
Some business owners will be ready to cash out in the near future, but old tech could decrease the value of their firmsClunky, old tech is costing the US a fortune. According to a recent column in the Wall Street Journal, it would take more than $1.5tn to fix and costs the US $2.41tn a year in cybersecurity and operational failures, failed development projects, and maintenance of outdated systems".This technical debt" lurks beneath the shiny and the new in an accumulation of quick fixes and outdated systems never intended for their current use, all of which are badly in need of updating", according to the Journal. Continue reading...
Moguls extol the fruits of artificial intelligence, but seek to hide its science from public viewIn 1914, on the eve of the First World War, HG Wells published a novel about the possibilities of an even greater conflagration. The World Set Free imagines, 30 years before the Manhattan Project, the creation of atomic weapons that allow a man [to] carry about in a handbag an amount of latent energy sufficient to wreck half a city". Global war breaks out, leading to an atomic apocalypse. It takes the establishment of a world government" to bring about peace.What concerned Wells was not simply the perils of a new technology, it was also the dangers of democracy. Wells' world government was not created through democratic will but imposed as a benign dictatorship. The governed will show their consent by silence," England's King Egbert menacingly remarks. For Wells, the common man" was a violent fool in social and public affairs". Only an educated, scientifically minded elite could save democracy from itself". Continue reading...
In an extract from her memoir, Lucy Sante reveals how she lived with the feeling of being the wrong gender into her 60s, when a smartphone app gave her the inspiration to take action
Some say Biden's high-profile warrior - who's gone after Kroger, Amazon, and Nvidia - has redefined the US antitrust landscapeAcross 96 pages of the Yale Law Journal in 2017, Lina Khan set out why she believed the US's policing of big business was failing. The paper - which targeted Amazon - shook the Silicon Valley establishment and catapulted Khan into the heart of a battle over America's business orthodoxy and, ultimately, into a role in which she could overhaul it.Khan's appointment to lead the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) just four years later angered big tech, but it has become increasingly clear that Khan, and the Biden administration have an even bigger agenda: resetting the federal government's decades-old stance on competition in a manner unseen in decades. Continue reading...
When OpenAI launched, Sam Altman touted his close relationship with Tesla's CEO. A decade later, they're at each other's throatsThe day after OpenAI launched in December 2015, its co-founder Sam Altman sat down with Vanity Fair to discuss what the magazine described as a non-profit company to save the world from a dystopian future". Altman talked up his vision for keeping artificial intelligence safe and distributing it widely, as well as his good working relationship with his co-chair - Tesla CEO Elon Musk.I really trust him, which is obviously important to everyone involved," Altman said. Continue reading...
Altman pleased' investigation over, saying he could have handled dispute with former board member with more grace and care'OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman has been reinstated to the firm's board of directors following an outside investigation into the turmoil that led the company to abruptly fire and rehire him in November.OpenAI said the investigation by the law firm WilmerHale concluded that Altman's ouster had been a consequence of a breakdown in the relationship and loss of trust" between Altman and the prior board and that the CEO's conduct did not mandate removal". Continue reading...
Tech giant takes a step back from years-long feud with game maker after pressure from European regulatorsUnder pressure from European regulators, Apple took a step back in its feud with Epic Games on Friday, clearing the way for Epic to put Fortnite and its own game store on iPhones and iPads in Europe.Earlier this week, Apple had taken steps to block Epic from starting up a store and bringing back the popular game, which Apple removed from its App Store in 2020 after Epic broke the iPhone maker's in-app payment rules in protest. Continue reading...
Experts say Gemini was not thoroughly tested, after image generator depicted variety of historical figures as people of colourGoogle's co-founder Sergey Brin has kept a low profile since quietly returning to work at the company. But the troubled launch of Google's artificial intelligence model Gemini resulted in a rare public utterance recently: We definitely messed up."Brin's comments, at an AI hackathon" event on 2 March, follow a slew of social media posts showing Gemini's image generation tool depicting a variety of historical figures - including popes, founding fathers of the US and, most excruciatingly, German second world war soldiers - as people of colour. Continue reading...
Six years since its voyage began, the oceanic co-op is landing on PS5 - and the team behind the game can't wait to empower the creativity of a whole new community of playersOne evening many months ago, Mike Chapman, the creative director of the co-op pirate adventure game Sea of Thieves, sat down to play the game with producer Joe Neate. This wasn't just a standard playtest - joining them online would be a crew of players they'd never taken to the ocean with before. It was a team from Sony Interactive Entertainment. The plan to bring the Xbox exclusive to PS5 had just been hatched; now it was time to get into the detail. We were educating them about the game, talking through what was special about it," says Neate. It was so surreal," chips in Chapman. Trying to find treasure on an island with a group from a different platform holder ..."The PS5 launch is scheduled for 30 April, and pre-orders are now open, but it's only the latest stage in the evolution of this fascinating game. Launched on 20 March 2018, it was the most ambitious project in the long history of veteran British studio Rare. Billed as a cooperative pirate adventure, Sea of Thieves gave players access to a vast multiplayer world of oceanic exploration, buried treasure and ship-to-ship battles. The design philosophy behind the game was simple, yet extremely risky: tools not rules. Players would be given everything they needed to set out on their own pirate adventures - even musical instruments and gallons of virtual grog - but there would be no overarching narrative, no skill trees, no complex character progression systems. The stories would come from the players themselves, as they built their crews and fought other buccaneers for fame and fortune. Continue reading...
Conspiracy theorists are still routinely targeting and abusing women and woke' game consultants. With a small studio currently under fire, the games industry's silence is deafeningTen years ago, a game developer's aggrieved ex-boyfriend published a vindictive screed accusing her of trading sex for favourable reviews of her indie game. This was leapt upon by the least savoury corner of the 2014 internet, 4chan, and kicked off a harassment campaign that broadened to include all women working in video game development or the gaming press, as well as the industry's LGBTQ+ community. Sensing blood in the water, alt-right" agitators on YouTube and Steve Bannon's Breitbart jumped on the bandwagon, and soon began to steer it - and Gamergate, as this manufactured outrage became known, mutated into one of the first fronts of the modern culture wars, driven by social media, misogyny and the weaponised disaffection of young men. Many of its tactics became part of the Trump election playbook.This week, a 16-person narrative design studio has found itself at the centre of a conspiracy theory that holds it responsible for the insidious prevalence of wokery" in modern video games. A group with more than 200,000 followers on PC games storefront Steam, as well as thousands in a Discord chat channel, believes that Sweet Baby Inc is secretly forcing game developers to change the bodies, ethnicities and sexualities of video game characters to conform to woke" ideology. They think that Sweet Baby has written and controlled almost every popular video game of the past five years, shutting straight white men out. As Trump once again heads out on the campaign trail, this is part of a broader far right panic about diversity and inclusion that has already resulted in proposed regressive anti-women and anti-woke legislation in the US and elsewhere. Continue reading...
Following the game's hero into hellish madness, Petri Alanko required an especially unsettling score. Enter a noise machine that disturbed even Stephen KingOn Petri Alanko's website, where the Bafta-nominated Finnish musician offers his services as a composer for video games and film, the artist and performer makes a bold claim: No deadlines missed since 1990". If you're a creative of any flavour, you're likely to read that with a mixture of awe, suspicion and incredulity. Deadlines are flexible, right? Right?It's not a boast, it's a service promise, more or less," laughs Alanko. I'm really good at scheduling my own work, but I am very careful when dealing with someone else for the first time. Not all clients know exactly what they want, despite me helping them to figure out what's needed. I need to be the creative, the analyst, as well as the crisis negotiator." Video game music production is often chaotic: composers have to be malleable, lean, adaptable, unafraid of killing their darlings or working to impossibly tight deadlines. That Alanko shrugs this off as simply part of the job is testament to his dedication. Continue reading...
Platform sent alert to US users urging them to protest bill that would make its parent company divest from the app or face a banLawmakers' offices have reportedly been flooded with calls from TikTok users speaking out against a bill that would force the platform's parent company to divest from the app or face a US ban.The bill, which is backed by more than a dozen representatives, passed unanimously out of the House energy and commerce committee on Thursday with a vote of 50 to 0. TikTok responded by pushing out a notification to many of its estimated 170 million US users, calling on them to contact Congress in protest. The notification included a mechanism that allows people to search for their representative's number by inputting their zip code. Continue reading...
As Bafta's video game awards celebrate their 20th outing, the full list of nominations reflects a outstandingly creative yearBafta has announced the nominations for the 20th Bafta games awards, which will take place in London on April 11.Leading the pack this year are Larian Studios' Baldur's Gate 3 with 10 nominations; Spider-Man 2 with nine; Alan Wake 2 with eight; and six apiece for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and Star Wars: Jedi Survivor. Hi-Fi Rush, a colourful music-based action game from Japan's Tango Gameworks, picked up five nominations, as did Mintrocket's breakout hit Dave the Diver. Continue reading...
The tech giant said the lawsuit was near-sighted and akin to Hollywood's losing backlash against the VCRMicrosoft has responded to a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by the New York Times over alleged use of content to train generative artificial intelligence, calling the claim a false narrative of doomsday futurology". The tech giant said the lawsuit was near-sighted and akin to Hollywood's losing backlash against the VCR.In a motion to dismiss part of the lawsuit filed on Monday, Microsoft, which was sued in December alongside ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, scoffed at the newspaper's claim that Times content receives particular emphasis" and that tech companies seek to free-ride on the Times's massive investment in its journalism". Continue reading...
Claims that artificial intelligence will help solve the climate crisis are misguided, warns a coalition of environmental groupsClaims that artificial intelligence will help solve the climate crisis are misguided, with the technology instead likely cause rising energy use and turbocharge the spread of climate disinformation, a coalition of environmental groups has warned.Advances in AI have been touted by big tech companies and the United Nations as a way to help ameliorate global heating, via tools that help track deforestation, identify pollution leaks and track extreme weather events. AI is already being used to predict droughts in Africa and to measure changes to melting icebergs. Continue reading...
by Hollie Richardson, Hannah Verdier and Rachel Aroes on (#6K5EZ)
In this week's newsletter: Comedian Joanne McNally explores one of the most bizarre celebrity conspiracy theories in a new BBC series. Plus: five of the best books podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWho Replaced Avril Lavigne?
Widow who depends on wifi to order medication and grocers was disconnected in the autumnI'm at my wits' end trying to understand how my BT landline and wifi can be cut off without the company receiving any instructions from me.I'm a 79-year-old widow living seven miles from a town and depend on wifi to order medication from the GP, groceries and many other things. Continue reading...
Linwei Ding, facing four counts of theft of trade secrets, accused of transferring confidential information to his personal accountA Chinese software engineer has been arrested for allegedly stealing artificial intelligence technology from Google while secretly working for two Chinese companies.Linwei Ding, 38, also known as Leon Ding, faces four counts of theft of trade secrets, the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, said in a statement. Continue reading...
Shane Jones said he warned management about the lack of safeguards several times, but it didn't result in any actionAn artificial intelligence engineer at Microsoft published a letter on Wednesday alleging that the company's AI image generator lacks basic safeguards against creating violent and sexualized images. In the letter, engineer Shane Jones states that his repeated attempts to warn Microsoft management about the problems failed to result in any action. Jones said he sent the message to the Federal Trade Commission and Microsoft's board of directors.Internally the company is well aware of systemic issues where the product is creating harmful images that could be offensive and inappropriate for consumers," Jones states in the letter, which he published on LinkedIn. He lists his title as principal software engineering manager". Continue reading...
In this week's newsletter: Like Kratos's axe and Halo's Warthogs before it, Pacific Drive's beat-up banger and I have formed a lasting connection as we survive a scary world together Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereI had to give up on Pacific Drive, the weird-fiction-inspired driving survival game I recommended the other week. Not because it's bad - it's great - but because it needed 20-plus hours from me that I just do not have right now.Also, if I'm totally candid, it freaks me out. It's a game about probing further and further into a long-abandoned exclusion zone in a beat-up old car, and the anomalies you encounter. These range from pillars suddenly thrusting themselves from the earth to alarming hurricanes that shove you around the road, and all are excitingly inventive and creepy. Continue reading...
Employers are letting artificial intelligence conduct job interviews. Candidates are trying to beat the systemWhen Ty landed an introductory phone interview with a finance and banking company last month, they assumed it would be a quick chat with a recruiter. And when they got on the phone, Ty assumed the recruiter, who introduced herself as Jaime, was human. But things got robotic.The voice sounded similar to Siri," said Ty, who is 29 and lives in the DC metro area. It was creepy." Continue reading...
ChatGPT maker releases emails in support of claim Tesla boss backed plan to create for-profit unitOpenAI has hit back at Elon Musk's lawsuit accusing it of betraying its altruistic roots, claiming the Tesla chief executive had in fact supported the artificial intelligence company's plans to create a for-profit unit.Executives at the ChatGPT maker released a blogpost containing what they claimed was historical email correspondence with Musk in which the entrepreneur suggested merging the San Francisco-based startup with Tesla. Continue reading...
The meeting in Palm Beach, Florida - reported on by the New York Times - comes as Trump trails president Joe Biden in fundraisingDonald Trump met with billionaire Elon Musk in Florida over the weekend as the former Republican president seeks a major cash infusion for his re-election campaign, The New York Times reported.According to the Times, Trump met with Musk - one of the world's richest people - and a number of wealthy Republican donors on Sunday and hopes to have a one-on-one discussion soon with Musk, the CEO of both Tesla Inc and SpaceX, and the owner-executive chairman of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Continue reading...
Services refuse login attempts and feeds stall as Google's platform also experiences login problemsFacebook and Instagram experienced severe issues around the world on Tuesday, with the services refusing login attempts and feeds stalling.The outages were first reported at about 3.30pm GMT (10.30am EST, 2.30am AEDT) and began to clear at about 5pm. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian