Sharing economy helping to mitigate blows dealt by 2008 financial crisis and dwindling middle class that Trump warned about, says head of global policyAirbnb says it is a solution to the problem of growing middle-class inequality that Donald Trump campaigned on, as it attempts to persuade local governments around the world of what it has to offer.Chris Lehane, head of global policy, told media in Sydney on Tuesday that a struggling middle class was a concern for both the Democrats and the Republican party in the recent presidential election campaign. Continue reading...
Patients and staff use a wide range of new technologies, from smart watches to virtual gaming. Let’s see how the NHS can use itImagine a world where doctors and nurses glance at their watch to see patient updates, where virtual reality headsets are used to consult on medical procedures, or where patients could interact with their doctor through their television or media console.All of this, and a great deal more, is achievable with the technology we have today, but both the NHS and its technology suppliers are yet to embrace what’s possible and make these scenarios happen. Continue reading...
Google’s timelapse project allows users to see how anywhere in the world has changed in the past 32 years using Landsat satellite images. These images of Australia show the extent of development around its largest cities, as well as the changes brought by projects such as the Cubbie Station cotton plantation in Queensland, the Fimiston goldmine in Western Australia and mining development in the New South Wales Hunter Valley.Google’s satellite timelapses show the inconvenient truth about our planet Continue reading...
Agency reportedly believes individuals acting for Moscow hacked Democrat party emails and gave them to WikiLeaksUS intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia interfered in last month’s presidential election to boost Donald Trump’s bid for the White House, according to reports.A secret CIA assessment found that Russian operatives covertly interfered in the election campaign in an attempt to ensure the Republican candidate’s victory, the Washington Post reported, citing officials briefed on the matter.
CIA investigation may have implications for upcoming French and German polls, even raising doubts over integrity of Brexit voteThe CIA’s conclusion that Russia covertly intervened to swing last month’s presidential election in favour of Donald Trump but its actions did not place the overall credibility of the result in doubt will be hard to swallow for some.The classified CIA investigation, which has not been published, may also have implications for the integrity of Britain’s Brexit referendum last June, and how upcoming elections in France and Germany could be vulnerable to Russian manipulation. The latest revelations are not entirely new. What is fresh is the bald assertion that Moscow was working for Trump. Continue reading...
Move is intended to render the devices useless in order to prevent any more phones from exploding or catching fire, an issue that led to expansive recallSamsung’s next software update for the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone will render the devices useless in order to prevent any more from catching fire and exploding.A problem with the device’s lithium ion battery led some units to combust, in some cases injuring their owners and causing damage to property. The issues continued even after Samsung recalled, replaced and refunded some of the units, leading to a second more expansive recall of 1.9m devices. Continue reading...
by Presented by Leah Green and produced by Max Sander on (#24M05)
With an estimated 50 million users on Tinder, how are digital platforms like this changing the way we date? And the way we think about love? Leah Green reaches out to Moira Weigel and Dr Jenny Bristow in search of answersWith more and more of us turning to digital platforms in the hope of finding love, we ask whether there’s any truth in the claim they are the harbingers of romance’s death. Further – what can their popularity tell us about our ever-changing conceptions of love itself? Continue reading...
Ride-share company releases guidelines that include no vomiting and other ‘not OK’ behaviors that could see people permanently banned from serviceUber released a new set of rules for passengers on Thursday, banning vandalism, “vomiting due to excessive alcohol consumption†and flirting.
Nintendo’s legendary platformer runs and jumps on to smartphones on 15 December, but will it spring to new heights or plumb the depths?Quirky social app Miitomo wasn’t the “proper†game fans were looking for when Nintendo announced its long-anticipated move into smartphone games. Super Mario Run almost certainly is that game though.Unveiled at Apple’s WWDC event in June, it will be an iOS exclusive when it launches on 15 December, although an Android port is expected to follow in 2017. Continue reading...
Majority say it isn’t a problem – with fewer people feeling overloaded now than in 2006 – but those who are poorer, less educated and older are most affectedSome 20% of American adults feel the burden of information overload, with that figure at least doubling among those from poorer or less educated backgrounds, according to a report released today by the Pew Research Center.
Jack Dorsey says he has mixed feelings about the president-elect’s use of the social media serviceFor the first time, Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, has described his “complicated†feelings about the US president-elect Donald Trump’s use of the social media service.Speaking at the Code Commerce conference in California, Dorsey demurred when asked if he felt responsible for Trump’s election. “America is responsible for Donald Trump being president,†he said, before conceding that, more than any other candidate, Trump excelled in his use of Twitter.
Ranking of 12 highest-earning YouTube stars by Forbes shows they are increasingly monetising their popularity on platformTheir talents range from comedy to gaming and from singing to playing pranks, often captured with nothing more than a handheld camera. But YouTubers are at the vanguard of an industry worth tens of millions of pounds.Forbes’ ranking of the 12 highest-earning YouTube stars shows they collectively earned £55m in the past 12 months, an increase of 23% on last year.
Unanimous decision holds that patent violators do not have to surrender profits from sales of products that use stolen designs for componentsThe US supreme court on Tuesday sided with Samsung in its big-money smartphone patent fight with Apple, throwing out an appeals court ruling that said the South Korean company had to pay a $399m penalty to its American rival for copying key iPhone designs.
The tech companies plan to create a shared database of ‘unique digital fingerprints’ that can identify images and videos promoting terrorismGoogle, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft have pledged to work together to identify and remove extremist content on their platforms through an information-sharing initiative.
Hate sites are dominating and controlling searches on Muslims, Jews, Hitler and women and search engine is failing to tackle problem, say academicsGoogle must urgently review its search ranking system because of “compelling†evidence that it is being “manipulated and controlled†by rightwing propagandists, leading academics have said, after the Observer reported that hate sites are now dominating searches on Muslims, Jews, Hitler and women.
Fumito Ueda’s PlayStation 4 title has been a decade in the making. From the game’s exquisite animation to its emotional intelligence, it has been worth the wait“I awoke to find myself in a strange cave.â€This is the fairy tale opening of Fumito Ueda’s heavily anticipated game, 10 years in the making and only the forty-six year old Japanese director’s third major work. But then, of course, the first two – Ico and Shadow of Colossus – are legendary. Film director Guillermo del Toro once described them as the medium’s sole masterpieces; anticipation is accordingly high. Continue reading...
Search company removes antisemitic and sexist autocomplete phrases after Observer article highlights offensive resultsGoogle has altered autocomplete suggestions in its search engine after it was alerted to antisemitic, sexist and racists entries.
Forget gilded mansions and super yachts. Among the tech elite, space exploration is now the ultimate status symbolThe explosion could be felt 30 miles away. At 9.07am on 1 September, a SpaceX rocket containing 75,000 gallons of liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene ignited into a fireball that could be seen from orbit, billowing black smoke into the gray sky around its Cape Canaveral launch pad.On board was a $200m, 12,000lb communications satellite – part of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Internet.org project to deliver broadband access to sub-Saharan Africa. Continue reading...
Electric-car evangelist is the target of concerted negative online campaign linked to influential rightwing networkHe is the charismatic Silicon Valley entrepreneur who believes his many companies - including the electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors, solar power firm Solar City, and SpaceX, which makes reusable space rockets – can help resist man-made climate change.South African-born Elon Musk is a billionaire green evangelist, a bete noire of the fossil fuels industry who talks about colonising Mars and believes it may be possible that we’re living in a computer simulation. Continue reading...
Under agreement, Airbnb takes responsibility for ensuring hosts follow local rental limits – leading some analysts to express optimismAirbnb, the startup that has fought tooth and nail to avoid regulation in cities around the world, appears to have reversed its attitude toward regulators in a dramatic change of policy.In a deal with London and Amsterdam announced this week, the company has agreed to take on the responsibility of policing limits on the number of days per year a full unit can be let through its system, making it the first short-term rental company to cut such a deal.
BS Detector was created by Daniel Sieradski (not Facebook) and was a reaction to the network’s failure to flag false information – until Facebook blocked itIt’s a fable for our times. Someone creates a tool that flags fake news on Facebook with big red warning signs. Someone else installs said tool, forgets about it, and then mistakenly assumes that the red warning signs are evidence of Facebook’s own efforts to tackle the problem. A reputable technology website then writes a story about Facebook’s new experiment without doing any fact checking, thus generating its own piece of fake news. The icing on the cake? The fake news detector fails to recognize it as fake news.Related: Fake news: an insidious trend that's fast becoming a global problem Continue reading...
Academics say working out card number, expiry date and security code of Visa card takes ‘as little as six seconds’A team of academics claims an unsophisticated type of cyber attack that exploits “flaws†in the Visa card payment system was probably used to defraud Tesco Bank customers of £2.5m last month.Related: Cyber attack: hackers 'weaponised' everyday devices with malware to mount assault Continue reading...
As social network reportedly develops tools to restrict users so the Communist party will let it in, some experts say it is ‘light years’ behind rivals already in placeFacebook needs to invest in more than just censorship tools if it hopes to lift a seven-year ban in China, experts say, amid a tightening space for foreign technology companies in the world’s most populous nation.
Four friends who had to undergo extensive hospital treatment threatening legal action after incident at Brighton flatAirbnb has refused to admit liability for multiple serious injuries suffered by a group of guests who fell two storeys when the balcony of their holiday rental in Brighton collapsed beneath them.Four friends had to have hospital treatment, including one impaled on an iron railing, when what was advertised as a “balcony with sea view†sheared off, sending the guests tumbling into the basement footwell. They had rented the £217-a-night flat for a birthday celebration in July through the booming accommodation website, which is at the forefront of the fast-growing sharing economy. Continue reading...
App says it cuts pollution amid attacks over licensing and safety rules in case that could prompt stronger regulations for digital startupsUber defended its business model in Europe’s highest court on Tuesday, saying its service had made it easier for people to get around and cut pollution as it fights a case which could leave app-based startups facing tougher regulation.The ride-hailing app, which expanded into Europe five years ago, has come under attack from established taxi companies and some EU countries because it is not bound by strict local licensing and safety rules which apply to some of its competitors. Continue reading...
‘Neural karaoke’ program can take any digital photo and transform it into a computer-generated singalongIt will not, if there is any certainty left in the world, top the charts this Christmas. But what it lacks in party hit potential, it more than makes up for with its unique, if vaguely unsettling, brand of festive cheer.To be fair, humans had very little hand in penning the song. Instead, scientists fed a Christmassy photograph into a computer and let it do its thing. A program analysed the image, whipped up some relevant lyrics, and then sang them to music it had composed along the way.
Investors have called on South Korean company to set up holding and operating units as it deals with Galaxy Note 7 recall and prepares for successionSamsung Electronics has said it is considering splitting in two, to allow heir-apparent Lee Jae-yong to take over the firm from his father, Lee Kun-hee, and address governance concerns.Samsung has also come under pressure from foreign investors, including the US hedge fund Elliott Management, to improve its corporate governance through the establishment of a holding company and to increase dividends for shareholders. Continue reading...
Small gadget brings voice control to almost any smart device in the home, while playing music, answering questions and telling you the weatherThe Amazon Echo Dot is essentially all the bits of an Amazon Echo that make it interesting, but without the speaker beneath it – and so it costs just one-third of the price.
While we’re undoubtedly living through dark times, the storm we’re in now started with a rush of rapid technological changeIt’s interesting how particular years acquire historical significance: 1789 (the French Revolution); 1914 (outbreak of the first world war); 1917 (the Russian revolution); 1929 (the Wall Street crash); 1983 (switching on of the internet); 1993 (the Mosaic Web browser, which started the metamorphosis of the internet from geek sandpit to the nervous system of the planet). And of course 2016, the year of Brexit and Trump, the implications of which are, as yet, unknown.But what about 2007? That was the year when Slovenia adopted the euro, Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU, Kurt Vonnegut died, smoking in enclosed public places was banned in the UK, a student shot 32 people dead and wounded 17 others at Virginia Tech, Luciano Pavarotti died and Benazir Bhutto was assassinated. Oh – and it was also the year that Steve Jobs launched the Apple iPhone. Continue reading...
The anthropologist explains why being scared about AI has more to do with our fear of each other than killer robotsGenevieve Bell is an Australian anthropologist who has been working at tech company Intel for 18 years, where she is currently head of sensing and insights. She has given numerous TED talks and in 2012 was inducted into the Women in Technology hall of fame. Between 2008 and 2010, she was also South Australia’s thinker in residence.Why does a company such as Intel need an anthropologist?
Few cars can match the performance of a McLaren on the road or the track, but from the air it’s a sitting target…The word McLaren sends a shiver of expectation down the spine of anyone who thinks life on four wheels is how God intended us to spend our most fulfilled moments. On the track it’s the most successful marque in Formula 1 history, the car in which Niki Lauda, Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton and co have smashed records and set pulses racing. On the road it is sure-footed, sublime and intoxicatingly faaaaaaaaast… But no one had bothered to tell the large woodpigeon that swooped over me as I whipped the open-topped McLaren 650S along a country lane in Northamptonshire. It unloaded a colossal pile of guano which hit me square in the forehead before exploding over my face and splattering over the instrument panel and the immaculate suede lining of the doors. A real life angry bird!It’s a sign of luck, they say, but when you are at the wheel of a McLaren you don’t need anyone to tell you how fortunate you are. The road cars take their lead from 1993’s seminal McLaren F1 – a car which caused a proper hoo-ha when it was launched. Back then it was the world’s fastest production car (240mph), used real gold in the engine and cost £635,000. Only 106 were made and today each is worth at least £10m. Back then it used to take about 3,000 hours to make each carbon-fibre chassis, today it takes four hours to create the carbon MonoCell at the heart of the 650S. Continue reading...
From top-of-the range offerings from Apple and Google to more modest fare, which big-screen smartphone is the one for you?If a big screen for watching videos, playing games or simply to fit more on the screen when browsing, emailing and texting is what you’re after, these are the best phablets available right now. Continue reading...
Some say attempts by police to blame gay dating app for Port’s killings is ‘victim blaming’, while others urge caution when using such appsThe murders of four young men by Stephen Port, the serial killer sentenced to life in prison on Friday, have given rise to a debate among users of the gay dating app Grindr.Related: Serial killer Stephen Port receives whole-life prison sentence Continue reading...
When Labour’s John McDonnell stood up to respond to the autumn statement on Wednesday, half his party’s MPs started noodling on their phones behind him. Was it the height of rudeness – or all part of a modern-day MP’s duties?They filed into the House of Commons chamber to learn what Brexit means for the economy, and filed out to be shamed the next morning by newspaper picture editors armed with yellow pens. In one photograph, half of the 42 Labour MPs sitting behind John McDonnell can be seen immersed in their mobile phones while the shadow chancellor responds to the autumn statement.“Isn’t that awful?†asked Judith Woods in the Daily Telegraph, comparing the “rude†MPs to millennials unable to resist the lure of their devices during pub quizzes. “Isn’t this addiction steering dangerously close to out-and-out junkiedom?†she added, gamely offering to “restore Britain’s manners to their factory settingsâ€. Continue reading...
Now that the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 - or snooper’s charter – has become law, Charles wants to protect his privacyNow that the snooper’s charter has been passed, how can I protect myself? Should I use a VPN? CharlesThe UK has just passed the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, at the third attempt, and it will become law by the end of the year. The bill was instigated by the then home secretary, Theresa May, in 2012. It is better known as the snooper’s charter.
Peter Frase’s roaming, thoughtful work of ‘social science fiction’ sketches out a frightening future of rich v poorThe idea that computers will soon steal our jobs is an article of faith among many of the world’s most powerful people. The argument goes like this: breakthroughs in robotics and artificial intelligence will make it possible to automate various kinds of labour. Self-driving cars will replace taxi and truck drivers; software will replace lawyers and accountants. We’ll end up with a world where machines do almost all of the work.Over the last few years, a growing chorus of pundits, academics and executives have made this scenario seem inevitable – and imminent. There are many reasons to be sceptical of their claims. But even if you accept the argument that mass automation is around the corner, you might find yourself wondering what a post-work future would look like. Would it be a heaven or a hell, or somewhere in between? Continue reading...
New voluntary guidelines for Apple, Samsung and others encourage system that blocks app and text use, but allows navigation and musicUS regulators are seeking to reduce smartphone-related vehicle deaths with a new driving-safe mode that would block or modify apps to prevent them being a distraction while on the road.
Apple patents way to use an OLED screen to enable a folding iPhone that flips in half like it’s 1999 all over againIt’s time to party like it’s 1999: Apple has patented a flip-phone.Admittedly, the phone depicted in the patent, spotted by AppleInsider, is rather more advanced than 2004’s Motorola Razr. The patent envisages a phone with a flexible OLED screen on the front, designed to fold in the middle with a more conventionally hinged back, allowing the whole thing to fold in half for portability. Continue reading...
Social network’s founder and chief executive was suspended from the site due to ‘internal mistake’, losing 700,000 followers in the processIn the wake of the US elections, with the rise of the “alt-right†blamed for the easy ride the far right have had on social media, Twitter is eager to prove that it can police its own borders. Perhaps too eager.Overnight, the social network suspended its own chief executive and co-founder, Jack Dorsey. Continue reading...
Pope Francis called on Catholics to ‘build an outward-looking church’, and Xiskya Valladares is helping others do just thatPope Francis was probably not dwelling on the myriad uses and abuses of social media when he called for a “bruised, dirty and hurting†Roman Catholic church that would more closely resemble the flawed 21st-century world to which it ministers.But, as far as one technologically engaged nun is concerned, the Twitter-sphere is equally deserving of the church’s presence.
The year has become so maligned that Twitter is awash with posts listing the strange and terrible things that 2016 can be compared toFor many people 2016, which brought the planet Brexit, the Donald Trump election victory, the deaths of Prince, David Bowie and Leonard Cohen and the brief union that was Twiddleswift, has not been the greatest of years.In fact, the year has become so maligned that Twitter is now awash with scores of posts listing the strange and terrible things that the last 11 months can be compared to. Continue reading...
by Sally Weale Education correspondent on (#22KJ8)
Simon Milner, network’s policy director, tells Lords committee parents are helping children aged under 13 to sign upA senior Facebook boss has accused parents in the UK of helping their children to open an account before they are 13, flouting the minimum age restriction for signing up to the social media giant.Facebook’s policy director, Simon Milner, was giving evidence on Tuesday before a parliamentary committee looking into issues surrounding children’s use of the internet. Continue reading...
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