Biobank urged to review transfer of information for medical researchRising political and security tensions between Beijing and the west have prompted calls for a review of the transfer of genetic data to China from a biomedical database containing the DNA of half a million UK citizens.The UK Biobank said it had about 300 projects under which researchers in China were accessing “detailed genetic information” or other health data on volunteers. Continue reading...
Artificial intelligence is being used to design magazine covers and provide pictures for internet newsletters. What could possibly go wrong?It all started with the headline over an entry in Charlie Warzel’s Galaxy Brain newsletter in the Atlantic: “Where Does Alex Jones Go From Here?” This is an interesting question because Jones is an internet troll so extreme that he makes Donald Trump look like Spinoza. For many years, he has parlayed a radio talkshow and a website into a comfortable multimillion-dollar business peddling nonsense, conspiracy theories, falsehoods and weird merchandise to a huge tribe of adherents. And until 4 August he had got away with it. On that day, though, he lost an epic defamation case brought against him by parents of children who died in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre – a tragedy that he had consistently ridiculed as a staged hoax; a Texas jury decided that he should pay nearly $50m in damages for publishing this sadistic nonsense.Warzel’s newsletter consisted of an interview with someone who had worked for the Jones media empire in its heyday and, as such, was interesting. But what really caught my eye was the striking illustration that headed the piece. It showed a cartoonish image of a dishevelled Jones in some kind of cavern surrounded by papers, banknotes, prescriptions and other kinds of documents. Rather good, I thought, and then inspected the caption to see who the artist was. The answer: “AI art by Midjourney”. Continue reading...
The WeWork co-founder is reportedly at the helm of Flow, a new company looking to reinvent apartment living – but have any lessons been learned?Adam Neumann presided over one of the most spectacular business collapses in recent history. A New Age-spouting, barefoot business messiah, he managed to build and burn his last startup, the office-sharing company WeWork, in such spectacular fashion that even Hollywood paid attention.And now he is back – on a quest to become America’s biggest landlord. Continue reading...
Ghanem Almasarir’s victory opens way for other hacking victims in UK to bring cases against foreign governmentsA British judge has ruled that a case against the kingdom of Saudi Arabia brought by a dissident satirist who was targeted with spyware can proceed, a decision that has been hailed as precedent-setting and one that could allow other hacking victims in Britain to sue foreign governments who order such attacks.The case against Saudi Arabia was brought by Ghanem Almasarir, a prominent satirist granted asylum in the UK, who is a frequent critic of the Saudi royal family. Continue reading...
Content written to appear high up on web search results will be targeted with new changes, the company saysGoogle is tweaking its search results in an effort to prioritise “content by people, for people” and fight back against the scourge of clickbait, the company says.“We know people don’t find content helpful if it seems like it was designed to attract clicks rather than inform readers,” Danny Sullivan, from Google, said in a blog post. “Many of us have experienced the frustration of visiting a webpage that seems like it has what we’re looking for, but doesn’t live up to our expectations. The content might not have the insights you want, or it may not even seem like it was created for, or even by, a person.” Continue reading...
From pictures of puppies to deadly political manoeuvres, WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging platform. But is it losing its appeal?Every morning before she leaves for work, Rosie, a 28-year-old physiotherapist, chats with her three housemates. Sometimes they commiserate or celebrate over the weather or football results; sometimes one of them has good news about a job interview to share or lets off steam about their latest dating app disaster.The friends moved out of the house they shared in Bristol last summer when they left college, and they live in different towns now, but their WhatsApp group, named after the road they lived on together, starts pinging with messages around 7.30am most days. “I live on my own now, and I miss having company,” says Rosie. “Some of the others have moved back in with their parents, which has its own challenges. We make each other laugh and keep each other sane. We don’t get to meet up much, but the group chat has kept our little gang alive.” Continue reading...
One of the minds behind deeply unsettling sci-fi classic Dead Space imagines another haunted, forsaken space station in this forthcoming horror gameAn unnamed convict staggers through a lunar prison that’s been sundered by some sort of galactic catastrophe. The steely corridors are shrouded in darkness, save for the neon glow of computer terminals. Every step is tentative, because pulsating monstrosities – other prisoners, mutated into abominable forms – threaten to emerge from every crevice.Few versions of hell loom larger in the imagination than the haunted, derelict space station. You’re alone in the dark, far from home, and stalked by whatever horrors have leaked in from the cosmic void. Steve Papoutsis has been obsessed with this bleak fantasy for years: he worked as a producer on the vaunted Dead Space series, which condemned gamers to their own forsaken Nostromo. The Callisto Protocol, which arrives on consoles and PC later this year, is pitched as a spiritual successor to that franchise. Papoutsis is at the helm once again, and wants to show us just how terrifying the final frontier can be. Continue reading...
The email subscription platform has been a source of inspiration and financial freedom for Pitchfork favourites struggling in the streaming economy“I jumped from my chair and knelt over my father, cradling his head. As if in a movie, I held his head in one hand and snapped the other in front of his face, yelling for him to wake up,” writes singer-songwriter Kevin Morby in a recent post on his Substack newsletter, recounting a night his father had a medical scare. “Thankfully, moments later, his eyes, like cherries in a slot machine, quickly dinged forward and he looked around the room without moving his head.”Morby loves his Substack. The Kansas City-based musician, who is adored by Pitchfork and recently released his seventh album, This Is a Photograph, joined the email newsletter platform in April at his manager’s suggestion. He now sends his several hundred subscribers a series of rambling, poetic vignettes every few weeks. Continue reading...
Users of iPhone, iPad and Mac advised to update software to secure them against vulnerabilityApple users have been advised to immediately update their iPhones, iPads and Macs to protect against a pair of security vulnerabilities that can allow attackers to take complete control of their devices.In both cases, Apple said, there are credible reports that hackers are already abusing the vulnerabilities to attack users. Continue reading...
The petition by Alphabet Workers Union outlines measures to safeguard employee and user data in light of abortion prosecutionMore than 650 Google workers have signed on to a petition lobbying the tech behemoth to adopt policies that could protect and provide support for employees and consumers seeking abortion care.The demands were threefold: workers asked that the company extend access to reproductive healthcare benefits already offered to full-time employees to temporary and contract workers; second, the company stop any and all political lobbying of politicians or organizations “because these politicians were responsible for appointing the supreme court justices who overturned Roe v Wade and continue to infringe on other human rights issues”. Last, they demanded Google stop storing health-related data that could later be used to criminalize users and address the disinformation and misinformation found in search results. Continue reading...
The Melbourne international film festival installation transports viewers to the Daintree Rainforest. Its creators share how they built an entire ecosystem
Memo from boss Tim Cook backs down from earlier attempt to get all employees in on same three fixed daysApple has told its employees they must come in to the office for at least three days a week from next month, in an effort to restore “in-person collaboration”.In a memo to all employees, Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said the policy would require all staff to return to the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as well as a third day that would vary team by team. Continue reading...
After she was dropped by her agent, Alex Aster turned to a books-obsessed corner of TikTok to gauge interest in her YA novel … and now Lightlark is one of the most eagerly anticipated releases of the yearHaving finally published her first novel, Alex Aster was feeling disheartened. The book had tanked during the pandemic and she had been dropped by her literary agent. Then, on 13 March 2021, she decided to take to TikTok, asking her followers if they would: “read a book about a cursed island that only appears once every 100 years to host a game that gives the six rulers of the realm a chance to break their curses.” One of the rulers must die, the short video revealed, “even as love complicates everything” for the heroine, Isla Crown.Aster didn’t expect much, especially when she checked in a few hours later to see that her post had only clocked up about 1,000 views. Maybe the books world was right, she thought. Maybe there wasn’t a market for Lightlark, a young adult story she had been writing and rewriting for years, to no interest from publishers. The next day, however, she woke up to see her video had been viewed more than a million times. A week later, Lightlark had gone to auction and she had a six-figure deal with Amulet Books. Last month, Universal preemptively bought the film rights for, in her words, “more zeros than I’ve seen in my life”. Continue reading...
Firm increased business expenses in 2021 after former chancellor introduced 130% ‘super-deduction’ relief schemeAmazon could be off the hook for tax in the UK for at least two more years after benefiting from reliefs brought in by Rishi Sunak during the pandemic, a report suggests.The research from the Fair Tax Foundation indicates that the US tech company claimed more than £800m in capital allowances – business expenses that can be offset against profits – in 2021, £500m more than in 2020. Continue reading...
It started with blocky players and electronic crowd noise, now it boasts intelligent animation and specific movement capture for the women’s gameEarlier this year, at the famed La Romareda stadium in Zaragoza, Spain, EA Sports organised two football matches, one each for male and female pro players. During these competitive 90-minute fixtures, all participants, including subs and officials, wore advanced Xsens motion capture suits that recorded their every movement, shot, tackle and celebration. Involving more than 70 people it was, according to gameplay producer Sam Rivera, the largest number of players ever motion-captured in a single session.Every year, the developers of Fifa tell us that their key aim is authenticity. This year, Fifa 23 – the final product of EA Sports and Fifa’s 30-year partnership – is about making key moments more intelligible, detailed and dramatic, zooming in ever closer to the action at pitch level. That grand Zaragoza mo-cap session provided 10m frames of animation – twice as much match capture as Fifa 22 – allowing for more than 6,000 authentic player animations, a wealth of which are female-specific. Continue reading...
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington on (#62CWN)
Saudi official Bader al-Asaker accused by US of recruiting employees to secretly report on dissidents’ anonymous accountsTwitter has allowed a senior Saudi official and aide to Mohammed bin Salman to maintain a verified account with more than 2m followers despite allegations that the official recruited and paid Twitter employees to secretly report on dissidents’ anonymous accounts.A US jury on Tuesday convicted one of the former Twitter employees, a US-Lebanese national named Ahmad Abouammo on charges that he used his position at the social media company to spy on Twitter users on behalf of the Saudi government. Two other named defendants, Saudi citizens Ali Alzabarah and Ahmed Almutairi, are on the FBI’s wanted list and are believed to be in Saudi Arabia. Both are accused of acting as unregistered agents of Saudi Arabia. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hollie Richardson, Hannah Verdier a on (#62CWP)
In this week’s newsletter: The BBC’s Kayley Thomas pieces together the Argentinian striker’s final hours in Transfer: The Emiliano Sala Story. Plus: five of the best podcasts about childhood memories
The company has offered only a 35p rise, and hundreds of workers stopped work last week in protestThe GMB union has submitted formal pay claims to Amazon seeking a minimum of £15 an hour for workers at its UK warehouses as unofficial protests continue to dog the online retailer.Hundreds of workers in warehouses across the country, including Tilbury in Essex, Dartford in Kent, Belvedere in south-east London, Coventry, Avonmouth, near Bristol and Rugeley in Staffordshire, stopped work last week after Amazon offered workers a 35p an hour pay rise – equivalent to about 3% compared with the June inflation rate of 9.4%. Continue reading...
App spares users the embarrassment of a blanket notification as part of series of updates over coming monthWhatsApp users will soon be able to avoid social awkwardness by gracefully – and silently – leaving annoying groups, the company has announced.Currently, if you leave a WhatsApp group, every member is notified, which can be embarrassing for smaller groups and irritating for larger ones. Continue reading...
US treasury says popular cryptocurrency service reportedly laundered more than $7bn worth of virtual currencyThe United States on Monday imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash, a popular cryptocurrency service that allows users to mask their transactions, accusing it of helping hackers, including from North Korea, to launder proceeds from their cybercrimes.A senior treasury department official said Tornado Cash, one of the largest virtual currency “mixers” identified as problematic by the treasury, has reportedly laundered more than $7bn worth of virtual currency since it was created in 2019. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#628WV)
Lightning-quick recharging could be game-changing for cut-price Android with top performanceOnePlus is back with another mid-cycle upgrade to its top Android phone – this time with the lightning-fast-charging 10T handset, which can fully power up in under 20 minutes without destroying its battery life.After a two-year hiatus, the “T” series of phones is back to debut new technology halfway through the year, this time with 150W charging – more than five times the power of Apple’s top iPhone.Screen: 6.5in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (393ppi)Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1RAM: 8 or 16GB of RAMStorage: 128 or 256GBOperating system: OxygenOS 12.1 (Android 12)Camera: 50MP main, 8MP ultrawide, 2MP macro; 16MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSSWater resistance: NoneDimensions: 163 × 75.4 × 8.8mmWeight: 203.5g Continue reading...
We had more than 2,500 followers, then suddenly the page was disabled and we have no idea whyI was setting up a community cooking school when the pandemic struck, and during the crisis we used our kitchens to run a surplus food project instead. It was used by thousands of people, and Facebook played a vital role in our success.I’m back working on the original plan for the social enterprise but this week we suffered a big blow as I discovered my personal Facebook page, and the page for the cooking school, had been disabled. Continue reading...
Nikkei says firm wants components bound for mainland to now comply with longstanding Beijing ruleApple has reportedly asked Taiwan-based suppliers to label their products as being produced in China, in an effort to avoid disruption from strict Chinese customs inspections resulting from the visit of the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Taipei.According to Nikkei, the company has asked manufacturers on the island to label components bound for mainland China as made in “Chinese Taipei” or “Taiwan, China”. The labels are required in order to comply with a longstanding but previously unenforced rule that requires imported goods to suggest the island is part of the People’s Republic of China. Continue reading...
by Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent on (#62898)
‘Black-box’ AI-based discrimination seems to be beyond the control of organisations that use itIt started with a single tweet in November 2019. David Heinemeier Hansson, a high-profile tech entrepreneur, lashed out at Apple’s newly launched credit card, calling it “sexist” for offering his wife a credit limit 20 times lower than his own.The allegations spread like wildfire, with Hansson stressing that artificial intelligence – now widely used to make lending decisions – was to blame. “It does not matter what the intent of individual Apple reps are, it matters what THE ALGORITHM they’ve placed their complete faith in does. And what it does is discriminate. This is fucked up.” Continue reading...
Ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith urges ministers to cut ties with Chinese-owned platform over data fearsDowning Street and senior ministers have been urged to follow parliament in shutting down their TikTok accounts over concerns about the app’s connection with China and rising tensions over Taiwan.After a successful lobbying campaign by Conservative MPs, the Speakers of the House of Commons and Lords ordered officials to close down the @ukparliament account, saying they had not been consulted about its creation and had been made aware of reasons for concern. Continue reading...
Featuring an astronaut trapped on a space station with only his alternate selves for company, 11 Bit Studios’ next game walks the line between comedy and commentaryA sci-fi management sim from the team behind climate crisis fable Frostpunk, The Alters turns the classic video game concept of the “extra life” into a source of manpower. Protagonist(s) Jan Dolski is the sole survivor of a crash-landed mining mission, trapped on an airless planet in a mobile base that resembles an East End boxpark strung to the inside of the London Eye. To run the facility, Dolski must spawn and collaborate with alternate versions of himself. These aren’t just doppelgangers, but independent characters with diverging personalities and skills (and haircuts) born of different life choices: one is a dreamy guitar player, another seems to have anger issues, a third is the boffin type, a fourth carries himself like Captain Kirk.Teamwork is crucial, but despite – or perhaps, thanks to – being genetically identical, Jan’s parallel selves may not get along. “[Their] paths branch at different stages or certain ages, defining their personality and – most importantly – identity,” says director Tomasz Kisilewicz. “The result is a different being that is annoyed by [different] things and driven by different motivations. Understanding them correctly is key to success in the game.” Mismanaging Dolski’s selves may lead to outright conflict; Kisilewicz declines to go into detail, but it’s certainly possible for them to die.The Alters will debut on PC; release date to be confirmed. Continue reading...
News of Renate Nyborg’s exit came as Match Group reported results that missed Wall Street expectationsThe chief executive of Tinder has left the dating app after less than a year after the market value of its parent company plunged by more than a fifth following reporting disappointing results.The departure of Renate Nyborg was one of a number of management changes announced by the $20bn Match Group, which owns dating brands including Hinge, Tinder and Match.com. Continue reading...
Computer engineer who accidentally discarded hard drive consults Newport council over schemeA computer engineer who accidentally threw away a hard drive containing approximately £150m worth of bitcoin plans to use artificial intelligence to search through thousands of tonnes of landfill.James Howells discarded the hardware from an old laptop containing 8,000 bitcoins in 2013 during an office clearout and now believes it is sitting in a rubbish dump in Newport, south Wales. Continue reading...
In an industry notorious for neglecting its past, one developer is trying to make a game that will be playable (and enigmatic) long into the futureIn January 2020, players of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time stumbled on a buried spaceship: a fully functional “Arwing” fighter from another classic Nintendo game, Star Fox 64. The Arwing was added as a programmer’s shortcut to, essentially, teach a dragon how to fly. Once the dragon was airborne, the ship was hidden away in Ocarina of Time’s source code, where hackers unearthed it 22 years later.“It’s amazing to me that it was there all this time – it just took a lot of digging to find it,” says Billy Basso, a game developer from Chicago. “It’s completely inessential, but it helps people bond with how games are made, the creators behind them and the time and place. It connects you to history in a way.” Basso hopes to foster similar connections with Animal Well, an eerie pixel-art cave system which its creator hopes will have plenty of secrets left to uncover a decade from now.Animal Well will debut on PlayStation 5 and Steam; release date to be confirmed Continue reading...
Prof Hany Farid says all online services should adopt idea backed by GCHQ and National Cybersecurity CentreApple should take heed of warnings from the UK’s security services and revive its controversial plans to scan iPhones for child abuse imagery, the inventor of the scanning technology has argued.Prof Hany Farid, an expert in image analysis at University of California, Berkeley, is the inventor of PhotoDNA, an “image hashing” technique used by companies across the web to identify and remove illegal images. He said that, following an intervention from the technical leads of GCHQ and the National Cyber Security Centre backing an extension of the technology on to individual phones, Apple should be emboldened to revive its shelved plans to do just that. Continue reading...
Loyal users and Kardashians forced social network to partially retreat by demanding renewed emphasis on photo-sharingIf you’re going to change a social media platform synonymous with celebrity culture, make sure the Kardashian-Jenners are onboard first.Instagram was forced into a partial retreat last week as influencer royalty joined a user rebellion against the app, driven by complaints that it had become too video-centric and was pushing content from accounts that people did not follow. Continue reading...
As we embrace the binary thinking of digital technology the divisions between us are growing ever starker. Can fiction help us imagine a different future?In 2017, I published my fourth novel, Exit West, and bought a small notebook to jot down ideas for the next one. I thought it would be about technology. I came across an article by Simon DeDeo, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, discussing an experiment he and his colleague John Miller had conducted in that same year. They simulated cooperation and competition by machines over many generations, building these machines as computer models and setting them playing a game together. An interesting pattern emerged. Rather than constant trading for mutual benefit among equals, or never-ending fights to the death among foes, instead a particular type of machine became dominant, one that recognised and favoured copies of itself, and enormous prosperity ensued, built on ever-growing levels of cooperation. But eventually the minute differences that naturally occurred (or were, in the experiment, designed to occur) in the copying process, as they do in organisms when genes are passed on, became intolerable, and war among the machines resulted in near-complete devastation and a new beginning, after which the cycle repeated, over and over.I remember being struck by this article. Not because I fully understood what the simulation was or even how it worked. No, I was struck by its similarity to a narrative I had already been feeling drawn to myself: that the rise and fall of human society is not merely something that has happened but also something that will continue to happen, that moments of peak cooperation contain within them the tendency for differences to become utterly intolerable, and that the transition from one societal epoch to the next is rarely a series of gently eliding waves, each a bit higher than the previous one – to the contrary, humanity’s trajectory on the way down is often far more steep than it was on the way up. Continue reading...
The British choreographer’s programme includes beguiling digital dance created by Tobias Gremmler, a reckoning with desire from Rocío Molina and seven visions of viceLeonora Carrington is a guiding spirit of the 2022 Venice Art Biennale, where the main exhibition borrows the title of her book for children, The Milk of Dreams. The great surrealist’s untethered hybrid figures are also evoked in Tobias Gremmler’s hypnotic digital artwork Fields (★★★★☆), shown as part of the Dance Biennale directed by Wayne McGregor. The festival’s overall theme is “boundary-less” and serves as a rebuttal of any parochial destiny for Brexitland dance as well as a reaffirmation of international collaboration and the merging of artforms with new technologies.The shapeshifting virtual dancers that Gremmler has created for his scenographic installation are cast over parallel gauze screens. These looped sequences find wispy bodies slowly forming to give the briefest of solos, duets and group dances before dissolving within a swirl of motion that abstractly conjures twisting cords of sinew and flowing hair. As the energy builds, dissipates and resurges, it gradually comes to resemble a series of life cycles, one ethereal dance after another within a vortex of space and time. Continue reading...
The ‘partial blockade’ of the war-torn Ethiopian region has added to Tigrayans’ fears and distressWhen the Ethiopian long-distance runner Gotytom Gebreslase won the women’s marathon gold at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon this month, her jubilation was tinged with sadness: she had broken the championship record, but could not celebrate with her family.“My mother and father would have been delighted,” she said in a brief interview with the BBC, before bursting into tears. Continue reading...
Reversal includes toning down algorithm that resulted in users’ feeds being deluged with videos from accounts they do not followInstagram is reversing some changes to the app following a user backlash that saw influencer royalty Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian turning on the platform.The photo and video sharing app was accused of mimicking TikTok at the expense of its most loyal users, after user anger at a series of changes boiled over this week. Instagram said on Thursday it was rolling back some of the changes including a test version of the app that gave a full-screen display to posts. Continue reading...
The tech firm reported sales and profit of $83bn, in a positive sign for the company which lost its most valuable status earlierApple reported higher-than-expected profit and sales as demand for iPhones holds steady even amid inflation and the challenges of an economic slowdown.Sales and profit for the quarter were $83bn and $1.20 a share, according to Apple, surpassing Wall Street expectations. The report is a positive sign for the company, which earlier this year lost its status as the most valuable company in the world to the oil giant Saudi Aramco. The company’s shares rose by 2.6% after hours in response to the news. Continue reading...
Pa Edrissa Manjang is suing company for alleged dismissal based on racially biased facial recognition softwareA delivery driver who is suing Uber Eats in London over his dismissal from the company and claims its facial recognition technology is racially biased says the company treats couriers as “numbers rather than humans”.Pa Edrissa Manjang worked for Uber Eats between November 2019 and April 2021 while employed full-time as a financial assistant. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hollie Richardson, Hannah Verdier a on (#61WW9)
In this week’s newsletter: Journalist Nelufar Hedayat hears from everyday people whose lives changed forever just one year ago in Kabul Falling. Plus: five of the best podcasts for better mental health
After months of calls, hostility, and a referral to a debt collectors, the phone company cancelled my late mother’s contract. I will not watch this happen to othersIt’s sometimes called “sadmin”: tying up the affairs of someone who has passed away. There’s a lot to do, though some aspects have become easier – you can notify most branches of government through an online form called Tell Us Once. But some private interests are less helpful.My mother died in early March. My father is confused and very frail, so my sister and my dad’s carer and I handled the sadmin. Most of it went smoothly: in many cases cancelling my mother’s accounts was quick and straightforward. That was until we ran into Vodafone. Continue reading...
Only by learning to unplug and face uncomfortable truths can we teach our offspring to face bad news about the worldIn January 2020, the photographer Brad Fleet posted a photo of a baby kangaroo burned to death against a barbed wire fence, after a thwarted attempt to escape the Australian bushfires. You may remember the picture: the charred remains of the joey’s arms wrapped around the fence, its head poking through a gap, clenched teeth standing out pale white against the grey body and post-apocalyptic backdrop.The photo went viral, spreading like wildfire through people’s devices and into their nervous systems, causing them anxiety and distress about an event a world away. In my child psychotherapy practice, I’m seeing ever more children struggling to manage their feelings in the wake of viral news events, such as the murder of George Floyd in the US, the murder of Sarah Everard in the UK, school shootings, some of the shocking images around climate breakdown, and now a war.Louis Weinstock is a child and family psychotherapist, the co-founder of the charity Apart of Me, and the author of the book How The World Is Making Our Children Mad And What To Do About ItDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com
Wins for Amazon and Starbucks workers shows labor movement surging after years of decline – but pushback has been fierceAfter years of decline, the American labor movement is experiencing a resurgence, with an increase in popularity of unions and of workers organizing.But the corporate pushback in America has been fierce, and has come amid allegations of union-busting, and brutal campaigns to try and discourage workers from organizing. Continue reading...
Fans were outraged after the cost of watching the Boss play surged. But companies are now increasingly adjusting charges based on data they have about you tooIf you want to see Bruce Springsteen play in the US, it may cost you. Some of the tickets for the Boss’s forthcoming tour are going for over $4,000 (£3,300) on Ticketmaster – prices that have triggered a backlash and angry headlines. Do you get hand-fed gold-coated caviar and have your feet massaged by a supermodel for that money? Not exactly. The reason the tickets cost so much is because of “dynamic pricing”. Ticketmaster has said most Springsteen tickets cost under $200, but 11% are part of a variable pricing strategy where the cost adjusts according to demand. Think Uber’s surge pricing – but for concert tickets.While people are understandably outraged by Ticketmaster’s antics, dynamic pricing isn’t unusual. We’re all used to the fluctuating prices of hotel rooms and aeroplane tickets, for example. What is newer, however, is the extent to which dynamic pricing is being used. According to a 2018 Deloitte and Salesforce report, 40% of brands that use artificial intelligence to personalise customer experience have adjusted pricing and promotions in real time. A recent McKinsey report, meanwhile, notes that Amazon “reprices millions of items as frequently as every few minutes”. Continue reading...
Parent company Alphabet reports second-quarter revenue of $69.69bn, 13% higher than a year agoAlphabet only narrowly missed estimates for its quarterly revenue on Tuesday, a sign the tech giant may weather an industry-wide slowdown better than expected.Alphabet reported second-quarter revenue of $69.69bn, 13% higher than same period a year ago, and nearly in line with the average expectation of $69.88bn among investment researchers tracked by Refinitiv. Continue reading...
Social network turning to its ‘supreme court’ about decision, says head of global affairs, Nick CleggFacebook is turning to its “supreme court” to decide whether to end restrictions on Covid misinformation, more than two years after the company first started to take special action on posts promoting falsehoods about the disease.The social network is considering changing the way it deals with such misinformation by, for example, labelling it as false or demoting it in algorithmic ranking, rather than simply removing it from the site. It wants to make the change now, according to head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, “as many, though not all, countries around the world seek to return to more normal life”. Continue reading...
Updates to copy features of arch-rival leave some users struggling to find friends and family contentInstagram’s head defended the app against a user backlash, after the social network launched a series of changes intended to make it more like its arch-rival TikTok.The changes, which include an extremely algorithmic main feed, a push for the service’s TikTok-style “reels” videos, and heavy promotion of the TikTok-style “remix” feature, have resulted in users struggling to find content from friends and family, once the bread and butter of the social network. Continue reading...
Monthly subscription to increase by 12.5% to £8.99 in latest sign of rising delivery costsAmazon is to increase the price of its monthly Prime subscription service by 12.5% – or £1 – to £8.99 from September in the latest sign that delivery costs are rising.The company said the cost of an annual Prime package, which includes unlimited deliveries for online shopping, access to its video and music streaming services and its Amazon Fresh grocery deliveries, would rise by more – 20%, or £16 – to £95, although this remains a discount on the monthly option. Continue reading...
Chinese internet giants have become compliant parts of the regime they promised to disrupt. For Tencent’s Pony Ma and other tycoons the future is fraughtIn April 2022, a resurgence of Covid spread seemingly unchecked through the financial centre of Shanghai. The government imposed a strict lockdown, confining millions to their homes, triggering mass-testing on a scale unseen since the initial outbreak and outraging affluent urban residents who were increasingly sceptical about China’s Covid-zero policy. In an attempt to control public opinion, the government told social media sites including WeChat – the super-app used by two-thirds of China’s population – to wipe and scrape posts deemed negative or critical of the policy.But the censorship backfired. There was an unprecedented public outcry, which became a virtual protest. A video documenting the dire fallout of lockdown began circulating online. The six-minute clip known as Voices of April – a montage of audio recordings encompassing the cries of babies separated from parents during quarantine, residents demanding food and the pleas of a son seeking medical help for his critically ill father – resonated with the tens of millions in Shanghai and more across the country. The video was quickly marked as banned content and taken down from social media platforms in China. On the Twitter-equivalent Weibo, even the word “April” was temporarily restricted from search results. Continue reading...
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