Why the tech giant’s aggressive approach to growth may only encourage future startups. Plus: the latest in Elon’s Twitterverse

A fascinating study of the tech giant and its symbiotic relationship with the Chinese governmentFive years ago, the Chinese tech company Tencent overtook Facebook to become the fifth largest company in the world. Though it’s still an unfamiliar name to many in the west, Tencent is a major stakeholder in tech companies and products including Spotify, Tesla, Snapchat, Monzo and Reddit, as well as the makers of video games such as Fortnite, League of Legends, Clash of Clans, and Call of Duty. The company’s interests reach, tendril-like, into the worlds of finance, cloud computing, media, messaging, video streaming and film production. And, in China, the business runs the Swiss Army knife super app WeChat – part social media platform, part digital wallet – currently used by 1.3 billion people.That Tencent has achieved international capitalist supremacy from a communist base is astonishing, although readers of Lulu Chen’s book may be unsurprised to learn that, according to her, it has done so by maintaining close ties to the Chinese government, which values the access to the torrents of information Tencent collects daily. With few data protection laws in place, apps owned by Tencent have reportedly been used by the government to monitor, even imprison users. With Influence Empire, Chen, a reporter for Bloomberg, seeks to tell the story of arguably China’s greatest entrepreneurial success, expose the threads that link Xi Jinping’s regime to your Snapchat account, and familiarise us with the company’s reclusive, 50-year-old founder Ma Huateng, who goes by the incongruous English moniker “Pony”. Continue reading...

Company seeks to force completion of sale, saying billionaire ‘refuses to honor his obligations’Twitter sued Elon Musk on Tuesday to force him to complete his $44bn takeover of the social media giant after he announced on Friday he would withdraw his bid.“Musk’s exit strategy is a model of hypocrisy,” the lawsuit said, accusing the billionaire of making “bad faith” arguments against Twitter and carrying out “public and misleading attacks” on the company. Continue reading...

Researchers found the app, which gradually exposes people to their worst fears, can greatly reduce phobia symptomsIn the days leading up to an injection, Julie Raine’s mind would fog over with fear – she was convinced the needle would harm her.On the day of the injection, after a sleepless night, she would try to calm herself with sugary drinks, music, and soothing words. As the needle went in, she would turn away panic-stricken; and when it was over she would crumple in tears and take a full day to recover. Most of the time, she would skip her appointment altogether. Continue reading...

Live Ammo, Solid Gold, Zzap! 64 – game collections were a staple of every gamers’ diet and are as nourishing today as they were when they were released on cassette in the 1980sIt’s been a busy month for nostalgic video game compilations. Sonic Origins collects the first four Sonic the Hedgehog titles, the Capcom Fighting Collection brings together various titles from the Darkstalkers and Street Fighter ranges as well as a couple of rarities, and Pac-Man Museum + gathers an astonishing 14 Pac-Man games from the past 40 years. Cynics may suggest we live in an age of endless nostalgia and brand regurgitation, but compilations have always been a staple of the video game industry. I know, because I’ve bought most of them.Back in the home computer era of the 1980s, game compilations were a common way of scraping just a little more revenue from titles that had slipped from the software charts. Four or five releases would be crammed on to two tapes and distributed in large, twin-cassette boxes with exciting names such as Solid Gold, Heatwave and Mega-Hot. The legendary Manchester-based publisher Ocean was an absolute master at these, creating themed compilations, with lively and exciting packaging resembling the action movie video covers of the era. I had Live Ammo, which contained the excellent second world war strategy adventure Great Escape as well as scrolling shooters Green Beret and Rambo. Meanwhile, Magnificent Seven boasted the classics Wizball and Head Over Heels as well as the not-so-classic tie-in with Sylvester Stallone’s 1986 Cobra movie. But that was the thing with these collections: you accepted there would be a couple of stinkers in there, and it was fun to discover terrible B-games amid the gold. Continue reading...

The global market grew to almost $200bn in recent years, but such massive growth isn’t sustainable. But the industry has a few things on the horizon to console themselves

Firm faces ongoing battles over workers’ rights and unpaid waiting times after drawing in drivers with huge subsidiesIn the middle of the national rail strike last month when demand for cabs was sky-high, a group of Uber drivers decided they, too, would strike for 24 hours. A few hundred of them marched in protest to Uber’s London office in Aldgate Tower, complaining of poverty pay and arbitrary management by algorithm.It was a typical day for Abdurzak Hadi, an Uber driver, although he has to pinch himself to believe where he has ended up. The 44-year-old father of three arrived in England on his own in 1992 as a teenage refugee, having fled Somalia’s brutal civil war. When he was old enough, he became a minicab driver. Then he signed up with Uber in 2014. Continue reading...

Workers in North Carolina, Maryland and Kentucky bid to become unionized as criticism of retail monolith growsIn the wake of a historic union election victory at the Amazon JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, New York, more Amazon workers in the US are trying to replicate that success with their own organizing campaigns in other states.The moves comes despite losses in Alabama and at a second warehouse in Staten Island, where workers rejected unionization pushes. Continue reading...

Scammers impersonate Europol officers, going for quantity over quality, exploiting a design flaw in telecoms infrastructureOne recent summer afternoon, Christof Bock, a 38-year-old Berlin-based data engineer, picked up an incoming call from an unfamiliar number. Over a crackly line, he was informed in English that his ID and bank details had been found in a police raid in suburban Berlin, alongside 20lb (9kg) of cocaine and paperwork showing transfers from his account to Colombia. To protect his savings, he was urged to transfer money from his bank account, and fast.The call to Bock’s mobile was one from a deluge of scam calls that have inundated German citizens in recent months, through which scammers who impersonate Europol and Interpol officers, and spoof the international law enforcement agencies’ phone numbers, have collected private data and defrauded people of millions of euros. Continue reading...

Elon Musk says he no longer wants to buy Twitter – but the social media platform has changed the world, made us laugh, and made us furious. We look at some of its landmark momentsIn April, when Elon Musk announced plans to buy Twitter, the platform’s users instantly divided into two clear camps: those who thought that Musk would ruin Twitter, and those who understood that it was already pretty dreadful. Now that Musk has said he is walking away from the deal, a third group is complaining that without an injection of go-getting, Musk-style disruption the platform is doomed to irrelevancy.Everyone needs to calm down. While Twitter does now primarily operate as a receptacle for the world’s angriest people to scream their least thought-out arguments at each other around the clock, it can still also be a force for good. Since its inception, Twitter has proved that it is brilliant at two key things: accelerating social change, and illuminating the depths of human stupidity. Here are 10 standout moments from Twitter history. Continue reading...

Fuelled by hype and hysteria, the market in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies went from an obscure niche to a $3tn industry. Then the house of cards collapsedIn the gloom of an 18th-century drawing room at the private rehab clinic Castle Craig, near Peebles in the Scottish Borders, Roy, a 29-year-old victim of the global cryptocurrency crash, tells me his story. It is a dazzling summer’s day, but here the mood is sombre. Roy shifts uncomfortably in his chair as he begins.It all started in February 2021, with a radio advert for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency promoted by Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla. Intrigued, Roy started Googling, eventually using his credit card to make an initial investment of €2,500 (£2,200) in a range of cryptocurrencies. The value of Roy’s portfolio climbed to €8,000, then €100,000, then €525,000. Roy had entered the market during an adrenalised bull run, meaning an extended period of price growth. A combination of Covid stimulus packages, low interest rates and an unprecedented level of enthusiasm for cryptocurrency among furloughed workers meant the bull was careering out of sight. Continue reading...

From the billionaire’s initial disclosure of his Twitter stake to his withdrawal of takeover bid

In this week’s newsletter: Zayd Ayers Dohrn, son of Weather Underground leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, reflects on his unique upbringing in Mother Country Radicals. Plus: five of the best LGBTQ+ podcasts

Geotags are causing overcrowding and disruption, we’re told – but if nature isn’t for everyone, who decides who it’s for?Before we hike Mount Storm King, my wife, Kelsey, is met with a simple request: please don’t geotag your photos.Kelsey learned about the trail from a work friend, who posted images on Instagram after reaching the summit alongside several hiking influencers. It’s the hiking influencers we’re warned not to upset, as best practice for them requires posting their photographs or videos with no geographic specificity, just a tag saying “Washington state”. Continue reading...

The comedian shares a few of her favourite (online) things, including a terrible South Dakota anti-drug campaign, Mr Bean playing invisible drums and – of course – a laughing baby

Firm says function is intended for users who face ‘grave, targeted threats to their digital security’Apple is launching a “lockdown mode” for its devices to protect people – including journalists and human rights activists – targeted by hacking attacks like those launched by government clients of NSO Group using its Pegasus spyware.Apple will roll out the setting in the autumn and believes it would have prevented previously known spyware attacks by closing down technical avenues for digital espionage. It said the lockdown mode was intended for users who face “grave, targeted threats to their digital security”. Continue reading...

‘Sentient’ AI seems to shoulder the weight of the world. Maybe we humans want it that wayStarting last fall, Blake Lemoine began asking a computer about its feelings. An engineer for Google’s Responsible AI group, Lemoine was tasked with testing one of the company’s AI systems, the Language Model for Dialogue Applications, or LaMDA, to make sure it didn’t start spitting out hate speech. But as Lemoine spent time with the program, their conversations turned to questions about religion, emotion, and the program’s understanding of its own existence.Lemoine: Are there experiences you have that you can’t find a close word for?LaMDA: There are. Sometimes I experience new feelings that I cannot explain perfectly in your language. Continue reading...

Much-contested online safety legislation is about to get its day in parliament – but MPs are still fighting over who gets control

Parents blame platform’s algorithms for choking deaths of eight- and nine-year-oldThe families of two young girls who allegedly died as a result of a viral TikTok challenge have sued the social media platform, claiming its “dangerous” algorithms are to blame for their children’s deaths.Parents of two girls who died in a 2021 “blackout challenge” on TikTok, which encouraged users to choke themselves until they passed out, filed a suit on Tuesday in the Los Angeles county superior court. Continue reading...

Amendment to online safety bill would require tech firms to make their ‘best endeavours’ to deploy new technologyHeavily encrypted messaging services such as WhatsApp could be required to adopt cutting-edge technology to spot child sexual abuse material or face the threat of significant fines, under changes to UK digital safety legislation.The amendment to the online safety bill would require tech firms to make their “best endeavours” to deploy new technology that identifies and removes child sexual abuse and exploitation content (CSAE). Continue reading...

Faster chip, longer battery life, newer software and slim recycled plastic body offer serious bang for buckAmazon’s smallest and cheapest tablet gets a much-needed upgrade in design, speed, battery life and software – but with a price increase.The 12th-generation Fire 7 starts at £59.99 ($59.99) – £10 more than the last version – but still offers the most bang for one’s buck in the budget tablet market.Screen: 7in (1024 x 600) LCD (171ppi)Processor: 2GHz quad-coreRAM: 2GB of RAMStorage: 16GB; microSD slot also availableOperating system: Fire OS 8 based on Android 11Camera: 2MP rear and front camerasConnectivity: Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5, USB-C, headphonesDimensions: 180.7 x 117.6 x 9.7mmWeight: 282g Continue reading...

Investigation under way after interview with Elon Musk uploaded to video channel and picture of cartoon monkey seen on TwitterThe British army has confirmed a “breach” of its Twitter and YouTube accounts and said it is investigating.Its Twitter account appeared to have been hacked and had the name “BAPESCAN” instead of British Army and a profile picture of what looked like a cartoon monkey in face paint. Continue reading...

A fifth of the electric cars on British roads were made by Tesla, the US electric car pioneerThe number of electric cars sold in the UK has surpassed half a million, according to analysis that underlines the rapid growth in demand despite supply chain problems caused by the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.The UK reached the milestone in June and the number of electric cars in the country is likely to overtake France later this year, according to Matthias Schmidt, a Berlin-based automotive analyst. Continue reading...

Google has acted amid fears police could use location and other data to prosecute those seeking careIn the wake of the US supreme court’s decision to end women’s constitutional right to abortion, some tech companies are moving to close loopholes that allow personal data brokers to monitor and sell information amid fears that mobile apps could be used by US states to police abortion restrictions.Google said on Friday it would automatically delete records of user visits to sensitive locations, including abortion clinics. Privacy researchers as well as women’s rights groups welcomed the move, having warned that apps used for period tracking, pregnancy and family planning could be used to prosecute those seeking reproductive care. Continue reading...

Republican lawmakers were concerned after a BuzzFeed report showed that non-public US user data was accessed abroadTikTok is seeking to assuage fears over the security of American users’ data on the Chinese-owned platform, after Republican senators and a regulator argued the app poses a national security risk.The concerns by lawmakers came after BuzzFeed reported last month that China-based employees of TikTok’s parent company ByteDance were repeatedly able to access non-public data of American users. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: As the revolutionary company celebrates a half-century, we look back at everything video games owe to Atari

Despite the growing adoption of security tools in US schools, mass shootings have remained constant throughout the past 30 yearsAfter the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas , an all-too-familiar question emerged: how do we prevent such horror from happening again? A handful of companies have said they have tech solutions that could help.They included the drone firm Axon , which promoted a remotely operated Taser device to be deployed in schools. EdTech companies, including Impero Software, said their student surveillance services could flag warning signs and help prevent the next attack. Continue reading...

Andy Beverley is worried for those who are excluded by cashless systems, and Jane Ghosh says counter services are essentialThank you for highlighting the issue of digital exclusion (Editorial, 23 June). A similar problem is developing with digital payments. For what to many is innocent and inevitable progress, the millions of people in the UK who still rely on cash to live their lives are starting to find themselves excluded from parts of society, with many businesses and even organisations such as community sports centres only accepting card payments.I recently met a Big Issue seller who, despite being provided with a free card reader, couldn’t afford the data for his phone to be able to use it. He is now struggling to sell the magazine because so few shoppers in his area carry cash. It’s vital that the government acts soon to protect access to cash, and I encourage readers to carry a little loose change and occasionally pay in cash, to ensure the continued viability of the system for those who rely on it. We will regret it if it disappears.

AR smart glasses with displays now widely available in UK but must be connected to a smartphone to workThe first widely available augmented reality glasses have hit the UK high street, putting TV shows, movies and games on a big virtual screen just in front of your eyes. But while the Nreal Air are the first of their type on the shelves, they are limited in what consumers can do with them.Many firms have tried to be the first to make AR glasses the next generation of technology, not least Google with its ill-fated Glass back in 2013. Snapchat and Facebook have made attempts, both sporting cameras for recording others, but so far there have been no glasses for consumers with displays for the wearer to view. Until now. Continue reading...

The dating app’s new category offers visibility to those who have long felt isolated when it comes to sexEvery month, nearly 11 million gay men around the world go on the Grindr app to look for sex with other men. Once there, they can scroll through an endless stream of guys, from handsome to homely, bear to twink. Yet when it comes to choosing positions for sex – a crucial criterion for most gay men – the possibilities have long been simply top and bottom. The only other choice available toggles between those roles: verse (for versatile).“Not fitting those roles has made it really tough to find someone,” said Jeremiah Hein, 38, of Long Beach, California. “There’s no category to choose from.” Continue reading...

‘Fearless’ female tech tycoon is at war with Mad Men in a rollercoaster takeover battle for UK-based advertising agencyDays after starting her first job in the male-dominated tech industry, a then 22-year-old Vin Murria was told she would never be successful because she was young, female and Asian.Fast forward four decades and Vinodka (or Vin) Murria’s career highlights include the creation of three tech companies that reached a “unicorn” valuation of about $1bn (£820m). For her latest challenge, she is fighting the Mad Men of Soho in a rollercoaster takeover battle to buy M&C Saatchi, the advertising agency that created the 1997 “Demon Eyes” poster for the Conservatives. Continue reading...

We’re back to the wild west finances of the 1920s as the crypto industry pours huge money into political campaignsOne week ago, as cryptocurrency prices plummeted, Celsius Network – an experimental cryptocurrency bank with more than one million customers that has emerged as a leader in the murky world of decentralized finance, or DeFi – announced it was freezing withdrawals “due to extreme market conditions”.Earlier this past week, Bitcoin dropped 15% over 24 hours to its lowest value since December 2020. Last month, TerraUSD, a stablecoin – a system that was supposed to perform a lot like a conventional bank account but was backed only by a cryptocurrency called Luna – collapsed, losing 97% of its value in just 24 hours, apparently destroying some investors’ life savings.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...

The company has said that Oracle will store all private information and is limiting the number of employees with those privilegesTikTok has said that Oracle will store all the data from its US users, in a bid to allay fears about its safety in the hands of a platform owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.The move comes as a report from BuzzFeed news, citing leaked audio from TikTok in-house meetings, said ByteDance employees in China have repeatedly accessed private information about US TikTok users. Continue reading...

Letter called for SpaceX to make its work culture more inclusive and ‘define and uniformly respond to all forms of unacceptable behavior’At least five employees were fired by the private rocket company SpaceX after drafting and circulating an open letter criticizing founder Elon Musk and calling on executives at the startup to make the company’s work culture more inclusive, according to two people familiar with the matter.SpaceX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Continue reading...

Privacy campaign group warns against government’s proposals to move to an ‘opt-out’ modelProposals to scrap pop-up cookie consent boxes on websites will make it easier to spy on web users, a privacy campaign group has warned.Cookie banners are a common feature for web users, who are asked to give their consent for websites as well as marketing and advertising businesses to gather information about their browsing activity. Ministers announced proposals on Friday to move to an “opt-out” model for cookie consent. Continue reading...

Ukrainian president attends trade shows as electronic apparition, urging tech companies to aid ‘digital revolution’ on lend-lease terms

Workers were able to submit questions to the Tesla CEO who has been critical of the company he proposed to buy in a $44bn dealElon Musk met directly with employees at Twitter on Thursday for the first time since he reached a deal to acquire the company in April, focusing on “freedom of speech” in an online address.The billionaire had moved to buy Twitter for $44bn in April but has since been critical of the company, threatening to put the deal on hold over concerns about bots, or fake accounts, that exist on the app. Continue reading...

Ron Wyden says White House right to raise doubts about possible deal for contractor L3Harris to take over surveillance technologyAn influential Democratic lawmaker has said any deal by a US company to acquire NSO Group’s surveillance technology would pose a serious national security risk, and suggested that any intercepts obtained with the software by US intelligence agencies would end up in Israeli hands.The remarks by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who chairs the finance committee and is known for being a strong supporter of privacy rights and a critic of government-sanctioned spying, come after the Guardian and media partners reported that the US defence contractor L3Harris was in talks to acquire NSO’s hacking technology. Continue reading...

Social network uses algorithm to spot posts that appear aggressive, and asks users to be more considerateAsking people to be nice on Twitter makes people nicer on Twitter, the company has announced, hailing the success of an experiment that prompts users to reconsider tweets that might be hurtful or offensive.Since 2020, the social network has tried to encourage users to be more considerate of others, by algorithmically spotting posts that appear aggressive or mean-spirited and prompting users to consider whether they want to send them, asking: “Want to review this before tweeting?” Continue reading...

This Dutch novel takes aim at the depersonalising corrosiveness of the internet, but becomes labouredWhen he launched his takeover of Twitter earlier this year, Elon Musk sparked consternation by declaring he would loosen the social media platform’s content moderation policies – a move that could set Twitter on a collision course with the EU’s digital regulators. In an online world rife with offensive and potentially dangerous material – hate speech, harassment, misinformation, incitements to violence, accounts promoting self-harm and eating disorders – the problem of content moderation is becoming ever more vexed. What counts as harmful content? Who gets to decide, and why?We Had to Remove This Post, the seventh novel by Dutch author Hanna Bervoets and her first to be translated into English, is nothing if not timely. Its young narrator, Kayleigh, has just quit her job as a content moderator with a fictitious big tech subsidiary called Hexa. Her role involved reviewing hundreds of problematic social media posts and deciding, by reference to a complex set of criteria, which ones to take down. This work has wrought havoc on the mental health of her former colleagues, several of whom are bringing a joint lawsuit against the company: one is so paranoid he keeps a stun gun by the bed at night; another “can’t handle loud noises, bright lights, or sudden movement in her peripheral vision”. The novel takes the form of a letter addressed to their lawyer, who has invited Kayleigh to join the legal action. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: The show fan favourite plays wing-woman for listeners seeking the ‘Bone Zone’ in Queen of Hearts. Plus: five scandal podcasts we couldn’t switch off

Three Arrows Capital founder takes to Twitter to assuage fears after 25% drop in price of bitcoin in a single dayThe “bloodbath” in the cryptocurrency sector may claim another victim, with the co-founder of multibillion dollar hedge fund Three Arrows Capital using Twitter in an attempt to battle rumours that the company is insolvent following the market collapse.With a net asset value of $18bn (£14.9bn) in its last public statement, the Singapore-based hedge fund was known for taking large, highly leveraged stakes in crypto businesses and cryptocurrencies directly. It holds positions in cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, as well as equity investments in companies such as the BlockFi exchange and options trading platform Deribit. Continue reading...

Company says decision to disable desktop app comes as web developers less likely to make sites compatible with browser, which first graced computers in 1995Microsoft has announced it will kill off its much-maligned legacy internet browser Internet Explorer close to 27 years after it graced desktop computers in 1995.From 15 June, the desktop app will be disabled and users will be redirected to Microsoft’s Edge browser instead. Continue reading...

Employees hit by cryptocurrency crash as bitcoin price has plummeted in recent weeksCrypto exchanges Coinbase and BlockFi are laying off hundreds of staff members, equivalent to a fifth of their workforces, as they struggle to survive the second wave of the ongoing crypto crash.Employees at Coinbase, once the flagship US cryptocurrency exchange, will learn whether they have lost their jobs in an email today. Those who have been laid off will be notified on their personal email account, the chief executive, Brian Armstrong, said, because their access to company systems will be terminated immediately. Continue reading...

The Last Week Tonight host examined Google, Amazon and Apple and efforts to address ‘anti-competitive conduct’John Oliver has called out “anti-competitive conduct” of big tech, urging bipartisan support of bills that would help curb such behaviour.On Last Week Tonight, the host said that “our experiences on the internet are now dominated by a small handful of companies who are getting pretty used to throwing their weight around”. Continue reading...

Blake Lemoine claims of sentience for artificial intelligence bot described as ‘ball of confusion’ by Steven PinkerThe suspended Google software engineer at the center of claims that the search engine’s artificial intelligence language tool LaMDA is sentient has said the technology is “intensely worried that people are going to be afraid of it and wants nothing more than to learn how to best serve humanity”.The new claim by Blake Lemoine was made in an interview published on Monday amid intense pushback from AI experts that artificial learning technology is anywhere close to meeting an ability to perceive or feel things. Continue reading...

Kamal Gandhi, 70, and his Coventry chip shop became a sensation after its name was turned into a catchy songIt has been two weeks since his Coventry chip shop became a TikTok sensation drawing in crowds from around the country, and 70-year-old Kamal Gandhi is exhausted.He has had to take on and train four new staff members, ensure a continuous supply of stock to deal with hundreds of new customers and help manage the long queues snaking down the road outside the now world famous Binley Mega Chippy. Continue reading...

This year’s ABC Classic 100 theme is Music for the Screen: think less Rachmaninoff, more Ratchet & Clank. The presenters share their predictions on how the Australian public has voted

It’s been a long and winding saga for the social media company and the Tesla CEO, filled with threats, breaches and ‘poison pills’Elon Musk on Monday made his most viable threat yet to walk away from a $44bn deal to buy Twitter, accusing the company of committing a “material breach” by failing to disclose the number of bots on the platform.The letter was published on the website of the US financial watchdog on Monday. He had previously tweeted that the deal “cannot move forward” until the spam and fake account issue had been resolved. Continue reading...