Technology | The Guardian

Founder says his company is committed to augmenting the real world rather than replacing itThe Snapchat founder, Evan Spiegel, has dismissed Facebook’s “metaverse” ambitions as “ambiguous and hypothetical” as he announced a raft of new augmented reality features coming to phones and Snap’s experimental AR Spectacles over the next year.Speaking ahead of the Snap Partner Summit, the company’s flagship annual event, Spiegel argued Snapchat was uniquely placed to guide the next decade of technology thanks to the company’s vast array of augmented reality services, such as the “lenses” that are used by millions of people every day. Continue reading...

World’s richest person aims to reassure followers, saying he will not seek to politicise social media network

Reclaim These Streets joins running groups in calling ad insensitive ‘especially in light of Ashling Murphy’A Samsung advertisement featuring a woman jogging alone at 2am has been criticised as “unrealistic” and insensitive.The ad, titled Night Owls, which was promoting the Galaxy Watch4, Galaxy Buds 2 and Galaxy S22 phone, features a young woman running at 2am, with earbuds in, through dark streets and alleyways. At one point she runs past a man on a bike on a deserted bridge.

Information released under data protection laws sheds light on apparent effort to undermine Canadian research group Citizen LabWhen Downing Street was recently named as the suspected victim of a phone hack by the United Arab Emirates using the Israeli-made spyware, Pegasus, few were surprised at who was behind the discovery.The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto has for years been a thorn in the side of the NSO Group, deciphering the company’s sophisticated hacking tools and – crucially – identifying victims of the spyware. Continue reading...

He’s been incubating his latest work for the past two years. Now the Canadian film-maker is auctioning it off to the crypto community – and what an incredible bargain it isNothing on earth is quite as depressing as the moment a celebrity starts getting into NFTs. There you’ll be, quite happy following them on social media when, bang, up pops a sub-Banksy cartoon of a monkey in a wig and a falsely jubilant message celebrating the fact that they’ve joined some sort of club.NFTs somehow represent all the worst things about celebrity combined. It’s both an obnoxious display of status and a very clear indication that these people see their fans as nothing more than a tradable commodity. It was gross when Gwyneth Paltrow did it. It was gross when Brie Larson did it. It’s gross when anyone does it, quite frankly. Or at least it was, because now David Cronenberg is getting into NFTs, and he may be the saviour of the entire thing. Continue reading...

Computer monitoring software is helping companies spy on their employees to measure their productivity – often without their consentWhen the job of a young east coast-based analyst – we’ll call him James – went remote with the pandemic, he didn’t envisage any problems. The company, a large US retailer for which he has been a salaried employee for more than half a decade, provided him with a laptop, and his home became his new office. Part of a team dealing with supply chain issues, the job was a busy one, but never had he been reprimanded for not working hard enough.So it was a shock when his team was hauled in one day late last year to an online meeting to be told there was gaps in its work: specifically periods when people – including James himself, he was later informed – weren’t inputting information into the company’s database. Continue reading...

Fears that carmaker’s CEO may have to sell shares to fund $44bn acquisition of social network

Japan reports child with acute liver disease of unknown origin, and Canada investigating similar cases, with nearly 200 now recorded worldwideA mysterious liver disease that has infected children in a dozen countries around the world has reached Asia, with a case reported in Japan.The case in Japan of acute hepatitis – or inflammation of the liver – of unknown origin was flagged by local authorities on 21 April in a child who had tested negative for adenovirus – a possible cause being investigated worldwide – and Covid-19. Continue reading...

If the ex-president rejoins he will once again have access to a tool he acknowledged helped him win in 2016 – but it will also be an admission that Truth Social failedElon Musk’s planned takeover of Twitter, and his desire to return what he describes as “free speech” to the platform, has buoyed many of those on the right wing in America, who have seen themselves, or their cohorts, banned in recent years.For one prominent rightwing Twitter exile, however, the prospect of a return to the powerful social media website causes mixed emotions and a difficult dilemma. Continue reading...

Company’s push into ‘metaverse’ continues with Bay Area shop offering headsets and smart glassesMeta Platforms is set to open its first physical store where shoppers can try out and buy virtual reality headsets and other gadgets as the company plots a course to take its highly touted “metaverse” mainstream.The 1,550-sq ft Meta Store at the company’s Burlingame campus in California opens on 9 May, and will feature demos for its Quest 2 VR headset and video calling device Portal, as well as smart glasses it produces with Ray-Ban, Meta said on Monday. Continue reading...

Latest mass theft of digital art assets is carried out by phishing post on InstagramYuga Labs, the multibillion-dollar collective behind the infamous Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible tokens, has been targeted by another hacking attack, leading to the theft of millions of dollars worth of the simian NFTs.BAYC’s series of algorithmically generated cartoon ape profile pictures is one of the best-known collections of NFTs – a digital asset or artwork whose ownership is stored on a blockchain, a decentralised ledger of transactions like those used by cryptocurrencies. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: with its fun gimmicky design and new games every week, this handheld device is taking us back to our Game Boy days

The BBC Proms video games concert will look back over the history of the genre, with scores from The Legend of Zelda, Battlefield 2042 and moreFor the past 10 years or so, if you lived in a big city and fancied hearing an orchestra play something from Metal Gear Solid or Sonic the Hedgehog instead of the Romantic period, there has been no shortage of options. Touring orchestras have played music from games such as Pokémon, Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed for appreciative audiences all over the world. The largest such series, Video Games Live, has been running since 2005 and has played over 400 shows in Los Angeles, Beijing, Sydney and elsewhere. But this summer, for the first time, video game music will be part of the BBC Proms season at the Royal Albert Hall in London. A concert on 1 August will feature orchestral selections and adaptations from soundtracks spanning gaming history, including The Legend of Zelda, Shadow of the Colossus and Battlefield 2042.“We’ve always very happily put on concerts of film music, [but] I think if I’m honest we haven’t felt it was quite the right moment to put on a gaming music prom until now, because we were still waiting for a lot of composers to enter this field,” says David Pickard, director of the Proms. “Now we can be there on the front foot and say that there’s a huge range of music here, appealing to a new audience, and of a very high quality that we’re really happy to have at the Proms.” Continue reading...

Teen Casey joins an occult online game in this unnerving experiment in form by trans film-maker Jane SchoenbrunStrangeness is a quality valued and yearned for in so many sorts of movies, but rarely found – yet this really is strange, an experiment in horror form from the trans film-maker Jane Schoenbrun and executive-produced by David Lowery. It draws on a video-art aesthetic, a gamer aesthetic and a lockdown Zoom aesthetic, taking us to a world where liberation goes hand-in-hand with loneliness. It’s very unnerving and a little bit exhausting.Newcomer Anna Cobb plays Casey, a teen who is about to take the World’s Fair Challenge; that is, to take part in an occult horror online game, immerse herself in the fantasy roleplay, and upload videos documenting the supposed changes in herself triggered by the game. This she duly does, along with other players, and it is these disjointed existences and worlds which provide the film’s drama of alienation. Continue reading...

Amazon founder raises concerns after Tesla boss strikes $44bn deal to buy social media platformJeff Bezos has questioned whether China will lean on Elon Musk’s Tesla business to quell criticism of Beijing on Twitter.The world’s second richest man posted a tweet raising concerns over potential Beijing influence on Twitter several hours after the Tesla chief executive, and current holder of the No 1 wealth spot, reached a $44bn (£34bn) deal with the Twitter board to buy the influential social media platform. Continue reading...

As the self-declared ‘free-speech absolutist’ takes the reins, some activists and politicians fear for the platform’s futureElon Musk’s $44bn deal to buy Twitter has elicited cheers, concern, and lots of questions for the future, most of them issued on, well, Twitter.Musk, who has described himself as a “free speech absolutist”, reached a deal with the company on Monday in a takeover that will eventually give him control of the social network, which has more than 200 million users. Continue reading...

Tesla chief executive will gain control over social network he has criticized over its handling of ‘free speech’Elon Musk has reached a $44bn deal to buy Twitter in a takeover that will give the world’s richest man control of a social network with more than 200 million users.The sale will put the Tesla chief executive in charge of a company that he has frequently criticized, claiming it has not lived up to its potential as a platform for “free speech”. Continue reading...

About 1,500 eligible workers at LDJ5 sorting center on Staten Island vote in union ballot, after recent success at JFK8 warehouseAmazon workers in New York will go to the polls again as labor activists push to unionize a second facility in the US following their surprise recent victory over the tech giant.About 1,500 eligible workers at an LDJ5 Amazon sorting center in Staten Island, New York, begin voting in a union election on Monday, in a process that will continue through 29 April. Ballot-counting starts on 2 May. Continue reading...

Giant smart display offers a little more than smaller versions, packed with untapped potentialThe Echo Show 15 is Amazon’s biggest Alexa smart display and is designed to be a command centre or digital noticeboard for all the family.It is considerable larger than the rest of Amazon’s Echo Show devices, which were recently given a motorised screen and small desk-ready displays. The Echo Show 15 – which costs £239.99 ($249.99/A$399) – dwarfs them, with its huge 15.6in screen looking more like a picture frame than a piece of technology. Continue reading...

Tesla billionaire initially posted that he was ‘moving on’, prompting speculation about status of possible Twitter takeoverThe billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Sunday threw some uncertainty into his plans for a takeover of social media platform Twitter by posting a message that said he was “moving on”.Musk is famed for his enigmatic messages on Twitter, which he often uses to attack people, post insults or simply make jokes. Continue reading...

Digital Services Act can now fine platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter up to 6% of their global revenueLarge online platforms including Facebook, Google and Twitter will have to do more to tackle illegal content or face multibillion euro fines under a new European Union regulatory regime agreed on Saturday.The wide-ranging Digital Services Act (DSA) can fine a company up to 6% of its global turnover for violating the rules – which would be $7bn (£5.9bn) in the case of Facebook’s owner – while repeated breaches could result in a tech firm being banned from doing business in the EU. Continue reading...

The message, sent through a service that holds emails for the future, offered some sage adviceI just received a mysterious email. “Dear Wilfred,” it began. “You better be a baller by this time. You better have a hot wife and kids. I hope you have a Porsche. If not, I don’t know what is wrong with you man.”The 280-word message, which arrived in my inbox this week, on the morning of my 31st birthday, was actually from someone who I knew well: myself, exactly 10 years ago. Continue reading...

Feature that searches messages will go ahead after delays over privacy and safety concernsA safety feature that uses AI technology to scan messages sent to and from children will soon hit British iPhones, Apple has announced.The feature, referred to as “communication safety in Messages”, allows parents to turn on warnings for their children’s iPhones. When enabled, all photos sent or received by the child using the Messages app will be scanned for nudity. Continue reading...

The Tesla CEO, Twitter botherer and all-round richest man in the world has said he doesn’t own a home, instead preferring to stay with friendsName: Serial houseguests.Age: As old as the oldest dwelling. Continue reading...

Raider gains voting rights over digital currency and uses them to transfer contents of treasuryThe Beanstalk cryptocurrency has been stripped of reserves valued at more than $180m (£138m) in seconds, after an attacker used borrowed money to snap up enough voting rights to transfer the money away.The lightning hostile takeover raises fresh questions about the unregulated nature of digital currencies and the lack of protections for investors. Continue reading...

Whether it’s cake pretending to be other things or Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, our critics recommend some feeling-peaky blindersFor days of gratuitous slobbery, the last thing you want is anything remotely nourishing. Netflix’s Is It Cake? isn’t that, in any sense of the word; it’s a hilariously pointless viral video stretched out into a series, in which bakers compete to make cakes that look like they aren’t cakes. In fact, they can look like anything from full English breakfasts to grubby old trainers. Each episode ends with host Mikey Day, wielding his massive knife with a deranged relish that would make Mary Berry shudder, as he cuts and reveals the answer to the show’s one and only question. It’s magnificently bizarre, disarmingly foolish and as moreish as a Victoria sponge. Phil Harrison Continue reading...

As company pursues growth on continent, it stands accused of not putting enough money into moderating contentFacebook has been accused of failing to invest sufficiently to combat misinformation as it pursues rapid growth in Africa, where the Covid pandemic has highlighted the outsize role played by social media in online discourse.Traditional media and governments have an increasingly limited ability to control information flows on the continent, as social media platforms including Facebook seek to expand rapidly, though largely without fanfare. Continue reading...

The Italian photographer on an inspiring trip to a nudist resortThe young Italian man was playing on a basketball court with two friends when professional photographer Stefano Morelli approached him and asked to take his photograph. All four were entirely naked, aside from Giacomo, who had thrown on his orange shirt to play. It was 2014, and all were holidaying in Cap d’Agde in the south of France, within the resort’s naturist village, considered the largest in Europe.“Inside there are supermarkets, shops, a post office, bars, discos and, of course, the beach,” says Morelli, also from Italy. The fenced perimeter is controlled 24/7 by private security; there is only one entrance and you must present identification and agree to the rules, the main one being: no clothes allowed. Given the resort’s strict policy against cameras, Morelli’s photograph was taken furtively, with his iPhone 4s. Aside from some colour optimisation, it is otherwise unedited. “I describe myself as a visual anthropologist, and I love to learn about alternative lifestyles,” Morelli says. “When I first arrived in my clothes, I felt all eyes on me; as soon as I was undressed, no one considered me any more.” Continue reading...

Tesla chief mocks Meta CEO with comparison to King Louis XIV and promises different share ownership structureThe Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, has derided the Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, for owning vast media platforms as Musk himself attempts to buy the vast media platform Twitter.Talking at a Ted conference in Vancouver, Musk accused Zuckerberg of having too much control over public debate given his ownership of Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other social media sites. Continue reading...

Got something to ask the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist? Send it our way and we’ll put it to himIn a 2015 Ted talk, Bill Gates claimed: “If anything kills over 10 million people over the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes.” With deaths from Covid-19 surpassing 6 million, it turns out the grisly prediction from the Silicon Valley billionaire and philanthropist might be correct. His and other experts’ warnings were widely ignored – the US, for instance, slashed funding from the relevant response agencies. Gates feels that, despite the world experiencing a pandemic, lessons still won’t be learned, and in May he is publishing a manifesto, How to Prevent the Next Pandemic.Next month, the Observer New Review will publish a “You Ask the Questions”-style interview with Bill Gates. Here is your chance to put a question to Gates about pandemics, or indeed, any of the other topics he is an expert on: from disease eradication and Silicon Valley to philanthropy and global heating. What’s it like to be named in a conspiracy theory? Can vaccines eradicate Covid-19 entirely? Why should I bin my Mac and buy a Windows computer? Continue reading...

Tech entrepreneur makes offer of $54.20 a share in cash to ‘unlock potential’ of social media site• How ‘free speech absolutist’ Elon Musk would transform TwitterElon Musk has launched an audacious bid to buy Twitter for $43.4bn (£33bn), saying he wants to release its “extraordinary potential” to boost free speech and democracy across the world.The Tesla chief executive and world’s richest person revealed in a regulatory filing on Thursday that he had launched a hostile takeover of Twitter. He further confirmed the move in a public appearance at the TED conference in Vancouver later that day. Continue reading...

‘This is the Mona Lisa of the digital world’, says crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi who bought the NFT in March 2021Crypto entrepreneur Sina Estavi made headlines in March 2021 when he paid $2.9m for an NFT of Twitter boss Jack Dorsey’s first tweet. But his efforts to resell it have run aground, with a top bid of just $6,800 as of Thursday.The initial purchase was at the time among the most expensive sales of a non-fungible token, or NFT, and came amid a flurry of interest in the niche crypto assets. Continue reading...

Andy Jassy says company created top 100 ‘employee experience pain points’, while also defending workers’ wages and benefitsIn his first letter to Amazon shareholders, CEO Andy Jassy offered a defense of the wages and benefits the company gives its warehouse workers while also vowing to improve injury rates inside the facilities.Jassy, who took over from Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, as CEO last July, wrote the company has researched and created a list of the top 100 “employee experience pain points” and is working to solve them. Continue reading...

Analysis: Musk’s past musings about Twitter show desire to reshape essence of its business model

Cybersecurity officials said the evidence suggests Russia is behind the tools – configured to target North American energy concernsMultiple US government agencies issued a joint alert Wednesday warning of the discovery of malicious cyber tools created by unnamed advanced threat actors that they said were capable of gaining “full system access” to multiple industrial control systems.The public alert from the Energy and Homeland Security departments, the FBI and National Security Agency did not name the actors or offer details on the find. But their private sector cybersecurity partners said the evidence suggests Russia is behind the tools – and that they were configured to initially target North American energy concerns. Continue reading...

Pygmy marmosets, tiger cubs and African grey parrots among endangered species for sale, investigation by Avaaz revealsFacebook remains a thriving marketplace for online wildlife trafficking despite the tech giant’s pledge to help combat the illegal trade, according to a new investigation.Tiger cubs, leopards, ocelots, African grey parrots and the world’s smallest monkey, the pygmy marmoset, were among the endangered animals that researchers from the global campaign group Avaaz found on Facebook pages and public groups. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: from the environmental impact of servers and plastic packaging down to the energy our PCs and consoles consume, the sector can no longer afford to play around

Novel, thin and light machine bucks trend by being simple to take apart, with good performance and looksThe Framework Laptop is a modular, repairable and upgradeable notebook PC that aims to spark change in the world of computers and prove things can look good, work well and still be fixable at home.Launched by US firm Framework Computer, this new laptop has a similar feel to the excellent Fairphone, providing customisation options and the ability to upgrade parts rather than having to replace the entire device. It even ships with the only screwdriver you will need to take it apart. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: why a weird year for games saw big wins for games like Unpacking and The Artful Escape at the Bafta Video Game Awards

This miniature Amiga 500 comes with 25 games from a fertile period in video game historyBack when the console industry was still young, and the PC was an expensive business machine for grownups, the Commodore Amiga was one of the most vibrant and diverse gaming platforms available. Originally launched as the Amiga 1000 in 1985, its 16-bit 68000 CPU and array of graphics acceleration coprocessors promised a new era of visually and sonically advanced gaming – a prospect realised by the 1987 launch of the more affordable Amiga 500. Supported by an array of small, talented studios, and inspiring a vast community of demo coders, it was the home computer for a generation of players and creators. Now, following the success of retro consoles such as the SNES Mini and Mega Drive Mini the Amiga is back in the form of the A500 Mini, a teeny replica of the original Amiga 500 with 25 built-in games.As with other machines in this growing category, the A500 is designed to be plugged into a modern LCD TV via an HDMI cable. Users can opt to run games in 50hz or 60hz depending on their display; they can also scale the image to fit, and there’s a decent CRT mode, which simulates the scan lines you’d see on an old cathode ray TV or monitor. However you set things up, what you’re getting is Amiga code running via an emulator rather than on the original hardware or an FPGA like the Analogue Mega Sg. However, the emulation is excellent and every one of the built-in games plays perfectly well, with no weird glitches or controller issues. The system also supports later iterations of the Amiga system, namely the Enhanced Chip Set and the Advanced Graphics Architecture of the Amiga 1200. Continue reading...

As Sydney’s ‘last, best’ video shop closes, what’s the future for physical media in Australia, and for the communities who collect them?

Parag Agrawal says tech entrepreneur has declined offer, adding: ‘I believe this is for the best’Elon Musk has performed a U-turn on joining Twitter’s board a week after it emerged he had taken a surprise 9.2% stake in the social media company.The world’s richest man was due to become a board member on Saturday but Twitter’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal, said on Monday morning that Musk had declined the offer. Musk, who is worth $260bn (£200bn), emerged as a large Twitter investor last week and was invited to join its board. Continue reading...

From Dalí’s eerie streetscape to the fearful little crewmates in Among Us, our critics recommend culture for the irrationally threatenedThe world may be celebrating the 50th anniversary of The Godfather right now, but for paranoia aficionados, the biggest Francis Ford Coppola semi-centennial is still two years off. The Conversation came between the first two instalments of his operatic mafia trilogy but is stunningly different in mood. Starring an extraordinary Gene Hackman as a surveillance expert who fixates on a fragment of dialogue he has recorded, it culminates in Hackman tearing up his apartment as if he’s tearing at his own skin, all because of the tectonic shift in meaning that can come from a minute change of inflection. A lonely, desperate, guilt-ridden masterpiece. Jessica Kiang Continue reading...

Companies including Microsoft and Apple are attempting to build ‘Netflix for games’Video game developers are champing at the bit ahead of an influx of money from some of the biggest technology companies in the world as they compete to build a “Netflix for games”.At the centre of the contest are Microsoft and Sony, followed by less gaming-centric companies such as Apple, Amazon and Netflix who have all launched subscription services in an attempt to entice gamers on to their platforms. Continue reading...

Diaspora families typically travel to the region each year for wedding shopping. But the pandemic has changed everythingOnce a year, between December and February, brides-to-be and their families from all over the the US and Europe flock to India and Pakistan to escape the cold, wintry weather, visit family and, perhaps most importantly, shop for wedding outfits.Designers and retailers prepare for the influx of non-residential Indians, or NRIs, by setting up sales, pop-up events or previews of their upcoming lines of lehenga cholis, anarkali and saris. Continue reading...

Husbands, wives and children: there was something for everyone at the Earl’s Court Motor Show that year‘Probably the safest place to drive a car in Britain now is in the middle of a Scottish loch,’ is the arresting beginning of the Observer Magazine of 16 October 1966, a special issue to coincide with the Motor Show at Earl’s Court, London (‘Living with your car’).This state of affairs was ‘a sad reflection on the crowded state of our roads, with their jams and their queues, their narrowness and their parking meters’ – newly arrived horrors clearly. Continue reading...

Chinese-owned video platform is set to overtake the advertising scale of Twitter and Snapchat combined• TikTok: five of the UK’s favourite videosTikTok is on track to overtake the global advertising scale of Twitter and Snapchat combined this year, and to match mighty YouTube within two years, as trendsetting teens and young adults make it the hottest social app of the moment – and Facebook is worried.The Chinese-owned video-sharing platform is forecast to catch up with YouTube by 2024 when both are predicted to take $23.6bn (£18.2bn) in ad revenue, despite TikTok being launched globally 12 years after its Google-owned rival. Continue reading...

The New York-based photographer and his wife adopted an injured bird, which gets annoyed when they leave it home aloneJeffery Jones had a parakeet as a kid but never considered himself a bird fanatic. Yet when he and his wife settled into an apartment block in New York’s East Village, the pair began noticing the local pigeons. “We began to see how interesting they were – preening, doing funny little dances.” he says.Around the same time, Jones began volunteering for the Wild Bird Fund, which takes in injured birds in the city. It was far removed from his usual work as a fine art and fashion photographer. “When I joined, they had this resident pigeon, named Ghob after the person who rescued her. She had arrived as a baby: a tiny, yellow, prickly thing, and had refused to leave. We did a trial fostering period with her, but when I took her back to the sanctuary, she was so angry with me she wouldn’t interact with me any more. Then she fell sick and became depressed. My wife and I realised we’d have to adopt her permanently if she was going to survive.” Continue reading...

As Twitter prepares to roll out its new edit function, a look back at the tweets that could have done with oneAfter years of public pestering, Twitter has finally begun work on an edit button, the company announced this week.The ability to alter existing tweets has long been the platform’s most-requested feature, according to a vice-president, Jay Sullivan. But the company has expressed concerns that an edit button could be “misused to alter the record of the public conversation”. “Protecting the integrity of that public conversation is our top priority when we approach this work,” Sullivan wrote. Continue reading...

A suburban two-bedroom apartment was the HQ from which Amazon’s multimillion-dollar anti-union effort was defeatedThe living room of the small two-bedroom apartment in Staten Island – sometimes called New York City’s “forgotten borough” – is overflowing with office supplies, mail, red union stickers, and flyers with information about unions.It seems almost unbelievable that amid this chaos, and armed with just $120,000 that they raised on GoFundMe, its occupants, Amazon workers Brett Daniels and Connor Spence, helped successfully unionize workers at the nearby gargantuan 855,000-square-foot Amazon warehouse – the first of the company’s warehouses in the US to vote for a union. Continue reading...