Breaking Bad-themed cooking show and music with lyrics about cocaine among content deemed appropriate for children as young as twoYouTube is showing videos that promote skin-bleaching, weight loss, drug culture and firearms to children as young as two, a new investigation of the company’s “Kids” app has found.YouTube Kids, an app and website released in 2015, is supposed to be a safer, curated version of the video-sharing website aimed at children under 13. It tailors content to three age groups: “older”, “younger” and “preschool”, roughly corresponding to those aged nine to 12 years old, four to seven, and under four. Continue reading...
Investors include Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Saudi prince Alwaleed bin TalalElon Musk has secured more than $7bn (£5.7bn) in funding for his $44bn takeover of Twitter from a group of investors including the tech tycoon Larry Ellison, the Qatar state investment fund and the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange.It came as CNBC reported that Musk, the world’s richest person and Tesla chief executive, will serve as temporary chief executive of the social media platform for a few months once the deal closes. Continue reading...
New York is obvious choice for British-based chip designer’s IPO, according to Hermann HauserA key figure in the creation of Arm has said the UK government is only just waking up to the fact that London is struggling to attract leading tech company listings, adding that New York was the obvious choice for the British-based chip designer’s primary stock market flotation.Hermann Hauser, who co-founded Acorn Computers and helped to develop Arm’s first processor before it was spun out as a separate company, said it was an issue of a lack of liquidity in London and poor support and infrastructure for local firms. Continue reading...
Workers say they’re replacing career ambitions with low-stakes side hustles. But are many of the schemes too good to be true?Aubrey, a 26-year-old in Florida, does not recommend working at a hotel in the middle of a pandemic. The floors were constantly understaffed and inventory seemed to disappear overnight. In fact, Aubrey was genuinely relieved when she was finally laid off. And like so many newly occupation-free members of the American workforce, Aubrey turned to the internet and searched for any sort of minimal-effort side-hustle that seemed feasible.Aubrey found hope with what she describes as “low-content books”. With just a layperson’s grasp of graphic design, Aubrey was able to flood the Amazon marketplace with a tide of scholastic notebooks, graph-paper pamphlets and crossword collections. There is no real writing involved in the low-content book scheme, which is exactly the point. All Aubrey needs to do is come up with an appetizing front cover and trust that the shadowy algorithm takes care of business. “My most successful product is randomly a ‘vegetable’ blank lined notebook where I just scattered some pictures of cartoonish onions, pumpkins and leeks on the cover,” she tells me. “It has done pretty well and is about $200 of my sales.” Continue reading...
School leaders say online exams could allow them to go ahead in lockdown-style conditions in futureSitting exams using pen and paper could soon be a thing of the past, as England’s qualifications regulator, Ofqual, said it is exploring technology to transform the way GCSEs and A-levels are administered.The regulator’s latest corporate plan says Ofqual will remove regulatory barriers to allow exam boards to study the use of remote assessment, digital delivery and “adaptive testing” software that tailors exam questions to student responses. Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: The franchise has just been sold off on the cheap, but could the original video game heroine be saved by games that see her as more than just eye candy?
The tech mogul is looking at various options such as pledging his shares of Tesla to secure bank loansA week after Elon Musk finalized a $44bn deal to purchase Twitter, the billionaire is working to secure outside funding for the acquisition that would tie up less of his personal fortune.The world’s richest person is in talks with large investment firms and high net-worth individuals to take on more financing, Reuters reported Monday. Though Musk has an estimated net worth of about $245bn, much of his fortune is tied up in stocks. Continue reading...
Minister for presidency says ‘illicit’ targeting will be investigated by Spain’s highest criminal courtThe Spanish government has said the mobile phones of the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the defence minister, Margarita Robles, were both infected last year with the Pegasus spyware that its manufacturers claim is available only to state agencies.In a hastily convened press conference on Monday morning, Félix Bolaños, the minister for the presidency, said Sánchez’s phone was targeted in May and June 2021, while Robles’s was targeted in June 2021. Data was extracted from both phones. Continue reading...
It was grey, ugly and had 0.0128% of an iPhone’s memory. But the Amiga 500 defied its limitations to power a series of astonishing dance tracks, from early jungle to Calvin Harris“Phat as fuck.” This was how jungle legend Gavin King – AKA Aphrodite – described the powerful bass capabilities of his Amiga 1200 home computer in a 90s interview. Several decades later, it remains in his studio. With its drab grey buttons, it looks more suited to tax returns, but Amiga machines are instrumental in electronic music as we know it.“The thing about the Amiga bassline is that it was constant volume, it didn’t waver,” King says now, “so when you pulled it up to the maximum volume that you could press on to vinyl, it made it, well, phat as fuck.” Continue reading...
There are some fun, beautiful and smart homegrown hits to celebrate, from Untitled Goose Game to the political statement of Escape from WoomeraThere used to be a time where video games were sneered at and overlooked by the culturati as lowbrow schlock but games are, and always have been, a lively and responsive form of artistic expression. It’s not always immediately clear when a game was made in Australia, which makes it a little harder to celebrate homegrown hits – which we should do, because we have a thriving community of developers who punch well above their weight. The Australian independent games scene is vibrant, dynamic and overdue an apology.As I have (graciously, selflessly) decided, we’re all going to yank games from the declasse and appreciate them properly – so here are 10 great Australian-made games, all variously ruminative, charming, effervescent, sincere, generous, visceral, cheeky and beautiful. Glad we have that sorted. Continue reading...
A new law recognizes ‘decentralized autonomous organizations’ and could help the state attract blockchain-based businessesWhen you think about Tennessee, you’re more likely to be thinking country music, barbecue and bourbon than crypto, blockchain and Web3. The state legislature has plans to change that.Tennessee just passed a bill that could help it become a leader in states providing a home to entrepreneurs who want to set up a unique kind of company that uses the blockchain to automate its decision-making. It’s called a DAO. Continue reading...
The chief executive of the booming fitness tracker wants to help reinvent urban travel, but he isn’t racing to float the companyMichael Horvath took up hiking and yoga during the pandemic when his usual cycle to work was off limits. Like almost 100 million others in nearly 300 countries he was able to track his chosen activities on Strava – the app for sporty types he co-founded 13 years ago.Conceived as a “virtual locker room” through which cyclists could compete against their mates, the app boomed during the pandemic as millions of people looked at ways to get active and join online clubs that would inspire them to keep going. Continue reading...
The controversial billionaire may find that buying the platform exposes him to a whole new world of legal problemsContained within 95 pages of dense legal jargon, the warning from Twitter to Elon Musk was clear: don’t use your considerable power on the social media platform to attack the company.The world’s richest man and owner-in-waiting of Twitter signed an agreement for the planned $44bn (£35bn) takeover last week confirming that he could tweet about the deal so long as “such tweets do not disparage the company or any of its representatives”. Continue reading...
James Ball spends countless hours a week staring at his iPhone. Would a fortnight with just old-school text messages and games of Snake shake him out of it?
A spontaneous snap in Iceland in the first week of lockdown has taken on a new significance for the Canadian photographerPre-pandemic, Canadian Jessica Auer split her time between Montreal and east Iceland. She was living in the former when the city announced its first lockdown in March 2020 and so, not knowing what lay ahead, she and her boyfriend, Zuhaitz, returned to Iceland. It’s here that their kitchen window faces a fjord 25km long and 1km wide. “It appears like a really wide river, but it’s actually the sea,” Auer says. “A kilometre across, or a little less, sits this mountain. It changes constantly with the seasons and the light. This photograph was taken at sunset.”The mirror-image binoculars on each side of the sill are left out for guests, who immediately gravitate towards them when visiting. “The window has such a sublime view. The mountain is usually peaceful, but we’ve seen backcountry skiers on it occasionally. On the water, ships pass by, the birdlife is varied and porpoise appear most weeks,” Auer says. “Once a year, if we’re lucky, we see humpback whales.” Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5YQGS)
If you keep precious camera moments locked away on a mobile they are at risk of being lostPhotos are precious records of our lives, and as the summer kicks off many of us will be adding to our collection as we enjoy holidays and celebrate special occasions.For many of us, however, these pictures end up locked on our phones, taking up storage and at risk of loss. Continue reading...
Naked Wolfe’s six-inch ‘Spice’ platform boots have topped Lyst’s ‘heat’ index and been a hit with Tik Tok users and celebrities alikeYou might think that unfeasibly high, pumped-up platform boots by the London-based brand Naked Wolfe would only enjoy niche appeal. At first glance, they look more at home with Camden’s cybergoths or Catwoman wannabes than the mainstream.On Wednesday it was revealed that the six-inch “Spice” platforms are officially the hottest item in the world, according to fashion shopping app Lyst. Each quarter, Lyst releases a “heat” index, ranking the fashion products that have generated the most sales, searches and views within its app, as well as social media engagement worldwide. Continue reading...
Demand for products emblazoned with ‘Theranos’ logo have soared with set of five pens selling for a eye-popping $150Fans and followers of Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes can now take home an expensive original piece of the company.On eBay, more than a dozen allegedly authentic products from the now-defunct Silicon Valley firm are being sold – and much like the company itself, are listed at inflated prices. Continue reading...
Workers raise questions about job security and advertising concerns as executives brace for billionaire’s takeoverTwitter’s chief executive, Parag Agrawal, sought to quell employee anger on Friday during a company-wide meeting where employees demanded answers to how managers planned to handle an anticipated mass exodus prompted by Elon Musk.The meeting comes after Musk, the Tesla chief executive who sealed a $44bn deal to buy the social media company, repeatedly criticized Twitter’s content moderation practices and a top executive responsible for setting speech and safety policies. Continue reading...
Company insists any content glorifying violence against Ukrainians not allowed, but moderators say lack of guidance means they feel forced to leave up some content
Carmaker’s shares fell this week over concerns CEO would offload stock to help fund takeover of platformElon Musk has sold $8.5bn (£6.8bn) worth of shares in Tesla as the world’s richest man raises cash after reaching a deal to buy Twitter.The Tesla chief executive has committed $21bn of his own money to the funding package for acquiring the social media platform, which he agreed to buy for $44bn on Monday. Since then Musk has sold 9.6m Tesla shares, or about 5.6% of his stake in the business, according to filings with the US financial regulator. Continue reading...
Unplugging equipment normally left on standby may not save consumers as much cash as hopedAs the cost-of-living crisis bites, and households look for any opportunity to cut the bills, headlines suggesting consumers can save hundreds of pounds just by turning off unused chargers have been an appealing prospect. But, experts say, such claims about “vampire devices” are actually more like a zombie statistic.“Things have dramatically improved since those studies were first carried out,” said Craig Melson, an associate director for climate, environment and sustainability at techUK. “Processors are low-power, screens have switched from LCD to LED technology, fridges and washing machines have become more efficient. Technology is just more miniaturised, more efficient, using better processors – and, crucially, they are more adaptable as well.” Continue reading...
The first trailer for Avatar: The Way of Water promises an extravaganza – but do we really want to put our eyes through the meat grinder all over again?As far as we know, there’s no such thing as time travel in the Avatar universe, which is weird because there was a distinct whiff of 2009 coming off this week’s industry reports about a screening of the first trailer for the newly titled Avatar: The Way of Water. The Hollywood Reporter said delegates at CinemaCon in Las Vegas were wowed by the movie’s impressive 3D and high frame rate, which 20th Century Fox and Disney will be rolling out across the globe when the movie finally hits multiplexes in December. You’d think not more than a couple of years had gone by since the release of the original Avatar, a time when it felt like the entire film industry was about to go through a radical journey into high-end stereoscopy and accelerated frame rates. Unfortunately for Hollywood, it has actually been more than a decade since we last hung out with Jake Sully and his Na’vi comrades. Are we expected to get excited about this stuff all over again?The problem with 3D is that it has had more comings than Jesus caught in a time loop. There was the original 1950s phase, then that brief period in the 1980s when Jaws 3-D landed at cinemas, and finally around 2009 when James Cameron seemed to think stereoscopic film-making was about to become more popular than the Beatles. In between now and then we’ve also had 3D TVs, which ran out of steam around 2017 amid a chorus of unbothered shrugs. As for higher frame rates, Peter Jackson was forced to dull down his Hobbit trilogy after viewers complained they didn’t really need to see Bombur’s blackheads in such excruciating detail when viewing An Unexpected Journey at 48-frames per second. Continue reading...
Tech giant’s revenues grew at a sluggish 7% in the first quarter to $116.4bn as shoppers switch back to bricks and mortarAmazon announced its first loss since 2015 on Thursday as sales slowed, costs rose and its investment in electric vehicle company Rivian wiped out profits.The news sent Amazon’s shares tumbling by 10% in after hours trading. Continue reading...
The tech giant saw nearly $3tn in profits despite challenges created by the Russia-Ukraine war and the global supply chainApple on Thursday reported strong quarterly results despite supply shortages, but warned that its growth slowdown is likely to deepen. The company said it’s still struggling to get enough chips to meet demand and is contending with Covid-related shutdowns at factories in China that make iPhones and other products.Although initial results for the January-March period topped analysts’ projections, the good news was quickly eclipsed when management warned of trouble ahead during a conference call. Continue reading...
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...
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.
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Harry Davies on (#5YN4H)
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...
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...
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...
by Dan Milmo Global technology editor and Kari Paul i on (#5YHM5)
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...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5YGV9)
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...