Technology | The Guardian

Downing Street says Moscow behind calls to British defence secretary and home secretary last week

Two weeks ago, the Tesla chief was vowing to support Ukraine – now he believes that’s some kind of woke cause célèbreElon Musk has a net worth of $220bn – rounded off nicely by a bounty of government subsidies. Yet he has not taken cues from any of his billionaire peers. Jeff Bezos rarely ever shows his face on the internet, Bill Gates defers most of his public statements to his charity and Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t even have a Twitter account. But Musk has never been able to overcome a need for attention that churns away at the core of his being. He has been offered an incredible pedestal by his wealth, and he is committed to use it as obnoxiously as possible.By now we’ve become accustomed to his blend of churlish gamer patois and casual prejudice. In the past week on Twitter, Musk has challenged Vladimir Putin to one-on-one combat, derided the Ukrainian solidarity campaign as a movement for sheeple and alluded to the idea of moving to Mars by 2029. Continue reading...

The ride-hailing firm believes it has done its bit with driver concessions and backing for Ulez, but will the mayor agree?It seems hard to credit, but in the days before the likes of Vladimir Putin and P&O Ferries showed their true colours, Uber was regarded by many in London as one of the more suspect foreign arrivals.This week, however, the global ride-hailing firm will once again find out if it is on the naughty step, when its licence to operate in one of its biggest markets comes up for renewal. Continue reading...

Powerful tech platforms like Facebook and Instagram act very differently when people make even mild criticisms of, say, Israeli occupation of PalestineLast week, we learned that Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – has temporarily changed its rules and will allow certain posts calling for violence to remain on its platforms. Users of Facebook and Instagram who live in countries close to Ukraine will be permitted to post calls for violence against Russian soldiers and even for the deaths of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko – though without specifics of location or method, the company stipulated.“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules, like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders’. We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” Meta said in a statement.Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He is a contributing opinion writer at Guardian US Continue reading...

The English photographer captures an intimate moment on his honeymoonGreg Williams has 173,000 photos on his phone, but this is one of his favourites. Honeymooning in Mexico, he and his wife, Eliza Cummings, had enjoyed a massage in their hotel, and stepped into a large, round bubble bath for two.“We were messing around with the bubbles,” Williams recalls, “and when she lifted her hand up to her mouth like this, it looked just like she was holding a cup of tea. It felt such a glamorous, timeless moment, and there are frames within the frame, like the window, and the engagement ring – a black sapphire – which even mirrors the shape of her face,” he says. Continue reading...

Lawsuit accuses company of ‘racially biased corporate culture’ in which Black people comprise just 4.4% of employeesA lawsuit filed on Friday accuses Google of systemic racial bias against Black employees, saying the company steers them to lower-level jobs, pays them less and denies them opportunities to advance because of their race.According to a complaint seeking class-action status, Google maintains a “racially biased corporate culture” that favors white men, where Black people comprise only 4.4% of employees and about 3% of leadership and its technology workforce. Continue reading...

My father, Peter Lewis, who has died aged 76 of cancer, was a forensic engineer, Open University lecturer, expert witness and author. His investigations into product failures contributed to safer designs for a number of household items, manufacturing products and medical devices.He was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, son of Rhys Lewis, a former coal miner who became a college history lecturer, and his wife, Louise (nee Jorgensen), who was a secretary for a publisher. After completing his schooling at the Forest grammar school in Winnersh, Berkshire, Peter went to the University of Manchester in 1963 to study chemistry, and stayed there to complete his PhD. Continue reading...

Ex-executive faces same charges as his former romantic and business partner in Silicon Valley scandalThe trial of Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, the former romantic and business partner of Elizabeth Holmes, was reportedly delayed on Wednesday after a possible Covid-19 exposure forced a judge to send a full courtroom home.Wednesday was meant to be the day that Balwani finally has his first chance to defend himself against charges that he was Holmes’ accomplice in a Silicon Valley scam that brought down the blood-testing startup Theranos. Continue reading...

People who have suffered from the damage the bill is trying to prevent share their storiesThe online safety bill is a landmark piece of legislation that aims to stop damage to people online, ranging from racist tweets to the harmful content sent by powerful algorithms.The revised bill, published on Thursday, will impose a duty of care on tech firms to protect users from harmful content, or face large fines from the communications watchdog. Continue reading...

Rockstar’s anarchic masterpiece has been freshened up for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X nine years after it was originally releasedAnd so the boys are back in town. Michael, Trevor and Franklin, the sociopathic trio that lit up the gaming scene nine years ago, have been made over for the 2020s with this crisp new reworking of Grand Theft Auto V for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. The game’s violent narrative of shifting loyalties and doomed machismo felt wild and edgy back in 2013, so how does it fare in the modern era?The good news is, the overhauled visuals definitely give the game new zest and freshness. You can play in either 4K at 30 frames-per-second or in a performance mode that lowers the resolution but bumps up the frame rate to 60, giving wonderful fluidity to car chases, swooping helicopter rides and mass shootouts. The DualSense controller features on PlayStation 5 are very good too: improved driving feedback via the analogue triggers makes the game’s cumbersome handling a little easier to, well, handle. It’s been quite a joy to rediscover this alternate-reality California; to see the sun drop behind the downtown skyscrapers, or to hit Senora as dawn splashes orange-yellow light across the burning desert. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: the ‘Creator Economy’ is billed as a way for artists to directly monetise their work – but in reality it simply puts more power in the hands of big tech

Social media companies’ response amid war in Ukraine has been haphazard and confusing, experts sayAs the war in Ukraine rages on, Russia is ramping up one of its most powerful weapons: disinformation. Social media companies are scrambling to respond.False claims about the invasion have been spread by users in Russia as well as official state media accounts. Russia frequently frames itself as an innocent victim and has pushed disinformation including that the US was providing biological weapons to Ukraine (denounced by the White House as a “conspiracy theory”) and that victims of an attack on a Ukrainian hospital were paid actors. Continue reading...

Update from parent company Meta says ‘calls for the death of a head of state’ are banned

The LA-based photographer on the sunbather he stumbled across on a walk to Beachwood Canyon during the pandemicIf you looked through Bradley Meinz’s living room window, you’d see the Hollywood sign. The photographer lives in LA’s Beachwood Canyon, and in February 2020 he was taking daily hikes to the landmark and back. News of a pandemic was beginning to circulate, and the streets were uncharacteristically deserted. It was on one of those hour-long walks that he stumbled across this man, taking a moment for himself in the warming winter sun.“The red and white sign was up for some kind of movie or photoshoot, to allow production trucks to park,” Meinz says. “Anyone who knows LA knows the sheer density of traffic and bodies, yet there is a void of that here. Instead, there was this lone, shirtless guy, not even on the sidewalk, but ‘parked’ on the street. He’s flouting the rules, but not in a serious way.” Continue reading...

Tech companies took swift action to back Ukraine, a watershed moment for an industry with control over informationLess than a day after Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine, the head of security at Meta (formerly Facebook) announced the company would no longer accept ad money from Russian state media outlets like Russia Today and Sputnik. Twitter said it would pause all ads from both Russia and Ukraine. And the next day, 26 February, YouTube quietly shared that it had begun blocking a handful of Kremlin-run media outlets from monetizing and running ads on their channels too.It was the start of a cascade of corporate denials of service: one after the other, prominent social media and tech companies intensified restrictions on Russian state media’s presence on their platforms. Even major internet infrastructure firms, such as the domain registrar Namecheap and the internet services provider Cogent, told their Russian customers to take their business elsewhere. Continue reading...

Facebook parent company tells workers they will no longer receive free valet service and meals will be delayedLavish onsite perks may be a thing of the past for employees at Meta, who will now have to do their own laundry due to company cutbacks.The parent company of Facebook informed its employees it would be cutting down on various perks including free laundry, dry cleaning and valet service, as well as delaying the daily free dinner by half an hour from 6pm to 6.30pm, the New York Times first reported. Continue reading...

Experts say that, while intended to increase safety, the tool lacks nuance and risks amplifying biases in the criminal justice systemAs of this week, Tinder users will be able to run criminal background checks on their potential dates. The feature – launched in partnership with Garbo, a background check provider that aims to make public safety information more accessible – is intended to make Tinder users feel safer.But experts who specialize in sexual violence and surveillance have said the move is misguided, and risks amplifying the biases inherent in the criminal justice system. Continue reading...

Change comes after high court ruling that Uber should be regarded as a contractor, not an agentUber fares across the UK are to rise sharply from Monday night when VAT of 20% will be applied to rides booked via the app.The change comes after a high court ruling last December that Uber could not be viewed as simply an agent but should be regarded as the contractor. Continue reading...

‘I thought, “I’m going to show these videos to my kids and say that’s what we had to go through”,’ says Diana TotokAs Diana Totok and her sister reached through the wire fence separating Romania from Ukraine to grasp her father’s hand, it occurred to her that she might never see him again.Ukraine’s new wartime laws barred their father, a pastor, from fleeing the country with them. Nevertheless, he promised his teenage daughters and wife, Svetlana, that they would meet again soon. Continue reading...

Print media were once the lifeblood of the gaming community, and now a new generation of lovingly assembled periodicals are bringing the scene back to lifeIf you were into video games in the 1980s or 90s, then along with your computer, your QuickShot joystick and your tape player, there was one other vital component of your set-up: a games magazine. For me it was Zzap! 64, a glossy mag dedicated to the Commodore 64 with brilliant, opinionated writers, excellent features, and an exhaustive tips section. I would rush to the newsagent on publication day, bring it home with almost religious reverence, then read it from cover to cover. And then I would go back and read it again. This was how I discovered new games such as Sentinel, Elite and Leaderboard, but also, through the letters page and competitions, joined a community of players, years before the world wide web allowed us all to get in contact. In the 80s, video game magazines were the internet.In the mid-90s I was lucky enough to get a job at Future, one of the leading publishers of gaming magazines in Britain. This was the absolute heyday for the industry – as a writer on Edge magazine, I shared offices with the acclaimed Nintendo magazine Superplay, the wildly enthusiastic GamesMaster, the anarchic Amiga Power and a burgeoning Official PlayStation Magazine, which would go on to rival FHM and even the Radio Times in monthly circulation. Producing a magazine was a labour of love – a constant battle between our desire to play and cover everything and the restraints of page counts and print deadlines. Conveying the excitement of a new Resident Evil or Tekken title in prose, images and captions, was a skill that took months to learn. Continue reading...

The country singer’s new novel and accompanying album have been fused into Spotify’s ‘first Bookcast’. Plus: John Legend calls for prisoners to get voting rightsRun, Rose, Run

Parent company Meta makes temporary change to hate speech policy for users in eastern Europe and Caucasus

All non-Russian content blocked, in addition to ban on livestreaming and adding new content from RussiaTikTok has blocked all non-Russian content in Russia but is allowing historical content uploaded by domestic accounts to stay online, including videos by state-backed media services.The Chinese-owned video sharing app said on Sunday it had banned livestreaming and uploading of new content in Russia after the Kremlin criminalised the spreading of what it deems to be fake news about its invasion of Ukraine. Continue reading...

Businessman who served as Theranos’s co-president accused of wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud investorsTwo months after Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of defrauding Theranos investors, her former business and romantic partner, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, began his own trial on Wednesday.The trial of Balwani, who served as the blood testing startup’s co-president, shares several parallels with Holmes’s. The businessman is accused of similar crimes, including wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud investors, and will appear in the same San Jose, California, courthouse where Holmes spent more than 12 weeks defending herself. Continue reading...

A hero site generating better revenue for creators has sold out, say some musicians, while others hail the potential to reach new audiencesMusos and gamers were left scratching their heads last Wednesday as Bandcamp, the online record store hailed by independent artists as a bankable alternative to the razor-thin royalties of streaming, announced its acquisition by Epic Games, makers of the online gaming phenomenon Fortnite.Bandcamp CEO Ethan Diamond framed the deal as a boon for artists, saying that the two US companies shared a vision of building “the most open, artist-friendly ecosystem in the world”. A blogpost from Epic underlined the need for “fair and open platforms” to enable “creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money”. Continue reading...

From an army of volunteers to EU and Nato teams, the variety of online actors working for the cause is unprecedentedAs the conflict in Ukraine escalates, expert cyber-watchers have been speculating about the kind of cyber-attacks that Russia might conduct. Will the Kremlin turn off Ukraine’s power grid, dismantle Ukraine’s transport system, cut off the water supply or target the health system? Or would cybercriminals operating from Russia, who could act as proxies for the Russian regime, conduct these activities?Over the past decade, Ukraine has experienced many major cyber-attacks, most of which have been attributed to Russia. From election interference in 2014, which compromised the central electoral system and jeopardised the integrity of the democratic process; to a hack and blackout attack in a first-of-its-kind fully remote cyber-attack on a power grid in 2015, resulting in countrywide power outages; to one of the costliest malicious software attacks, NotPetya, in 2017, which significantly disrupted access to banking and government services in Ukraine and, subsequently, spilled over to France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, the UK, the US and Australia.Joyce Hakmeh is a senior research fellow for the International Security Programme at Chatham House. Esther Naylor is a research analyst at the International Security Programme Continue reading...

No one believed he could make a light gun that worked on modern TVs. But Andrew Sinden persevered with his dream to revive a dying game genreAlmost every console and computer, from the Sega Dreamcast to the humble Amstrad CPC, once had its very own light gun. Whether you were shooting ducks with the NES Zapper or downing baddies in Time Crisis on the PlayStation, they were ubiquitous – yet now they are all but extinct. Andrew Sinden aims to change that: he’s on a crusade to make light-gun games mainstream again. “I’d consider the project has failed if I don’t manage to do that,” he says.It all began around four years ago, when Sinden’s parents were cleaning out their loft. They came across his old NES, and asked him whether he still wanted it. “Of course, the answer was yes,” recalls Sinden. “And what I really wanted to do was play Duck Hunt with my kids.” But after hooking up the console to his television, he was dismayed to find that nothing happened when he pulled the Zapper’s trigger. “I completely forgot that light guns didn’t work on modern TVs,” he admits. “It was a real disappointment, because I thought Duck Hunt on a 50-inch TV would be amazing. I used to play it on a 14-inch TV!” Continue reading...

Premium Android has good screen and camera, longer updates and recycled materials – but lacks wow factorThe Galaxy S22+ is Samsung’s big-screen premium phone for 2022, offering top specs and good quality hardware, but little in the way of novel or exciting features. It’s a safe, solid device.With an RRP of £949 ($999/A$1,549) that doesn’t mean low cost, but it is £200 cheaper than the all-singing, all-dancing £1,149 S22 Ultra superphone with its Galaxy Note-like design. Shop around, though, and you should soon be able to find it for less.Main screen: 6.6in FHD+ Dynamic Amoled 2X (393ppi) 120HzProcessor: Samsung Exynos 2200 (EU) or Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (US)RAM: 8GB of RAMStorage: 128 or 256GBOperating system: One UI 4.1 based on Android 12Camera: Triple rear camera: 50MP wide, 12MP ultra-wide, 10MP 3x telephoto; 10MP front-facingConnectivity: 5G, dual nano sim, USB-C, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2, UWB and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 mins)Dimensions: 157.4 x 75.8 x 7.6mmWeight: 195g Continue reading...

Dominik Diamond was drawn to It Takes Two’s depiction of a struggling couple who must work together – but discovered co-op games don’t bring out the best in himI don’t like co-operative gaming. I am too much of a control freak to let another player screw up my good work. But I really wanted to try It Takes Two because, first, it was in every single top games of 2021 list and, second, the game is about a couple on the verge of divorce who must find a way to work together. And a little over a year ago, my wife and I were in the same situation.In It Takes Two, the spouses become tiny dolls who must work their way through their suddenly gigantic house, solving puzzles to reunite with their weeping daughter. In real life, we did family therapy. Continue reading...

I despise chores – so I jumped at the chance to test the latest hi-tech solutions (and simple hacks) that promise to keep domestic drudgery to a minimumA prime candidate for secular canonisation – and a personal hero of mine – is Frances Gabe. She was a visionary, a terrible neighbour (she antagonised hers with a succession of snarling great danes and a penchant for nude DIY) and the inventor of the self-cleaning home. Gabe, who died in 2016 at 101, transformed her Oregon bungalow into a “giant dishwasher”, with a system of sprinklers, air dryers and drains, plus self-cleaning sinks, bath and toilet. “Housework is a thankless, unending job,” Gabe said. “Who wants it? Nobody!”I agree with Gabe – and with Lenin, who condemned housework as “barbarously unproductive, petty, nerve-racking, stultifying and crushing drudgery”. My own objections are mainly founded in sloth and a vague desire to stick it to the man, but for others housework can be difficult, or even impossible. Continue reading...

The comedian has missed being around other people – specifically those doing absurd things. Luckily, the internet has that in spadesI’ve missed people. Thanks to something called Covid-19 (look it up), I’ve been around other human beings less and less over the past couple of years. And I’ve missed you! I’ve missed overhearing couples bicker on the train, and watching Insta girls’ photoshoots get ruined by their dog, and seeing cocky business guys with Bluetooth headsets trip over on the footpath.And most of all I’ve missed my favourite brand of real-world comedy: the moment when absurdity meets reality; the strange brew of “absolutely 100% real” and “that has to be fake”. Continue reading...

Reports of fitness watch’s lithium-ion battery overheating leads to warning from US safety commissionThe fitness-tracking device maker Fitbit is recalling 1.7m of its Ionic smartwatches after reports of the battery overheating and burning some users.The company, which was acquired by Google in 2021, had sold about 1m of the model in the US and nearly 700,000 internationally. Continue reading...

Advertisements named after Elon Musk’s dog allegedly took advantage of consumers’ naivetyThe UK advertising watchdog has banned a London underground campaign for Floki Inu, a cryptocurrency named after a dog owned by Tesla chief Elon Musk, for allegedly taking advantage of naive consumers unaware of the potential dangers of investing in digital crypto assets.The poster campaign featured an image of a cartoon dog wearing a Viking helmet and encouraged consumers who may have missed out on making money from other successful cryptocurrencies, such as Dogecoin, to join the investment craze. Continue reading...

Tech giant details range of responses to invasion as Facebook faces calls for ‘more aggressive action’ after curbs on Russian mediaApple has said it will pause all product sales in Russia, heeding requests from Ukrainian officials to take action against the country in response to its invasion.“We are deeply concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and stand with all of the people who are suffering as a result of the violence,” Apple said in a statement on Tuesday. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: in bleak moments, games can satisfy our urge to take action and make things better

Meta says network ran websites posing as independent news entities and created fake personas

Home rental platform joins swathe of companies offering support and donations during crisis

The runner-up enjoys a seven-hour episode of the livestreaming phenomenon in which voice actors role-play wizards, warlocks and goblin in a game of Dungeons & Dragons

After two years of messaging and video chats, in-person dates are back. But how do you give yourself the best chance of meeting the right people?So much about being single is great: being able to eat, watch and do what you want; independence; no in-laws. But routine can easily turn into a rut, which makes life difficult if you want to find a relationship. We asked the experts how you might go about shaking things up. Continue reading...

Could buying an NFT the way one buys a bag of Cheetos demystify the process?It’s easy to miss the storefront that is home to the “world’s first NFT vending machine” in Manhattan’s financial district. Squished between a sandwich shop and a tailor, the windows are bathed in pink neon light, with glowing letters that announce “NFT ATM.” When you walk through the entryway, you enter a tiny booth with the vending machine, filled with rows of little paper cartons, looking almost like cigarette packs. There are only two products: a “color” for $5.99 and a “party pigeon” for $420.69.I was here to spend some of the Guardian’s money on an NFT, or non-fungible token. NFTs are based on a blockchain feature called the “smart contract,” which is kind of like a virtual vending machine. Send some of your crypto to a smart contract, and it’ll print a unique token – basically a digital receipt – that says you now own this cat pic. Anyone else can still right-click-save and share Mr Whiskers, but you’ll know, and anyone else looking at the blockchain will know, that the image is yours. Or so the logic goes. Continue reading...

The group has claimed credit for hacking the Russian Ministry of Defence database, and is believed to have hacked multiple state TV channels to show pro-Ukraine content

For centuries, swindlers and thieves have been drawn to the highly lucrative world of wine crime. But a new generation of tech-savvy detectives are closing in on them. Ed Cumming meets the men and women trying to put a cork in the business of wine fraudDown in the cool, dark cellar of Berry Bros & Rudd in St James’s, central London, Philip Moulin arranges some of the world’s most valuable wines on a table. This building has been the wine merchant’s HQ since the company was founded in 1698, and we are in the Holy of Holies, a cellar accessible via fingerprint scanner and several locked gates, where the “directors’ stock” is stored. On one rack lie dusty magnums of Mouton Rothschild 1982, on another a pyramid of golden Château d’Yquem Sauternes. The liquid in this room is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not more. Or at least is, if it is what it claims to be.Moulin, a genial figure who has been into wine since he was a boy, has sometimes been called a “wine detective”. He is the quality and authentication manager at Berry Bros, who in recent years has specialised in helping to check everything the company buys is up to scratch. Berry Bros is the first British merchant to employ an authenticator; recognition that their reputation is based on trust and that fraudulent wine is a serious problem in the trade. Moulin shows me some of the dozens of ways to check a wine is real without actually tasting it: from the weight of the bottle to the level of the wine within, watermarks, paper with a unique weave, ink with special DNA, microchips in the bottle. Using a magnifying glass, he shows me micro-writing hidden within what look like lines. A UV torch reveals hidden flecks of reflective material. Continue reading...

Drivers with no off-street parking must use public charging points and miss £950 in savings, warns thinktankAlmost 10 million households in England and Wales risk missing out on savings of £950 a year that come from owning an electric car, according to a study warning that richer households stand to benefit most.About a third of households have no access to off-street parking or a personal garage, so will miss out on lower costs from charging the cars using cheaper overnight electricity. Continue reading...

Technical snags, criticisms of its terms of service and questions about copyright infringement plague the app’s kickoffDonald Trump last week launched his long-awaited social media app, Truth Social, luring users with the promises of a platform free from “discrimination against political ideology”.But with tech glitches plaguing the platform and early criticisms of its content policies the rollout is already raising questions about its future. Continue reading...

Thanks to the rapid advance of little tech, employers can now monitor every online action of their remote employeesPandemics, as the historian Yuval Noah Harari observed at the beginning of the current one, tend to accelerate history. If you doubt that then think back to, say, January 2020. If you told people then that by April that year major corporations would be insisting that most of their staff worked from home, they would have given you funny looks and checked for the nearest exit. Nobody then had heard of Zoom and something called “video conferencing” was considered either a geeky affectation or the last resort of organisations that could not afford air fares for senior executives to go to Rotterdam or Las Vegas for a one-hour meeting.And then, in the blink of an eye, working from home had become not just an acronym – WFH – but a cliche and Zoom, like Google before it, had become a verb as well as a noun. The tiresome daily commute shrank to padding from bedroom to kitchen to a laptop on a desk. For an initial period, utopian visions of better work-life balances blossomed. But then the new reality dawned: instead of us going to the office, the office had come to us and we were working, eating and sleeping in it. Continue reading...

The Foo Fighters frontman on his favourite new band, watching celebrities eat hot sauce and Zendaya in HBO’s EuphoriaDave Grohl was born in Ohio in 1969 and raised in Virginia. He got his start as a drummer with the punk band Scream before joining Nirvana in 1990. Following the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994, Grohl formed Foo Fighters, who released their 10th album last year. He has directed several documentaries, and last year published an autobiography, The Storyteller. His latest project, in which he stars with his band, is the horror-comedy film Studio 666, on general release now. Grohl lives with his wife and three daughters in Los Angeles. Continue reading...

Samuel Gibbs was surprised when his details were used to pay for a stranger’s takeaway. It is just one of a flood of ‘guess attacks’I am no stranger to credit card fraud: in the past I have had my card cloned and had the details stolen from a hack on a retailer. But I thought a card I had never used would be safe from the threat of crime. I was wrong.Even if you lock your credit card in a safe the moment it arrives, you can still fall victim to charges made by criminals. But how can criminals steal your card details if you’ve never even used them? Continue reading...

My Robben Island consists of five watercolours painted by former South African presidentThe contrast between the tiny austere cell on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in jail, and the infinite diversity of the digital world could not be greater.But the two will come together next month when the first non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of artwork by the former South African president and anti-apartheid hero are sold against the backdrop of a booming global digital art market. Continue reading...

Automakers’ history of taking fat subsidies and overpromising job growth make some analysts skeptical of the dealIn September, Ford stunned Michigan when it announced plans to build two massive electric vehicle (EV) plants in the nation’s southeast instead of its midwestern back yard. Fearing the future of the automotive industry was leaving Detroit, the state’s political class swung into action.Four months later, lawmakers responded by handing a staggering new subsidy deal to GM that they claimed would fortify the Motor City’s standing as the world’s auto capitol during industry electrification: In exchange for $1bn in tax incentives, the Detroit-based automaker promised $7bn in investment for new battery and EV plants that could create 4,000 new jobs. Continue reading...

Sarah Hyland and What We Do in the Shadows’ Harvey Guillén appear in a twist-filled comedy that satirises murder-based pods. Plus: a look at the Brooklyn riots that went on to shape New YorkBone, Marry, Bury