Technology | The Guardian

UK government and banks on alert for new form of electronic attack said to have infected hundreds of machines

The series on the rise and fall of Uber’s hard-charging, grandiose CEO Travis Kalanick, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, gets too high on its own supplyOne of the side effects of watching a recent history true-scam show like Super Pumped, the high-octane, wearisome Showtime anthology series whose first season tracks the rise and fall of Uber’s disgraced CEO, Travis Kalanick, is to wonder in every scene: did this really happen? Or, in the case of Super Pumped specifically: is this dialogue heavily embellished or do tech CEOs flying too close to the sun on a jetstream of cash just sound this deranged?Kalanick, played with gusto by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is a ball of jumpy, narcissistic energy who speaks in comically grandiose terms. “We fuck the status quo, alright?” he says to his staff. He spins a cease and desist order from the city of San Francisco as “VALIDATION OF OUR STATUS OF DISRUPTORS”, in a shouted speech to the whole office. He draws a huge smiley face on the order with red Sharpie, because “WE ARE IN THE WORLD-CHANGING BUSINESS!” Continue reading...

Report comes as Ukraine faces cyber-attack and allies brace for state-sponsored hacks

Heather Morgan, the wannabe Tiktok and hip-hop star, and her husband allegedly stole $4.5bn worth of cryptocurrencyHeather Morgan is free, for now. The 31-year-old fraudster was offered bail on Valentine’s Day, releasing her from incarceration while her husband, Ilya “Dutch” Liechtenstein, remains in federal bondage.Morgan is at the centre of a psychedelic cryptocurrency saga, that began when the pair were arrested on suspicion of laundering $4.5bn worth of stolen bitcoin. That money was originally pilfered from a Hong Kong-based crypto exchange firm called Bitfinex, and it breaks the record for the most digital currency that’s ever been seized by a criminal sting operation. (The pair allegedly spent the money on NFTs, gold and a Walmart gift card.) It’s the first major crime saga of the Web3 era – Blockchain noir, ripe for a Safdie Brothers film – and each twist in the storyline is more implausible than the last. Continue reading...

The writer and performer shares the funny videos that make the internet less scary (mostly babies and pets)

Meetings held on threat posed, particularly to critical infrastructure, and how it could be tackled

PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/Series S/Series X; FromSoftware/Namco Bandai

In this week’s newsletter: two under the radar moves feel like the beginning of the end for one of the last sections of the internet to exist outside of the major tech platforms

Michael Sun is flying solo this week on Guardian Australia’s online culture podcast, so he brings in two special guests. First, Matilda Boseley joins to mourn our fading relevance as we become victims of the vibe shift and ‘terminal trend velocity’. Then TikTok star Tom Cardy tells us about his overnight success, and the struggles of making money on the platform – even with 1 million followers Continue reading...

Lawsuit claims Amazon’s Flex app creates ‘foreseeable risk’ of drivers being distracted, resulting in hazardous conditionsA North Carolina motorcyclist is suing Amazon for $100m after a collision with a delivery driver resulted in the amputation of his left leg. The man says Amazon’s pressure on its employees rendered the driver distracted and caused the crash.The accident happened in October when motorcyclist Justin Hartley was hit by a Hertz truck with an Amazon logo in Virginia Beach. Continue reading...

After a dismal earnings report in February and in a bid to attract younger users, the platform is prioritizing short video contentFacebook has launched its short video feature Reels globally, its owner Meta Platforms said on Tuesday, in a move to expand its fastest growing content format after reports that overall user numbers are down.The social media giant, which recently announced a massive pivot into virtual reality products, lost a third of its market value after a dismal earnings report in February. It has highlighted Reels as a key priority to court younger users. Continue reading...

Police have been accused of spying on at least 26 individuals who are not criminal suspectsAn inquiry into allegations that Israel’s police force systematically hacked into the mobile phones of Israeli citizens has found that while the police did use NSO Group’s controversial Pegasus malware, there is no evidence suggesting illegality.In a series of explosive reports over the last two months, the local financial daily newspaper Calcalist accused the police of spying on at least 26 individuals who were not criminal suspects. Those named included politicians, protesters, and members of the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner circle – claims Netanyahu used to delay proceedings in his corruption trial. Continue reading...

When EA decided not to release a same-sex marriage story for The Sims in Russia, the LGBTQ+ community mobilised – and won an unlikely victoryTwo weeks ago, Electronic Arts opted not to launch a same-sex marriage story in Russia for its hit life-simulation video game The Sims 4. At a glance, this is a simple story – a game publisher refusing to compromise its art in order to comply with Russia’s controversial “homosexual propaganda” law. Yet to Russian LGBTQ+ gamers, EA’s blog post wasn’t a show of solidarity – it was a betrayal.Since 2013, it’s been illegal in Russia to “promote” homosexuality to minors. This means that any LGBTQ+ content must carry an adults-only rating. It’s a law that EA knows all too well, as back in 2014, The Sims 4’s same-sex relationships saw it slapped with an 18+ rating in Russia. Continue reading...

The metaverse won’t affect your small business now, but a lot can change in a decade – and the smartest business owners I know are keeping an eye on itThe metaverse. You’ve heard about it. You’ve read about it. But do you really understand it? Unfortunately, most small business owners I know don’t. They should.The metaverse is virtual. But it’s also real. It’s an online world that might generate its own economy. So far it’s been mostly created and championed by Mark Zuckerberg, who literally changed the name of one of the most familiar brands in the world to match its future promise – Meta. But the big brands are jumping in … and in a big way. Continue reading...

It was a play that gave us the word “robot” – and now an android is the performer in a groundbreaking new production. But can it make us laugh – and cry?A figure sits alone on stage, dressed in comfy jumper and trousers, one leg crossed over the other. He slowly moves his hands and turns his head. But this sole performer in Uncanny Valley, by theatre company Rimini Protokoll, is not human. It is a lifelike animatronic model of the German writer Thomas Melle.The show’s director, Stefan Kaegi, had seen animatronics used in museums, where he found there was not sufficient time for what he calls the “empathy mechanism” to kick in. But he wondered what would happen if the robot became a performer, “someone with whom we start to identify”. Continue reading...

Online retailer will continue to accept Visa payments across its sites after striking global dealAmazon will continue to accept Visa credit card payments across its sites after the companies struck a new global deal.The move comes months after the online retailer threatened to stop the use of UK-issued Visa credit cards because of the fees charged to process payments. Continue reading...

Parag Agrawal’s plan seen as step toward normalizing time off for men involved in childcareTwitter’s new CEO, Parag Agrawal, is reportedly taking a “few weeks” off for paternity leave after the birth of his second child, a move that drew cheers from other fathers as a positive step towards normalizing men taking time off for childcare.The 37-year-old became CEO of the company in November when its co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down. Continue reading...

Kremlin denies it was behind the attack, which Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said was the largest of its type ever seen

International watchdog highlights stablecoins as particular concern in absence of regulationThe booming crypto assets market could pose a serious threat to financial stability if regulators fail to take action, a global watchdog has said.The Financial Stability Board (FSB), which monitors financial authorities in 24 countries, is concerned that the scale and structural vulnerabilities of crypto markets – as well as increasing interconnectedness with traditional financial systems – have the potential to cause significant disturbance to the global economy. Continue reading...

Shift comes a year after Apple curtailed amount of personal data shared by users of its mobile operating systemGoogle announced on Wednesday that it plans to limit the amount of personal information shared on Android, the world-leading mobile phone operating system used by more than 2.5 billion people around the globe.The shift comes a year after Apple curtailed the amount of personal data shared by users of its mobile operating system – a change that sent shock waves through the digital advertising world and contributed to a collapse in Facebook’s share price. Continue reading...

Some 46,000 regional users left without service for seven hours and more than 500 had no internet for two weeks

CEO of company formerly called Facebook touts pivot at all-hands meeting as he faces investment concerns“Move fast”, “build awesome things” and “live in the future” were among Meta’s new internal values introduced by Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, as the company grapples with growing pains in its pivot towards virtual reality and the “metaverse”.Speaking at an all-hands meeting on Tuesday, the CEO unveiled a number of new slogans and internal branding changes at the company, previously called Facebook. Continue reading...

SEC filing does not disclose name of charity while analysts say ‘tax benefit would be huge’Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, donated a total of 5,044,000 shares in the world’s most valuable automaker to a charity from 19 November to 29 November last year, its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed on Monday.The donation was worth $5.74bn, based on the closing prices of Tesla shares on the five days that he donated the stock. The filing did not disclose the name of the charity. Continue reading...

Windows PC (Game pass, Steam); Creative Assembly/Sega

Labor board overturned first election over company’s unfair conduct, giving workers another chance to be the first Amazon facility in US to unionizeWorkers at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, have begun the rerun of a historic union election after the US labor regulator ruled Amazon’s conduct had interfered with a previous election in 2021 and ordered a new vote.The union drive comes as other large US employers including Starbucks and Target are fighting off union drives. If successful, the warehouse would be the first Amazon facility to unionize in the US. Employees said that Amazon – which now employs more than 1 million people in the US – is fighting hard to make sure this vote also fails, but some are feeling more confident the second time around. Continue reading...

Richard Dexter sentenced to four-and-a-half years for duping victim into sending payments after meeting via dating appA “charming” fraudster who conned a millionaire he met on Tinder into handing him almost £150,000 has been jailed for four-and-a-half years.Richard Dexter, 38, boasted to his victim, Amrita Sebastian, that he was worth almost £7m, owned private jets, was involved in Hollywood studios and had bought a hot air balloon on a whim. Continue reading...

Regulators sound alarm over function that can play sounds over external speaker and obscure warnings for pedestriansTesla is recalling nearly 579,000 vehicles in the US because a “Boombox” function can play sounds over an external speaker and obscure audible warnings for pedestrians.The recall is the fourth made public in the last two weeks as US safety regulators increase scrutiny of the nation’s largest electric vehicle maker. In two of the recalls, Tesla made decisions that violate federal motor vehicle safety standards, while the others are software errors. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch; Game Freak/Nintendo

Heather Morgan, arrested on suspicion of laundering cryptocurrency worth billions, has a second life as performer with ‘more pizzazz than Genghis Khan’A woman accused of laundering billions of dollars in stolen cryptocurrency alongside her husband may end up becoming better known for her excruciating music career as a self-styled “raunchy rapper” called Razzlekhan.Heather Morgan was arrested along with her husband, Ilya Lichtenstein, in Manhattan on Tuesday over their alleged involvement in laundering bitcoin stolen in a 2016 hack of the virtual currency exchange Bitfinex. They are not accused of involvement in the hack itself but face charges of conspiring to commit money laundering as well as to defraud the United States. Continue reading...

The company beat estimates to report a revenue of $5.8bn for the fourth quarter as Uber Eats posted an adjusted profit of $25mUber’s food delivery service Uber Eats has turned profitable for the first time, the company said on Wednesday, in an earnings report that revealed it may be bouncing back after a rough run during lockdown.Shares rose 6.8% in after-hours trading after the company’s report showed $5.8bn in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021, beating estimates of $5.36bn. It said demand for its ride-hailing service was again approaching pre-pandemic levels. Continue reading...

The subpoena was issued on 16 November after Musk polled his Twitter followers on whether he should sell 10% of his sharesTesla said on Monday it received a subpoena from the US securities regulator related to a settlement that required tweets from its chief executive, Elon Musk, on material information to be vetted.The subpoena by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was issued on 16 November, some 10 days after Musk asked his Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his stake in the company, triggering a stock selloff. Continue reading...

Top-of-the-line sports watch goes anywhere and tracks anything, with longer battery life, better GPS, stamina and a touchscreenGarmin’s latest top-of-the-line Fenix 7 track-it-all adventure smartwatch introduces a number of new features, better GPS, longer battery life and improved tech – as well as a touchscreen to go with its buttons.Starting at £599 ($699.99/A$1,049), it can hit £1,000 or more if you pick the largest, most fancy version. But the new luxury device does give us a preview on what the firm’s cheaper sports watches may feature later in the year. Continue reading...

PC, PS4/5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X; Roll7

Hacking of emails at Murdoch company raises fears for safety of journalists’ confidential sourcesJournalists working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp have had their email accounts hacked in what the company believes was an espionage operation linked to China, raising fears for the safety of confidential sources.The cyber-attack affected a limited number of individuals working for outlets including News UK – the publisher of the Times and the Sun – as well as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. Continue reading...

Streaming firm is facing a cocktail of crises, from culture wars to competition concernsHe was supposed to be Spotify’s biggest acquisition, one who would transform the music streaming company into a one-stop shop for all kinds of online audio.But controversy over “misinformation” on Joe Rogan’s podcast precipitated a hellish week for the Swedish firm as high-profile boycotts, a social media backlash and a share price drop challenged the viability of its meteoric growth. Continue reading...

Zooey Deschanel, Hannah Simone and Lamorne Morris reunite to reminisce about their Emmy-nominated show. Plus: top actors read the hilarious uncommissioned scripts of talented female writersWelcome to Our Show

The e-commerce giant announced gains of more than $14bn last holiday season in its latest earnings reportAmazon’s profits surged to $14.32bn in a fourth quarter marked by record holiday sales, the company said in its earnings report on Thursday, while also announcing an increase in the price of Amazon Prime membership to help compensate for rising operating costs.In the three months ending in December 2021, sales for the e-commerce giant were up 24% from a sluggish third quarter to $137.4bn. Sales are also up 9% year-over-year from the same period in 2020. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg says company faces tough competition for attention from rivals such as TikTok• Analysis: why the shares are in freefall Facebook shares fell 25% on Thursday – wiping over $200bn (£147bn) off its value – after the company reported its first ever drop in daily user numbers.The huge collapse – more than value of McDonald’s – came after Mark Zuckerberg’s newly rebranded social media empire, Meta, said daily active user numbers at its main app – a key growth target for investors – fell to 1.929 billion in the three months to December, from 1.93 billion in the previous quarter. Continue reading...

Joyful and innocuously addictive, the online word game harks back to a more innocent age. The new owners must respect its spiritSmart daily brain tease works magic, makes eager crowd happy, later turns truly viral – until game’s adept maker earns great money (ample Times bucks). Yes, it is sometimes hard not to think entirely in five-letter words after an encounter with Wordle, the online game that requires participants to guess a five-letter word in six tries. It was quietly launched last October by Josh Wardle, a Welsh, Brooklyn-based software engineer who created it for the amusement of his partner.In November, its users numbered a few hundred. Now, they are in the millions. Mr Wardle has sold the game to the New York Times for a seven-figure sum – having previously said that he felt somewhat overwhelmed by the responsibility to the game’s fans to keep the site running perfectly. Continue reading...

Why is a 50-year-old comedian on TikTok? Who knows, but at least the TikToks are funnyThe 10 funniest things I have ever seen on the internet? Like, ever? How about the last 10 things I liked on TikTok? Cool. Why has a 50-year-old got a TikTok account?Before you call the authorities, we made a kids’ show back in 2006 and most of the fans had no idea who the Umbilical Brothers were. But now we have more than 600,000 20-year-old college students captured and addicted. OK … I’m calling the authorities. Continue reading...

Struggling to hit the right notes over email and chat? Perhaps you need the ‘sarcasm converter’Who am I when I’m behind a screen?It’s a question we face more and more as the pandemic minimizes face-to-face contact, forcing even more workplace communication to take place over email and messaging apps. Continue reading...

There are plenty of streaming options available for music and podcasts – or you could listen the old-fashioned wayThe recent decision by Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to pull their music off Spotify amid a backlash over Joe Rogan’s podcast has put fans of the folk icons in an awkward position – and reminded us that music can find a home beyond the now ubiquitous Spotify playlist.Rogan, who has been accused of spreading Covid-19 misinformation through his wildly popular podcast, has since promised to “try harder”, while Spotify has said it will direct listeners toward facts about the pandemic. But for some, it might be too little too late, especially if other artists follow in the boycott. Continue reading...

Radlandia, the skating game’s exuberant and diverse world, was created during the pandemic as a happier place to which its developers could escapeIn a skate park under the arches near London Bridge, a couple of game developers called John Ribbins and Simon Bennett are messing around in a half-pipe. (I do not join in – sadly the immense skills that I have built up over 20 years of playing skating games do not in any way translate into real life.) In 2014, their studio Roll7 released a fondly remembered and notoriously tricky skateboarding game called OlliOlli – an experience that prompted them, both lapsed skaters who were obsessive about it in their teens, to get back out on the streets in real life. They had about 10 people working with them back then; now they’re directors of a studio of 80.I’d spent a few days playing Roll7’s latest game, OlliOlli World – an exuberant and characterful tribute to skateboarding, with wild levels full of rails and walls to grind and weird characters such as sentient trees and buff seagulls pottering around in the background. The art, a mix between the kind of mural you might find in a London skate park and the strange but cutesy cartoonish vibe of something like Adventure Time, contrasts with an extremely chill soundtrack that soothes your nerves as you try to pull off awesome chains of tricks. Continue reading...

Host Jesse Watters wasted no time in painting the Reddit thread’s moderator as a clumsy, ‘lazy’ caricatureIn 2013, the subreddit r/antiwork was born. “Unemployment for all, not just the rich!” read its tagline. America was experiencing a mood change at that time. Occupy: The Movie had just hit theaters, lodging the eponymous movement in the national consciousness; the Socialist Alternative party had just won its first ever seat on Seattle’s city council; and Senator Bernie Sanders, the longtime independent from Vermont and self-described “democratic socialist” was considering a presidential run.Born of the moment, r/antiwork offered a space where people could envision a life free from work – or at least, too much of it. Anchored by Marxist philosophy, people used it to commiserate, share memes and trade war stories about the horrors of modern-day working in America. Then the pandemic hit, laying bare inequities long faced by lower-wage workers, particularly in the United States. The subreddit exploded. Screenshots of resignation texts to bosses went viral – “Eat. My. Ass.” read one memorable text, in response to a boss who had warned against such an “impulsive decision”. In December, users bombarded a Kellogg’s application site that had been launched to replace 1,400 striking users with fake applications. As media reported on the “Great Resignation” in the wake of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report that 4.5 million Americans left their jobs in November 2021, an all-time high, r/antiwork inched closer to the mainstream. Continue reading...

Bungie developed Destiny and Halo while sale comes after Microsoft’s $69bn acquisition of Activision BlizzardSony has agreed to buy the video game maker Bungie for $3.6bn, the latest in a series of takeovers in the video game industry.Washington state-based Bungie developed hit first-person shooter video game Destiny and Halo, a series that has provided some of the biggest ever hits for rival Microsoft’s Xbox system. Bungie was acquired by Microsoft in 2000 and split from Microsoft in 2007. Halo ​​is now managed by Microsoft-owned 343 Industries. Continue reading...

In DM exchange Tesla boss offers $5,000 for takedown but 19-year-old replies: ‘Any chance to up that to $50K?’A row has broken out between the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, and a 19-year-old student and aviation enthusiast from Florida.Jack Sweeney created the Twitter bot @ElonJet, which tracks Musk’s Gulfstream private jet and posts real-time updates of its location. Continue reading...

My biggest distraction from my work, family and friends – and yet I can’t pull away, even when my own research says I shouldLike most humans, I want intimacy. But as a developmental psychologist, I consider intimacy a fundamental human need. Sharing feelings, embraces, intellectual conversations, sex – these intimate moments are often the touchstones of a rich human experience. Yet millions of people worldwide are isolated and lonely, woefully lacking in the meaningful and diverse social experiences that help support emotional and physical health.Teens are spending most of their waking hours online, eschewing in-person gatherings for online chats, games and Netflix. And even those of us with socially rich networks sometimes long for flashes of intimacy, like hugs from friends or sex with lovers, amid the doldrum of our daily lives. Continue reading...

Streaming platform publishes rules for creators and announces plan to tackle misinformation, including ‘content advisories’Spotify is adding a message that will direct listeners to correct Covid-19 information as controversy over misinformation shared on Joe Rogan’s podcast continues to grow, with the streamer losing billions in market value and more musicians withdrawing their music.On Sunday, the CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, released an official statement setting out the streaming platform’s plan to tackle misinformation. New content advisories will direct listeners of any podcast that discusses coronavirus to a dedicated website that “provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics and public health authorities around the world, as well as links to trusted sources”. Continue reading...