Technology | The Guardian

From the Barbican in London to shopping centres around the country, audiences can become part of sophisticated new XR dance spectaculars – diving into Lewis Carroll’s imagination or an extravagant ballroomI’m in an abandoned-looking house, where a woman appears like a dancing apparition. Then I’m going down a rabbit hole into a tea party in a bright yellow field. I’m conducting avatars moving to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring; taking part in a dance class where the teacher is a hologram; arriving at a grand Parisian party dressed in Chanel.These are my recent forays into the world of extended reality (XR) in dance. It is technology that we are told is leading us towards a new metaverse, but in practice can often seem more like watching bad graphics in very uncomfortable headgear and wondering what the point is. Nevertheless, a number of choreographers are exploring what XR could bring to dance, whether in virtual reality (VR), where you are completely immersed in a different world via a large headset; or augmented reality (AR), where you wear glasses that add images into the space around you. Continue reading...

Elsewhere, a unionization vote by Alabama workers is pending as hundreds of votes were challengedAmazon workers in New York are close to voting to form a union – a major win for labor activists who have failed in previous efforts to organize at the tech giant that is now the second largest private employer in the US.Workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Staten Island will find out on Friday whether or not they want to form a union, Amazon’s first in the US where it now employs over one million people. Continue reading...

A study found that external articles shared on the bioweapons myth were not labeled as ‘false information’ or ‘missing context’

Shows such as WeCrashed, Super Pumped and The Dropout all retell recent stories of millennial work-life balance going wrongThe third episode of WeCrashed, Apple TV+’s eight-part series on the precipitous rise and fall of the WeWork founders Adam and Rebekah Neumann, gives the viewer a small taste of being a startup employee. It’s 2012, and a nameless female employee arrives for her first day; she’s given a key card, an Apple laptop, a reminder that there’s a 7pm “Thank God It’s Monday” meeting, and a mimosa. In one of the most effective montages of the series – largely because it draws attention away from the two eccentric, delusional founders who take up the vast majority of screen time – we whirl through the nameless female employee’s hedonistic, exhausting life at WeWork. Coffee, shot, staff party, sex with a co-worker in a supply closet. Adam Neumann leading employees in a “we!” “work!” call and response. Another shot, another day, pass out, wake up, repeat. Is it night or is it noon? At a desk or at a party? Doesn’t matter – she’s at work, which is life.This ethos of so-called “hustle culture” – the idea that work is life and the self derives value through constant work – courses throughout a number of recent shows set across the 2010s. It’s most overt in WeCrashed, based on the Wondery podcast of the same name, in which Neumann literally urges workers to “hustle harder” (also the title of its fifth episode, which airs this Friday). The Theranos employees in The Dropout, Hulu’s eight-part series on Elizabeth Holmes’s fraudulent blood-testing company that was once the darling of Silicon Valley, work through the night, missing kids’ birthday parties and dinners in the name of changing the world. Same for the Uber staff in Super Pumped, Showtime’s series on Uber’s relentless, now disgraced founder Travis Kalanick, who berates employees to pursue growth at any cost (and change the world.) Anna Delvey, the scammer at the heart of Netflix’s Inventing Anna, is most chagrined that her notoriety as the “Soho grifter” overshadowed how hard she worked at the business plan that ultimately exposed her; the journalist who covers her is so obsessed with the story and its import for her career that she goes into labor in the office. Continue reading...

Nice says wearable tech reduces need for finger-prick testing by up to 50%Hundreds of thousands of people with type 1 diabetes in England are to be offered a hi-tech skin sensor to monitor their blood sugar levels in seconds.The device, the size of a £2 coin, sits on a patient’s arm and constantly checks their glucose levels. It comes with an app that tells them whethertheir blood sugar levels are at an appropriate level. Continue reading...

Gamers stocked up on hardware such as consoles and virtual reality gear, offsetting a fall in game salesThe UK video games market hit a new record of £7.16bn last year as the pandemic continued to fuel an unprecedented boom in home entertainment, with gamers rushing to stock up on new consoles and virtual reality kit even as overall sales of games fell.Lockdown conditions have made gaming one of the biggest pandemic winners with the value of the UK market now a third higher than in 2019 before the coronavirus crisis hit and worth more than the music and video streaming markets combined. Continue reading...

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, solicited campaign accusing TikTok of being a danger to American childrenMeta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and other social media platforms, is reportedly paying a notable GOP consulting firm to create public distrust around TikTok.The campaign, launched by Republican strategy firm Targeted Victory, placed op-eds and letters to the editor in various publications, accusing TikTok of being a danger to American children, along with other disparaging accusations. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: how a madeup backstory for a crisp mascot became accepted fact, and why it proves the internet doesn’t just reflect reality – it can alter it too

When you’re young, you believe in the possibility of anything – ghosts, goblins, the Resident Evil house – but by my age, the spell is brokenMy wife and kids have a tough time believing that I fear nothing supernatural. Because they do. They fear all of them. Ghosts, goblins, werewolves, wendigos, all that claptrap. I just don’t. When they tell me that this is strange, considering I’m the only one of us who goes to mass every Sunday and literally eats the body and blood of a man who came back from the dead, I distract them by showing them my latest Day-Glo Virgin Mary statue which plays Ave Maria.My youngest teen, Sharkie, gives me a list of her scariest games ever. Apparently one of them is bound to give me nightmares. I start with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard because everyone says it’s terrifying and the original Resident Evil game did genuinely scare me, back in the days when I experienced fear. I am sorry to disappoint the legions of people who have needed underwear changes exploring that house, but for me the most frightening thing about it is that they are still using tape recorders as save points. Continue reading...

Company’s first wearable delivers personal pocket of filtered air and cancels unwanted noiseDyson has announced its first wearable product that builds the firm’s air purification expertise into a set of Bluetooth noise cancelling headphones aimed at city dwellers wanting to avoid polluted air.Quite unlike anything the company has made before, the Dyson Zone is sure to draw quizzical looks. It is a set of large, plush headphones with a plastic mask-type contraption that connects from ear-to-ear across the wearer’s mouth and looks like something out of a sci-fi movie. Continue reading...

As well as turning off your hot water or boiler as you leave home, some can offer to heat only rooms that need it

ESA project aims to harness power of smartphones to match atmospheric conditions to weather on groundEven with supercomputers, accurate weather forecasting is still one of science’s most difficult challenges. We are all familiar with the feeling of being let down having planned a trip based on the forecast only to find it was wrong. In response to criticisms, a useful caveat, “these predictions may change”, seems to have crept into the three-day-ahead weather outlook.The power of smartphones equipped with GPS is now being harnessed to try to improve on this. The idea is that thousands of people holding their phones still and pointing at the sky can interact with satellites to match atmospheric conditions and the actual weather on the ground at that location. Artificial intelligence then mashes and processes all the data. This will be used to improve future weather forecasts on Earth and also monitor the weather in space. Understanding space weather is helpful for better satellite operations and communications. Continue reading...

‘I supposedly have it again (sigh), but almost no symptoms,’ Tesla and SpaceX billionaire tweetsElon Musk said on Monday he had “supposedly” tested positive for Covid-19, with no major symptoms.“I supposedly have it again (sigh), but almost no symptoms,” the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire said in a tweet. Continue reading...

Great performance and battery life, held back by cost, camera and lack of software polishThe latest high-end smartphone from China’s Oppo aims to usurp Samsung as the best Android phone launched in 2022 with serious speed and a luxurious ceramic back that’s almost too smooth.The Find X5 Pro costs £1,049 and won’t be sold in the US. It replaces last year’s Find X3 Pro (there was no X4) and is packed with all the things you expect from a top-flight phone.Screen: 6.7in 120Hz QHD+ OLED (525ppi)Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1RAM: 12GB of RAMStorage: 256GBOperating system: ColorOS 12.1 (Android 12)Camera: 50MP main and ultrawide + 13MP 2x telephoto, 32MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2 and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)Dimensions: 163.7 x 73.9 x 8.5mmWeight: 218g Continue reading...

Partnership will boost number of rides available, and gives NYC cab drivers access to massive pool of commuters with Uber appUber, hit by driver shortages and a surge in food delivery requests during the pandemic, will list New York City taxi cabs on its app, a partnership that until recently would have been unthinkable with both camps fighting ferociously for the same customers.After a period in which waits for an Uber ride grew longer due to a driver shortage, the partnership will boost the number of rides available, and it gives NYC cab drivers access to a massive pool of commuters with an Uber app on their phones. Continue reading...

Rise of 35% on previous year may represent improvement on the part of platforms, says nonprofit centreA record 29.3m items of child abuse imagery were found and removed across the internet in 2021, according to data from the US nonprofit organisation in charge of coordinating reports on the matter.The figure released by the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) is a 35% increase from 2020. Continue reading...

The Mad Men star uses his silky voice to win over a hostage-taker – and his audience. Plus: five of the best bite-sized podcasts

Xbox One/Series S/X, PlayStation 4/5, PC, Nintendo Switch; Okomotive AG/Frontier FoundrySinglehandedly manage a steampunk sailboat in this ramshackle but glorious anti-open world gameFar: Changing Tides melds Mario with Cormac McCarthy and a touch of nautical engineering. Human civilisation lies in ruins, and you are a child journeying to the other end of it. You can’t do this on foot, however. As in Okomotive’s previous Far: Lone Sails, the star is actually your vehicle – a rattling origami hybrid of sailboat and first world war tank. Scurry inside, and the hull lifts away dollhouse-style to reveal a warren of buttons and boilers. This isn’t the fantasy of uninhibited traversal offered by car-based apocalypses such as Mad Max: you don’t so much drive the craft as maintain it while it plots its own course rightward through flooded cities and glacial seas.Changing Tides is a game of three moods. First, the satisfying rhythms of ship management – stowing fuel and pumping the bellows while hosing down the overheating engine, or angling pop-out sails to catch the wind. Second, the mild thrill of exploration outside, whether scouting for fuel or to clear the path by, say, operating a crane. And third, the reflective interludes when things are humming along nicely and you have a moment to watch the horizons pass.Far: Changing Tides is out now; £14.99 Continue reading...

The much-hyped adaptation of the phenomenally successful video game crash lands on TV with impressive visuals but not much elseQuite how Halo hasn’t made it to the screen, small or big, before this is an enigma almost as nebulous as the long-running first person shooter video game’s crowded mythos. Luminaries such as Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and District 9’s Neill Blomkamp have all been involved in trying to get a film based on the explosive exploits of Masterchief across the line for the best part of two decades, yet to no avail. Even this big-budget – it reputedly cost more than $200m and looks like gold – TV series starring Pablo Schreiber as the genetically engineered soldier-hero of the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) has been held up for two years by Covid.Never mind, it’s here now, and fans of the games who just want to see their nightly battles with giant space monsters played out on the TV screen will no doubt be more than content with Kyle Killen and Steven Kane’s adventurous if somewhat insipid reimagining. Unfortunately, those of us who don’t recognise every re-enacted power-up bleep and helmet-cam vision of destruction will probably find ourselves wondering, much of the time, quite what is going on.

PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC; Gearbox Software

Appliances left on standby account for almost a quarter of Britain’s electricity use. Turns out your gran was right to go around switching things off at the wallName: Vampire appliances.Age: There are old ones, and less old ones.This article was amended on 24 March 2022 as we had used an incorrect format for measuring the power used by a Sky box. We used W/hour when W (for watts) would have sufficed. Continue reading...

Who is winning the Russia-Ukraine infowars? Plus: lessons for the next pandemic

Prosecutors portray ex-executive as accomplice in a health scam while defense paints picture of well-meaning businessmanThe specter of Elizabeth Holmes loomed over the opening day of a trial that will determine whether Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her former romantic and business partner at Theranos, was also her partner in crime.Tuesday marked the opening of a case slated to begin last week, which was delayed by a Covid-19 exposure. Continue reading...

Two high court cases brought by transparency campaigners are exploring whether use of self-destructing messages is unlawfulTransparency campaigners have accused ministers of conducting “government by WhatsApp” in the UK’s third-highest court, arguing that the use of self-destructing messages on insecure platforms is unlawful and undemocratic.Ministers and government officials could be stopped from sending “disappearing messages” after failing to keep public records of exchanges on personal phones, email and WhatsApp. Continue reading...

In this week’s newsletter: there’s another instalment of CD Projekt Red’s fantasy behemoth on the way, and it’s sure to have some bite. Time to play catch up!

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...