Technology | The Guardian

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

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