Technology | The Guardian

Campaigners say Face Pay, launched in over 240 stations, is ‘dangerous step’ in efforts to control populationThe Moscow metro has rolled out what authorities have lauded as the world’s first mass-scale facial recognition payment system, amid privacy concerns over the new technology.The cashless, cardless and phoneless system, named Face Pay, launched at more than 240 stations across the Russian capital on Friday. Continue reading...

After uploading her tracks online, the UK singer-producer thought the industry was a closed shop. Then she turned to TikTok ...In December, a TikTok user in London named PinkPantheress started uploading clips of a song, intending to keep at it until “someone notices”. Ten months later, the social media platform named her song Just for Me its breakout track of the summer; it has more than 20m plays on Spotify and, after being sampled by the drill rapper Central Cee, went into the UK Top Five.A flood of similarly fleeting tracks have followed: rarely lasting more than two minutes, they are mostly self-produced, lo-fi mash-ups of saccharine-sweet vocals and jungle and drum’n’bass beats. Gen Z adores her; Grimes and Charli XCX are fans; Lizzo and Charli d’Amelio, TikTok’s reigning queen, have used her music to soundtrack their own TikToks. Continue reading...

The Flipside sees Lees explore conflicting views on themes including identity. Plus: the great British canoe con, the resurgence of natural hair, and My Therapist Ghosted MeThe Flipside

One bill would prevent platforms from giving preference to their own products, the other would remove Section 230 protectionsUS lawmakers announced two major new proposals seeking to rein in the power of big tech, days after the revelations from a former Facebook employee spotlighted the company’s sweeping impact.The first bill, proposed by a group of senators headed by Democrat Amy Klobuchar and Republican Chuck Grassley would bar big tech platforms from favoring their own products and services. Continue reading...

Captain Kirk’s profound reflection on our home planet was an ironic outcome for a trip that was meant to boost space travelThere’s nothing like a vacation to make you appreciate home.That seemed to be the sentiment behind William Shatner’s words as he returned from a brief journey to space on Wednesday. In remarks filmed after he landed, the actor described having had “the most profound experience I can imagine”. Continue reading...

Exclusive: UK institution was in line for huge donation but has paused talks due to concerns Gulf state used hacking softwareThe University of Cambridge has broken off talks with the United Arab Emirates over a record £400m collaboration after claims about the Gulf state’s use of controversial Pegasus hacking software, the university’s vice-chancellor has said.The proposed deal, hailed by the university in July as a “potential strategic partnership … helping to solve some of the greatest challenges facing our planet” – would have included the largest donation of its kind in the university’s history, spanning a decade and involving direct investment from the UAE of more than £310m. Continue reading...

Hope not Hate urges messaging app to act on privacy policy that ‘facilitates’ murderous contentMPs, leaders of faith communities, and groups involved in countering hate have sent a letter to Telegram urging it to take action as it emerged as an “app of choice” for racists and violent extremists.An image was projected on to Telegram’s offices in London this week by the campaign group Hope not Hate, which has organised the letter, in a move to shame the company. Continue reading...

After election humiliation and Brexit, the former UK deputy prime minister swapped Westminster for a £2.7m job in Silicon Valley. The catch? Serving as the public face of the crisis-hit companyOn Sunday, Nick Clegg did a succession of interviews with some of the US’s biggest TV news shows. In his role as Facebook’s vice-president for global affairs and communications, he was defending his company after weeks of headlines about its latest crisis – this time involving Frances Haugen, a Facebook staffer turned whistleblower who had testified days earlier before a committee of the US Senate. The story centred on a stash of company documents that Haugen had given to the Wall Street Journal. The central allegation, which Facebook vehemently denies, was that the company had ignored its own research into the harms caused by some of its products in favour of the pursuit of “astronomical profits”.Anyone au fait with the five grim years Clegg spent as the UK’s deputy prime minister would have had the familiar impression of someone emphasising his good intentions in almost impossible circumstances. His facial expression regularly expressed a sort of righteous exasperation; his words seemed to imply that if only his critics could grasp the facts, everything would quickly die down. Like any well-briefed politician, he emphasised a handful of statistics: the 40,000 content moderators Facebook employs, the $13bn (£9.5bn) it says it has spent cracking down on misinformation and hate speech; the company’s claim that the latter accounts for only five of every 10,000 Facebook posts. Continue reading...

Edwin Robbe had a troubled life, but found excitement and purpose by joining an audacious community of hackers. Then the real world caught up with his online activitiesJosé Robbe was leaving her place of work in Rotterdam when she saw a man and a woman walking towards her. It was a Tuesday afternoon, 20 March 2012. “Are you Mrs Robbe?” She nodded. The woman, who was wearing jeans and a black windcheater, explained that she was with the police. “I’d like to talk to you for a minute. It’s about your son, Edwin. We’re arresting him.” José stared, frozen. The woman asked if she would accompany them. Warily, José agreed.At the police car, the officer told her they intended to surprise her son at the family home in Barendrecht, just south of Rotterdam, and arrest him on the spot. She asked if José wanted to be there for her son’s arrest. “No,” she replied grimly. It felt as if she had just betrayed her son. To stand by and watch would make it even worse. The police asked José for her house keys and dropped her off at a plaza by the local supermarket a few blocks from her house. She felt terrible as the officers drove away to arrest her eldest child, just a troubled 17-year-old. A little while later, three officers emerged from the house, escorting Edwin between them. He offered no resistance. Continue reading...

Industry’s huge use of electricity could present an awkward question for Joe Biden ahead of the Cop26 climate talksThe United States has overtaken China to account for the largest share of the world’s bitcoin mining, according to data published by researchers at Cambridge University.The figures demonstrate the impact of a crackdown on bitcoin trading and mining launched by the Chinese government in late May, which devastated the industry and caused miners to shut up shop or move overseas. Continue reading...

The company, under wide-ranging scrutiny for harms linked to its platforms, increased protections against harassment and bullyingFacebook will count activists and journalists as “involuntary” public figures and increase protections against harassment and bullying targeted at these groups, its global safety chief said in an interview this week.The social media company, which allows more critical commentary of public figures than of private individuals, is changing its approach on the harassment of journalists and “human rights defenders”, who it says are in the public eye due to their work rather than their public personas. Continue reading...

Inside the notoriously insular company, employees’ perceptions of Haugen appear to be dividedWhen former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen testified before the Senate last Tuesday, she painted an unsightly picture of the social networking company.As a member of the company’s civic misinformation team for almost two years until her departure in May, Haugen shared insights the company had previously hidden – from Facebook’s willingness to propagate hateful content on its platforms to keep users engaged to research proving Instagram’s detrimental effects on teen girls’ mental health – and leaked thousands of pages of internal documents backing up her claims. Continue reading...

Sir Jon Cunliffe likens danger to 2008 crash and calls for tough regulation of cryptocurrenciesA senior Bank of England policymaker has warned that digital currencies such as bitcoin could trigger a financial meltdown unless governments step forward with tough regulations.Likening the growth of cryptocurrencies to the spiralling value of US sub-prime mortgages before the 2008 financial crash, the deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe said there was danger financial markets could be rocked in a few years by an event of similar magnitude. Continue reading...

Shares in Apple fall as global chip shortage and supply chain issues prompt White House to admit there could be empty shelves during festive seasonApple may slash the number of iPhone 13s it will make this year by up to 10m because of a shortage of computer chips amid a worldwide supply chain crunch that led the White House to warn that “there will be things that people can’t get” at Christmas.Apple was expected to produce 90m units of the new iPhone models this year but has told its manufacturers that the number would be lower because chip suppliers including Broadcom and Texas Instruments were struggling to deliver components, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. Continue reading...

Mothers describe their daughters’ dangerous experiences after whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimonyEarly in the Covid-19 pandemic, Michelle noticed her teenage daughters were spending substantially more time on Instagram.The girls were feeling isolated and bored during lockdown, the Arizona mom, who has asked to be identified by her first name to maintain her children’s privacy, recalled. She hoped social media could be a way for them to remain connected with their friends and community. Continue reading...

Round-the-clock surveillance of students’ accounts raises tricky privacy concerns. And do they really help keep kids safe?In the midst of a pandemic and a national uprising, Teeth Logsdon-Wallace was kept awake at night last summer by the constant sounds of helicopters and sirens.For the 13-year-old from Minneapolis, who lives close to where George Floyd was murdered in May 2020, the pandemic-induced isolation and social unrest amplified the emotional distress he was experiencing as a result of gender dysphoria. His billowing depression landed him in the hospital after he tried to kill himself. During that dark stretch, he spent his days in an outpatient psychiatric facility, where he listened to a punk song on loop that promised things would soon “get better”. Eventually they did. Continue reading...

TikTok | Children’s books | Child refugees | Travelling fairs | DuelsIt isn’t TikTok that’s letting kids see inappropriate posts, it’s their parents (Revealed: anti-vaccine TikTok videos being viewed by children as young as nine, 8 October). There are controls that can stop young people signing up; it’s up to their parents and guardians to use them. I suggest a “revert to defaults” on kids’ devices once a day, or as often as necessary. Then get TikTok to deal with the liars. Take back control, people!

Lindy Cameron, head of National Cyber Security Centre, says extortion is most serious online threat to UKCybercriminals from Russia and neighbouring states are behind the majority of online extortion conducted against businesses and other organisations in Britain, according to the chief of the UK’s cybersecurity agency.Lindy Cameron, the chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said ransomware “presents the most immediate danger” of all cyber threats faced by the UK, in a speech to the Chatham House thinktank. Continue reading...

Xbox One/Series X/S, PC, PlayStation 4/5; Remedy Entertainment

According to one survey, 81% of teachers in America said their schools monitor devices. Students are not always awareWhen the pandemic started last year, countless forms of inequality were exposed – including the millions of American families who don’t have access to laptops or broadband internet. After some delays, schools across the country jumped into action and distributed technology to allow students to learn remotely. The catch? They ended up spying on students. “For their own good”, of course.According to recent research by the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), “86% of teachers reported that, during the pandemic, schools provided tablets, laptops, or Chromebooks to students at twice the rate (43%) prior to the pandemic, an illustration of schools’ attempts to close disparities in digital access.”Jessa Crispin is a Guardian US columnistIn the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org Continue reading...

Corinne and Luke, both 31, met online in August 2013 when they bonded over a video game. They now live together in LondonIn August 2013, Corinne was living with her family in north London and working in a dull admin job. “I was playing a lot of video games as an escape,” she says. One day, she was recruited by friends to try a new game with a group of others online. She wasn’t told how it worked and quickly became lost, but got talking to Luke, an American who was struggling with the same game. “While everyone else was slaying dragons, we started talking on voice chat,” he says. They couldn’t see each other’s faces, but Luke liked her accent.They continued to talk during online gaming sessions and spoke regularly about Luke’s love for British comedy panel shows. “I was living in New York with my family and I was curious about what life was like in the UK. I had a lot of questions,” says Luke, laughing. They built an online friendship, but it wasn’t until the following March that they began to speak on other platforms. Continue reading...

Heartbreak is the ailment, could culture be the cure? Our critics’ suggestions to help ease your pain – or channel your angstThe best method for getting through a breakup is watching Marc Webb’s movie (500) Days of Summer, in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets dumped by the original Manic Pixie Dream Girl Zooey Deschanel. For all its faults, this film has a killer rejection scene; it’s so painful, especially for a man, that it should lance the boil of emotional pain all by itself. Gordon-Levitt stars as Tom, who shows up for a party to which he has been diplomatically invited by his now ex-girlfriend Summer. The poor dope is somehow hoping against hope that the old magic will be rekindled. The party is cleverly split on the screen between “Expectations” and “Reality”: on the left we see his fantasy that they will start canoodling, on the right, the horrible reality of her distant, if polite interactions with him. Pure agony. Peter Bradshaw Continue reading...

Modern video games now exist in a bewildering mass of interconnected genres and sub-genres: here’s your guide to the most interestingThis term is a portmanteau derived from two beloved games that arrived on the Nintendo Entertainment System in the mid-1980s, Metroid and Castlevania, and is usually applied to 2D games in which the world is explorable in all directions (as opposed to classic platform games, in which you go from left to right). There are usually secret rooms and areas that can only be accessed once you’ve found some key or item later on, so players have to mentally map their progress and backtrack when necessary. In this way a good metroidvania world is like a story, with tension, foreshadowing, plants, payoffs and surprise reveals built into the very foundations. Continue reading...

Failure to ensure women have equal access to the internet hampering developing economies and fuelling gender inequalityA failure to ensure women have equal access to the internet has cost low-income countries $1tn (£730bn) over the past decade and could mean an additional loss of $500bn by 2025 if governments don’t take action, according to new research.Last year, governments in 32 countries, including India, Egypt and Nigeria, lost an estimated $126bn in gross domestic product because women were unable to contribute to the digital economy. Continue reading...

The site rejected my request to pay for new locks and refused to discuss it furtherCan you please ask Airbnb how it allowed a fraudster to stay in my house and steal my speakers and keys? I rent out my home in east London whenever I go back to Ireland to visit family. In July I accepted a request from a woman called Clare who had a verified profile and past reviews, and all seemed well. The keys were left in the lockbox as usual, the guests checked themselves in – and then threw a house party. When I returned I found my £600 speakers were gone along with the house keys. I had to spend £400 replacing the locks.Airbnb rejected my request for reimbursement and refused to discuss it further. However, after I tracked down Clare, it emerged that her account had been taken over fraudulently, and that Airbnb had been made aware of this fact on the day of the booking by her credit card company, Barclaycard. Continue reading...

State reports 1,612 new local coronavirus cases and eight deaths amid testing of updated phone appAbout 70,000 Victorians have downloaded the updated Service Victoria app as the state pushes ahead with regional trials for the vaccinated economy.The smartphone app allows Victorians to view and download vaccine certificates for the double jabbed, which can be scanned alongside QR code check-ins at venues. Continue reading...

Facebook executive would not say if he believed platform bore responsibility for amplifying baseless claims of stolen election

Demand for capacity grows on back of hit Netflix shows, online games and moreThe breakout success of the South Korean drama Squid Game has prompted a local broadband provider to launch legal action to force the maker, Netflix, to help pay for the huge surge in traffic, the latest flashpoint in the argument over who should carry the burden of the spiralling costs of data fuelled by the global streaming boom.From Netflix’s latest global sensation and livestreamed Premier League football matches on Amazon Prime Video, to bandwidth-busting traffic when hit online games such as Fortnite or Call of Duty are updated, the demand for internet capacity has undergone unprecedented growth in recent years. Continue reading...

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsI imagine that a couple of hundred years ago the idea of recording and playing back audio or video was as ridiculous as the idea seems now of recording and playing back odours. So why have we made so much progress at the first but none at the second? Peter Keyston, Newton BlossomvilleSend new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Continue reading...

Teenage boys’ easy access to violent sexual images is creating a crisis for them – and for women, argues the anti-porn campaignerViolence against women is never far from the news, but currently it is high on the agenda – and porn features again and again as a factor. From the murder of Sarah Everard to the paltry sentence handed down to Sam Pybus, the latest man to use the so-called “rough sex defence”, it seems the world is riven with misogyny.Sarah’s killer Wayne Couzens was attracted to “brutal sexual pornography”, the court heard during his trial. Pybus – who was sentenced to four years and eight months last month for manslaughter after strangling a vulnerable woman during sex – was also known to use violent porn. Tackling porn culture is clearly a key part of tackling sexual violence towards women. I have campaigned to end the sex trade for decades, and am well aware of its role in the sexual exploitation of women. Continue reading...

Scientist Philip Jones is resigned, but ready for a fresh wave of abuse when drama The Trick tries to put the record straight on accusations that he falsified data on global heatingTwelve years ago, Professor Philip Jones was subject to a barrage of hate mail and death threats that pushed him close to suicide. Emails, hacked from his laboratory, proved climate change research was a fraud, it was claimed.Now Jones faces a repeat of that grim onslaught when the BBC One film, The Trick, is screened on 18 October. It will tell the story, sympathetically, of his tribulations at the hands of climate change deniers. Continue reading...

In her explosive Senate testimony, the former employee exposed how the tech giant puts profit before the public goodThe journey from disillusioned ex-employee to modern-day heroine took Frances Haugen less than five months. The 37-year-old logged out of Facebook’s company network for the last time in May and last week was being publicly lauded a “21st-century American hero” on Washington’s Capitol Hill.That journey was paved with tens of thousands of internal documents, taken from Facebook’s internal system by Haugen, that formed the backbone of a series of damning revelations first published in the Wall Street Journal last month. They revealed that Facebook knew its products were damaging the mental health of teenage girls, resisted changes that would make the content of its main platform less divisive and knew its main platform was being used to incite ethnic violence in Ethiopia. Continue reading...

‘I think we need regulation to protect people’s private data,’ influential Democrat says in wake of Frances Haugen revelations

A heavily criticised investment in OneWeb could bring the government a first bite at the lucrative satellite internet marketThey are invisible to the naked eye, but can leave a streak of light across an astronomer’s telescope. Above our heads, the constellation of small satellites orbiting the Earth is expanding every month. Often no bigger than a fridge, they are part of a new space race as rivals compete to beam broadband internet to the hardest-to-reach places on Earth.The frontrunners are Starlink, backed by US tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, and OneWeb, which is part- owned by the British taxpayer. The latter’s plan to build a network of 650 satellites is a centrepiece of the UK’s space strategy, unveiled in September. Continue reading...

Philippines journalist Maria Ressa says social media firm is threat to democracy and failing to halt spread of misinformationThe campaigning Philippines journalist Maria Ressa, who was last week awarded the Nobel peace prize, has launched a stinging attack on Facebook, accusing the social media firm of being a threat to democracy that was “biased against facts” and failed to prevent the spread of disinformation.She said its algorithms “prioritise the spread of lies laced with anger and hate over facts”. Continue reading...

If you think ending the supply chain crisis will be hard, pity the poor players of this popular job simulation game, who have to deal with angry customers, mean relatives and weird physicsThe fuel crisis has brought the rigours of one particular profession into sharp focus this month. Petrol station managers throughout Britain have had to cope with snaking queues, angry customers and even forecourt fist fights, as the shortage of HGV drivers took its toll. It’s a career many of us probably hadn’t thought much about before this troubling new subplot in the ongoing Brexit/Covid drama, but has now become a countrywide concern. For those who want to know more, there’s a game for that.Fortuitously released just a few weeks before the crisis, and currently one of the most streamed games on Twitch, Gas Station Simulator has you taking over a dilapidated fuel stop just off Route 66 in the middle of the desert. OK, so it’s hardly a BP garage on the North Circular, but the basics are similar. First you need to clear the place up – unboard the windows, fix the electrics and throw away a lot of junk (which is extremely satisfying) – but then you’re down to the real business: filling tanks, serving customers at the till and ordering in petrol and snack deliveries. Continue reading...

Frances Haugen, the Facebook whistleblower, joined a growing list of Silicon Valley former employees to call out company policiesWhen Frances Haugen revealed she was the Facebook whistleblower who supplied internal documents to Congress and the Wall Street Journal, she joined a growing list of current and former Silicon Valley employees who’ve come forward to call out military contracts, racism, sexism, contributions to climate crisis, pay disparities and more in the industry.In the past days, the Guardian spoke with five former employees of Amazon, Google, and Pinterest who’ve spoken out about their companies’ policies. The conversations revealed Haugen’s experience has been singular in some respects. Few of them received the international praise bestowed upon her. Some of them said they have faced termination, retaliation, harassment and prolonged litigation. Continue reading...

Covid misinformation remains on site for months adding to concern over impact of social media on young peopleLies and conspiracy theories about Covid-19, which have amassed millions of views and are accessible to young children, have been available on the social media platform TikTok for months.TikTok accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers that discourage vaccination and peddle myths about Covid survival rates were uncovered by NewsGuard, an organisation that monitors online misinformation. Continue reading...

Israeli maker of surveillance software blocked +44 code after detecting hack against Princess Haya, source saysThe powerful spyware used to hack into mobile phones belonging to Princess Haya and her divorce lawyer Fiona Shackleton is no longer effective against UK numbers, sources familiar with the software’s developer have said.NSO Group, the Israeli maker of the Pegasus surveillance tool, implemented a change preventing client countries from targeting +44 numbers, the sources said, after it became aware of the British hacking scandal on 5 August last year. Continue reading...

With its larger, brighter display and array of useful updates, this sleek new version of the Switch is expensive but desirableI will be for ever grateful to the Nintendo Switch for saving my sanity during the two most trying periods of my life: my first year of parenthood, during which I learned to breastfeed lying down so that I could sneak extra hours of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule; and basically all of 2020, during which I was dealing with a pandemic, a six-month-old baby and a three-year-old, and Animal Crossing was the only thing that kept me from losing my entire mind.After four and a half years, though, the brilliant hybrid on-the-go-and-living-room console is getting long in the tooth. The Switch Lite, released in September 2019, wasn’t so much an upgrade as a stripped-down redesign: lighter, simpler, made for playing on the bus or in bed. And it lacked the Switch’s two most elegant features: you couldn’t play it on a TV, and you couldn’t snap off a controller to hand to a friend for a pub round of Mario Kart. Continue reading...

According to leaked research, the firm has found engagement among a key demographic is in declineOliver Coghlan embodies Facebook’s problems with teen and young adult audiences – a growing number of them do not like it. The 23-year-old says he stopped using Facebook regularly three years ago and he is considering deleting the app. His sole use for it now is to check people’s birthdays.“I haven’t deleted it yet but I might do soon – I really don’t like the company’s monopolistic behaviour,” said Coghlan, a British student based in the Netherlands. He added that the EU referendum and the 2016 US presidential election, and the online anger that accompanied those polls, convinced him that he wanted to spend less time on Facebook’s main platform. Continue reading...

We must demand that Facebook tell the full, unvarnished truth. Fortunately for us, the public, the truth tends to come through despite Facebook officials’ best efforts to obscure itImagine what it’s like to work at Facebook this week. For about five years much of the world has slowly turned against the service that once promised to connect the world and spread democracy and cookies and puppies and such. But this week, in the wake of revelations of serious malfeasance and moral irresponsibility by Facebook’s leaders, it must be unbearable to face friends and family, even distant Facebook friends.In recent days, Frances Haugen, a former member of Facebook’s “civic integrity team”, has launched a deft and professional public assault on the company. Unlike previous Facebook whistleblowers, like former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, Haugen managed to capture the interest and attention of policy leaders and journalists around the world. We have to ask why Haugen has had so much traction and impact when Zhang, who was fired for raising objections within the company to Facebook’s human rights problems, did not.Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy Continue reading...

Silenced No More Act makes it illegal for firms to prevent employees from speaking out about harassment or discriminationIn an important victory for Silicon Valley activists and California workers, the governor has signed a law making it illegal for companies to bar employees from speaking out about harassment and discrimination.The new law is the result of hard-fought advocacy work by those in the tech industry who have long spoken out against the restrictive confidentiality arrangements, known as nondisclosure agreements or NDAs, which are intended to protect industry secrets but have also created a culture of silence around wrongdoing. Continue reading...

The Economist’s correspondents offer expert analysis in To a Lesser Degree. Plus: how a 90s boyband disappeared, and an enlightening, enraging look at Anita Hill’s landmark testimonyTo a Lesser Degree

As high-end fashion conglomerates rush to invest in virtual reality fashion, small players are making moves tooIn the designer Denni Francisco’s new film, models wearing clothes from her label Ngali wander through a virtual landscape. Using this digital medium, it was possible to take her collection on location, despite being in lockdown and unable to travel.This was particularly important for Francisco, a Wiradjuri woman, as the landscape used in the film is based on Taungurung Country, in central Victoria, where Francisco was born, and her daughter now lives. She says when she’s designing, connection to Country is at the forefront of her mind. “We’re often talking about how what we do belongs to Country, how it’s connected to Country and how it has a rightful place in Country,” she says.

Users urged to ‘look out for each other’ and ‘remember the human’ as platform tries to limit abuseTwitter users poised to dive into a heated online debate will be warned they are about to enter an “intense” conversation, under a safety trial.The social media platform is testing a feature that drops a notice under a potentially contentious exchange, stating: “Heads up. Conversations like this can be intense.” Another prompt, which appears to be aimed at people making a reply, goes to greater lengths to calm down users and urges the tweeter to “look out for each other”, “remember the human” and note that “diverse perspectives have value”. Continue reading...

Super-slick screen, better cameras with 3x optical zoom, good battery and speed make it tough to beatThe iPhone 13 Pro is a solid upgrade on last year’s model with a faster and slicker screen, a better camera with 3x optical zoom, longer battery life and a small price cut.Apple’s latest Pro smartphone costs £949 ($799/A$1,349), which is £50 cheaper than its predecessor but still near the top of the market. It sits between the standard £779 iPhone 13 and the £1,049 iPhone 13 Pro Max.Screen: 6.1in Super Retina XDR with ProMotion (120Hz OLED) (460ppi)Processor: Apple A15 BionicRAM: 6GBStorage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TBOperating system: iOS 15Camera: Triple 12MP rear cameras with OIS, 12MP front-facing cameraConnectivity: 5G, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5, Lightning, ultra wideband and locationWater resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)Dimensions: 146.7mm x 71.5mm x 7.7mmWeight: 204g Continue reading...

This film exploring the ideas of Dr Phil Kennedy, who had an electrode implanted in his brain, throws up interesting prospects for the human futureDr Phil Kennedy is regarded by many as the Indiana Jones of neuroscience: a Limerick-born doctor who became a bioengineering trailblazer, making people excited – and then nervous – by the way he worked outside the system. Then finally, sensationally, he experimented on himself by having an electrode implanted inside his brain in a Belize clinic that specialises in medical tourism.Kennedy did this to measure the ways in which brainwaves can be harnessed to external computing capacity, helping people with locked-in syndrome or ALS, for example, although what was specifically achieved by implant surgery on himself isn’t clear. This brief documentary is a partial introduction to the man and his work and it seeks to rescue Kennedy from his wacky reputation, to downplay the maverick side of his personality (there is no mention of his self-published sci-fi novel called 2051) and it doesn’t dwell on the fact that Kennedy is now regarded as somewhat eccentric by mainstream neuroscientists – although disruptors, pioneers and original thinkers are very often people just like him. Continue reading...

Court judgments reveal how Sheikh Mohammed’s use of Pegasus spyware against his ex-wife was uncovered

Instant messaging app experiences one-day surge in signups and tops the US iPhone download chartThe instant messaging app Telegram registered 70 million new users during Monday’s Facebook blackout, its Russian founder said, as people around the world flocked to the encrypted service.“The daily growth rate of Telegram exceeded the norm by an order of magnitude, and we welcomed over 70 million refugees from other platforms in one day,” Pavel Durov wrote on his Telegram channel. Continue reading...