Feed technology-the-guardian Technology | The Guardian

Favorite IconTechnology | The Guardian

Link https://www.theguardian.com/us/technology
Feed http://feeds.theguardian.com/theguardian/technology/rss
Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. 2024
Updated 2024-11-23 00:00
Do dress up, don’t get drunk: how to have a great virtual date
Lockdown or no lockdown, the video-call date is here to stay. Experts reveal how to look your best, keep the conversation flowing and turn that online spark into a face-to-face meetingAs if first dates aren’t awkward enough, along comes video dating to add an extra layer of tech frustration and misinterpreted body language to the mix. During lockdown, video calls – either within a dating app, or on platforms such as Zoom – took off. But as restrictions lift, many dating experts predict the format is here to stay – or at least that it has become a helpful additional step. Dating apps rolled out video call functions last year, and Hinge found that 65% of people who had been on a virtual date planned to continue post-pandemic. Of Tinder’s younger users (Generation Z daters, in their late teens and early 20s), half have used video dating. So you may as well perfect your on-screen hairstyle, decide what to wear on your upper half and embrace it. Here are some tips on how to succeed. Continue reading...
PayPal to allow UK users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies
Payment platform offers service for bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cashPayPal is to allow users in the UK to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies through the payment platform for the first time.The firm said it would allow customers to choose from four types of cryptocurrency – bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and bitcoin cash – and that the service would be available via the PayPal app and its website. Continue reading...
The Guardian’s first Tech editor: ‘They gave me a demo and showed me things I couldn’t believe’
Victor Keegan, the correspondent who went on to put the first Guardian content online, recalls the chance news item in 1981 that opened up the possibilities of home computing and kicked off the paper’s dedicated coverage of a social revolutionTechnology isn’t a beat with a natural affinity for nostalgia. The industry thrives on its futuristic image, worships boy-CEOs and renders the past obsolete at a frightening pace.Even in the eight years I’ve sat on the Guardian’s technology desk, the field I cover is frequently unrecognisable from what it was when I started – a world where self-driving cars were just around the corner, where virtual reality was an impressive technology that had failed to catch on with normal people, and where the world was starting to tire of the like-clockwork appearance of a new iPhone every 12 months. Continue reading...
Constant craving: how digital media turned us all into dopamine addicts
According to addiction expert Dr Anna Lembke, our smartphones are making us dopamine junkies, with each swipe, like and tweet feeding our habit. So how do we beat our digital dependency?Dr Anna Lembke, a world-leading expert on addiction, is concerned about my “phone problem”. During our interview I confess, in passing, to having an unhealthy attachment to my iPhone, checking it every few minutes like a compulsive tic (sound familiar?) Lembke is having none of it. She wants me to abstain from using it for at least 24 hours by locking it in a drawer and going out. The first 12 hours will be filled with anxiety and Fomo, but as time unfolds, I’ll experience a sense of “real freedom”, will gain insight into my relationship with my digital companion and will “resolve to get back to using it a little differently”, she says, speaking with a soothing yet firm tone.I’d do well to heed her advice. As the chief of Stanford University’s dual diagnosis addiction clinic (which caters to people with more than one disorder), Lembke has spent the past 25-plus years treating patients addicted to everything from heroin, gambling and sex to video games, Botox and ice baths. The bespectacled 53-year-old psychiatrist has written an influential book about the prescription-drug epidemic, delivered Ted Talks on America’s opioid crisis and appeared as a talking head in the 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma to discuss the drug that is social media. She’s a whiz on why we get hooked on things – and how we can enjoy pleasurable things in healthier doses. Continue reading...
Meet the man behind Tveeder, the no-frills live TV transcript that became an Australian media hero
Beloved by journalists and increasingly used by a wider public, Tveeder is still run from Franco Trimboli’s Melbourne bedroom, in his spare time, out of his own pocketOn any given day, Franco Trimboli’s hobby makes the news.During office hours the 42-year-old who lives in suburban Melbourne is a coder, digital designer and project manager for the educational branch of the jobs website Seek. Continue reading...
Humanoid ‘Tesla Bot’ likely to launch next year, says Elon Musk
Billionaire Tesla chief gives no indication of any progress in actually building such a machineElon Musk said he would probably launch a humanoid robot prototype next year dubbed the “Tesla Bot”, which is designed to do “boring, repetitious and dangerous” work.The billionaire chief executive of the electric carmaker Tesla said the robot, which would be about 5ft 8in (1.7m) tall and weigh 125 pounds (56kg), would be able to handle tasks such as attaching bolts to cars with a spanner or picking up groceries at stores. Continue reading...
Apple delays return to corporate offices until 2022 as Covid cases rise
The iPhone maker had previously told its global workforce to plan for a phased return from October
Australians hit by ‘Flubot’ malware that arrives by text message
New scam spreads to Australia from Europe, targeting thousands of Android usersThousands of Australians have been hit by a new scam text message known as Flubot, which aims to install malware on their phones.Flubot is a type of malware targeting Android users, but iPhone users can also receive the messages. It tells the receiver they missed a call or have a new voicemail, providing a fake link to listen. Continue reading...
Amazon reportedly plans to open department stores
Company’s latest move comes after years of competing against brick-and-mortar retailersAmazon is planning to open department stores after years of competing against, and in some cases helping to destroy, the very same traditional brick-and-mortar retailers.The company’s latest move to bricks and mortar, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes after Amazon earlier this week eclipsed even Walmart in overall sales to become the world’s largest retail seller outside China. Continue reading...
Facebook pledges to become ‘water positive’ by 2030
The tech firm aims to restore more water than it consumes, as it competes to meet green goalsFacebook has announced plans to become “water positive” by 2030, restoring more water than the company consumes globally.The firm is leaning further into a virtuous skirmish between the world’s largest technology players, as they all compete to be the first to achieve carbon neutrality, commit to offsetting the emissions created by their customers as well as their own operations, and even plan to eliminate all carbon emitted over the organisation’s lifetime. Continue reading...
UK consortium enters race to build solid-state batteries for electric cars
Some prototypes exist, but firms have struggled to commercialise a durable solid-state batteryBritish manufacturers believe the UK could become a significant exporter of solid-state batteries that could pave the way for lighter, longer-range electric cars within a decade, as a group of companies teamed up to develop prototypes.The FTSE 100 chemicals company Johnson Matthey, the battery startup Britishvolt, which is backed by Glencore, and Oxford University are among the seven institutions that have signed a memorandum of understanding promising to work together on the technology. Continue reading...
Australian watchdog considers regulating Apple and Google to boost app store competition
Push comes as Fortnite creator Epic Games fights a global legal battle against the tech giants over in-app paymentsAs Fortnite creator Epic Games continues its global legal battle against Apple and Google over in-app payments, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says “upfront rules and regulations” may be needed to force the tech giants to open their app stores to greater competition.For Apple iOS platforms, developers must use the App Store, while for Google, apps can be installed on Android devices outside the Play store either through direct download or alternative marketplaces, but uptake of these options is limited. Continue reading...
Twelve Minutes review – a tense time-loop thriller
Xbox, PC; Luis Antonia/Annapurna Interactive
Facebook no, Twitter yes: which tech firms let the Taliban post?
Analysis: Twitter has faced criticism for allowing members to post, while Facebook has taken harder line
Game (voice)over: actors turn to video game work during pandemic
Demand for voice actors increases, providing relief for workers whose other sources of income has dried up
‘Ten years ago this was science fiction’: the rise of weedkilling robots
The makers of robot weeders say the machines can reduce pesticide use and be part of a more sustainable food systemIn the corner of an Ohio field, a laser-armed robot inches through a sea of onions, zapping weeds as it goes.This field doesn’t belong to a dystopian future but to Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer whose TikTok posts about farming life often go viral. Continue reading...
Why Mass Effect is some of the best sci-fi ever made
By turns as cerebral as Star Trek, as hopeful as Asimov and as dramatic as Battlestar Galactica, the video game series deserves a place among the sci-fi greatsOur species will one day end. Whether it’s down to our own hubris, the disastrous effects of unbridled wealth accumulation and social division, war, the climate crisis, plague, a space rock or perhaps unfriendly aliens – we’ll one day be dust caught in cosmic winds, lost to an indifferent universe. On our pale blue dot, the remnants of once-great civilisations and vanished peoples that we unearth already show us that advanced development is no guarantee of perpetuity.In sci-fi, humanity’s naive yearning to fight on despite this realisation often proves a point of curiosity – and sometimes inspiration – for alien species. This is front and centre of the Mass Effect trilogy of video games, in which our imminent annihilation is given form in the tendrils of creatures called Reapers: ancient, building-sized, alien-robot hybrids that wipe out most life in the Milky Way every 50,000 years. Continue reading...
UK security chiefs issue guidance to ministers over hackers on WhatsApp
Exclusive: civil service chief points to work to improve cybersecurity in response to Labour concernsMinisters and civil servants conducting “government by WhatsApp” have been at risk of being targeted by hackers, leading to new advice from security chiefs about how to improve their privacy.The cabinet secretary, Simon Case, revealed that the Government Security Group had issued fresh guidance across government in a letter to Labour, which had raised questions about ministers using their personal phones to conduct official business. Continue reading...
TechScape: Is Apple taking a dangerous step into the unknown?
Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: Privacy fears over Apple’s plans to scan photo libraries to flag child abuse material … algorithmic bias … and comics in your inboxApple made waves on Friday, with an announcement that the company would begin scanning photo libraries stored on iPhones in the US to find and flag known instances of child sexual abuse material.From our story: Continue reading...
No Man’s Sky: five years of metaphysical adventures
As it celebrates with a teaser of a new update, the strange, metaphysical space exploration has survived a tricky take-off and retained its vital spiritAs soon as I set foot on my first planet in No Man’s Sky five years ago, dying almost immediately in the boiling atmosphere of an utterly barren, deserted world, I was hooked. Here at last, was a space game for the rest of us, and by the rest of us I mean kids who grew up watching Silent Running and Solaris, and reading the trippy existential sci-fi of Ray Bradbury, Stanisław Lem and Ursula K le Guin. Here was a space game with no space marines, where making a bad decision on a hostile alien planet or in some distant asteroid belt could have deadly ramifications, and where existence among the stars was about toil and patience and long periods of silent travel.This wasn’t how everyone felt about the game upon its much-hyped launch in 2016. No Man’s Sky was famously revealed at the 2014 Game Awards, a hugely popular showcase for new mega-budget blockbusters, the gaming equivalent of advertising during the Super Bowl. This high-profile introduction, together with some ludicrously ambitious plans from tiny Guildford developer Hello Games, led to wild expectations – a gigantically detailed massively multiplayer space opera, combining elements of Elite Dangerous, Eve Online and Star Citizen into one giant production. Continue reading...
Covid contracts: inquiry to look into use of WhatsApp, says ICO
Information commissioner confirms Lord Bethell’s use of messaging app will be investigated
Venmo voyeurs: why do we let friends see our financial transactions online?
Some Venmo users enjoy the voyeurism of public payments – but soon the days of snooping on strangers’ spending habits will be overWould you ever want your friends to see how many taxi rides you share on a wild weekend out? Who you had Thai noodles with on any given day? With whom you split rent and living expenses?Related: Who misses paying for things with cash? Well, I do Continue reading...
Beats Studio Buds review: Apple’s Android-loving noise-cancelling earbuds
Buds have good sound, battery life, compact shape without stalks and work with Android or iPhonesThe latest Apple Bluetooth earbuds from its Beats brand offer active noise-cancelling and cross-compatibility that goes beyond its competitors – even for Android users.The Studio Buds cost £129.99 ($149.99 or A$199.95) and are Beats’ smallest earbuds to date, following on from the sport-oriented PowerBeats Pro and budget Beats Flex. Continue reading...
A dog’s inner life: what a robot pet taught me about consciousness
The creators of the Aibo robot dog say it has ‘real emotions and instinct’. This may seem over the top, but is it? In today’s AI universe, all the eternal questions have become engineering problemsThe package arrived on a Thursday. I came home from a walk and found it sitting near the mailboxes in the front hall of my building, a box so large and imposing I was embarrassed to discover my name on the label. It took all my strength to drag it up the stairs.I paused once on the landing, considered abandoning it there, then continued hauling it up to my apartment on the third floor, where I used my keys to cut it open. Inside the box, beneath lavish folds of bubble wrap, was a sleek plastic pod. I opened the clasp: inside, lying prone, was a small white dog. Continue reading...
Why Instagram’s creatives are angry about its move to video
The social media platform was once a favourite of artists and photographers, but a shift towards TikTok-type videos and shopping could leave them looking for a new home onlineIn late July, hobbyist photographer and self-proclaimed “sunrise hunter” Sam Binding conducted an experiment. After visiting Somerset Lavender Farm to catch the sun peeking over the purple blossoms, the 40-year-old from Bristol uploaded the results to both Instagram and Twitter. Two days later, he used the apps’ built-in analytics tools to assess the impact of his shots. On Instagram, a total of 5,595 people saw his post – just over half of his 11,000 followers. On Twitter, his post was seen by 5,611 people, despite the fact he has just 333 followers on the site.This confirmed Binding’s hunch that although most people believe that Instagram is a place to share photos and Twitter is a place to share words, that may no longer be the case. When it launched in 2010, Instagram courted the artistic community, inviting respected designers to be among its initial users and naming its very first filter X-Pro II, after an analogue photo-developing technique. In her 2020 book No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, technology reporter Sarah Frier documents how Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom wanted Instagram to be an outlet for artists (in a high-school essay, Systrom wrote that he liked how photography could “inspire others to look at the world in a new way”). Continue reading...
Activision Blizzard scandal a ‘watershed moment’ for women in the gaming industry
California’s legal action could mark step towards fixing culture of harassment, experts sayFor women at Activision Blizzard, one of the world’s most famous video game companies, showing up to work meant navigating near daily episodes of humiliation, sexual harassment, and even physical abuse, according to a bombshell lawsuit that has prompted a reckoning within the gaming industry.The claims paint a disturbing picture of life for female employees: rampant sexual harassment, gender discrimination, retaliation, and a “frat boy” workplace culture where men objectified women’s bodies and openly joked about rape. Continue reading...
Is robot therapy the future?
Seek help for a mental health issue today and you may find yourself referred to an online app or talking to a robot therapist. Is this welcome democratisation of an expensive resource – or the ‘Uberisation of therapy’?She’s sitting on a purple armchair, nodding slowly as she talks. “When was the last time you felt really happy?” Her voice is low and measured, with the gently broken glottal quality that one might expect of a computer simulation, her ethnicity undefined, her cardigan beige. Ellie, an artificial intelligence therapist created with funding from the US government agency responsible for the development of military technologies, is capable of reading 60 non-verbal cues a second. She wears a watch and a look of blank empathy. On the split screen, her patient repeats her question. “Hmm, when was the last time I felt really happy?” He’s a young white man who appears to find the interaction unremarkable, which I find remarkable. She detects his “low gaze attention” as he answers, and nods, and prods, and mirrors his facial expressions. And I realise I am nodding, too.The future of therapy arrived faster than planned. Over the past decade the appearance of mental health care has radically changed, evolving from soft conversations held in small rooms, to encompass teletherapy (at a distance), text-based therapy (through messaging apps), chatbots that perform cognitive behavioural therapy, online platforms that match you to a therapist and, soon, AI therapy with a “non-human” therapist like Ellie. In 2020 the pandemic brought about a mental health crisis and these online services were pushed blinking into the light. As Covid gnawed its way through communities, record numbers of children and adults sought NHS help for problems such as anxiety and depression, and private online therapy platforms, such as BetterHelp, saw a spike in users. The future was here, for around £60 a week. Continue reading...
Now Zuckerberg wants Facebook to be master of the virtual universe | Alex Hern
The social media magnate has evidently decided that the ‘metaverse’ is the way forward. But should we be worried?Brace yourselves: Mark Zuckerberg has a new pivot for Facebook. The visionary genius who brought us the pivot to video, the pivot to privacy, the pivot to trusted news and the pivot away from trusted news is now preparing for the latest turn: the pivot to the “metaverse”. Continue reading...
At best, we’re on Earth for around 4,000 weeks – so why do we lose so much time to online distraction?
Silicon Valley makes billions by stealing your attention. No wonder it’s so hard to focus…One Friday in April 2016, as that year’s polarising US presidential race intensified, and more than 30 armed conflicts raged around the globe, approximately 3 million people spent part of their day watching two reporters from BuzzFeed wrap rubber bands around a watermelon. Gradually, over the course of 43 agonising minutes, the pressure ramped up – the psychological kind and the physical force on the watermelon – until, at minute 44, the 686th rubber band was applied.What happened next won’t amaze you: the watermelon exploded, messily. The reporters high-fived, wiped the splatters from their reflective goggles, then ate some of the fruit. The broadcast ended. Earth continued its orbit around the sun. Continue reading...
WeChat’s youth mode is illegal, says lawsuit, as China steps up attack on Tencent
The messaging app does not comply with laws protecting children, say prosecutors, in fresh crackdown on tech firmsProsecutors in Beijing have initiated a civil lawsuit against a subsidiary of Tencent, saying the “youth mode” on the company’s popular social messaging app WeChat does not comply with laws protecting minors.Related: No cults, no politics, no ghouls: how China censors the video game world Continue reading...
Secret buyer nabs Microsoft grandee’s superyacht for £200m
For £1m a week you can rent 126-metre ship built for Paul Allen, with two helicopters, two subs and a recording studioA vast “explorer class” superyacht built for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has been sold for almost £200m, and is now available to rent for anyone with about a £1m to drop for a week.Octopus was the world’s largest yacht when she was built for Allen in 2003 and the 126-metre vessel marked a turning point in superyacht design, capable of being used for deep sea exploration as well as living a life of luxury on the high seas. Continue reading...
Apple plans to scan US iPhones for child sexual abuse images
Security researchers fear neuralMatch system could be misused to spy on citizensApple will scan photo libraries stored on iPhones in the US for known images of child sexual abuse, the company says, drawing praise from child protection groups but crossing a line that privacy campaigners warn could have dangerous ramifications. The company will also examine the contents of end-to-end encrypted messages for the first time. Continue reading...
A horrifying ‘true crime’ show on the climate crisis – podcasts of the week
Amy Westervelt’s Drilled considers the terrifying practices of the natural gas industry. Plus: an epic podcast about a reclusive writer, and the rise and fall of a prominent megachurchDrilled
Uber drivers in Sydney’s Covid hotspots being offered jobs that breach restrictions
App does not distinguish between trips inside and outside restricted areas, forcing drivers to either give up work or break rulesUber drivers who live in the most heavily locked-down areas of western and south-western Sydney are still being offered work outside of their local government areas, with drivers asking for more clarity from the app about what they can and can’t do.Under the current Sydney lockdown restrictions, rideshare drivers are still allowed to work in certain conditions, such as driving essential workers to their workplaces. But a driver who lives in a locked-down LGA generally cannot leave their LGA to work. Continue reading...
Free Guy review – Ryan Reynolds bounces through fun videogame existential crisis
A non-player character evolves into a sentient AI in a cheerfully silly riff on The Truman Show, with Taika Waititi and Jodie ComerThe great big handsome-goofy face of Ryan Reynolds looms out of the screen in this fantasy comedy from screenwriter Matt Lieberman and director Shawn Levy (of the Night at the Museum franchise). It’s an undemanding and cheerfully silly riff on the themes of virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and what the heck we’re all doing in this big old universe of ours: as if someone took The Truman Show or Inception – or even The Lego Movie – and stripped out every serious satirical ambition, replacing it with M&M-coloured spectacle. The result is not something that’s in any way challenging, but Reynolds is so puppyishly eager to please.Reynolds plays a normal, boring guy whose name is Guy (amusingly, it is never clear if this is his actual given name, as in Guy Crouchback, or the more generic “guy”). He smiles incessantly, wears a bland, short-sleeved blue shirt and goes to work every day as a bank teller in a serenely marvellous-looking modern city, resembling Vancouver. There, he hangs out with his best friend, Buddy – again: generic or given name? – played by Lil Rel Howery, but his bank is always being hit by heists, which he greets with the same imperturbable smileyness. Gradually, Guy realises that he is an NPC, or non-player character, in a video game: a quirk or flaw in the algorithm means that he has hyperevolved into an AI state of free will and agency, able to question what is going on. This astonishes the game’s evil corporate owner Antwan (Taika Waititi), and also the designers Millie (Jodie Comer) and Keys (Joe Keery) whose concept Antwan ripped off. And Millie realises that she will have to enter the game as a player, befriend Guy and enlist his help in getting back their intellectual property – before, of course, falling in love with this clueless pixelated lunk. Continue reading...
Biden sets goal for 50% of new US vehicles to be electric by 2030
President outlines plan to tackle the climate crisis by cutting emissions and tightening pollution standards for cars and trucksJoe Biden is setting a goal for half of all new US vehicle sales to be electric by 2030 while also tightening pollution standards for cars and trucks, in a barrage of action aimed at reducing the largest source of planet-heating gases in America.Related: Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse Continue reading...
Heavy spending on driver incentives pushes Uber to bigger-than-forecast loss
Revenues double as demand for rides increases, but ride-hailing company has to spend moreHeavy spending to encourage drivers back to the road has pushed ride-hailing firm Uber into a larger-than-expected loss, despite the company than doubling its revenues as demand for its services increased.Uber’s “take rate”, or its share of the fare, dropped in the last quarter as it faced elevated costs of getting willing drivers behind the wheel. Continue reading...
TechScape: Why ‘hacker summer camp’ and pandemics don’t mix
Up for discussion in the Guardian tech newsletter: DEF CON hit by Covid concerns … Zuckerberg enters the Metaverse … and the impact of Final Fantasy VIIIn a normal year, I would be getting on a plane today and travelling to Las Vegas for the loose conglomeration of events informally known as “Hacker Summer Camp”. Centred around DEF CON and its stuffy younger sibling Black Hat, the event sees Las Vegas taken over by hackers, information security specialists, spooks and criminals, all there to discuss the best ways to defend computers against hostile adversaries – and to break into those same computers as quickly as possible. Continue reading...
Sony profits soar as it benefits from home entertainment boom
Semiconductor shortage means production volumes of PlayStation 5 fall short of demand
A moment that changed me: I realised I had become a masochist – and quit Twitter
Social media brought me better jobs, close friends and love. But I was ignoring the ways in which the constant criticism and approval were shaping my lifeIn March 2009, I type in “twitter.com” and sign up for the next 12 years of my life. I am 20, in my first year of uni. I have three friends and hate it here. But, on Twitter, I can talk to real music journalists, my longed-for future people. Two years later, I move to London to work at NME. My social awkwardness makes life in a new city feel like dredging the Thames with baggy tights. On Twitter, however, I have blossomed into a magnificent little chaos magnet. Even on sad, drunk Friday nights in, my phone-sized kingdom glitters.Real life improved, often thanks to Twitter. It led me to John, still my boyfriend 10 years on, and many of my closest friends. Thanks to being a woman in a male-dominated field, the odd viral review and little talent for discretion, I ended up with 60,000 followers. I didn’t take it that seriously, but acing my first popularity contest felt like winning Miss World, if she had bad posture and trigger-happy thumbs. Visibility brought better jobs and gave me a platform to retaliate against music’s many dirtbags. The mute button silenced reply guys and trolls, and I hadn’t searched my name in years, ever since John likened that always-upsetting habit to self-harm – an overstatement that nevertheless rang true. Continue reading...
How to photograph the moon on your phone or camera, and the best settings to use
Guardian Australia picture editor Carly Earl explains the dos and don’ts of taking pictures of the moonWhen a full moon rises, many people will pull out their mobile phones to try and get an Instagram-worthy photograph, but unfortunately it is really challenging to get a great picture of the moon.Two reasons: it is very far away and unless you have a telephoto lens (which makes the moon appear closer than it is) it will always appear as a very small glowing dot in the frame. Continue reading...
Let us regulate ‘wild west’ of cryptocurrency, SEC chair urges
Gary Gensler seeks more authority from Congress to oversee a market ‘rife with fraud, scams and abuse’The chair of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has called on Congress to give the agency more authority to police cryptocurrency trading, lending and platforms, a “wild west” he said was riddled with fraud and investor risk.Gary Gensler said on Tuesday that the crypto market involved many tokens that may be unregistered securities and left prices open to manipulation and millions of investors vulnerable to risks. Continue reading...
China’s Tencent tightens games controls for children after state media attack
Article called online gaming ‘spiritual opium’ in what many fear is latest target of regulatory interference
Twitter admits it verified fake account of author Cormac McCarthy
Reclusive US novelist’s agent confirms he did not share his opinions about kombucha and SoundCloudCormac McCarthy is known for his sparse punctuation and distinctive writing style, the violent and pessimistic themes of his work, and his reclusive public persona. So it was surprising to see the novelist on Twitter, sharing bons mots about kombucha and SoundCloud for an audience of thousands.But it was the real Cormac McCarthy – at least, according to Twitter, which gave the account, registered in 2018 under the misspelled name “CormacMcCrthy”, a blue tick marking it as a “verified user”. Continue reading...
The Ascent review – a frenetic murderfest in a dystopian future
PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X; Neon Giant/Curve Digital
Why the internet in Cuba has become a US political hot potato
After Havana shut down online access for 72 hours, the battle is on to keep the country connectedCubans used to joke about Napoleon Bonaparte chatting to Mikhail Gorbachev, George W Bush and Fidel Castro in the afterlife. “If I’d have had your prudence, I’d never have fought Waterloo,” the French emperor tells the last Soviet leader. “If I’d have had your military might, I’d have won Waterloo,” he tells the Texan. Turning last to Castro, the emperor says: “If I’d have had Granma [the Cuban Communist party daily], I’d have lost Waterloo but nobody would have known.”The joke no longer does the rounds. With millions of Cubans now online, the state’s monopoly on mass communication has been deeply eroded. But after social media helped catalyse historic protests on the island last month, the government temporarily shut the internet down. Continue reading...
BT is trying to charge me £348 to leave its broadband service
The company had told me I could leave penalty-free, but it is threatening me with debt collectorsCan you please help me as BT is chasing me for £348 in early termination fees despite previously telling me that it would forgo these charges. The broadband service provided to my house had always been poor but after I had open-heart surgery four years ago, I needed a service that worked. After repeated attempts by BT to improve matters, I eventually switched to Sky, which improved matters somewhat.At the time, BT said I could leave penalty-free, and staff told me to ignore any bills that were sent. However, the company’s most recent letter said it will pass the matter to debt collectors if the bill is not paid with seven days.
The lost history of the electric car – and what it tells us about the future of transport
To every age dogged with pollution, accidents and congestion, the transport solution for the next generation seems obvious – but the same problems keep coming backIn the 1890s, the biggest cities of the western world faced a mounting problem. Horse-drawn vehicles had been in use for thousands of years, and it was hard to imagine life without them. But as the number of such vehicles increased during the 19th century, the drawbacks of using horses in densely populated cities were becoming ever more apparent.In particular, the accumulation of horse manure on the streets, and the associated stench, were impossible to miss. By the 1890s, about 300,000 horses were working on the streets of London, and more than 150,000 in New York City. Each of these horses produced an average of 10kg of manure a day, plus about a litre of urine. Collecting and removing thousands of tonnes of waste from stables and streets proved increasingly difficult. Continue reading...
The billionaire space race – podcast
Last month, billionaire after billionaire hopped into spacecraft to reach the final frontier. Shivani Dave speaks to Robert Massey, the deputy executive director at the Royal Astronomical Society, to understand what, if any, positives might come from what has been called ‘the billionaire space race’, or if the money and resources spent on space exploration should be redistributed to focus on the challenges being faced on Earth Continue reading...
A ‘safe space for racists’: antisemitism report criticises social media giants
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok failing to act on most reported anti-Jewish posts, says studyThere has been a serious and systemic failure to tackle antisemitism across the five biggest social media platforms, resulting in a “safe space for racists”, according to a report.Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok failed to act on 84% of posts spreading anti-Jewish hatred and propaganda reported via the platforms’ official complaints system. Continue reading...
...40414243444546474849...