Will Cathcart likens governments’ stance to insisting a 1984 telescreen be installed in every living roomGovernment attacks on WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption are akin to demands that an Orwellian telescreen be installed in every living room, the app’s head has said as it launches a major advertising campaign in defence of privacy.Will Cathcart told the Guardian in an interview that the abstract nature of digital communications can obscure huge violations of personal freedom. Continue reading...

The ransomware attack that caused long lines for fuel on the east coast was just part of a dramatic change in the scale and nature of foreign-based threatsIt’s been 40 years since Lisa Donnan has queued for gas. But last month the cybersecurity expert found herself joining the long lines of cars across the east coast of the US looking for fuel after the latest in a series of cyber-attacks had shut down the pipeline that provides fuel to 45% of the region.“The last time I did that was in the Iran crisis,” she said. “My dad had to wait with me.” Continue reading...

Yorkshire-based plant-burger and vegan sausage maker launches £5m crowdfunding drivePlant-based burger and sausage maker Meatless Farm is giving its customers the chance to put their money where their mouth is and invest in the fast-growing company, which hopes to follow in the footsteps of runaway “alt-food” successes such as Oatly.The £5m crowdfunding programme is the first time the Yorkshire-based company has offered retail investors the chance to invest with a starting stake of just £10. It comes at a time when eating meat-free meals a couple of times a week is no longer niche, according to its founder, Morten Toft Bech. Continue reading...

GCHQ cybersecurity boss sounds alarm over extortion by hackers who are mostly based in former Soviet statesRansomware represents the biggest threat to online security for most people and businesses in the UK, the head of GCHQ’s cybersecurity arm is to warn.Lindy Cameron, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, will say in a speech that the phenomenon, where hackers encrypt data and demand payment for it to be restored, is escalating and becoming increasingly professionalised. Continue reading...

The neuroscientist, broadcaster and author on the evolution of the brain, the mystery of consciousnesss, and why the next generation will be much smarter than usDavid Eagleman, 50, is an American neuroscientist, bestselling author and presenter of the BBC series The Brain, as well as co-founder and chief executive officer of Neosensory, which develops devices for sensory substitution. His area of speciality is brain plasticity, and that is the subject of his new book, Livewired, which examines how experience refashions the brain, and shows that it is a much more adaptable organ than previously thought.For the past half-century or more the brain has been spoken of in terms of a computer. What are the biggest flaws with that particular model?

The social media giant’s offer of free internet access ensures that mobile users stay where it can keep an eye on themThe security guru Bruce Schneier once famously observed that “surveillance is the business model of the internet”. Like all striking generalisations it was slightly too general: it was strictly true only if by “the internet” you meant the services of a certain number of giant tech companies, notably those of Facebook (including WhatsApp and Instagram), Google (including YouTube), Twitter and Amazon.The trouble is (and this is what gave Schneier’s aphorism its force) that for a large chunk of networked humanity, especially inhabitants of poorer countries, these walled gardens are indeed what people regard as “the internet”. And that’s no accident. Although Chinese smartphones are pretty cheap everywhere, mobile data tends to be prohibitively expensive in poor countries. So the deal offered by western tech companies is that data charges are low or zero if you access the internet via their apps, but expensive if you venture outside their walled gardens. Continue reading...

Companies are springing up all over the UK promising to deliver whatever you want in as little as 10 minutes. But what could we lose by never popping out for milk again?One Friday afternoon in May, Glenn Cobane, 40, who lives with his wife and two cats in Salford, did some grocery shopping: a loaf of bread, bananas, an avocado, cat food, chocolate brownies and some cans of beer. Rather than going to a nearby corner shop or walking a mile to the large Tesco Extra, he bought the food and drink from a new app called Weezy. He placed the order at 2.19pm. “I just sent the order, typed an email and then it arrived.” he says. It is now 2.27pm, and I’m standing on his doorstep beside the courier.“This is the third or fourth time I’ve used them in the past fortnight,” Cobane says. The Weezy delivery rider might have shaved a few minutes off the mile-long journey from the warehouse to Cobane’s house on his e-bike if he hadn’t had to wait for me to keep up. Continue reading...

Tom Davies has 925,000 subscribers who watch his attempts to cross countries without making a turn

Flotation values company at $2.2bn despite the fact its eVTOL aircraft is still to make its first test flightA UK startup that makes flying taxis is to float on the New York stock exchange as Virgin Atlantic and American Airlines placed orders for as many as 1,000 of its prototype electric aircraft.Vertical Aerospace, which is based in Bristol, said its electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (eVTOL) could be in service by 2024, once safety regulators certify it. Developers believe eVTOLs will transform urban transport, offering on-demand flights in and between cities more quietly, cheaply and safely than helicopters. Continue reading...

A witty investigation into the misogyny and bro culture of the world of startups and social media appsFrom John Carreyrou’s award-winning Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup to Reeves Wiedeman’s WeWork shakedown Billion Dollar Loser, the real-life stories coming out of startup land are so far-fetched that you could be forgiven for thinking there’s no ground left for invention.So what role can fiction play in this world with no boundaries – between home and work, love and business, purpose and profit? Tahmima Anam’s fourth novel attempts to answer this by taking inspiration from her experience as executive director of ROLI, a music technology startup founded by her husband. Continue reading...

The Guardian’s Vincent Ni tells the story of a clandestine mission in The Documentary. Plus: more My Dad Wrote a Porno, and a bingeable, ballet-themed mysteryThe Documentary: When Kissinger went to China (from 12 Jun)

Police say they used ‘appropriate legislative powers’ during Operation Ironside but a lawyer representing people charged says legal concerns remainThe Australian federal police have clarified the legal basis for a wide-ranging operation that ensnared hundreds of people using compromised encrypted devices developed by an FBI informant.The An0m devices were released in October 2018 by a convicted narcotics importer who was working for the FBI. Continue reading...

Cricket privilege | The Queen at Oxford | Nightingale torment | Breaking the internetWhile it’s good to see the England team wearing anti-discrimination T-shirts (Ollie Robinson Twitter racism storm obscures ECB’s decades of inaction, 9 June), perhaps the England and Wales Cricket Board should be wondering why the whole team is made up of white players. There are thousands of black and Asian cricketers in the UK; what stops them making it into the national team? Perhaps not enough of them attend the private schools where many of the players of the last few years have been educated. Privilege wins out again.

Growth of crypto-assets threatens financial stability and could increase risks faced by banks, they warnGlobal regulators have said cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin should come with the toughest bank capital rules to avoid putting the wider financial system at risk should their value collapse suddenly.The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which consists of regulators from the world’s leading financial centres, is proposing a “new conservative prudential treatment” for crypto-assets that would force banks to put aside enough capital to cover 100% of potential losses. Continue reading...

Move for 12% stake by Altice’s Patrick Drahi could be a good thing, though only time will tellA vote of confidence in the company? That’s always a board’s default spin on events when a billionaire buys a large stake, purrs politely about management but is slightly mysterious about his long-term intentions. The pitch is rarely convincing because billionaires are not generally the type to sit back and simply collect a stream of dividends. They tend to want something.It’s too soon to be confident about the motives behind Patrick Drahi of Altice’s purchase of a 12.1% stake in BT, worth £2bn. But, on this occasion, the non-threatening interpretation may be correct. Or, at least, it looks the most likely line for a while. Continue reading...

Brazil-based company paid ransom in bitcoin after ransomware attack shut down operations across worldJBS, the world’s biggest meat processor, has paid an $11m (£7.8m) ransom after a cyber-attack shut down operations, including abattoirs in the US, Australia and Canada.While most of its operations have been restored, the Brazilian-headquartered company said it hoped the payment would head off any further complications including data theft. Continue reading...

We asked professional funny people what makes them laugh, and where we can find it online. Here are Rose Callaghan’s tipsHello, I’m comedian and internet aficionado Rose Callaghan. I have ADHD and am what many would consider “underemployed” so obviously spend most of my time on the internet arguing with people on Twitter and watching TikToks.I live and breathe the internet and unfortunately/sadly haven’t been able to stop posting since I first created an account on LiveJournal in the year 2002. Continue reading...

Lawmakers voted in favor of President Nayib Bukele’s proposal as some experts call it ‘political marketing’El Salvador has become the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender after its congress approved President Nayib Bukele’s proposal to embrace the cryptocurrency in an effort to promote “financial inclusion”, investment and economic development.Bukele, a media-savvy former mayor of the capital, San Salvador, who was elected president in a landslide victory two years ago, is known for his love of technology and his fondness for attention-grabbing stunts. Continue reading...

President also orders new commerce department review of security concerns posed by those apps

Flaw was introduced in May and lay dormant until a customer updated their settings, firm saysAn internet blackout that knocked out some of the world’s biggest websites on Tuesday was ultimately caused by a single customer updating their settings, the infrastructure provider Fastly has revealed.A bug in Fastly’s code introduced in mid-May had lain dormant until Tuesday morning, according to Nick Rockwell, the company’s head of engineering and infrastructure. When the unnamed customer updated their settings, it triggered the flaw, which ultimately took down 85% of the company’s network. Continue reading...

Experts say outage shows internet services too centralised and lack resilienceOne of the world’s biggest web outages should act as a “wake-up call” that internet infrastructure has become dangerously over-centralised and lacks resilience, security experts have warned.An unexplained configuration error at a single infrastructure provider, Fastly, which handles 10% of the world’s internet traffic, was enough to render major websites and services inoperable for almost an hour on Tuesday morning. Continue reading...

From retailers such as Amazon to government information portals, the service interruption took its tollThe internet outage caused by a fault with cloud computing service Fastly took down thousands of websites in multiple countries, affecting governments and businesses in sectors ranging from media to online retail and telecoms.The interruption was relatively brief, lasting slightly more than an hour in most cases and occurring mid-morning UK time, before many people in the US will have woken up. Continue reading...

Privacy protection is latest effort by the company to cut down tracking of users by advertisers and other third partiesApple’s new privacy feature designed to obscure a user’s web browsing from internet service providers and advertisers will not be available in China, Saudi Arabia or Belarus, the company has said.It was one of a number of privacy protections Apple announced at its annual software developer conference on Monday, the latest in a years-long effort by the company to cut down on the tracking of its users by advertisers and other third parties. Continue reading...

PlayStation 5; Insomniac Games/Sony

Problem at content delivery network provider Fastly is part of growing need for speed online

Technical problem traced to network run by Fastly brings some sites down entirely

European and Australian police join forces with FBI to seize weapons, drugs and $148m in cashThe FBI set up its own encrypted platform used by hundreds of criminals around the world, in an “unprecedented” sting operation that led to more than 800 arrests in 18 countries, law enforcement officers have said.The operation by the FBI and Australian and European police, ensnared suspects in Australia, Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East involved in the narcotics trade. Continue reading...

Police in Australia and the US struck a blow to organised crime, resulting in hundreds of arrests. Now, an FBI affidavit reveals how authorities were able to pull it offIt was mid-2018 when a convicted narcotics importer met with FBI agents from San Diego and made them a tantalising offer: in exchange for a possible reduction in the importer’s sentence on other charges, would the bureau like a backdoor into the encrypted communications of a vast network of international organised crime groups?The importer had invested a “substantial amount” of money in developing an encrypted device which could be used by criminals around the world to avoid the detection of police. Continue reading...

Luis Abreu once thrived on servicing India’s many typewriters but computers are eclipsing his tradeIn Goa’s capital, Panaji, on Rua São Tomé, not far from the main post office, is a shop that offers packaging services. For a small fee, they will wrap your parcel in a sheet of muslin sewn with precise stitches to protect its contents from being damaged in the post.It started as a sideline to the main business of the store, but now it is the main earner for Luis Francisco Miguel de Abreu as he struggles to maintain one of the last typewriter repair shops in this Indian state. Continue reading...

Operation to recover cryptocurrency from Russia-based hacking group is first undertaken by new ransomware taskforceThe US Justice Department has recovered the majority of a multimillion-dollar ransom payment to hackers after a cyberattack that caused the operator of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline to halt its operations last month, officials said Monday.The operation to recover the cryptocurrency from the Russia-based hacker group is the first undertaken by a specialized ransomware taskforce created by the Biden administration, and reflects what US officials say is an increasingly aggressive approach to deal with a ransomware threat that in the last month has targeted critical industries around the world. Continue reading...

All of Apple’s latest hardware and software updates from its worldwide developers conference

Several popular accounts on Twitter-like service are closed down, displaying message saying account ‘violates laws and rules’China has stepped up its crackdown on bitcoin trading and mining, blocking a slew of cryptocurrency-related accounts on the Twitter-like Weibo platform over the weekend.More actions are expected, including linking illegal crypto activities in China more directly with the country’s criminal law, according to analysts and a financial regulator. Continue reading...

Company blames ‘human error’ after users in US, Germany, Singapore and France reported no results shown on the crackdown’s anniversaryMicrosoft has blamed human error after its search engine, Bing, blocked image and video results for the phrase “tank man” – a reference to the iconic image of a lone protester facing down tanks during the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square – on the 32nd anniversary of the military crackdown.Users reported that no results were shown for the search query in countries including the US, Germany, Singapore, France and Switzerland, according to Reuters and Vice News. Continue reading...

We would like to hear your experiences of after-hours contact from your employer, and how you manage work-life boundariesTrade union Prospect is calling for the government to grant employees a legally binding “right to disconnect” that would ban bosses from “routinely emailing or calling” outside of set working hours. This comes after a similar labour law took effect in France in 2017.With work-life boundaries having been tested by the pandemic, we would like to hear from you about how work emails have affected your life. Continue reading...

Joint inquiry to consider if Facebook stifles competition on Marketplace and Dating platformsUK and EU regulators are investigating Facebook over whether it is abusing its dominance in digital advertising.It marks the first time the regulators have coordinated on a major inquiry since Brexit, and strikes at the core of Facebook’s revenues, which rely heavily on selling advertising on its platform. Continue reading...

Christian Smalls is taking on the fiercely anti-union colossus , convinced that a union of only Amazon workers is the smartest way to rally Amazon employeesChristian Smalls has taken on the biggest challenge of his life. Still smarting from when Amazon fired him last year, the 32-year-old is spearheading an effort to unionize more than 5,000 workers at four Amazon facilities in Staten Island, including a giant warehouse.Smalls is taking a highly unusual route in pursuing this goal; he has founded an independent union, the Amazon Labor Union, convinced that a new union comprising only Amazon workers is the smartest way to rally Amazon employees behind a union after the crushing defeat of an effort to unionize an Amazon warehouse in Alabama earlier this year. Continue reading...

Meera Syal and Jennifer Saunders star in Audible’s new spoof, Raj! Plus: a tense history lesson in GunPlot, and Unearthed offers gripping plant-themed talesRaj!

Reported change comes after the Facebook oversight board said that the same rules should apply to all usersFacebook is reportedly planning to end a policy that effectively exempts politicians from content moderation rules.The Verge reported on Thursday that the network is expected to announce its new policy on Friday. The change comes as Facebook faces increased criticism for allowing world leaders and politicians to use its platform to spread misinformation, quash criticism and harass opponents. Continue reading...

The tech giant has become more, not less, dependent on the US’s superpower rival in recent years, according to analysisApple used more suppliers from China last year than it did from Taiwan for the first time, highlighting the difficulty the United States government will have in persuading companies to become less reliant on its superpower rival.Despite Donald Trump’s trade war against China, the tech company had 51 suppliers based in China and Hong Kong in 2020, according to a Nikkei Asia analysis of the annual Apple supplier list released last week. Continue reading...

Shares in Samsung Publishing – a leading investor in the creator of the viral shark video – jump by 6%Elon Musk has once again proved his ability to move markets with a casual aside about internet culture, as a comment about the viral “Baby Shark” YouTube video sparked a surge in the share price of a South Korean company.In response to a clip posted by the official Twitter account of the animated comedy series South Park about viral internet memes battling each other, the Tesla boss tweeted to his 56.3 million followers: “Baby Shark crushes all! ” Continue reading...

Experts warn ‘no one is out of bounds’ after ransomware attack halts production at JBS, which supplies more than fifth of US beefMeat-processing factories in the US run by the world’s largest company in that field are coming back on stream on Wednesday after a ransomware attack – as experts warned all corporate and local government leaders to be on the alert.A cyber-attack on the meat processor JBS had forced it to halt all US operations while it scrambled to restore functionality. The attack, like other recent hacks, is believed to have originated in Russia. Continue reading...

Streaming company said to have approached game industry executives with project at early stageApple, Microsoft, Sony and Google have all tried to create a “Netflix for games”, offering unlimited access to a library of titles for a flat monthly fee. But a growing number of reports suggest they may be about to face stiff competition from the streaming company itself.Netflix has been approaching senior game industry executives about joining it to lead the creation of a subscription games service, according to reports from the tech news site the Information and Reuters. Continue reading...

Available online

Critics raise transparency fears over plan to turn all smart home devices into ‘mesh network’

An elderly neighbour’s alarm system is linked to a landline, but it is out of orderMy 97-year-old neighbour has an alarm system supplied by social services linked to her landline. She has a fob she can press to summon help if she has a fall.The problem is that her landline is out of order. I reported the fault to BT but found it impossible to speak to a real person. The automated system confirmed there was a fault on her line and promised an engineer would call – but only before midnight on a date four days away. Continue reading...

With the touch of a button, a Sydney Opera House audience rewrites Shakespeare as it is performed in front of themOn Sunday, as part of the Sydney Opera House’s UnWrapped series, a group of dancers “remixed” Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet by way of an Australian storytelling technology, Omelia. A product built to shuffle characters and events and generate narrative possibilities in real time, dancers using it brought a new version of the classic tragedy to life. The one-off production, R+J RMX, was filmed for the Opera House’s streaming platform.The “remix” was interactive: audience members were sent to a website where they could restructure the play with the touch of a button, while on stage narrators and dancers ran through numerous renditions of the story. Continue reading...

Participants found more or less evidence on hard drive depending on what contextual information they hadDevices such as phones, laptops and flash drives are becoming increasingly central to police investigations, but the reliability of digital forensics experts’ evidence has been called into question.A study found that experts tended to find more or less evidence on a suspect’s computer hard drive to implicate or exonerate them depending on the contextual information about the investigation that they were given. Continue reading...

‘A producer said: “Great – but can he dance?” So we got him to move like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever’The second I read the script, about a robot becoming self-aware after being struck by lightning, I put it down and said: “This is a hit.” It was a timeless story about an underdog, a friendship and being an outsider. It also had John Badham as director who had done Saturday Night Fever and War Games. He knew how to make a movie like this work. It felt like a piece that was going to be around a long time and I grabbed it with both hands. Continue reading...

Worldwide shift to flexible and home working in pandemic has led to rise of new kind of backpacker