PlayStation 5; Housemarque/Sony

2017 European Commission decision that ordered US firm to pay back-taxes to Luxembourg overturnedAmazon has won a court battle against the EU over allegations that the US technology company received €250m in “illegal state aid” tax benefits from Luxembourg.The ruling from Europe’s general court is the latest blow to the EU’s fight against “sweetheart deals” that allegedly allow big multinational tech companies to avoid hundreds of millions of euros in tax in other member states. Continue reading...

Demi Skipper would like a new house, but she’s not buying one. Instead she’s planning a daring strategy of trades – and millions are following her journeyWhile many of us were still finding novelty in group Zoom calls last May, Demi Skipper decided she was going to get a house. But not using money. Instead, she was going to trade items.Now the owner of one of only a few Chipotle celebrity cards in the world, and hoping to reach a house by the end of summer, the 29-year-old’s journey started where many voyages do: in a YouTube hole. Continue reading...

It seems rogue sellers have used it to generate fake reviewsI received a parcel from Amazon, a website I haven’t used for years. Several emails confirmed an order of three items, announced two-step verification on my account and warned a sign-in from an iPhone in Illinois had been detected.The next day an email thanked me for joining Amazon Prime. Since then I have had other emails showing semi-literate five-star reviews of the products. My bank confirmed no money has been debited. But you can’t contact Amazon without an account, and I can no longer access mine. I’ve now received emails telling me I’ve ordered a catflap but my payment has been declined.

Fuel shortages are largely a result of unnecessary panic-buying, analysts sayThe US energy secretary has urged Americans against “hoarding gasoline” amid shortages and long lines after hackers shut down a major pipeline.More than 1,000 gas stations in the US south and east coast have reported running out of fuel, primarily because of what analysts say is unwarranted panic-buying among drivers. Continue reading...

Complex cases involve perpetrators using multiple accounts and devices to abuse, control and monitor partners

‘We must rethink our approach,’ acting chief of the agency charged with protecting federal networks said in Senate testimonyThe US must “rethink our approach to cybersecurity”, the acting chief of the agency charged with protecting federal networks told senators on Tuesday, as fallout from the Colonial pipeline ransomware attack saw panic-buying begin at some gas stations while the energy industry moved to shore up systems of supply.Related: Biden says ‘no evidence’ Russia involved in US pipeline hack but Putin should act Continue reading...

Facebook has been busy developing a child-friendly social media platform. But why are US lawmakers so unhappy?

PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, PC, Mac; Unknown Worlds

Messaging app will begin to turn off features until users agree to Facebook’s updated terms of serviceIf you have not agreed to WhatsApp’s controversial new terms of service by 15 May, the app will begin to turn off features until you do, Facebook announced in an update to its FAQ page.At that point, the screen asking users to accept the terms of service set by Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company, will become permanent, with users needing to click through to directly use WhatsApp at all. Users will still be able to interact with the app in other ways for “a few weeks”, however, such as receiving calls, replying to messages, or responding to missed calls. Continue reading...

Brad Stone writes that voice for Amazon’s virtual assistant, which the company has never revealed, is Colorado-based Nina RolleThe voice of Alexa, the virtual assistant developed by Amazon, is provided by Nina Rolle, a Colorado-based voiceover artist, according to a new book.Amazon has never revealed who provides the default female voice that responds to commands and questions given to Alexa, but the author Brad Stone said he identified the voice as Rolle’s after “canvasing the professional voiceover community” for his new book, Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire. Continue reading...

The lack of a union at the elite level of mixed martial arts means fighters will very likely miss out on a digital gold rushIn the last year, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – effectively one-of-a-kind digital collectibles – have boomed in areas as varied as adult entertainment and the arts. Even sports leagues have started to take advantage of the NFT explosion.So it makes sense that the UFC, a body that has never been slow to sniff out a quick profit, reportedly filed several new trademark applications indicating plans to launch a UFC-branded cryptocurrency, as well as an app for users to manage NFTs and other digital assets. Continue reading...

Almost 20 million users could be eligible for compensation, with £1.5bn damages soughtApple is facing a demand for billions of pounds of consumer compensation in a British lawsuit that accuses the company of overcharging users by up to 30% on its App Store.The claim argues that Apple’s restrictive policies, which limit app developers to using its own payment systems, are generating “excessive” profits for the company and leading to consumers paying more than they otherwise would. As a collective action, it seeks to represent the almost 20 million people in the UK who have spent money on the App Store, and seeks damages of up to £1.5bn. Continue reading...

Wife of world’s fourth-richest man explored options almost two years ago, roughly at time sex criminal Epstein died in jailMelinda French Gates had concerns about her husband’s dealings with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein when she consulted lawyers to explore the option of divorcing the Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, according to reports.The billionaire philanthropists announced their decision to divorce last week after declaring their marriage “irretrievably broken” – but did not explain why. Continue reading...

Most of us have phones, computers and boxes full to bursting with our snaps – and will probably only ever look at a fraction of them. So how do you work out what to keep?If you’re anything like me, then your phone is full to bursting with unsorted photographs. If I were to die tomorrow, and my loved ones used my photo roll to better understand me, they’d be confronted by several shots of exactly the same thing, a bunch of blurred documents and a dozen or so Kathryn Hahn screengrabs. That’s no legacy to leave. We could all do with a photographic tidy-up – whether it be digital snaps on phones and computers or physical prints piled up in storage – but how? Continue reading...

Ifeoma Ozoma has co-sponsored a bill to protect workers who speak out on discrimination or harassment. ‘Coming forward should not carry as much risk,’ she saidFor months, Ifeoma Ozoma couldn’t tell anyone – not even her closest friends and family – why she had left her high-profile job at Pinterest.Even as she gave speeches about her work at the tech company, a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) she signed forbade her to share the reason for quitting her role as a public policy manager, where she engaged with press, elected officials and health experts. Continue reading...

A UCL study has found people around the world feel the same about their devices as they do about their homesSmartphone users have become “human snails carrying our homes in our pockets”, with a tendency to ignore friends and family in favour of their device, according to a landmark study.A team of anthropologists from UCL spent more than a year documenting smartphone use in nine countries around the world, from Ireland to Cameroon, and found that far from being trivial toys, people felt the same way about their devices as they did about their homes. Continue reading...

Long battery life, comfortable fit, Bluetooth 5 with decent sound and features for the moneyThe latest Bluetooth headphones from Anker offer very long battery life and surprisingly effective noise-cancelling on a budget.The Soundcore Life Q35 cost £129.99 and replace the Life Q30 as the brand’s top headphones, significantly undercutting leading models from rivals that often cost in excess of £300. Continue reading...

Vaccine rollout used as a lure via email and text to harvest people’s personal information for fraud

While enjoying an idyllic lockdown in France, the 83-year-old artist has created perhaps his most important exhibition ever – offering hope to an injured world‘I think it looks terrific,” says David Hockney. “It’s all on one theme, isn’t it? And there’s not many exhibitions like that, really, a show all about the spring.” The 83-year-old artist is taking a look around his new exhibition at the Royal Academy in London for the first time. He seems happy with it – and rightly so, for it is hypnotic and ravishing. But while I am getting a sneak preview in person, Hockney is here only virtually, his face appearing on two screens, one a giant TV, the other a small laptop.He is at home, at what he calls his “seven dwarves house” in Normandy, wearing a red, black and white check jacket, a checkerboard tie, a blue-green pullover and round, gold-framed glasses. His kaleidoscopic choice of clothing, challenging the very limits of the video call’s bandwidth, is as vibrant and beguiling as the canvases hanging around us. Hockney has not just painted spring; he has come dressed as it. Continue reading...

Its algorithm suggests I am most interested in jewellery, luxury goods, electronic music, love and emotions. Nothing could be further from the truth

White House to allow more fuel to be carried by road, but prices not expected to rise unless Colonial Pipeline outage lasts more than three daysThe hackers who caused the vast Colonial Pipeline to shut down on Friday reportedly began their cyberattack against the top US fuel pipeline operator a day earlier and stole a large amount of data.The attackers are part of a cybercrime group called DarkSide and took nearly 100 gigabytes of data out of Colonial’s network in just two hours on Thursday, the Bloomberg news website reported late Saturday, citing two people involved in the company’s investigation. Continue reading...

Price falls by as much as a third after billionaire’s comments on US comedy sketch show Saturday Night LiveThe price of dogecoin tumbled by as much as a third on Sunday, after billionaire Elon Musk, one of its biggest supporters, appeared to call the virtual currency a “hustle” while hosting Saturday Night Live.Cryptocurrency watchers had high expectations of what Tesla chief executive and crypto-enthusiast Musk, who has called himself the “Dogefather”, would say while hosting the American comedy sketch show, and dogecoin had risen in anticipation. Continue reading...

Eib is now in its seventh season, fearlessly tackling subjects from Beirut’s drag queen scene to Jordanian widows’ rightsRude, fault or blemish; flaw, disgrace or shame. The word has many shades, but nearly every woman who grows up in Arabic-speaking households knows its singular weight. “Anything related to women is eib,” says Tala El-Issa, from her home in Cairo. “If they want to talk about their bodies, it’s eib, their problems – eib. Just being a woman is almost eib.”When the team at Sowt, an Arabic podcasting network based across the Middle East, wanted to create a show that charged fearlessly into the region’s taboos around sex and gender, the title was obvious. “Eib” is now in its seventh season, the company’s longest-lasting podcast and its most popular. Continue reading...

Video game popularity soared during the pandemic, as people sought distraction and ways to connect with loved onesHelping his seven-year-old daughter Romy set up the Nintendo Switch she got for Christmas, Paul Cliff managed to get himself hooked on Animal Crossing. “I’ve somehow played over 600 hours on it since January,” says Paul, 56, of the life simulation game where villagers carry out daily activities such as gardening, furniture arrangement and gathering fruits.“I love the collecting in it, it’s so gentle and oddly rewarding,” he says, recalling an afternoon spent fishing together when Romy finally caught the Stringfish she’d been trying to catch for ages. “She couldn’t wait to show me. We’ve been amazed at each other’s achievements and creativity,” Paul says. “I’ve found it an immersive and relaxing experience. I love my wee island, it’s a wonderful escape from what’s going on outside our four walls.” Continue reading...

Algorithm will identify tweets that may be ‘harmful or offensive’ and give option to edit, delete, or send anywayMany of us have dashed off a mean-spirited reply in the heat of the moment. Now, Twitter wants to appeal to the good inside even the most callous trolls in an attempt to improve the tone of its social network.From Thursday, the company will roll out a new prompt to users who are about to send a tweet that its algorithms believe could be “harmful or offensive”. Those who try to send such a message will be asked if they “want to review this before tweeting”, with the options to edit, delete, or send anyway. Continue reading...

Former editor Alan Rusbridger looks back on the dawning realisation that news was about to change forever

Delivery bookings rose 166% from the same period last year, leading to better-than-expected earnings despite flat ride bookingsUber’s thriving food delivery business, aided by a bump in home deliveries during lockdowns, helped the company counteract a slow quarter for ride-hailing bookings amid the pandemic.The company announced better-than-expected earnings in its first quarter of 2021, despite reporting its ride bookings were flat from the previous quarter and had decreased year over year. Continue reading...

Analysts say Elon Musk’s turn as host of Saturday Night Live will raise its profile yet furtherIt is perhaps the ultimate symbol of late capitalism: a digital currency that started as a joke, now worth more than the Ford motor company, BP or Tesco.Riding a wave of speculative interest despite Covid-19 triggering the worst global recession since the 1930s Great Depression, Dogecoin has been a huge hit with amateur investors. It is a cryptocurrency based on an internet meme – a humorous online phrase or photo, which on this occasion is a dog – and has shot to wider attention with a record-breaking rise in value in recent weeks. Continue reading...

So many hours spent on the internet, so many bizarre and incredible things for this Australian comedian to show youDo you remember a time when you weren’t on the internet? I sure don’t, or at least the special version they gave us at gifted school so we did not become Troubled.But sometimes I wonder if it’s healthy to scrape every organic second of my day and deposit it into my computer’s protein tray in exchange for my Mandatory Web Hours. I do my little media job on the internet. I write my little stupid fiction stories and my very funny and well regarded Tinyletter here. I know if my ancestors could see me they would hoot angrily on their bone-trumpets and fill my T-shirt with the semi-poison berries. Sometimes, I dream I’m tilling the land with my 10 identical sons and daughters – cultivating, I don’t know, silverbeet, who gives a shit – but the dream always falters when I get to the part where I must clean myself up for supper and realise I don’t know how to use a non-wifi tap. Continue reading...

Analysis: Ruling stopped short of making final decision, deepening questions over the oversight board’s effectiveness

The oversight board has ruled that the former president must remain suspended for now but also asserted its independenceThe US supreme court is defined by Marbury vs Madison, an 1803 case in which the court ruled that it had the power to strike down laws. It was a pivotal moment for the court, less than 15 years old – and one the oversight board clearly had in mind as it made its own pivotal ruling, turning a simple yes/no question about the US president into a firm demand for the independence of a nascent legal institution. Here are five takeaways from the weighty ruling.Related: Trump’s Facebook ban should not be lifted, network’s oversight board rules Continue reading...

Jet suit developer Gravity Industries has joined forces with the Royal Marines to test its latest product for maritime boarding operations. The company said it spent three days with 42 Commando Royal Marines off the south coast of the UK. The suit was tested in exercises between two moving vessels as an alternative to boarding via helicopter fast-roping Continue reading...

Pair say in statement ‘we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple’ but will continue to run foundation togetherBill and Melinda Gates have announced they are to divorce after 27 years of marriage, saying they “no longer believe we can grow together as a couple”.The Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist and his wife have built up a combined $124bn (£89bn) fortune, making them among the five richest couples in the world. Continue reading...

Despite lockdown surge the firm’s Luxembourg unit made a €1.2bn loss and therefore paid zero corporation taxFresh questions have been raised over Amazon’s tax planning after its latest corporate filings in Luxembourg revealed that the company collected record sales income of €44bn (£38bn) in Europe last year but did not have to pay any corporation tax to the Grand Duchy.Accounts for Amazon EU Sarl, through which it sells products to hundreds of millions of households in the UK and across Europe, show that despite collecting record income, the Luxembourg unit made a €1.2bn loss and therefore paid no tax. Continue reading...

Startup joins forces with ride-hailing app to produce cars designed for use by Uber driversThe electric vehicle maker Arrival aims to start producing cars by 2023 with design help from Uber, in the latest step by the UK-headquartered startup’s ambitious plans to take on the automotive industry.The car, developed specifically for use by ride-hailing drivers, will be Arrival’s first, adding to buses that are due to be on UK roads this year, as well as urban delivery vans. Continue reading...

We look at the issues that led the two firms to pick a fight over content allowed on Apple’s App StoreApple and Epic Games will go head to head in court in front of a US federal judge on Monday, the latest stage in the Fortnite maker’s campaign to break open the iPhone’s walled garden.The feud has been growing since last August, when Epic set in motion a plan – known internally as “project liberty” – to try to get past the restrictions Apple places on software made for iPhones and iPads. Here is what brought the two companies to this point. Continue reading...

It started as a newsletter platform for unknown writers. Now it is becoming a media giant in its own right – with many of the problems it was supposed to avoidIsabelle Roughol was done with her day job at LinkedIn and was ready to start something of her own. She quit in early 2020 and launched Borderline, a podcast and newsletter aimed at “defiant global citizens”, and to help her build it she became an early user of a new online service: Substack.Substack has marketed itself aggressively to people such as Roughol as a new type of tech company, one that will let writers build their own brands and communities. The company offers software to help people set up free or paid-for newsletters and promises the people creating them that they can write what they want and that they own their own mailing list and can take it with them if they leave. Continue reading...

The Republican senator has written a sort of manifesto for the presidential primary. The Democrat seems focused on the supreme court

eCall contacts emergency services in an accident – but it is causing problems for some driversThe Volkswagen, Audi and Skoda group has been accused of knowingly selling cars with defective SOS warning systems that in some cases failed before the new owner had left the dealership.Since 2018 all new cars sold across the EU have been required to have an eCall system that automatically contacts the emergency services with the vehicle’s location in the event of a serious accident. It is a sophisticated set-up using the car’s navigation system and airbag sensors, and it has its own mobile phone sim card. Continue reading...

Zoë Roth says she plans to use proceeds from sale of 2005 image of her smirking in front of burning house to pay student loansZoë Roth, the woman whose picture was central to the 2005 Disaster Girl meme, has sold the original photo for $473,000 – the latest addition to the cryptocurrency-linked, digital image NFT craze that is sweeping through the art market.The image was taken of Roth, then aged four, by her father in front of a burning house in Mebane, North Carolina. Firefighters had intentionally set the blaze as a controlled fire. Continue reading...

iPhone and iPad maker distorts competition for streaming services such as Spotify, says commissionerApple has been accused of breaking EU law by charging high fees and setting unfair rules on those selling their products in its App Store, resulting typically in a 30% price hike for paying customers.Margrethe Vestager, the European commissioner for competition, said the preliminary view was that Apple had distorted competition in the music streaming market by abusing its dominant position and role as a “gatekeeper” to the 1.8m apps in its store. Continue reading...

Several internet personalities will be on the ballot on 6 May, though most know they have no chance of winning

Company makes $8.1bn profit for quarter as positive economic reports suggest US shaking off worst of pandemic recession

A brother and sister try to escape a satanic spell in this cruddy horror story shot entirely on smartphonesIn some corner of a US nowheresville town, sad-sack musician-schoolteacher Leo (Joey Millin) gets a call from his mom begging him to pick up his screw-up of a sister Virginia (Madison West). Virginia has had an on-off problem with drugs that ruined a once promising law career. Leo is sceptical of her latest excuse for being found in a squalid apartment looking high, even though there are no obvious track marks: she claims satanic jiggery-pokery has fused her bodily sensations with that of an unknown man, so she feels all his pain and pleasure and vice versa. She has no idea where he is – but carving “where r u?” into her arm prompts a handy reply with precise coordinates. So off Leo and Virginia go, for a family road trip. Continue reading...

The company says it’s creating a viable alternative for readers and writers – but is it trying to have its cake and eat it?Since launching in 2017, Substack has been touting itself as a “better future for news”. Their offering was simple: email newsletters with an option for subscribers to pay monthly fees for content – like Netflix for newsletters.Related: ‘So. Much. Sex’: a beginner’s guide to the ‘hot vax summer’ Continue reading...

Bumper results lead strong quarter for US tech giants, as Facebook and Alphabet also report soaring revenues

Makers say machine could be part of an agricultural revolution of automation and sustainability

ACCC won’t rule out regulation of tech giants if people aren’t given more choice when setting up a new devicePeople should be given a choice of apps other than the default Apple and Google phone apps when setting up a new device, under a raft of proposals from Australia’s competition watchdog to reduce the duopoly the two tech giants have over the app store marketplaces.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s latest interim report arising from the long-running digital platforms inquiry has found that while Apple and Google compete with each other, both companies face very little competition in app distributions on their respective mobile platforms. Continue reading...