Japanese carmaker reportedly wants millions in government support for new 6GWh plant at existing siteNissan is understood to be asking the UK government to provide tens of millions of pounds to build a new electric car battery “gigafactory” in Sunderland .
Users globally reported nearly 500 deleted posts in just over two weeks condemning the recent eviction of PalestiniansFacebook’s often inscrutable content moderation process has come under renewed fire during the 11-day bombardment of Gaza after hundreds of pro-Palestine posts were removed, many without explanation.Nearly 500 removals on Instagram and Facebook were documented by 7amleh, a Palestinian digital rights non-profit, between 6 and 19 May. Now, 7amleh and more than 30 other human rights organizations are calling for greater transparency into the social network’s decision making, especially as it relates to Palestine as part of a campaign titled Facebook, We Need to Talk. Continue reading...
Battle for streaming supremacy hots up after acquisition of studio behind James Bond franchiseAmazon has bought MGM, the Hollywood studio behind the James Bond and Rocky franchises, for nearly $8.5bn as the battle for global streaming supremacy reaches new heights.The scale of the deal far exceeds the $5bn (£3.5bn) price tag suggested when the studio put itself up for sale in December, as the fight to secure must-watch programming fuels fierce bidding wars for owners of increasingly scarce “crown jewel” content. Continue reading...
European Commission proposes more factchecking and algorithm changes to tackle disinformationA “massive anti-vaccination campaign” has been cited by the European Commission as a reason for social media platforms to intensify their factchecking and revise the internal algorithms that can amplify disinformation.Under a revised code of practice proposed by Brussels, companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter would need to show why particular material is disseminated and prove that false information is being blocked. Continue reading...
Sony’s Freeview TV staple has a new name, with an exclamation mark to show how exciting it is! What’s the thinking behind the rebrand? And who’s watching?As of this week, the Sony Movie Channel is no more. A staple of the Freeview era of television, the SMC and its spin-offs have allowed viewers to enjoy half-decent cinema, in their own home, free, for years. But now the channel has come to an end. Instead, the future is Great!Great! Movies is the name of the new channel that is to replace the old channel but will show the same films in the same place. There will be similarly rebranded siblings too – Great! Movies Action and Great! Movies Classic but not Great! Movies Asshole! Thanks to its agenda-setting break with syntax and the attendant suggestion of a complete critical lobotomy, Great! Movies has all the hallmarks of a swift right hook from modernity. Continue reading...
Lawsuit says controversial new laws are unconstitutional and violate the right to the preservation of privacyWhatsApp has sued the Indian government over new internet laws which the company says will “severely undermine” the privacy of their users.The new IT laws, which have been described as oppressive and draconian, give the Indian government greater power to monitor online activity, including on encrypted apps such as WhatsApp and Signal. They were passed in February but were due to come into effect on Wednesday. Continue reading...
Campaign failed to say investment was complex, volatile and could expose investors to losses, says ASAAn ad campaign telling the public that “it’s time to buy” bitcoin has been banned after the advertising watchdog ruled that it was irresponsible and misleading.The high-profile campaign, which has featured heavily across the London underground and the capital’s bus network since December, ran with the strapline “If you’re seeing bitcoin on the underground, it’s time to buy”. Continue reading...
Microsoft’s game subscription includes all the obvious Xbox hits, from Halo to Minecraft – but, if you’ve exhausted those, here are some deeper cuts from its libraryA 1930s mystery set on a sun-saturated yet eerie island full of mysteries and puzzles. This is a relatively short game that pulls you effortlessly through its story, about a curse-afflicted woman who follows her explorer husband on an expedition from which nobody has returned. It’s slower-paced, beautiful to look at and unexpectedly introspective. Read a full review. Continue reading...
by Hannah J Davies, Hannah Verdier and Mythili Rao on (#5J379)
Dr Death’s Laura Beil asks just how safe the smoking alternative is in The Vaping Fix. Plus: a winning tech parody, and another trip to West CorkThe Vaping Fix
The app offered a $30,000 reward to track him down and shared a photo of the man, which was seen by more than 861,000 peopleThe vigilante crime app Citizen falsely accused a California man of starting a wildfire, offering a $30,000 reward to track him down before retracting the post the next day, in a move that has been condemned by criminal justice experts.The app – which gives users local crime information via police scanners and other sources – shared an alert on Saturday about an alleged arsonist behind a large brush fire that broke out in Los Angeles over the weekend. Continue reading...
Covid lockdowns prove bad news for phone firm as less-mobile people translate into lower roaming chargesVodafone was the biggest faller on the FTSE 100 on Tuesday as investors reacted to lower than expected profits, a decline inrevenues due to the impact of pandemic travel bans and a drop in smartphone sales.While Vodafone swung back to the black last year, reporting profits of €536m (£461m) compared with a loss of €455m in 2019, the result was at the lowest end of the company’s guidance and disappointed City expectations. Shares fell 9% to 129p. Continue reading...
While many players in more traditional fine art circles feel ill-equipped to deal with the digital art trend, some contemporary art enthusiasts are going all inIn 1962, the French neo-avant-garde artist Yves Klein began dealing in what he declared to be Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility. In exchange for a sum of solid gold, Klein would imbue a patch of thin air with his artistic aura and provide a receipt. One such “zone” was bequeathed to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where it exists only as a photograph of the transaction, taken as the receipt was set ablaze and half the gold tossed into the Seine. In postwar Europe, such high-minded (Klein was an amphetamine addict, as well as a provocateur) artistic experiments both raised eyebrows and opened wallets.Sixty years later, the mind-bending US$69m sale of another intangible artwork, Everydays: the First 5,000 Days by digital artist Beeple, in the form of an NFT (non-fungible token) at Christie’s in March this year likewise has the art world paying attention. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5HZ03)
First big redesign since 2012 gives all-in-one Mac super-thin design, 4.5K display and top M1 chip performanceApple’s iMac has had its first big redesign since 2012 with a bigger screen, bold colours, remarkably thin body and the power of the M1 chip.The 24in iMac costs from £1,249 and replaces the outgoing 21.5in Intel iMac model, which remains on sale in the short term. Continue reading...
One in 10 US police departments can now access videos from millions of privately owned home security cameras without a warrantIn a 2020 letter to management, Max Eliaser, an Amazon software engineer, said Ring is “simply not compatible with a free society”. We should take his claim seriously.Ring video doorbells, Amazon’s signature home security product, pose a serious threat to a free and democratic society. Not only is Ring’s surveillance network spreading rapidly, it is extending the reach of law enforcement into private property and expanding the surveillance of everyday life. What’s more, once Ring users agree to release video content to law enforcement, there is no way to revoke access and few limitations on how that content can be used, stored, and with whom it can be shared. Continue reading...
The film company, which owns the James Bond franchise, had held talks with Netflix and AppleAmazon is in talks to acquire MGM, the Hollywood studio behind the James Bond and Rocky franchises, for $9bn (£6.3bn) in the latest deal to secure “crown jewel” content in the global battle for streaming supremacy.MGM, which put itself up for sale in December, is one of the few Hollywood studios with evergreen, must-watch franchises not to have been snapped up in the recent wave of huge mergers and acquisitions in the media industry. Continue reading...
One family said blue sparks were flying from their modem as electrical storms wreaked havoc on fibre-to-the-curb distribution boxesNBN Co has been forced to replace 10,000 faulty broadband devices in homes across the Blue Mountains west of Sydney after residents reported the technology was frequently struck by lightning and in one instance led to blue sparks flying out of a modem in a family’s home.About 20,000 of the more than 32,000 homes in the Blue Mountains and Emu Plains have been connected to the national broadband network via fibre-to-the-curb (FttC) technology, which was set up under the Coalition government’s multi-technology mixed model. Continue reading...
The most promising talent in the QPR academy would have been 30 this year and his life is commemorated in the video game to help provide inspiration to young peoplePromotional materials for the latest player to be added to Fifa 21 show Kiyan Prince scoring a goal. He takes a shot with his left foot, over the lunge of a despairing defender, and watches it fly into the roof of the net. Running off in celebration with his arms wide, he shouts in delight. Then he turns and shows his shirt to the crowd: Queens Park Rangers’ number 30.Prince, who was once the most promising talent in the QPR academy, would have been 30 this year, but in 2006 he died at the gates of his school in north London. In a notorious incident Prince was stabbed in the heart with a penknife as he tried to break up a fight. The killer, who called the knife a “little toy”, was 16. Continue reading...
Monthly $2.99 subscription includes ability to organise tweets into collections and ‘undo tweet’ buttonTwitter is considering launching a paid subscription service called Twitter Blue, according to unreleased features of the app discovered by an independent researcher.Jane Manchun Wong, who has made a name for herself through uncovering accidentally-public upcoming features of popular apps, shared screenshots of the service, which is pegged at $2.99 a month. Continue reading...
The Nobel-winning psychologist on applying his ideas to organisations, why we’re not equipped to grasp the spread of a virus, and the massive disruption that’s just round the cornerDaniel Kahneman, 87, was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 2002 for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making. His first book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, a worldwide bestseller, set out his revolutionary ideas about human error and bias and how those traits might be recognised and mitigated. A new book, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment, written with Olivier Sibony and Cass R Sunstein, applies those ideas to organisations. This interview took place last week by Zoom with Kahneman at his home in New York.I guess the pandemic is quite a good place to start. In one way it has been the biggest ever hour-by-hour experiment in global political decision-making. Do you think it’s a watershed moment in the understanding that we need to “listen to science”?
The hacking of a US gas pipeline is proof that cybercrime is now a major industry – with its own trading markets and even CSROn Friday 7 May, Colonial, the quaintly named operator of the pipeline that brings 45% of the US east coast’s gasoline and jet fuel from Texas to New York, announced that it had been hacked. My initial assumption was that this was Russian retaliation for the Biden administration’s punitive cyber-attacks on Russia in response to the SolarWinds hack. After all, if a pipeline like this isn’t “critical infrastructure”, what is? If so, were we not witnessing a significant escalation in information warfare between two nuclear-armed powers?Fortunately, my overheated imagination turned out to be wrong, but the reality – in a way – is almost as interesting. On 10 May, the FBI announced that the attack on Colonial was caused by an outfit called DarkSide, which specialises in ransomware, and that the bureau had forced the company to halt its pipeline’s operations so that it could carry out a full investigation into the breach. Continue reading...
Demand and prices are soaring for minerals essential to the construction of low-carbon infrastructureThe commodities boom ignited by China’s post-Covid recovery, and stoked by the global move to green energy, broke price records last week even as fears about inflation stalked the markets. But it also risks triggering a rush on metals and minerals that could derail climate action.Iron ore reached the apex of a super-rally that drove prices to $237.57 a tonne in New York on Wednesday. The record followed a surge in demand from China’s steel-making regions, now recovering after the pandemic, which has pushed prices up from less than $94 this time last year. Continue reading...
The comments aren’t just transactional – they can reveal more about how we connect than the curated feeds of social mediaHuman connection can often be found where you least expect it. Google Maps, started as a straightforward navigation tool, has become in recent years an unlikely treasure trove of humour and intrigue. With many businesses in my area closed for much of the pandemic, I took to exploring them through the reviews that others had left online. I have traversed foreign cities from my sofa, idly dreaming of future holidays via a one-line description of the perfect snack bar.From reviews of a local bistro to the dry cleaner, I have stumbled on snatches of city life that seem as compelling as any sitcom. Entire sagas are played out in a few sentences, and I have read elaborate tales of love, fights, breakups and makeups. “The owners created a drama around them, and chose us to express all their violence,” begins one particularly ominous review of a bar, which ends with: “We spent the night in hospital and my friend had to get surgery to fix his nose.” Continue reading...
With comedy venues reopening in England and Scotland, Sarah Henley discusses the effect of the pandemic, online audiences and being a woman in male-dominated sectorsTelling jokes to live audiences over Zoom has offered an alternative for standup comics since comedy clubs shut last year.It has also presented them with a new set of occupational hazards, as the comedian Andrew Maxwell discovered during an online gig where he got momentarily upstaged by an audience member’s cat showing its bum to the webcam. Continue reading...
Ofcom and big tech will be told to do more, but do we want them to decide who’s allowed to say whatConsequences matter. If there was one clear message from football’s temporary boycott of social media earlier this month, in protest at the torrent of online hate experienced disproportionately by black players, that was it.The former England striker Ian Wright has said that he’d almost given up reporting the vile stuff he receives daily because nothing ever seemed to happen to the perpetrators. “It makes you feel very dehumanised. You feel like there’s nothing you can do, you’re helpless,” he said. So two cheers, at least, for the inclusion in this week’s Queen’s speech of a long-delayed online safety bill aimed at holding big tech more accountable. Who wouldn’t agree with the culture secretary Oliver Dowden’s desire to rid social media of what he called “the bile and the threats”? Continue reading...
by Hannah J Davies, Hannah Verdier and Hannah Moore on (#5HT24)
Here Comes the Break melds a fictional story with interviews and new music. Plus: illuminating fashion industry conversations, and witty fun with Mike WozniakHere Comes the Break
Demi Skipper wants to own her first home, but she’s not buying one. Instead she’s planning a strategy of individual trades. The 29-year-old is already the owner of one of only a few Chipotle celebrity cards in the world, and is hoping to reach a house by the end of summer. Here's a record of her progress so far
Analysis: Ofcom remains gatekeeper of big social networks, but moderators face multiple conundrums with the legislationModeration of online content is difficult. Social networks want to take down content that breaks their rules. They have to do it quickly enough that they do not get shouted at for leaving bad things up, but they have to do it accurately so that they do not get shouted at for taking the wrong things down.In 2019 the UK government announced a plan to fix things. The intention of the online harms white paper was to apply pressure to social networks, to shift that dilemma. If social networks had rules against content that they did not enforce, they would get into legal trouble. Continue reading...
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...
‘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...
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...
by Martin Pengelly in New York and Rupert Neate on (#5HNDM)
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...
Technology | The Guardian