Technology | The Guardian

A combination of cyber attackers’ increased sophistication, the availability of cryptocurrencies and the activities of Russian security agencies has created a perfect stormI’ve just visited the Kaseya website. “We Are Kaseya,” it burbles cheerfully. “Providing you with best-in-breed technologies that allow you to efficiently manage, secure and back up IT under a single pane of glass.“Technology,” it continues, “is the backbone of all modern business. Small to mid-size businesses deserve powerful security and IT management tools that are efficient, cost-effective, and secure. Enter Kaseya. We exist to help multi-function IT professionals get the most out of their IT tool stack.” Continue reading...

Judge refuses to admit new evidence that might have helped Meng Wanzhou avoid extradition to USThe prospect of a deepening diplomatic row between the US and China has grown after a Canadian judge refused to admit new evidence that might have helped the Huawei chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, avoid extradition to the US.The arrest of Meng, the daughter of the Chinese telecommunication company’s billionaire founder, has prompted a sharp deterioration in relations between Canada, the US and China. Soon after Meng’s detention in Vancouver in December 2018, China arrested two Canadians in China: Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. Continue reading...

It’s not just jokes and emojis – the video-sharing platform can help users learn how to manage moneySea shanties and viral dance trends have helped make TikTok a hit since the start of the pandemic. In 2020, the social media app, which allows users to create and share one or more 60-second films soundtracked with music clips, surpassed 2bn global downloads.In the financial world, TikTok has a reputation for promoting volatile cryptocurrencies and activist investing – interest in Dogecoin and GameStop has been fuelled by the platform. But, beyond the jokes and rocket emojis being shared by some users, there is a wealth of practical personal finance videos that are teaching young people how to use their money better. Continue reading...

Clarita needed to put herself through nursing school; Lex wanted to boost his income as a labourer – now they are erotic influencers on the subscriber siteIn many ways, Lex Lederman, 28, is a classic American family man. He owns a farm in New Hampshire, where he lives with his wife and three children (plus a sizable company of chickens, pigs and geese). He’s teaching himself home renovation (plumbing, electrics, how to lay floors) and regularly helps out with homeless food charities, refugee relief, and the local high school football team. But this lifestyle has only become possible since he quit his construction job for a full-time career on OnlyFans – the content subscription service where he uploads erotic pictures and videos for his predominantly gay male fanbase.One of the biggest tech success stories of the last few years, OnlyFans was founded by British entrepreneur Tim Stokely in September 2016. “You could see the explosion of influencer marketing, but the influencers were getting paid via ad campaigns and product endorsements,” he explained in an interview earlier this year. “Our thinking was always, OK, what if you could build a platform where it’s similar to existing on social media, but with the key difference being the payment button?” Stokely is now worth an estimated $120m (£86m). Continue reading...

Successful flight on Virgin Galactic craft would mark the next phase of space tourism race with Jeff BezosIt does not often rain in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Nevertheless, Sir Richard Branson is likely to feel nervous as he checks the weather forecast on Sunday morning: if there are blue skies ahead then the British entrepreneur is likely to become the richest person ever to venture into space.Branson and his team – two pilots and three other “mission specialists” – will strap into the spacecraft, the VSS Unity. If all goes well Branson and co will be propelled 50 miles above the Earth’s surface, the point considered by Nasa, the US space agency, to mark the end of the Earth’s atmosphere. Continue reading...

Joe Biden’s hour-long phone call with the Russian leader suggests growing impatience over attacks disrupting US sectorsJoe Biden has increased pressure on Vladimir Putin to move against ransomware groups operating from Russia, warning the United States is prepared to respond if cyberhacks are not stopped.The two leaders held an hour-long phone call on Friday, their first since they discussed ransomware attacks at a summit in Geneva on 16 June. Biden’s message to Putin in the call was direct, suggesting a growing impatience over attacks that have disrupted key US sectors. Continue reading...

Vancouver judge denies bid by Meng Wanzhou to add over 300 HSBC documents to her legal battleA Canadian judge has denied an application by Meng Wanzhou, the Huawei chief financial officer, to add documents her legal team received from HSBC as evidence to her US extradition case, the judge announced on Friday.Meng, 49, is facing extradition from Canada to the US on charges of bank fraud for allegedly misleading HSBC about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, potentially causing the bank to break US sanctions. She has been held under house arrest in Vancouver since December 2018, when she was first detained. Continue reading...

Analysis: multiple state agencies have been drafting rules to regulate China’s booming, anarchic tech sectorChina’s biggest ride-hailing company, Didi, is the latest casualty of Beijing’s effort to rein in upstart tech companies that had been left to their own devices in the absence of proper regulation.The Cyberspace Administration of China’s ban on Didi listing its app on mobile app stores in China, only days after the company floated on the New York stock exchange, prompted a sharp selloff of Didi’s shares. The debacle has angered investors after it was reported that Chinese authorities had for months cautioned Didi against rushing into a US listing owing to data security concerns. Continue reading...

Roguelike shooters, punishing platformers and brutal, sword-heavy RPGs … not all great games have to be a walk in the park

The Natural History Museum’s new podcast covers poaching, smuggling and more. Plus: To Live and Die in LA returns, and Atlas Obscura offers instant wanderlustWild Crimes

Beijing’s crackdown on cryptocurrencies has captured headlines, while behind the scenes its reserve bank set up its own digital currencyFew would dispute that China’s recent crackdown on cryptocurrency trading and mining has contributed to the recent plunge in the value of bitcoin and other cryptos.But while the argument rages about whether the volatility of cryptos is a sign of fundamental weakness or merely a bump along the road, the initiatives coming out of Beijing are being seen by experts as a sign of China’s attempts to incubate its own fledgling e-currency and reboot the international financial system. Continue reading...

Operator behind USD Coin will merge with company chaired by former Barclays chief executive Bob DiamondCircle, the company behind digital currency USD Coin, is to float in the US in a $4.5bn (£3.27bn) merger deal with a company chaired by former Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond.It will merge with Concord Acquisition Corp, which is chaired by Diamond, with the combined business to be taken over by a newly formed Irish holding company that will then list on the New York Stock Exchange. Continue reading...

Legal scholars suggest former president’s complaint may bring the attention he craves but doesn’t present a serious legal argumentDonald Trump may have filed lawsuits against Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, claiming he and other conservatives have been censored – but legal scholars say his case is probably doomed to fail.

We ask Australian comedians to tell us where the funny stuff is online. Montaigne is not a comedian, but she does spend a lot of time on the internetHello! I’m Montaigne and I’m a singer-songwriter. I represented Australia at Eurovision this year (and, technically, last year as well). I’m currently writing songs for an indie video game and preparing to release new music, and I have just announced a tour.When I’m not doing these sorts of things, I’m on the internet. That’s right. I’m a little internet grub. More than anything, I love things that make me laugh. The internet: it makes me laugh. Here are some things that have made me bust my frickin’ guts. Continue reading...

Watchdog calls for inquiry after Guardian investigation reveals ‘Green party’ ads were placed by conservative marketing firmA campaign finance watchdog group has requested that the justice department open a criminal investigation into the figures behind a series of deceptive Facebook ads that promoted Green party candidates in the 2018 midterm elections.A Guardian investigation recently revealed that the ads were placed by a major conservative marketing firm, contradicting an inquiry by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which accepted the statement of Evan Muhlstein that he was responsible for the ads and had failed to comply with FEC reporting requirements due to “inexperience”. Continue reading...

Ministers back down after hundreds of government offices insist banishing fax would be impossibleMost bureaucrats might be expected to welcome the chance to be freed from the tyranny of the fax machine. But in Japan, government plans to send the must-have item of 1980s office equipment the way of telex have in effect been scrapped after they encountered resistance from “faxophile” officials.A cabinet body that promotes administrative reform said in June it had decided to abolish the use of fax machines “as a rule” by the end of the month and switch to emails at ministries and agencies in the Tokyo district of Kasumigaseki, Japan’s bureaucratic nerve centre. Continue reading...

The insistent low-frequency sound has been heard from Bristol to Swansea and ascribed to everything from horny fish to 5G – but the enigma itself is tellingMaybe you hear it. A low frequency hum, almost a vibration, just on the threshold of human hearing. It’s not particularly loud. In fact, you might not have even noticed it yet – but once you do, you can’t stop hearing it. It sounds like a truck, idling on the street in front your house. Or the atmospheric din of an airplane flying overhead, that never gets further away. You can hear it when you’re outside, but it seems louder indoors, and particularly at night, when you’re lying in bed. Maybe it keeps you awake. Maybe it causes you headaches, dizziness, even nosebleeds.If you do hear it, you’re among the roughly 4% of the world’s population affected by “the Hum”, a frequently reported but little understood global phenomenon. The earliest reliable reports of the Hum date from the UK in the mid-1970s, most notably from Bristol, when letters began appearing in the Bristol Evening Post about a low rumble heard by dozens of residents throughout the city. What began as an irritating if innocuous noise eventually drove many who heard it to distraction, and was said to be linked to two suicides. A prevailing theory was that the Bristol Hum originated from large industrial fans used at a warehouse in nearby Avonmouth. But according to some Bristolians the Hum persists to this day, despite the warehouse having long been decommissioned. Continue reading...

During the early 80s home computing boom, flexi discs full of data were briefly all the rage, and Frank Sidebottom, the Thompson Twins and the Stranglers made their way to the ZX SpectrumIt’s almost unthinkable now, but from the 1970s until the early 1980s, vinyl records were explored as a means of storing computer data – including video games. Some magazines of the time tucked code-packed flexi disc inserts into their pages: paper-thin plastic records that could be fed into home computers from an ordinary turntable, magically manifesting a game on screen. Long before Travis Scott was attracting 12 million players to a gig hosted in Fortnite, there was a coming together of a British game developer, a magazine and a pop act that marked the beginning of the intersection between the music and games industries.The Thompson Twins Adventure Game came cover-mounted on a 1984 issue of the beloved magazine Computer & Video Games, the first UK magazine devoted to games. Almost everyone involved in the project – a promotional item linked to the release of the single Doctor Doctor – admits the game was imperfect. It was a weird text adventure garnished with incidental visuals, in which the members of the Thompson Twins had to locate the ingredients of a potion to be made by the song’s eponymous medic. The idea was that readers could load the disc from a turntable linked directly to a Spectrum, or copy the audio on to a cassette, which could then be used to load the game on a Spectrum or Commodore. Getting the recording level right could take multiple attempts, as users experimented with audio settings, and some of the disks got damaged as they dangled exposed on the cover. Continue reading...

The breach has affected hundreds of businesses around the world, and experts fear the worst is yet to comeHackers last week infiltrated a Florida-based information technology firm and deployed a ransomware attack, seizing troves of data and demanding $70m in payment for its return.The hack of the Kaseya firm, which is already being called “the biggest ransomware attack on record”, has affected hundreds of businesses globally, including supermarkets in Sweden and schools in New Zealand. Continue reading...

Report says RNC computers were breached by Cozy Bear hackers, accused of DNC hack in 2016The US Republican National Committee has denied that Russian hackers accessed data during a breach of third-party provider last week.The hackers were part of APT29 or Cozy Bear, according to Bloomberg, citing two unnamed people familiar with the matter. The group is linked with Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, and was previously accused of hacking the Democratic National Committee in 2016, as well as carrying out the historic cybersecurity breach against SolarWinds, which affected about 100 US companies and nine federal agencies. Continue reading...

Computer – the most powerful in Britain – will use AI to find new cures and deepen understanding of diseasesThe UK’s most powerful supercomputer, which its creators hope will make the process of preventing, diagnosing and treating disease better, faster and cheaper, is operational.Christened Cambridge-1, the supercomputer represents a $100m investment by US-based computing company Nvidia. The idea capitalises on artificial intelligence (AI) – which combines big data with computer science to facilitate problem-solving – in healthcare. Continue reading...

Critic and film-maker Mark Cousins offers a new instalment in his monumental Story of Film series, examining what digital technology has brought to the tableCritic and documentary film-maker Mark Cousins has returned to Cannes with another episode of his amazingly ambitious cinephile history The Story of Film, an illuminated patchwork clip-quilt, accompanied by his inimitable incantation-voiceover. It’s another example of his unique approach: Cousins is subjective almost to the point of free-associating or even sleep-talking (maybe appropriate for the dream state of the movies) but also colossally well-informed, bracingly internationalist and genuinely educational. I have never yet watched a Cousins film without learning something and being a bit sheepish about what I didn’t know.That said, Cousins’s style takes some getting used to – almost like a hyper-innocent form of criticism, wide-eyed with wonder at cinema’s brave new world, a Miranda of the movies. Occasionally Cousins’s commentary verges on the superfluous, simply describing what is on screen, although there is almost always a shrewd insight there: he has a great section on a creepy travelling shot in David Robert Mitchell’s psychological horror It Follows. Continue reading...

The upgraded OLED model will have a bigger screen and more storage for gamesNintendo has announced a new version of the Nintendo Switch, due out on 8 October this year. The Nintendo Switch OLED model will have a larger and brighter 7in screen, a wide kickstand for tabletop play, enhanced audio in handheld mode and 64GB of storage for games. Like the 2017 Nintendo Switch, it can be slotted into a dock for playing on a TV at home, or taken out and played as a handheld console. The TV dock will also have a wired LAN port, an important addition for those who like to play competitively online.An upgraded model of Nintendo’s successful console has been rumoured for the past year, and was at one point expected to be announced during E3 last June. It will be available on the same day as Metroid Dread, the most anticipated game in Nintendo’s 2021 lineup. Continue reading...

Between 800 and 1,500 businesses around the world, including supermarkets and dentists’ offices, affected by attackBetween 800 and 1,500 businesses around the world have been affected by a ransomware attack centered on the US information technology firm Kaseya, its chief executive said on Monday.Related: Republicans’ effort to deny the Capitol attack is working – and it’s dangerous Continue reading...

Asia Internet Coalition, including Twitter and Apple, sounds warning over amendments to laws that could see individuals hit with ‘severe sanctions’Tech giants including Google, Facebook, and Twitter could stop offering services to Hong Kong if the city moves forward with laws to impose penalties on users who publicly release identifying information about individual or organisations,an Asian industry group has warned.The Asia Internet Coalition, which counts the three major companies as well as Apple Inc and LinkedIn as members, wrote to Hong Kong’s Privacy Commissioner to warn that privacy laws which could see undefined “severe sanctions” against individuals for so-called doxing were “not aligned with global norms and trends”. Continue reading...

Don’t blame the medium for our inbox anxiety. The more fundamental issue is how work dominates our livesI am about to defend the seemingly indefensible: email, the inbox, all of it. And yes, I’m offering this case at a time when it might sound especially unlikely. This is the season of holiday responder messages and out-of-office replies. The back-and-forth of delayed communications makes email an especially draining project during the summer.I’m not unfamiliar with the paralysing anxiety that settles in when I see a notification that my unread messages total some ungodly number. I probably owe an email to a percentage of people reading this. (Sorry! Things are a bit busy!) And I’d love to never see the words “hope this message finds you well” again in my life. But the decentralised wonder that is email isn’t the cause of my stress; the real problem is work and too much of it, as relayed through these messages. When it comes to communications systems, email – a technology that’s 50 years old this year – is hard to beat. Continue reading...

Tory MP Tom Tugendhat raises concerns about deal in light of global computer chip shortageThe UK’s largest producer of semiconductors has been acquired by the Chinese-owned manufacturer Nexperia, prompting a senior Tory MP to call for the government to review the sale to a foreign owner during an increasingly severe global shortage of computer chips.Nexperia, a Dutch firm owned by China’s Wingtech, said on Monday that it had taken full control of Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), the UK’s largest producer of silicon chips, which are vital in products from TVs and mobile phones to cars and games consoles. Continue reading...

My grandfather Tom Barker, who has died of cancer aged 84, was a pivotal figure in mechanical engineering. He collaborated with some of the world’s best architects, putting heat, sound, light and air at the forefront of design. As director of Ove Arup & Partners (now Arup Group), the global engineering company, he was known for his work on the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Lloyd’s building in London, among many others.Tom led Arup’s engineering group for 26 years, designing for key projects such as the Menil Collection museum in Houston, Texas, and Kansai international airport in Osaka, Japan, with Peter Rice. Continue reading...

Fitness firm’s new Apple Watch-rival looks the part and tracks loads of data but lacks some real smartsGarmin’s latest device aims to beat the Apple Watch and rivals at their own game, offering longer battery life and better fitness tracking in a more traditional touchscreen smartwatch body.The Venu 2 comes in either 40mm or 45mm models, costs from £349.99 ($399.99/A$629) and is compatible with both Android and iPhones connecting via Bluetooth. Continue reading...

A revolutionary new class of amphibious vehicle will transform the search for lost vessels on the ocean floor, says marine archaeologist Dr Robert Ballard

The veteran US pilot is set to become the oldest woman in space – the only snag is she has to go with the Amazon billionaireYou have to feel for the American pilot Wally Funk. You would sympathise with anyone with that name, but she has had a particularly mixed week. On one hand, at 82, she is set to finally fulfil her life’s ambition and travel into space. Funk was one of the most promising female candidates for the Mercury 13 programme in the 1960s, but was denied a spot because of her gender. Right stuff, wrong parts. On Thursday, the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, announced on Instagram that Wally would become the oldest person in space as one of the four passengers on New Shepard, the rocket being launched by his company Blue Origin on 20 July. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to go up,” Funk said in an interview.The obvious downside, which she was too polite to mention, is that she has to ride with Bezos, his brother and one other, in a kind of UberPool from hell. She ought to have been more specific to the genie. Midlife does strange things to men, and so does being a billionaire. The combination leads to some odd outcomes. Not content with building his own rockets, Jeff, as he approaches 60, has decided to start riding them as well. Towers and yachts are so passé. Private space travel is the thing. Elon Musk is at it, too, and presumably a load of guys in China. Continue reading...

President addresses hack of Kaseya software that has affected hundreds of US businesses and shut down Swedish shopsJoe Biden said on Saturday he had directed US intelligence agencies to investigate a sophisticated ransomware attack that hit hundreds of American businesses as the Fourth of July holiday weekend began and aroused suspicions of Russian gang involvement.Related: Joe Biden cherry-picks audience to promote bipartisan infrastructure deal Continue reading...

Radio 4 series on Britney Spears’s troubles and Elon Musk’s space ambitions highlight society’s double standardsPieces of Britney (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds

The computer restoration of this masterpiece illustrates both the benefits and the dangers of AIIn the late 1970s I lived and worked briefly in the Netherlands. Often, on Sundays, I would travel to Amsterdam, go to the morning concert in the Spiegelzaal of the Concertgebouw, and afterwards walk over to the Rijksmuseum, Holland’s national gallery, and spend a couple of hours there. The museum is a wonderful storehouse of Dutch art and there was always much to explore. But on nearly every visit I found myself being drawn back to one of Rembrandt’s most famous pictures – The Night Watch – which I guess is to the Rijksmuseum what the Mona Lisa is to the Louvre.Its official title is Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. It came to be called The Night Watch because by the end of the 18th century it had darkened considerably through the accumulation of layers of dirt and varnish, leading to the belief that the painted scene had occurred after dusk. Continue reading...

As he hands over top job at Amazon, Bezos will remain largest shareholder and ‘has never had more energy’A quarter of a century after he founded Amazon in a Seattle garage, Jeff Bezos is preparing to loosen his grip on his $1.7tn (£1.2tn) company. Few employees in the sphere conservatories at Amazon’s sprawling Seattle campus headquarters reckon Bezos will relinquish that much of his iron grip on the company’s big decisions when Andy Jassy succeeds him as CEO on Monday. After all, Bezos will become executive chairman of Amazon’s board and remains the company’s biggest shareholder. But Bezos, 57, told his 1.3 million employees (whom he refers to as “fellow Amazonians”) that “as much as I still tap dance into the office, I’m excited about this transition”.“I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring,” he said. “I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives … I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organisations can have.” Continue reading...

The US cybersecurity agency said it was investigating the attack after an incident at the Miami-based IT firm KaseyaHundreds of American businesses have been hit by a ransomware attack ahead of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, according to the cybersecurity company Huntress Labs.Huntress Labs said on Friday that 200 American businesses were hit after an incident at the Miami-based IT firm Kaseya, potentially marking the latest in a line of hacks destabilizing US companies. Continue reading...

Study website made claims including warmer temperatures ‘could lead to healthier outdoor lifestyles’The BBC has removed an educational page laying out the “benefits” of climate change after a furious online reaction.BBC Bitesize, its website for schoolchildren, claimed warmer temperatures “could lead to healthier outdoor lifestyles” and that a benefit of climate change could mean easier access to oil in Alaska and Siberia. Continue reading...

Advertisements promoting diets or slimming products and that idealise certain body types will be removed from the platformPinterest is banning all advertisements with weight loss language and imagery, including ads that idealise or denigrate certain body types, the social media company says.The popular, picture-led social network, which allows users to create and share mood boards, said it would also not allow ads with testimonials about weight loss or weight loss products, or ads referencing body mass index (BMI) or similar indexes. Continue reading...

Trading platform has grown to more than $80bn in customer assets, Robinhood revealed as it prepares to go publicThe trading platform Robinhood, which has gained notoriety for allowing amateur stock investors to play the market, has grown rapidly to more than $80bn in customer assets, it revealed as it prepares to go public, even as it faces dozens of lawsuits and a historic fine over its business practices.The app that has sent a newly empowered generation of investors to Wall Street saw its revenue soar 309% at the start of the year as a frenzy over so-called meme stocks shook the market. Continue reading...

Crypto asset represents ownership of various digital items from when Berners-Lee invented the web in 1989An NFT of the original source code for the world wide web, written by its inventor Tim Berners-Lee, has sold for $5.4m at Sotheby’s in an online auction, the auction house said on Wednesday.A non-fungible token (NFT) is a kind of crypto asset that records ownership of digital items, and has recently become a major asset in the creative world, with NFTs of artwork, music and internet memes selling for millions of dollars. Continue reading...

The tech giant’s move to combat fraud and dodgy ads has taken too long. The online safety bill must change“We are committed to leading the necessary changes to help fight online scammers,” trumpeted Google’s UK managing director, Ronan Harris, this week, as if the tech giant were somehow a pioneer of a crackdown on online financial fraud and adverts offering “bonds” with implausibly high rates of interest.The reality is that Google’s harder approach has taken an age to appear. It was 18 months ago that the frustration of Andrew Bailey, then the chief executive of the FCA, boiled over. He called for “more assistance from the big internet service companies, particularly Google” on taking down obviously dodgy adverts quickly. If a bank or a regulated financial institution had received such a public shaming, immediate action would be expected. Continue reading...

Portugal footballer can command as much as $1.6m to endorse a product on social mediaCristiano Ronaldo has shot to the top of Instagram’s annual rich list of celebrities who can charge the most for a sponsored post, with the footballer able to command as much as $1.6m (£1.2m) to endorse a product on social media.The Portugal captain, who rattled the Euro 2020 sponsor Coca-Cola by removing its drinks from view at a post-match press conference, has been crowned king of the influencers in a list that includes the wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson and the singer Ariana Grande. Continue reading...

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’s really challenging to take 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...

Michael Cole says urban air mobility could free up congestion and help with emissions in citiesFlying cars will be a reality in cities around the globe by the end of this decade, according to a leading car manufacturer, and will help to reduce congestion and cut vehicle emissions.Michael Cole, the chief executive of the European operations of South Korean carmarker Hyundai, said the firm had made some “very significant investments” in urban air mobility, adding: “We believe it really is part of the future”. Continue reading...

During the pandemic many workers have felt more under siege than ever from work emails that arrive at all hours. Could the legal right to disconnect help?For 10 years, Jonathan has been available on email. He receives messages as early as 6am and as late as midnight, and steadily for a 12-hour stretch every day. And right from when he first became a lawyer, the clear expectation was that he would do his best to read them as soon as they came in.“When you get these emails on your phone, as we all do now, the pressure externally and internally to do something is huge,” Jonathan, 41, from north-west England, says. Continue reading...

Telco says 75% of population now able to access new technology and most regional communities welcome extra coverageCovid-19 conspiracy theories and protests did not prevent Telstra from ramping up its 5G network construction over the past year, with 75% of the population now able to access the new technology.In the past year, despite lockdowns and restrictions, Telstra was able to keep up construction of its new 5G network. The telecommunications company now has 5G in more than 200 cities and towns, and at least 50% coverage in more than 2,700 suburbs. Continue reading...

It was more than seven months ago, but it still can’t say when I’ll get my moneyCan you please ask Hackney council to pay the £1,071 in council tax it owes me? It claims it can’t because it faced a big cyber-attack more than seven months ago.I moved out of the borough in August 2020 and filled in the required form to let it know that I would no longer be paying council tax. I received an email receipt and assumed my direct debits would be cancelled. However, in early May, I discovered it was still taking £119 from my account each month. Continue reading...

Faced with so much new music, major labels are using algorithms to hunt down tomorrow’s hits. Is this great news for rising stars – or the recipe for a bland new future?One lunchtime about three years ago, Hazel Savage and Aron Pettersson set a new piece of software running on a laptop then went to a nearby mall for a sandwich. They hoped, on their return, to have the answer to a question that would change the music industry: can a computer pick a hit record?The pair had just founded their firm, Musiio, in Singapore’s Boat Quay district. Pettersson, who is Swedish, was a specialist in artificial intelligence (AI) with a background in neuroscience; Savage, a British music industry professional with tech pedigree, had worked for Shazam and the Pandora streaming service. They let their software loose on the Free Music Archive, one of the world’s largest collections of copyright-free songs. These are written by little-known artists and commonly used for soundtracks and podcasts. They asked their computer to pick 20 songs from the archive, based on their similarity to a tune Savage liked: I Wanted Everything by the US indie star Kurt Vile. Back in the office, they listened. “Every song was great,” says Savage, “and every song was of a similar genre.” Continue reading...

FCA steps up oversight amid warning to consumers about platformBritain’s financial regulator has ordered Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, to stop all regulated activity and issued a warning to consumers about the platform, which is coming under growing scrutiny globally.In a notice dated 25 June, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said Binance Markets Ltd, Binance’s UK entity, “must not, without the prior written consent of the FCA, carry out any regulated activities … with immediate effect”. Continue reading...

Forget schools or a nice pub nearby. A good internet connection is a top priority. But not all properties are equalIt used to be that demand for homes centred on the proximity to good schools, or how close they were to a nice restaurant or pub. Now, before they sign on the dotted line, homebuyers want to ensure they can download a film quickly, or check their work emails without interruption.Access to reliable and fast broadband is one of the key priorities as working from home looks set to become a more permanent arrangement for many. And a surge of interest in people wanting to move to the country has been coupled with demand for good internet in areas that might otherwise have weak connections. Continue reading...