As the pandemic forced us inside and online, Room Rater was one Twitter account giving doomscrollers a well-needed levity break. A year on, co-founder Claude Taylor explains how he plans to keep goingWith its stately lamp and verdant window view, Hillary Clinton’s “Zoom room” is nicer than most.So when Room Rater – a Twitter account which scores the video conference backgrounds of high-profile figures – gave it nine out of 10 last spring, Clinton took her disappointment to social media: “I’ll keep striving for that highest, hardest glass ceiling, the elusive 10/10,” she tweeted at the account. Continue reading...

Radar-based gesture and sleep tracking turns top smart assistant into a great alarm clock tooGoogle’s second-generation Nest Hub smart display now comes with radar-based sleep tracking as it attempts to keep Amazon’s Alexa at bay.The new Nest Hub costs £89.99 on launch, which makes it cheaper than its predecessor and slightly undercuts competitors of a similar size. Continue reading...

The FBI has relied on a variety of technologies to track down rioters – and watchdogs are concerned those technologies could impede protesters exercising their first amendment rightsOver the past months, federal law enforcement has used a wide variety of surveillance technologies to track down rioters who participated in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol building – demonstrating rising surveillance across the nation. Continue reading...

We are raiding the Audio Long Reads archives and bringing you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.This week, from 2018: How an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies – written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father – inspired the likes of Peter Thiel to buy up property across the Pacific. By Mark O’Connell Continue reading...

China powers nearly 80% of the global cryptocurrencies trade, but the energy required could jeopardise its pledge to peak carbon emissions by 2030China’s electricity-hungry bitcoin mines that power nearly 80% of the global trade in cryptocurrencies risk undercutting the country’s climate goals, a study in the journal Nature has said.Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rely on “blockchain” technology, which is a shared database of transactions, with entries that must be confirmed and encrypted. The network is secured by individuals called “miners” who use high-powered computers to verify transactions, with bitcoins offered as a reward. Those computers consume enormous amounts of electricity. Continue reading...

Maggie Kelly went looking for secondhand clothes and a crib and found the mother tribeIt was that special brand of 2020 pessimism and a hefty dose of first-mum nerves that turned me in the pregnancy Grinch. Everything was new, overwhelming and expensive. List upon list grew with every 3am bolt from the blue. Cribs, bassinets, prams, nursing chairs, eco-nappies, cotton nappies, bamboo nappies. I was trapped in a cutesy-wootsy duckling-print plastic hell.“We’re going to kill the planet with every dollar we spend,” I grumbled to my partner as I waddled the aisles of Baby Bunting. Shopping secondhand seemed like the better option – I could save the planet while avoiding anything printed with baby animals. Continue reading...

Experts urge users to secure accounts and passwords after breach exposes personal details of more than 500 million peopleAustralians are being urged to secure their social media accounts after the details of more than 500 million global Facebook users were found online in a massive data breach.The details published freely online included names, phone numbers, email addresses, account IDs and bios. Continue reading...

Digital art can be easily and endlessly duplicated, but non-fungible tokens allow buyers to confirm ownershipThe artist Kevin Abosch has sold a picture of a potato for $1.5m, made a neon sculpture inspired by cryptocurrency, and even sold his own blood on the blockchain.So in many ways, entering the world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) was the next logical step for the 51-year-old Irish artist, whose work explores themes of digital currency and value. Continue reading...

Vote in Bessemer, Alabama, is chance to inform younger generations about the role unions play, labor leaders sayCounting is currently under way for the historic union election at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, and union organizers and leaders throughout the labor movement are hoping the effort will help galvanize support for workers and unions in the south and across the US.Tevita Uhatafe, 35, a member of Transport Workers Union of America Local 513 in the Dallas area, was one of several union members and leaders who visited Bessemer to lend their support for the union organizing drive. Continue reading...

Covid has given Peter Thiel’s secretive US tech company new opportunities to operate in Europe in ways some campaigners find worryingThe 24 March, 2020 will be remembered by some for the news that Prince Charles tested positive for Covid and was isolating in Scotland. In Athens it was memorable as the day the traffic went silent. Twenty-four hours into a hard lockdown, Greeks were acclimatising to a new reality in which they had to send an SMS to the government in order to leave the house. As well as millions of text messages, the Greek government faced extraordinary dilemmas. The European Union’s most vulnerable economy, its oldest population along with Italy, and one of its weakest health systems faced the first wave of a pandemic that overwhelmed richer countries with fewer pensioners and stronger health provision. The carnage in Italy loomed large across the Adriatic.One Greek who did go into the office that day was Kyriakos Pierrakakis, the minister for digital transformation, whose signature was inked in blue on an agreement with the US technology company, Palantir. The deal, which would not be revealed to the public for another nine months, gave one of the world’s most controversial tech companies access to vast amounts of personal data while offering its software to help Greece weather the Covid storm. The zero-cost agreement was not registered on the public procurement system, neither did the Greek government carry out a data impact assessment – the mandated check to see whether an agreement might violate privacy laws. Continue reading...

Spy Affair delves in to the tale of a gun campaigner arrested for espionage. Plus: true crime with a purpose in The Doodler, and Current Affairs looks at unionisation efforts at AmazonSpy Affair

The pandemic has driven chilliheads online, where some have built impressive followings for their hot sauce reviews and daring feats of strengthBehind his calm, methodical approach to every hot chilli eating and super spicy food challenge, Dustin “Atomik Menace” Johnson is enduring a kind of physical pain and mental anguish beyond what most will ever experience in a lifetime.In one of his most-watched YouTube livestreams, the 31-year-old Las Vegas resident downs 122 super-spicy Carolina Reapers, the Guinness World Record holder for hottest pepper, while fans watch and cheer him on. While there are clues that he’s struggling – his face turns a deep red color and shines with perspiration, and in the latter half in particular, he takes breaks – his low-key demeanor has made the growing chillihead community question whether he’s built like an average human, or if he’s human at all. Continue reading...

Former US president has been banned from the platform since early January after the violent insurrection of the CapitolFacebook on Wednesday removed a clip of an interview with Donald Trump from its platform, according to the former president’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump.In a post shared to her Instagram account, Lara Trump, who is a Fox News commentator, shared a message from Facebook officials alerting her they had removed a video teaser of an upcoming interview with her father-in-law on Fox News. Continue reading...

Fashion world will watch with interest after brand replaces social media posts with magazine IssueBottega Veneta has been the hottest fashion house on social media since the British designer Daniel Lee arrived at the Milanese label less than three years ago.The model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley posted no fewer than 39 selfies featuring her “Pouch” handbag in the space of three months. When four British Vogue staffers realised they were all wearing clothes or accessories from the label one day in September 2019, they posted a photo captioned: “We have a new desk dress code @bottegaveneta”.

Similar accounts have been used before during periods when the company was facing increased scrutiny and criticismA surge of “fake” Twitter accounts have emerged to defend Amazon and push back against criticism of working conditions at the company amid a fiercely fought union election for the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Continue reading...

Campaign viewed as one of the biggest and most consequential unionization drives in recent America historyVote counting is set to begin in an election to determine whether Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, Alabama, will form a union in what is viewed as one of the biggest and most consequential unionization drives in recent America history.The contest has pitted America’s labor movement – backed by a slew of Democrat politicians and some Republicans – against one of the most powerful companies in the world. Continue reading...

Scheme expanded to 38 more countries as tech giant faces heat on the right to repair iPhones and MacsApple will allow independent repairers in Australia and New Zealand to sign up to a new program this week which will provide access to its tools and spare parts, as the company faces heat on the right to repair.The countries are two of 38 included in the expansion of Apple’s independent repair provider program from later this week. The program is already available in the US, Canada and parts of Europe, with more than 1,500 independent repairers now onboard. Continue reading...

With the ex-president gone, the site is launching a flurry of new features – yet its reputation for abuse may endureIn January, Twitter committed what was at first glance a massive act of self-sabotage: it gave its star attraction, Donald Trump, a lifetime ban. This brought to an end a five-year faustian relationship between the two; some observers wondered if the platform would wither without him, yet, to many, Trump was Twitter’s problem writ large.If YouTube has creators and Instagram has influencers, then what does Twitter have? Few of the words that might jump to mind for regular users are especially positive: there is frequent talk of Twitter storms, Twitter mobs and Twitter pile-ons. Continue reading...

Early in the pandemic, we spoke to four bosses about how their businesses were faring. A year on, we ask them to about an extraordinary 12 months and what the future might holdEarly in the pandemic Philip Jansen gave investors a financial fright by scrapping BT’s multibillion-pound dividend. Now, nearly a year on, he is handing out Covid bonuses to tens of thousands of frontline staff before a vote on a potential national strike. Continue reading...

Has a year of video calls made you self-conscious? Don’t turn your camera off: just relax and deploy a few of these beauty tipsThought we were a nation of narcissists pre-Covid? Well, a global pandemic has taken things to a whole new level. It’s safe to say nobody planned to spend quite so much of the past year staring at their own grainy reflection, but with everything from weddings to work meetings forced online, our bid to stay connected with others has meant being constantly confronted with our own faces.And not all of us like what we see. There’s a big difference between sharing a carefully filtered selfie on Instagram, and catching yourself slumped in front of the screen during your fourth video chat of the day, the cat cleaning its paws in the background as you stare in horror at your dark circles. What with the unflattering lighting, unforgiving camera angles and the fact that none of us has been inside a salon in months, it’s no wonder we’re sick of the sight of ourselves. But what effect does it have on our self-esteem? And can we do anything to boost it? Continue reading...

The Instagram cleaning guru teams up with her husband for a fan-friendly new show. Plus: where is home, if home doesn’t exist any more, and a slow-burn serial on IsisAll the Best (and Worst) With Mr and Mrs Hinch

Protesters outside the Capitol denounced the platforms as Facebook, Twitter and Google heads questioned by CongressThe CEOs of America’s biggest technology companies faced a grilling on Thursday from Congress about the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol, as protesters outside the hearing denounced the platforms for playing a role in fueling the violence.The marathon, six-hour hearing saw the three most powerful men in tech – Sundar Pichai of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Jack Dorsey of Twitter – testify before two committees of the House of Representatives on social media’s role in promoting extremism and misinformation. Continue reading...

Former Australian prime minister interviewed by Abbey Hansen, known as minorfauna on TikTok, who turned misogyny speech into viral hitA year ago, former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech was given new life after it became a viral dancing meme on TikTok during the first wave of Covid-19 lockdowns.Now the woman who created the trend, Abbey Hansen, has interviewed her political muse on TikTok live to celebrate women’s history month. Continue reading...

Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai called to answer for the role of tech and social media in fueling Capitol violence and extremism9.51pm GMTThat wraps up the last statements of the Congressional hearing called Disinformation nation: social media’s role in promoting extremism and misinformation. In some ways it felt a lot of ground was covered during the six-hour questioning marathon of the three most powerful men in tech, but in others it is not clear what concrete action will be seen from the latest in a long line of panels on misinformation and hate speech.As has happened in past hearings on the matter, Republicans repeatedly claimed conservative viewpoints are maligned on social platforms while Democrats argued that something must be done about misinformation and hate speech. Special attention was paid to how hate speech impacts minority communities including the LGBTQ+ community, the Black community, Asian Americans, and Spanish-speakers.9.22pm GMTCongress member Kim Schrier, who is a medical doctor, talked about the concerns surrounding vaccine hesitancy caused by medical misinformation on social media.She said a lot of doctors spend their days vaccinating on the front lines of the pandemic, only to come home to combat misinformation on social media in their free time. Continue reading...

Millions bought new consoles in 2020. But with the pandemic ruining big releases, there’s a shortage of games to play on themSince the pandemic began, the video games industry has been booming. Last year was a bumper year, with most of the world’s population forced inside by lockdowns and looking for safe ways to have fun and socialise, and new games consoles such as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S launching in November. UK consumers spent more on games last year than ever before; Roblox, a gaming platform popular with children and teens, saw an 85% uptick in players and shares in the company recently rose 60%, increasing its value to $47bn. Last year’s games were great, too, from lockdown saviour Animal Crossing: New Horizons to the provocative horror game The Last of Us II and the knockabout multiplayer caper Fall Guys.But 2021, so far, is depressingly devoid of exciting gaming experiences. Since new PlayStation and Xbox consoles were launched last November, there has been almost nothing new to play on them – and due to supply issues, many thousands of people still haven’t been able to even buy one. Usually March is when the first big games of the year start to appear, but this time there’s been very little. Continue reading...

Ben Kirby’s PreachersNSneakers took off when he posted the enormous price tags of the fashion worn by prominent clergyBen Kirby never intended to gain a social media following or obtain a book deal based on his knowledge of religion and sneakers, but that’s exactly what happened when he launched the PreachersNSneakers account on Instagram in 2019.The 31-year-old Dallas, Texas, resident was working towards obtaining his MBA and DJ-ing as a side job in 2019, when he overslept and missed church. “I had never done this before but I decided to sit on my couch and look up YouTube worship videos,” he told the Guardian. Continue reading...

Schoolgirl’s fake cosmetics site helps hundreds of women as domestic violence rises during CovidIn April 2020, weeks after Poland went into its first Covid-19 lockdown, Krysia Paszko, a 17-year-old high school pupil, watched a TV report about Europe’s surge in domestic violence cases, which had increased by up to 60% on 2019, according to the World Health Organization. Poland’s largest women’s rights centre, Centrum Praw Kobiet (CPK), had reported a 50% increase in calls to its domestic violence hotline in March.Learning from the report that France had implemented a scheme in pharmacies that women could use to report domestic violence using the codewords “Mask 19”, Paszko had an idea. With help from a graphic designer friend, she created a Facebook page for a fictitious cosmetics company. Continue reading...

Company says hackers used malware to infect devices and enable surveillance after setting up fake profiles to build trustFacebook has blocked a group of hackers in China who used the platform to target Uighurs living abroad with links to malware that would infect their devices and enable surveillance.Related: 'Think of your family': China threatens European citizens over Xinjiang protests Continue reading...

This week an investment bank announced Zoom-free Fridays – and they are far from the first to question the stress and fatigue that comes with 24/7 screen time

Nintendo Switch; Marvelous Interactive/XSEED

Survey finds Asian and Black Americans saw major jump in harassment, while LGBTQ+ respondents face highest rate overallAsian Americans and Black Americans experienced major rises in online hate in the past year, a new report has found, despite recent steps that social media firms have taken to address harassment.A survey released on Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League, an anti-hate speech organization founded in 1913, discovered that in 2020 Asian Americans experienced the largest single rise in severe online hate and harassment year-over-year in comparison with other groups, with 17% reporting having experienced sexual harassment, stalking, physical threats, swatting, doxing or sustained harassment, compared with 11% last year. Continue reading...

Latest top-spec handset has Hasselblad-branded camera, great screen and long battery lifeOnePlus’s latest 9 Pro Android phone takes the firm’s winning formula of slick speed and adds knowhow from the Swedish renowned camera manufacturer Hasselblad to try to improve things in the photography department.The £829 phone tops the Chinese brand’s line for 2021 and joins its stablemate Oppo in its pursuit of top dog Samsung. Continue reading...

The head of Facebook, and his Google and Twitter counterparts, could face a rough ride at the scene of the insurrectionists’ crimeMark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, could be in for a rough ride on Thursday when he testifies to Congress for the first time about the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol in Washington DC and amid growing questions over his platform’s role in fuelling the violence.The testimony will come after signs that the new administration of Joe Biden is preparing to take a tougher line on the tech industry’s power, especially when it comes to the social media platforms and their role in spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories. Continue reading...

Calls for changes to classification system after award-winning role-playing game said to offend standards of ‘morality’The banning of video game Disco Elysium from sale in Australia has renewed calls for the Australian government to overhaul the classification system to move away from the “moral panic” associated with video games.On Friday afternoon, the Australian classification board announced Disco Elysium – The Final Cut was refused classification on the grounds the game was found to “depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena” in a way that offended “against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults”. It ruled the game should not be classified. Continue reading...

The 300-page document for moderators defines which phrases are ethically unacceptable

This year non-fungible tokens burst into the mainstream after several digital images and animations sold for absurd amounts – so I entered the world of NFTs myselfFor years, I’ve kept an ever-growing record of interesting pictures I discover online in a folder entitled Images on my desktop: a fox sauntering through an art gallery; a pixelated rendering of a Tokyo streetscape; Jon Bon Jovi doing yoga. They’re sentimental reminders of things I’ve seen online, but I am under no illusion that I somehow own these images. They come from the internet and can be copied, shared and experienced by many people all at once. My collection really is worthless to anyone but me.Related: Art, amulets and cryptokitties: the new frontier of cryptocurrencies Continue reading...

Federal court to decide whether Fortnite maker’s case can be heard while legal action under way in USApple has argued that Epic Games’ case against the tech giant’s in-app purchase system is not altruistically trying to secure a better deal for Australian customers and app developers in the app store, but the “self-serving” act of a Goliath trying to fundamentally change Apple’s business model.The popular video game Fortnite was kicked off both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store in August after Epic bypassed the companies’ in-app payment methods for their own cheaper direct billing that prevented Apple and Google taking a share. Continue reading...

Comedians went virtual, Ai Weiwei went to Portugal – and Bake Off pledged the show would go on. In the first of a two-part series, cultural figures look back on a year that shook their industry

The acclaimed writer on technology and its effect on our mental health talks about her memoir and the insights Covid has given herSherry Turkle, 72, is professor of the social studies of science and technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was one of the first academics to examine the impact of technology on human psychology and society. She has published a series of acclaimed books: her latest, The Empathy Diaries, is an enthralling memoir taking in her time growing up in Brooklyn, her thorny family background, studying in Paris and at Harvard, and her academic career.It’s quite unusual for an academic to put themselves central to the story. What was your motivation for writing a memoir?

The effort has received several high profile endorsements, including from President Joe Biden and other labor unionsOrganizers and workers are making the final push in the first Amazon warehouse union election in the US in Bessemer, Alabama which, if successful, would mark one of the biggest labor victories in the US over the past several decades.The fight over forming a union at the hugely profitable tech and retail giant has triggered immense political interest and pushed labor rights on to America’s front pages, especially during the coronavirus pandemic when warehouse workers for online retail have become an essential workforce. Continue reading...

Ipswich is an ideal place to trial technology to bring fully self-driving cars to Australian cities. But the project has had to overcome a lot of road bumpsAs the traffic lights turn from amber to red, Miranda Blogg accelerates towards them.“Here we go,” she says. Continue reading...

In progressive circles these days, there is a palpable horror of the uncurated world, of thought-spaces flourishing outside the consensusOne day in March 2015, I sat in a theater in New York City and took careful notes as a series of personages led by Hillary Clinton and Melinda Gates described the dazzling sunburst of liberation that was coming our way thanks to entrepreneurs, foundations and Silicon Valley. The presentation I remember most vividly was that of a famous TV actor who rhapsodized about the wonders of Twitter, Facebook and the rest: “No matter which platform you prefer,” she told us, “social media has given us all an extraordinary new world, where anyone, no matter their gender, can share their story across communities, continents and computer screens. A whole new world without ceilings.”Six years later and liberals can’t wait for that extraordinary new world to end. Today we know that social media is what gives you things like Donald Trump’s lying tweets, the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Capitol riot of 6 January. Social media, we now know, is a volcano of misinformation, a non-stop wallow in hatred and lies, generated for fun and profit, and these days liberal politicians are openly pleading with social media’s corporate masters to pleez clamp a ceiling on it, to stop people from sharing their false and dangerous stories. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch; Natsume

Shon Faye hosts Call Me Mother. Plus: inviting homecoming tours with Katy Wix and Adam Drake, and weird and wonderful tales with Heavyweight’s Jonathan GoldsteinCall Me Mother

Rise in 3D-printed homes comes as California’s housing crisis continues to rage, with 1.8m to 3.5m new units needed by 2025The desert landscape of California’s Coachella Valley will soon be home to the first US neighborhood comprised entirely of 3D-printed houses.Through a partnership between two California companies – Palari, a sustainable real estate development group, and Mighty Buildings, a construction technology company – a five acre parcel of land in Rancho Mirage will be transformed into a planned community of 15 3D-printed, eco-friendly homes claiming to be the first of its kind. Continue reading...

Social media giant says it’s exploring introducing a parent-controlled experience that allows kids to ‘safely’ use the photo sharing platformFacebook is considering launching a version of its popular photo social media platform, Instagram, for children under the age of 13.BuzzFeed News first reported Facebook announced in an internal company post that the company would begin building a version of Instagram for people under the age of 13 years to allow them to “safely” use Instagram for the first time. Currently the company does not allow people who are under this age to create an account on the platform. Continue reading...

Drivers react to new remuneration with taxi hailing app but say more still needs to be done to improve termsOn Wednesday Uber, the taxi hailing app, began offering 70,000 UK drivers a minimum hourly wage, holiday pay and pensions after years of legal battles.Related: Uber to pay UK drivers minimum wage, holiday pay and pension Continue reading...

We ask Australian comedians to liven up our day with comedy gems. Here’s what Nikki Britton sent usI’ll not waste too much of your time here. There is nothing funnier than an obnoxious dad, three beers in at a barbecue, dominating the kids’ trampoline, only to misstep and get his scrotum pinched in the springs. Nothing. It is comedy perfection. The slapstick physicality, the status drop, the schadenfreude. *chef’s kiss*Unfortunately, these clips are harder to come across that you’d think. And, if you do a Google search for “scrotal pinch” you’re in for a bit of spice. I expect most of these wonders are locked deep in a dusty vault in the basement at Channel Nine. The only way it might be opened is if Shelley Craft and Toni Pearen meet by the midnight moon and chant the spell: “You’re dinky-di true blue, the funny things you do. Australia, Australia, this is you.” Then combine their separate halves of the only key that opens the lock. (If you did not live through the 90s in Australia you won’t get this reference, and I can’t help you.) Continue reading...

Union says taxi app firm will force workers to take new cases to court despite success with wage claimUber is set to face further legal action over pay as unions said the taxi hailing app’s new deal was continuing to shortchange its UK drivers.On Tuesday, after years of resistance by the company, Uber said it accepted that its 70,000 private-hire drivers were workers with rights to a minimum hourly wage and holiday pay in line with a supreme court ruling last month. Continue reading...