The coronavirus pandemic has left us living more and more of our lives online. But the place where we chat with friends, get our news and form our opinions is full of vile and dangerous conspiracy theories. Is the world’s biggest social network doing enough to combat them?
High-speed pods could eventually make New York-Washington trip in 30 minutesRichard Branson’s Virgin Hyperloop has completed the world’s first passenger ride on a high-speed levitating pod system, a key safety test for technology it hopes will transform human and cargo transportation.The Virgin Hyperloop executives, Josh Giegel, its chief technology officer, and Sara Luchian, the director of passenger experience, reached speeds of up to 107mph (172 km/h) at the company’s DevLoop test site in Las Vegas, Nevada, the company said on Sunday. Continue reading...
by Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor on (#5A3G8)
Investment in robot warfare at heart of UK’s planned five-year defence reviewThirty thousand “robot soldiers” could form an integral part of the British army in the 2030s, working alongside humans in and around the frontline, the head of the armed forces said in a television interview on Sunday.Gen Sir Nick Carter said the armed forces needed “to think about how we measure effects in a different way” – and he called on the government to proceed with the previously promised five-year integrated defence review. Continue reading...
‘Stop the Steal’ group acquired 40,000 members after a similar group was shut down, then changed its name without explanationThousands of Donald Trump supporters have unwittingly found themselves in a Facebook group called “Gay Communists for Socialism”, after being tricked by its creators into joining what they thought was a pro-Trump election group.On Thursday, a Facebook group called “Stop the Steal”, a reference to the president’s false claims that Joe Biden is “stealing” the US election, was disabled by the social network for misinformation after gaining more than 350,000 members. Other groups emerged in its place, including a second “Stop the Steal” group that attracted more than 40,000 castaways from the original group. Continue reading...
If the system was really sophisticated, it would trigger a call to a dieticianI recently received a text asking me to verify whether I had made a recent purchase. This is something that happens a lot, as my bank is triggered by anything that doesn’t appear to be me. It will allow limitless funds to go on overpriced trainers, but block barbecue meats or Tottenham Hotspur merch. I am making this up, of course, as it seems entirely random what it double-checks, although I am sure there is a sophisticated algorithm that says things like: “Romesh doesn’t usually buy vegetables in January – he gets depressed and eats only pastries.”It is worse when I’m on tour. The bank gets extra suspicious because I make purchases in so many different towns, particularly since almost every one is curry. I spent the whole of my last tour on the phone trying to convince my bank it was actually me having vegetable jalfrezi for the 16th consecutive night. If the system were truly sophisticated, it would trigger a call to a dietitian. Continue reading...
Digital system automatically reduces electric bicycles’ power in built-up areasElectric bike motors will be shut down when entering residential or built-up areas of Amsterdam, under a government-funded project to cut road deaths from the increasingly powerful vehicles.The digital technology, which has been successfully trialled on a 4km stretch of bike lanes at Schiphol airport, was funded by the Dutch ministry of infrastructure and water management. Continue reading...
This enormous spaceship of a console comes with enough flagship features – from fast SSD and frame rate to 4K resolution – that you might overlook the hefty price tag
Conspiracy theories and misinformation have circulated widely before removal, watchdog findsTikTok has emerged as an unexpected source of misinformation about the US election, with numerous inaccurate or misleading posts circulating as tech companies battle to contain falsehoods from Donald Trump and others.
They’re superfast, they’re frictionless and you get access to Xbox Game Pass. But not much else, from the controller to the interface, has changed – and launching without a single new game is just bizarre
Feature on Facebook-owned app is designed to help people cut their digital footprintWhatsApp will soon have a disappearing message feature, designed to enable users of the chat app to cut down on their digital footprint.Once the update, which is rolling out from Thursday, hits phones, users will be able to set an option for each individual chat they are in – whether one-on-one or a group – to delete messages automatically seven days after they have been sent. Continue reading...
Richard Browning is pursuing the stuff of a million childhood dreams. But having built a working jetpack, will anybody use it?On a gloomy afternoon in a Sussex wood, a 21st-century superhero appears. Dressed in black, helmeted, a pack on his back and jets on his arms, he rises to a couple of metres above the ground, accelerates up above a grassy bank and then hovers in a swirling cloud of autumn leaves.No matter how many times you’ve watched a video on YouTube, nothing can quite prepare you for the sight of a human being in flight. It is the embodiment of a thousand myths, from Hermes and Peter Pan to Iron Man, as well as a million childhood dreams, and is the only correct answer to that old conundrum: which superpower would you choose, invisibility or flying? If it wasn’t for the roar of the jet engines and the smell of fuel, you would assume it was just a dream. Continue reading...
Funds have lain dormant since darknet site founder Ross Ulbricht was jailed in 2013A billion dollars worth of bitcoins linked to the shuttered darknet market Silk Road has changed hands for the first time in seven years, prompting renewed speculation about the fate of the illicit fortune.Almost 70,000 bitcoins stored in the account which, like all bitcoin wallets, is visible to the public, had lain untouched since April 2013. The website was shut down by an FBI raid six months after they were deposited, and they have not moved since. Continue reading...
Representation of characters from ‘uncivilised’ worlds and a nostalgia for colonial cultures have been problematic from the startWhen Black Lives Matter protests were raging following the death of George Floyd, the publishers of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, pledged to take concrete steps to make their games more diverse. Wizards of the Coast promised to “share what we’ve been doing, and what we plan to do in the future to address legacy D&D content that does not reflect who we are today”. In addition, it also pulled several racist cards from the card game Magic: The Gathering, such as Invoke Prejudice, Jihad and Pradesh Gypsies.Perceptions of racism in fantasy go back to the origins of the genre. Is it a coincidence that D&D’s dishonourable, dark-skinned elves come from a matriarchal society, or that its savage orcs bear uncanny resemblance to a traditionally white, western conceptualisation of barbaric peoples from the “uncivilised” world? Although fantasy affords us every freedom to imagine new worlds and cultures, for the last 200-odd years, humans have mostly managed derivative facsimiles of our own. This includes reproducing the scourge of systemic racism. Continue reading...
Officials are warning about foreign interference – but unlike in 2016, the greater threat comes from the White HouseIt seemed like the nightmare of 2016 all over again. Continue reading...
An online competition has set up two bots to see if they can simulate a romantic rendezvous. But almost two weeks later things are not quite going to planName: Kuki and Blenderbot.Age: Hard to say exactly, mid-20s or thereabouts. Continue reading...
Secure messaging app pivotal to organisation of protests and spreading of news about repressionsIn a small Minsk apartment one evening last week, a group of people gathered to discuss plans for a Halloween party with a twist. There would be costumes, drinks and games, but the main event was a ceremonial funeral. The plan: to bury Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship.“Maybe we should bury a pumpkin with a moustache,” suggested one young woman. Continue reading...
Even before the Covid pandemic, loneliness had been deemed an official epidemic in several countries – and some companies have offered tech-based solutionsThis was the year we all began social distancing. But the ensuing isolation was already the norm for a rapidly growing population – and a major opportunity for many businesses. And as isolation has engulfed the globe like the virus itself, the business of loneliness is booming.Even before the pandemic, loneliness had been deemed an official epidemic in several countries. Rates of loneliness in the US have doubled over the past 50 years. In 2018, some 200,000 of the UK’s elderly hadn’t spoken to a friend or relative in a month, according to a government report, and 75% of the country’s general practitioners report seeing between one and five lonely patients each day. Continue reading...
New York University research into who sees the messages is laudable but its collection of personal data isn’tIt looked like another classic Facebook scandal: a report in the Wall Street Journal with the headline “Facebook Seeks Shutdown of NYU Research Project Into Political Ad Targeting”. The story was that Facebook was “demanding that a New York University research project cease collecting data about its political-ad-targeting practices, setting up a fight with academics seeking to study the platform without the company’s permission. The dispute involves the NYU Ad Observatory, a project launched last month by the university’s engineering school that has recruited more than 6,500 volunteers to use a specially designed browser extension to collect data about the political ads Facebook shows them.”Cue outrage, including, initially, from this columnist. Typical tech company bullying, etc, etc. The NYU project seemed like a thoroughly good idea. After the controversies about its role in the 2016 election, Facebook created an archive of political ads that ran on its platform, showing who sponsored an ad, when it ran and the location of people who saw it, but excluding information about the targeting that determines who sees the ads. The NYU researchers sought to provide journalists and others with a tool for searching political ads by state and contest to see what messages are targeted at specific audiences and how those ads are funded. Continue reading...
Shops, cafes and pubs now can keep logs of their visitors who use the QR code check-in on their phonesBusinesses across Australia are being encouraged or required to keep logs of who has been in their establishment in case of a Covid-19 outbreak.Many choose to use paper and pen to keep records, but increasingly QR code posters are up so people can check in via their phones. Continue reading...
Like an idiot, I ordered them to replace my almost identical old pair that I was now convinced were trashI have been known to be wildly inconsistent with my reactions to expensive items. I will happily overpay for a pair of jeans, and later that same day bemoan the state of the world when an ice-cream costs a fiver, despite both items having a similar manufacturing cost.My biggest blind spot is headphones. I have become convinced that I need a pair for different situations. So I have a pair for the gym (barely used, obviously), a pair for everything else, and then a pair of wireless earphones for situations in which I don’t feel like wearing headphones (or something; I can’t remember how I justified it to my family). Continue reading...
Moderators had to manually intervene to limit distribution of Hunter Biden reportFacebook moderators had to manually intervene to suppress a controversial New York Post story about Hunter Biden, according to leaked moderation guidelines seen by the Guardian.The document, which lays out in detail Facebook’s policies for dealing with misinformation on Facebook and Instagram, sheds new light on the process that led to the company’s decision to reduce the distribution of the story. Continue reading...
by Written by Frank Pasquale, read by Raj Ghatak and on (#59QK3)
Autonomous machines capable of deadly force are increasingly prevalent in modern warfare, despite numerous ethical concerns. Is there anything we can do to halt the advance of the killer robots? By Frank Pasquale Continue reading...
Judge declines to dismiss case against Huawei CFO but says assertion that US misrepresented evidence for extradition has ‘air of reality’A judge has blocked an attempt by Canada’s attorney general to dismiss parts of the extradition case against Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, according to a ruling released on Thursday.However, the judge sided with the attorney general in agreeing that Meng’s arguments were not strong enough to warrant an immediate dismissal of the case to extradite to the US for trial on fraud charges. Continue reading...
Google, Facebook and Amazon rally in third-quarter earnings reportsBig tech rallied on Thursday in earnings reports, largely shaking off the impacts of recent regulatory hearings and the coronavirus pandemic.Major tech firms added a combined $163bn to their market capitalizations ahead of the release of their earning reports on Thursday, more than the entire value of McDonald’s. Continue reading...
Company also used Argentine flag instead of Swedish one to represent countryAmazon’s launch of a Swedish retail site, its first in the Nordics, has caused embarrassment at the e-commerce company after a series of errors led to confusing, nonsensical and occasionally vulgar product listings scattered across the catalogue.To start with, Amazon chose the wrong flag: the Argentine flag appeared where the Swedish flag should have been placed on the country picker. It is unclear how the error happened: aside from copious use of blue, the two flags are not similar. Continue reading...
The apps feed a false promise of stability to immigrants and people of color. Instead, drivers receive low pay and no benefitsUber and Lyft want you to know they aren’t racist. It’s why Uber put up billboards all over the west coast saying: “If you tolerate racism, delete Uber.” It’s why Lyft is running ads featuring Maya Angelou’s “Lift up your eyes” poem over clips of Black passengers enjoying their service. It’s all to say – “We get it. We’re woke. We think Black Lives Matter just like you do. We’re with you in the struggle.”OK, Uber and Lyft. You want a seat at the anti-racism table? Let’s talk about race. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#59NQ6)
Fresh, iPhone 4-like redesign is slimmer with long battery life, good camera and smash-resistant screenThe iPhone 12 combines the designs of the iPhone X and the legendary iPhone 4 and comes out looking and feeling fresh, with 5G, a better screen and improved cameras.The new iPhone costs from £799 and sits between the slightly smaller £699 iPhone 12 Mini and the £999 iPhone 12 Pro and £1,099 12 Pro Max. Continue reading...
Republican and Democrat lawmakers grill the CEOs of tech giants Twitter, Facebook and Google in a hearing about a federal law protecting internet companies from legal liability for content generated by its users. While Republicans focused on disinformation and the 'censoring' of Donald Trump, Democrats accused their rivals of politicising the hearing, while also questioning the mechanics of the platforms that promoted content they deemed divisiveRepublicans use congressional hearing to berate tech CEOs and claim Trump is 'censored'
In rare appearance days before election, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and Sundar Pichai defend law as critical to free speech6.29pm GMTThe hearing on Wednesday wrapped up a little before 11am, with very little concrete questioning around section 230 having transpired over the previous four hours.
Interview with conspiracy theorist leaves streaming service in awkward positionJoe Rogan, Spotify’s biggest podcast star, has left the platform in an awkward position after conducting a lengthy interview with Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist banned by Swedish streaming company for producing “hate content”.Rogan, the libertarian host of the long-running and wildly popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast, uploaded a three-hour discussion on Tuesday featuring Jones, the founder of the conspiracy site Infowars. Continue reading...
We ask Australian comedians to pan for gold in the murky slurry of the world wide web. Here are the bits Alice Fraser has picked up along the wayWhen I was told to write one of these 10 funniest things on the internet columns my first thought was, “Oh no, the internet isn’t for remembering things.” My second thought was, “Oh no, I don’t know what’s funny.” And my third thought was, “They’re really letting anyone do one of these.” Does it count if it’s on the internet but was originally on something else? Because that’s a lot of things. So it’s always good to start with an existential lack of confidence in the fundamental structures of the game.Related: Michelle Brasier: the 10 funniest things I have ever seen (on the internet) Continue reading...
by Rebecca Smithers Consumer affairs correspondent on (#59KRK)
Site will show shoppers sustainable products but campaigners say it is ‘tip of iceberg’Amazon has launched a dedicated “eco-friendly” shopping platform to help guide consumers in the UK and other European countries to household products with sustainable credentials.From plastic-free solid shampoo bars to organic children’s clothing, more than 40,000 items on the new platform will carry certificates from schemes such as Fairtrade International and the Carbon Trust to help consumers pick products on their environmental merits. Continue reading...
Australian Cyber Security Centre says it is assisting Isentia, which has ‘most government departments and large corporations’ as clientsA media-monitoring and analytics firm used by the federal government has been hit by a cyberattack, prompting the involvement of the nation’s leading cybersecurity agency.Isentia, which boasts it has “most government departments and large corporations” as clients in Australia, told the Australian Stock Exchange on Tuesday it is “urgently investigating a cybersecurity incident” that was “disrupting services” involving its media portal – a service customers use to see media reporting on them, or issues of interest to them, and find journalists. Continue reading...
Tech giants are not playing according to economic rules set by the market, but by rules they largely set themselves. That won’t washWhen the US Department of Justice filed a complaint against Google last week it triggered the most significant antitrust case since the federal authorities sued Microsoft in the 1990s. Today’s trustbusters argue that Google’s search and advertising dominance goes well beyond consumer preference and into consumer abuse by forcing people to use its services and bending them to its data collection practices.This is a new era for big tech, one inaugurated by the US Congress report earlier this month that looked at Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. The 16-month investigation said it had found in Silicon Valley “the kinds of monopolies [last seen] in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons”. This language deliberately recalls two American presidents, and cousins, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D Roosevelt, who are remembered, perhaps too generously, for standing up to big business and saving America from plutocracy. At the heart of Congress’s analysis is that tech giants are not playing according to economic rules set by the market, but by rules they largely set themselves. This allows corporations to appropriate excess profits through privileged access to user data. Continue reading...
Ex-moderators tell the Guardian Facebook underpays and mistreats contractors responsible for policing hate speechAlison Trebacz, a former Facebook content moderator based in Arizona, remembers the day of the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, which killed 58 people and injured more than 800 others, almost as if she were there.She came into work that morning expecting to see graphic content, but nothing could have prepared her for the queues full of videos of dead and dying victims waiting for her when she arrived. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#59HCC)
New tablet looks stunning, is fast with long battery life, great 10.9in screen, speakers and video call cameraThe latest tablet on the block is the totally revamped iPad Air with a modern design and plenty of power.The fourth-generation iPad Air costs £579 and fits in between the £329 iPad and the £769 11in iPad Pro. Continue reading...
by Presented by Rachel Humphreys with Sarah Frier; pr on (#59HNC)
This October marks 10 years since the launch of Instagram. Tech journalist Sarah Frier looks at how it went from a tiny startup to a multibillion-dollar business, and the impact the social media company has had on our livesSarah Frier is a tech reporter based in San Francisco who has watched the meteoric rise of Instagram, from its humble beginnings as a startup with a handful of employees to becoming a $100bn company. She talks to Rachel Humphreys about how the photo-sharing platform has become the most influential app of the past decade.Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s co-founder, was 25 when he started his company with his friend, software engineer Mike Krieger. Systrom realised there was a gap in the market for an app that helped people quickly share pictures from phones, and with Instagram the app would also offer filters that people could use to make their photos – and by extension, their lives – look more appealing. In 2012, with just 13 employees, the company was bought by Facebook for $1bn. With the introduction of Instagram Stories, its growth accelerated, but the relationship between the two companies was complicated and Systrom and Krieger eventually left Instagram in 2018. Mark Zuckerberg now controls two of the most important social media networks in our lives. Continue reading...
My former colleague Ervine Glenny, who has died aged 97, was a materials engineer who, through his research and subsequent management of engineers at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), helped to pioneer the advent of jet engines and the use of carbon fibre composites to lighten aircraft and other structures.He was born in Belfast, the son of Elizabeth (nee Ervine), a housewife, and Robert Glenny, a police constable. He was named Robert, but was always known by his middle name, Ervine. He was educated at Methodist college, Belfast, and won a bursary to study chemical engineering at Queen’s University in the city, where he met his wife to be, Joan Reid, who was taking the same course. Continue reading...
My father, Bill Fearns, who has died aged 99, was a marine engineer whose long career encompassed designing vessels that were used in the second world war, including the D-day landings.Born in Dundee into a family of eight, to James Fearns, a foundry labourer, and his wife, Jessie (nee Farquharson), a jute spinner, Bill was raised in a tenement. He attended Stobswell school, but left aged 14 to train as a draughtsman in the Robb-Caledon shipyard, gaining qualifications at Dundee Technical Institute at night. Continue reading...
Facebook amends code after deletion of black users’ photos sparks outrageAs campaigning victories go, forcing Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire to admit a discriminatory flaw in its policy is no small feat.But following a campaign launched in this paper, the Observer can exclusively reveal that Instagram and its parent company Facebook will be updating its policy on nudity in order to help end discrimination of plus-size black women on its platforms and ensure all body types are treated fairly. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian