Technology | The Guardian

EU science funding is being spent on developing new tools for policing and security. But who decides how far we need to submit to artificial intelligence?Patrick Breyer didn’t expect to have to take the European commission to court. The softly spoken German MEP was startled when in July 2019 he read about a new technology to detect from facial “micro-expressions” when somebody is lying while answering questions.Even more startling was that the EU was funding research into this virtual mindreader through a project called iBorderCtrl, for potential use in policing Europe’s borders. In the article that Breyer read, a reporter described taking a test on the border between Serbia and Hungary. She told the truth, but the AI border guard said she had lied. Continue reading...

Sundar Pichai apologizes for how Timnit Gebru’s departure ‘seeded doubts’ at GoogleThe CEO of Google has apologized for how a prominent artificial intelligence researcher’s abrupt departure last week has “seeded doubts” in the company.Sundar Pichai told Google employees in a Wednesday memo, obtained by Axios, that the tech company was beginning a review of the circumstances leading up to Timnit Gebru’s exit last week, and how Google could have “led a more respectful process”. Continue reading...

Minutes of a 2018 meeting show Facebook chief complaining UK was anti-tech and saying he might look elsewhere in Europe to investFacebook founder Mark Zuckerberg threatened to pull investment out of the UK if the government did not look to soften its stance on the regulation of Silicon Valley companies, according to a document published on Tuesday.In response Matt Hancock, who held the meeting with Zuckerberg in 2018 when he was culture secretary, said that the UK could “shift from threatening regulation to encouraging collaborative working to ensure legislation is proportionate and innovation-friendly”. Continue reading...

Surprise at high price as company looks to beat Bose and Sony with super luxury audioApple has announced its long anticipated first over-ear, noise-cancelling wireless headphones, AirPods Max, retailing at £549.The new headphones look to take the good bits of Apple’s wireless earbuds, AirPods, and put them in larger Bluetooth headphones with high quality speakers and a very high price tag. Continue reading...

Electric carmaker to join blue-chip S&P 500 index as its stock price continues to soarTesla is to raise up to $5bn selling new shares, as the electric carmaker takes advantage of an almost 900% surge in its share price over the last 12 months.The move comes three months after Tesla last moved to raise $5bn, at the time its biggest issue of new stock in a decade, and just weeks before the company is due to enter the blue-chip S&P 500 index. Entry to the benchmark index is likely to further fuel Tesla’s stock market run as passive investors that track the S&P 500 will be compelled to buy shares in the business. Continue reading...

The crowdfunding platform has boomed in the year of coronavirus, with indie mavericks joined by Hollywood royalty

Children’s commissioner for England says tech giants are failing to keep children safeThe children’s commissioner for England has warned that end-to-end encryption is putting children at risk of abuse, as a survey finds that most eight-year-olds are using messaging apps supposedly restricted to those aged 13 or older.In a report published on Tuesday, Anne Longfield said plans by social media firms to widen the use of encrypted messaging would make it impossible for platforms to monitor content. Continue reading...

Timnit Gebru’s colleagues challenge claims she resigned while more than 1,800 sign petition of solidarityOutcry is growing within Google over the treatment of the AI ethics researcher Timnit Gebru, with Gebru’s colleagues challenging the company’s account of her exit in an open letter.In a letter posted on Monday on Medium, Gebru’s colleagues disputed an executive’s claim that she had resigned and called internal research policies into question. Continue reading...

New figure follows surprise third-quarter profit and values the company at up to $42bnAirbnb has raised the price of its shares before its initial public offering this week and could float with a valuation of as much as $42bn (£31.5bn).In a government filing in the US on Monday, Airbnb said it expects to price its shares between $56 and $60 each, up from a range of $44 to $50 earlier this month. Continue reading...

Writers including Salman Rushdie express anger after journalist Salil Tripathi has account suspended

Guardian found potentially harmful pro-weight-loss accounts were still available in search resultsTikTok has launched an investigation and banned some search terms after the Guardian found harmful pro-anorexia content was still easily searchable despite measures taken by the social media company to prohibit the advertising of weight-loss products.The video app – one of the most popular in the world with more than 800 million users, almost half of whom are between the ages of 16 and 24 – has imposed new restrictions on weight-loss ads after criticism for promoting dangerous diets. Continue reading...

You can’t taste it or smell it, but food and drink play a big role in video games, providing everything from sustenance to secret weaponryFood has always played a vital role in video games. From Pac-Man’s bonus fruits to Mario’s magical mushrooms, it has provided everything from sustenance to supernatural abilities – and in games such as Cooking Mama and Overcooked, food preparation became a genre in its own right. Game developers, like the creators of cooking programmes and recipe books, have discovered that well-presented food is irresistible – even when we can’t eat it.In the modern games industry, where detail and authenticity are paramount, the depiction of food has become an art form. Kaname Fujioka, executive director on Capcom’s fantasy adventure, Monster Hunter: World, says: “We design the ingredients and recipes based around the grade of the food, as well as any seasonal events it may be tied to. Since we’re unable to showcase the most important elements of food (taste and smell), we have to alter, exaggerate or potentially deform the visuals in a way that conveys that as best as possible. In order for players to believe that the visuals look ‘delicious’, a lot of fine-tuning is done on details like the colour, lighting and softness.” Continue reading...

The price tag of £248,000 might make your eyes water but Moley Robotics claims to have more than 1,000 potential buyersFinally, the ultimate kitchen gadget you never knew you wanted is here – but it will cost you about the same as the average UK house.For those stumped as to what to buy the super-rich person in their lives this Christmas, how about a fully robotic kitchen that promises to whip up a choice of up to 5,000 recipes at the press of a button? Continue reading...

The consumer group Which? chooses its top 50 gadets of the year, from cheap and cheerful to high endA robot vacuum that deals with the unpleasant job of emptying the dust bag, a swivelling selfie camera for the YouTube generation and a £12 kettle are among an eclectic list of items dubbed the best products of the year.Experts from the consumer group Which? have picked out 50 items for special praise from the 3,500 reviewed or released over the last year, focusing on their innovation, sustainability or value for money. Continue reading...

A recent study suggests lengthy, complex corporate filings are increasingly read by, and written for, machinesMy eye was caught by the title of a working paper published by the National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER): How to Talk When a Machine Is Listening: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of AI. So I clicked and downloaded, as one does. And then started to read.The paper is an analysis of the 10-K and 10-Q filings that American public companies are obliged to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The 10-K is a version of a company’s annual report, but without the glossy photos and PR hype: a corporate nerd’s delight. It has, says one guide, “the-everything-and-the-kitchen-sink data you can spend hours going through – everything from the geographic source of revenue to the maturity schedule of bonds the company has issued”. Some investors and commentators (yours truly included) find the 10-K impenetrable, but for those who possess the requisite stamina (big companies can have 10-Ks that run to several hundred pages), that’s the kind of thing they like. The 10-Q filing is the 10-K’s quarterly little brother. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One

There is something powerful about seeing a squat, or a bicep curl, performed by someone whose musculature is beyond perfectI’ve never much used Instagram except for looking at pictures of pitbulls, so when I met my first influencer (an interiors one rather than fitness) I, of course, had no idea of the deadly seriousness of the medium. Existing not just on likes, but on likes as a proportion of followers, he expressly forbade me from following him, on the grounds that I seemed like the kind of person who, though approving of a post, would forget to actually click “like”. He had me bang to rights; I didn’t follow him, and all I can remember now is that his name was Richard and Instagram influencing is huge, huge business.The top 10 fitness influencers worldwide can earn between £10,000 and £37,000 per post – astronomical figures that work on a straightforward metric: your follower count multiplied by 0.003, turned into quids.( I don’t know who decided it, I just worked it out in my head). Only two of the global top 10 (Ulisses World and Simeon Panda) are men, and the women are similar only in the sense that they all have incredible muscle definition. Continue reading...

More than 1,500 researchers also sign letter after Black expert on ethics says Google tried to suppress her research on biasMore than 1,200 Google employees and more than 1,500 academic researchers are speaking out in protest after a prominent Black scientist studying the ethics of artificial intelligence said she was fired by Google after the company attempted to suppress her research and she criticized its diversity efforts.Timnit Gebru, who was the technical co-lead of Google’s Ethical AI team, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that she had been fired after sending an email to an internal group for women and allies working in the company’s AI unit. Continue reading...

The 15-year-old scientist has used technology to address contaminated drinking water, opioid addiction and cyberbullyingA 15-year-old scientist and inventor has been named as Time magazine’s first “kid of the year”.Gitanjali Rao, from Denver, Colorado, has invented new technologies across a range of fields, including a device that can identify lead in drinking water, and an app and Chrome extension that uses artificial intelligence to detect cyberbullying. Continue reading...

Sites such as Facebook will have to publicly disclose identity of people and entities funding such advertisingThe “dirty methods” of the Brexit referendum have been cited as a reason for new EU laws aimed at tackling disinformation and forcing online platforms including Facebook to publicly disclose the identity of people and entities funding political adverts.Věra Jourová, a vice president of the European commission, said the EU rule-book needed to be updated to deal with on-line political campaigning, as she unveiled draft legislation at a press conference in Brussels. Continue reading...

Move marks strongest push yet to prevent platform being used for anti-vaccination rhetoric

PC, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series X/S; Dontnod

The Internet Watch Foundation is seeing a growing number of tipoffs about child abuse. We talk to one analyst about her work

National Labor Relations Board files complaint over surveillance and termination after year-long inquiryGoogle violated US labor laws when it surveilled and terminated workers who organized employee protests, according to a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).The complaint was filed on Wednesday following a year-long investigation launched by terminated employees who filed a petition with the board in 2019, after hundreds of Google employees carried out internal protests and public demonstrations against Google’s work with US Customs and Border Protection. This came after a huge walkout in 2018 over the company’s handling of sexual harassment allegations. The Communications Workers of America union helped author the workers’ charges. Continue reading...

Sixteen years after its launch, World of Warcraft is finally introducing diverse skin tones, facial features and hairstyles. Game director Ion Hazzikostas explains why nowRecently, I’ve spent quite a lot of time pondering what an orc would look like with an afro. This, naturally, led to contemplation of an axe-afro-comb combo, and whether such a contraption would fall under blacksmithing or engineering.That’s because I’ve been playing Shadowlands, the eighth expansion to World of Warcraft. For Warcraft fans, there’s a lot to be excited about: the new game allows players to explore the afterlife – reviving classic characters such as Kael’thas Sunstrider – and introduces a new style of play in Torghast, a deliciously punishing dungeon that changes each time you visit. Continue reading...

You’ve got your PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X – but what else do you need to experience the future of gaming? Here are the TVs and headsets we recommendThis month we welcomed a new video game generation with the thrilling (if rather limited) arrival of the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 machines. Whether you’ve already received your shiny new console (and not a bag of cat food), or you’re hoping a plucky relative has managed to secure you one for Christmas, you might be wondering: what extra gadgets will I need to get the most out of this coming era?The good news is, your current flatscreen TV and gaming headset will almost certainly work fine with the new machines – you don’t have to rush out and buy anything else. But if you’re seeing this as an opportunity to update your whole gaming set-up, here are a few accessories we’ve tested and recommend. Continue reading...

It’s 130 years since Father Christmas first appeared in a department store. But this year is the strangest one yet – with virtual calls taking the place of shopping centre visits. Is it enough to keep the ho ho hos flowing?Five bearded men, dressed head to toe as Santa, wearing fur-trimmed face masks, file into an office building in London and sit behind wooden desks – laptops and webcams in front of them. The room has been made magical with the addition of a red and gold curtain, a snow-flecked Christmas tree and a stuffed penguin perched on top of some lockers. In years gone by these off-duty actors and former children’s TV presenters would have sat in department store grottos and worn out their knees taking the weight of Britain’s children. But they are here today to brush up their tech skills and learn how the in-store Santa can adapt and survive in the middle of a pandemic.The seminar is led by James Lovell, a honey-voiced compere who straddles the line between practical teaching and keeping up the illusion of snow and elves. He leads the five Santas through exercises and practical advice on how to handle the intricacies of online video calls. The Santas pepper Lovell and a tech expert with questions about how they will see the children in their virtual grottos. Continue reading...

PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, Nintendo Switch, PC; Ubisoft

Program solves scientific problem in ‘stunning advance’ for understanding machinery of lifeHaving risen to fame on its superhuman performance at playing games, the artificial intelligence group DeepMind has cracked a serious scientific problem that has stumped researchers for half a century.With its latest AI program, AlphaFold, the company and research laboratory showed it can predict how proteins fold into 3D shapes, a fiendishly complex process that is fundamental to understanding the biological machinery of life. Continue reading...

Digital secretary says he is setting ‘clear path for complete removal of high risk vendors’ from 5G networksTelecoms providers must stop installing Huawei equipment in the UK’s 5G networks from next September, the government has said.The digital secretary, Oliver Dowden, set out a roadmap to remove high-risk vendors ahead of the telecommunications (security) bill coming before parliament. Continue reading...

A new hunger for social contact during lockdown has boosted participation in online multiplayer gamesIf “sus” and “vent” mean nothing to you, then you’ve somehow missed out on the smash-hit multiplayer game Among Us. But with numbers playing the online game heading towards 100 million, maybe you’ll find out before Christmas how good you are at being an “impostor” .For the uninitiated, Among Us is the sleeper game hit of 2020. The premise is simple: it’s Cluedo or Wink Murder on a spaceship with four to 10 players of crewmates and impostors. The crewmates perform simple tasks for take-off, while impostors sabotage operations and kill other players. Impostors are the only players who can travel through vents – hence the significance of vent in Among Us. Gamers hold meetings to pick a suspect – which is where the word sus comes in – to jettison. The aim is to catch the impostors. Continue reading...

I thought I’d tried everything for my insomnia, but then I found Tamara LevittYou all know how much I love 80s movies, and the one rule of 80s movies is that there is always a sequel. So consider this a sequel column. It might not be up there with The Empire Strikes Back, but I reckon it equals the emotional drama of Ghostbusters II.Back in March, I wrote about my lack of sleep, due to my sleep-resistant baby. Well, funny how that story turned out! The baby is now sleep-trained, but I have managed to un-sleep-train myself. “Is there greater hell than this?” I’d wonder, soothing a bawling baby at 4.13am, but if there’s one thing 2020 has taught us, it’s that the answer to that question is always yes. What’s worse than being kept awake by your baby? Being kept awake by your own fritzed-out brain, while that treacherous little baby sleeps peacefully. I’ve considered demanding she now soothe me – a bit of quid pro quo here, baby – but I’m not sure she can sling me over her shoulder. Continue reading...

Alok Sharma says dominance of a few big companies hurts innovation and curtails customer choiceA new tech regulator will work to limit the power of Google, Facebook and other tech platforms, the government has announced, in an effort to ensure a level playing field for smaller competitors and a fair market for consumers.Under the plans, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will gain a dedicated Digital Markets Unit, empowered to write and enforce a new code of practice on technology companies which will set out the limits of acceptable behaviour. Continue reading...

Giant iPhone has two-day battery, better camera, massive screen and much-improved ergonomicsThe iPhone 12 Pro Max is the biggest, heaviest and most expensive version of Apple’s smartphone for 2020, a beast in every dimension.The top-of-the-range iPhone costs from £1,099 and sits above the 12 Pro (£999), the 12 (£799) and 12 mini (£699). Continue reading...

Global retailers should help collect, recycle and repair tech products, say MPsGlobal giants such as Amazon and Apple should be made responsible for helping to collect, recycle and repair their products to cut the 155,000 tonnes of electronic waste being thrown away each year in the UK, MPs say.An investigation by the environmental audit committee found the UK is lagging behind other countries and failing to create a circular economy in electronic waste. The UK creates the second highest levels of electronic waste in the world, after Norway. But MPs said the UK was not collecting and treating much of this waste properly. Continue reading...

The company said that the conservative news outlet, heralded by Trump, has repeatedly violated its policy on coronavirus misinformation

Thomas Moyer allegedly attempted to obtain concealed firearms licences for company employeesApple’s global head of security has been accused of trying to bribe police with hundreds of free iPads in order to obtain concealed firearms licences for company employees.Prosecutors in California allege that two officers were involved in a scam where they denied licences to carry concealed weapons (CCW) to applicants unless they offered something in return. Continue reading...

World’s biggest cryptocurrency has become more attractive to investors in Covid crisisThe price of bitcoin has broken through $19,000 for the first time in almost three years, taking the world’s biggest cryptocurrency close to its all-time high of just under $20,000.Bitcoin has surged by almost 40% in November and is up about 160% this year. It reached a peak of just under $20,000 in December 2017, before crashing spectacularly, losing a quarter of its value in a single day. Continue reading...

It spanned the River Eamont for over 250 years, then Storm Desmond swept it away. Now Pooley Bridge has been rebuilt – and a local delicacy must be updatedWhen Pooley Bridge lost its namesake crossing to the torrential floods of Storm Desmond in 2015, the picturesque Lake District village was robbed of more than just a route over the water. “It was like losing a well-loved relative,” says Miles MacInnes, chairman of the parish council. “Our community was split in two.” It was the symbol of the place, the essence of the community’s identity. As one local resident said: “We’ll have to call ourselves Pooley No Bridge now!”At Granny Dowbekin’s Tearooms, which had overlooked the historic bridge for generations, there was another dilemma. What would become of their trademark hand-baked delicacy, the Pooley Gingerbridge biscuit? “We’ll have to sell it in bits,” said baker Sarah Fowler. Continue reading...

… but a ‘seismic’ shift in Covid shopping habits will mean a cold Christmas for the actual high streetCoronavirus may be doing its best to cancel Christmas but, for the time being anyway, shoppers are carrying on regardless, with this week’s Black Friday online sales expected to reach new heights.In previous years, store chiefs have agonised about the impact on their high street chains of the US-inspired discount event, which arrived on British shores with a bang in 2013. But come this (Black) Friday, selling online will – for anything other than essentials – be the only game in town for retailers, whose shops may by then be closed in three of the four home nations. Continue reading...

You want to look so visually enticing that your boss won’t notice you’ve been saying the same thing, in different ways, for the last seven minutesWell, here we are. Week 2,057 of working from home. How’s it going? Is your posture resembling a crumbling question mark yet? Have you become depressed because the biggest dilemma of your day will be which flavour crisp you’ll go for? Are you a millisecond from Googling “quickie divorces”?One person who is loving this strange era must be Mr Zoom. Despite many of us wanting to silently scream at every new invitation link, video conferences and meetings remain inescapable. And the platforms proliferate. There’s your Google Meet, your BlueJeans and there is Zoom – the one where the etiquette still confuses me. Am I allowed to change my background to a wall-sized photo of the young Drew Barrymore at Studio 54, or is that considered rude? Continue reading...

Louder Than A Riot from NPR considers a majority-black musical genre – through the lens of the justice system. Plus: the dark side of orgasmic meditationLouder Than A Riot

Mini phone crams most of iPhone 12 into small body but screen may be too small for manyApple’s latest smartphone range has a surprise entry in the form of the iPhone 12 mini, which is a genuinely smaller phone with very few compromises.The phone costs from £699 and is the cheapest of Apple’s new smartphone line sitting below the £799 iPhone 12, the £999 12 Pro and the £1,099 12 Pro Max. Continue reading...

From the tomb of Tutankhamun to Raphael’s Sistine masterpieces, Adam Lowe makes perfect copies for governments and galleries the world over. But he’s not a forger – he’s a liberatorThe grandest spaces in the whole of the mighty Victoria and Albert Museum are the Cast Courts, built high enough to hold a full-scale replica of Trajan’s Column in Rome, which is colossal even in two pieces. No less imposing are the London museum’s 19th-century copies of Michelangelo’s David, not to mention its duplicates of Viking carvings and even the entire front of a Spanish cathedral. All these casts, which were recently cleaned, are a curious spectacle. Why did the Victorians create such a comprehensive “virtual art” collection? To make a clever point about a copy being just as good as the real thing – or simply to bring great work to the people?But there’s one exhibit here that brings the world of the fake, and all the questions the subject provokes, up to date: an eerily precise 3D print of a nude statue of Pauline Bonaparte, sister of French military leader Napoleon, by the neo-classical artist Canova. This lovely replica is the work of British-born, Madrid-based artist and tech pioneer Adam Lowe. By placing it here, the V&A is recognising that Lowe is reinventing the much misunderstood practice of copying. Indeed, Lowe takes the fine art remake to such heights of accuracy, sensitivity and detail that even experts are fooled. Far from being derided as cynical forgeries, though, his copies are hailed by this and other museums as opening up new ways of understanding and enjoying masterpieces. Continue reading...

Growing up on a farm in Virginia during segregation, West knew education would be her means of escape. But she didn’t know her quiet work on a naval base would change lives around the worldGladys West knew from a young age that she didn’t want to be a farmer. But the mathematician, born in 1930 in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, still had to help harvest crops on her family’s small farm. The hard work started before daybreak and lasted well into the blistering heat of the afternoon. She hated the dirt but, while she worked, she kept her mind on the building behind the trees at the end of the farm. It was her school, and even then she knew it would be her ticket to freedom.“I was gonna get an education and I was going to get out of there. I wasn’t going to be stuck there all my life,” West, 89, says firmly, on Zoom in her home in Virginia. Continue reading...

Workers are calling for hazard pay for moderators required to return to offices, plus better healthcare and mental health supportMore than 200 Facebook workers have signed a letter demanding better treatment for content moderators after some said they were required to return to the office even as the coronavirus crisis deepens. Continue reading...

Creation of specialist cyber force and artificial intelligence unit in pipeline