Technology | The Guardian

As management seeks more oversight of workers away from the office, campaigners fight for privacy to be respected

Issue revealed on Twitter meant results from hospitals or PHE labs could not be registered

Governments struggle to tackle the might of the tech giants when it comes to protecting users’ dataLast month, the Irish data protection commissioner (DPC) sent Facebook a preliminary order ordering it to stop sending the data of its European users to the US. This was a big deal, because in order to comply with the ruling, Facebook would have to embark on a comprehensive re-engineering of its European operations, or to shut down those operations entirely, at least for a time.Such a shutdown would of course be traumatic for the poor souls who are addicted to Facebook and Instagram, but it would be even worse for the company – for two reasons. The first is that it makes more money from European users’ data – an average of $13.21 (£10.19) per user in 2019 – than from any other territory except the US (where it earns $41.41 per user); the second is that failure to comply could land it with a fine of up to 4% of its global revenue, which in Facebook’s case would come to about $3bn. Given the scale of its revenues, that’s not a showstopper, but it would nevertheless be annoying. Continue reading...

Lower cost doesn’t have to mean lower quality: these mobiles can give high-end models a run for their moneyIt used to be the case that you had to spend at least £700 to get a really good phone. But in 2020, that’s no longer true. With fantastic smartphones costing as little as half as much as an iPhone 11, here’s a quick guide to the best mid-priced phones.Many of these smartphones will also be available on mobile phone contracts with no, or little, upfront cost. Just be sure to compare the total monthly fees over the 18- or 24-month contract against the cost of buying the phone outright, and using a cheaper sim-only or pay-as-you-go plan, to make sure you are getting a good deal. Continue reading...

Gen Sir Patrick Sanders says Boris Johnson has told him to ensure UK is major cyber powerBritain’s most senior cyber general has said the UK possesses the capacity to “degrade, disrupt and destroy” its enemies’ critical infrastructure in a future cyber conflict, in a rare acknowledgement of the military’s offensive hacking capability.Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, who heads the UK’s strategic command, said that he been told by Boris Johnson to ensure Britain is a “leading, full-spectrum cyber power” able both to defend against – and carry out – hacking attacks. Continue reading...

Company’s shares could start trading at $10 each when it goes public, bankers sayThe controversial data-mining-software company Palantir Technologies could be valued at as much as $22bn when it goes public next week.Bankers told the Wall Street Journal that the company’s shares could start trading at $10 each when it begins trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday, giving the company a value of $22bn. Continue reading...

Brussels seeks to overturn decision over alleged unpaid taxes to Irish governmentThe European commission is appealing against a court ruling that said Apple did not have to pay €13bn (£11.9bn) in alleged back taxes to the Irish government, reopening a landmark battle in the EU’s campaign to stop sweetheart deals for multinationals.The bloc’s competition chief, Margrethe Vestager, said on Friday she would appeal to the EU court of justice to try to oblige Ireland to collect the alleged unpaid taxes and interest from the tech giant. Continue reading...

Unpaid overtime, 100-hour weeks, instant dismissals … the pandemic has brought fresh momentum to the games industry’s union driveWorker strikes, let alone successful ones, are vanishingly rare in the video games industry. But in August, writers at Lovestruck, a mobile app that publishes visual romance novels, went on a 21-day strike, accusing the company of unfair pay, and won a rates increase after owner Voltage initially dismissed their demands.This is part of a growing, global unionisation movement among game developers – a movement whose urgency has been intensified by the pandemic, according to Declan Peach, who helped found the Game Workers Unite UK union in late 2018. With rising inquiries, casework and membership since lockdown, problems from the pandemic have brought growing momentum to the union. But dire conditions in the games industry had been driving developers to unionise long before coronavirus struck. Continue reading...

Feels Good Man and TFW No GF trace the impact of Pepe the Frog, lonely men, and the far rightOn 13 October 2015, Donald Trump, who had recently announced his run for president, tweeted an image of himself standing at the presidential lectern, his face transmogrified into a green, smug-looking frog, known to certain corners of the internet as Pepe. With hindsight, this strange moment offers a stake in the ground, marking out the point when the meme was invited into mainstream political culture.This collapse of the virtual and the real seems to have only accelerated since then. Online phenomena are no longer cordoned off in their virtual barriers but regularly pass through the screen to play mischief in the so-called “real world”. Two recent documentaries attempt to explain how this all happened – from two very different perspectives. Continue reading...

Firm shows new motorised display, car alarm, Luna game-streaming service and moreAmazon has announced a full range of new spherical Echo devices, new motorised smart display, a camera drone that flies around your house, a game-streaming service and more.In a streaming presentation, the company showed off a smorgasbord of new devices from its various brands, including Ring, Eero, Fire and Echo. Continue reading...

Body will be able to overrule some content moderation decisions and plans to be ready to hear user appeals next monthThe long-awaited Facebook Oversight Board, empowered to overrule some of the platform’s content moderation decisions, plans to launch in October, just in time for the US election.The board will be ready to hear appeals from Facebook users as well as cases referred by the company itself “as soon as mid- or late-October at the very latest, unless there are some major technical issues that come up”, said Julie Owono, one of the 20 initial members of the committee who were named in May, in an interview on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Problems on Android and iPhone leave some unable to use the software at all

Contact-tracing app for England and Wales for Android and iPhone is now available, here’s how to get it

Simplicity and lack of need for physical contact make scanning QR codes the perfect solution for the appAs people across England and Wales download the long-awaited NHS contact-tracing app on Thursday, they’ll also contribute to one of the most unlikely revivals of the Covid era: the humble QR code.The app, which has been substantially rebuilt from the version first tested in the Isle of Wight in May, has had two significant changes. The first is a new underpinning, based on a framework created by Apple and Google, which allows it to work in a “decentralised” manner, sharing little data with the NHS about individuals’ movements. Continue reading...

How one magic word became a way of justifying Silicon Valley’s unconstrained powerThere are certain phrases that are central to the sway the tech industry holds over our collective imagination: they do not simply reflect our experience, they frame how we experience it in the first place. They sweep aside certain parts of the status quo, and leave other parts mysteriously untouched. They implicitly cast you as a stick-in-the-mud if you ask how much revolution someone is capable of when that person represents billions in venture capital investment. Among the most influential of these phrases is undoubtedly “disruption”.The concept of disruption is a way for companies, the press or simply individuals to think about questions of continuity and discontinuity – what lasts and what doesn’t, what is genuinely new and what is just the next version of something older. There is a lot at stake in how we think about these issues. Are the changes the tech industry brings about, or claims to bring about, fundamental transformations of how capitalism functions, or are they an extension of how it has always functioned? The answers to such questions will determine what regulatory oversight we believe is necessary or desirable, what role we think the government or unions should play in a new industry such as tech, and even how the industry and its titans ought to be discussed. Continue reading...

Pilot studies show low download rate as app launches in England and Wales

Major carmakers, including Elon Musk’s electric car company, say the levies imposed last year on crucial components were ‘arbitrary’Tesla, Volvo, Ford and Mercedes-Benz have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, aiming to end what Elon Musk’s electric car manufacturer called “unlawful” tariffs imposed on certain parts imported from China.The lawsuits, filed in New York this week, target the 25% tariffs imposed by the US trade representative on a list of products including spare parts such as terminals. Continue reading...

The social media platform says it has ‘strict controls’ around its data security and has never censored Australian content at China’s requestVideo messaging app TikTok has hit back at what it says is “misinformation” about its connection to China, characterising itself as a global platform with “strict controls around security and data access”.The hugely popular platform has used a submission to the Senate inquiry into foreign interference through social media to note “and welcome” Scott Morrison’s recent commentary after a “reported investigation by security agencies”. Continue reading...

My mother, Nina Wedderburn, who has died at 91, was an authority on how viruses affect the immune system. At the Royal College of Surgeons, where she became dean of the Hunterian Institute, 1990-93, she led a successful research group investigating the effects of malaria and viruses on the immune system.Her early work was on how malaria alters the immune system’s ability to control cancer. She then developed a model to understand how viruses can suppress immunity and in particular the Epstein Barr Virus (EBV), linked to a childhood cancer common in Africa. Many of her PhD students and fellows went on to establish successful careers all over the world, and remained lifelong friends. Continue reading...

Facebook says accounts were interfering in politics of US and PhilippinesFacebook says it has removed hundreds of coordinated fake accounts with links to individuals in China and in the Filipino military that were interfering in the politics of the Philippines and the US.The company said all the accounts – in two distinct networks based in China and the Philippines – were removed for violating its policy against foreign or government interference, which it defines as “coordinated inauthentic behaviour on behalf of a foreign or government entity”. Continue reading...

Communications minister does not rule out shift on the public broadcasters, saying government will consider its position after regulator’s consultation processThe communications minister has left the door open to including the ABC and SBS in the new code forcing Google and Facebook to pay for the value they receive from distributing Australian journalism.Paul Fletcher also acknowledged on Wednesday that the competition regulator had received “quite a number of submissions” about the suitability of the proposed mechanism to resolve disputes between the big digital platforms and Australian media organisations. Continue reading...

The federal government has announced plans to boost broadband speeds for millions of homes across Australia. Here’s what it means for your internetMillions of homes across Australia will be able to get their national broadband network connection upgraded to offer speeds of up to one gigabit-per-second under a plan announced by the federal government on Tuesday. Here’s what we know so far. Continue reading...

Communications minister Paul Fletcher will defend the government’s approach during a National Press Club appearanceAustralia’s national broadband network will roll out fibre “deeper and closer to homes and businesses” under a $3.5bn upgrade package to be announced on Wednesday.The federal communications minister, Paul Fletcher, will use an address to the National Press Club to defend the Coalition’s approach of “committing to more fibre when it makes economic sense to do so”. Continue reading...

For months the broadband in the whole village failed due to ‘electrical noise’ from one resident’s televisionFor 18 months, at precisely 7am every day, the broadband signal in the tiny Welsh village of Aberhosan simply vanished.Engineers were sent to the remote settlement in mid Wales, which has a population of just 400, to investigate the problem. They spent days testing connections and replacing cables until they finally got to the root of the problem – one villager’s old telly. Continue reading...

EU court in July ruled there were insufficient safeguards against snooping by US intelligence agenciesFacebook has warned that it may pull out of Europe if the Irish data protection commissioner enforces a ban on sharing data with the US, after a landmark ruling by the European court of justice found in July that there were insufficient safeguards against snooping by US intelligence agencies.In a court filing in Dublin, Facebook’s associate general counsel wrote that enforcing the ban would leave the company unable to operate. Continue reading...

PC (version tested), PS4, Xbox One; Awe Interactive

Acquisition comes ahead of Microsoft’s new Xbox Series X consoles and could have significant impact on games industryMicrosoft is acquiring ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, publisher of the best-selling video game franchises The Elder Scrolls, Fallout and Doom. The $7.5bn deal (£5.85m) will see all future releases from Bethesda’s studios included on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service.Xbox chief Phil Spencer said: “Like us, Bethesda are passionate believers in building a diverse array of creative experiences, in exploring new game franchises, and in telling stories in bold ways. All of their great work will continue and grow, and we look forward to empowering them with the resources and support of Microsoft to scale their creative visions to more players in new ways for you.” Continue reading...

Users highlight examples of feature automatically focusing on white faces over black onesTwitter has apologised for a “racist” image cropping algorithm, after users discovered the feature was automatically focusing on white faces over black ones.The company says it had tested the service for bias before it started using it, but now accepts that it didn’t go far enough. Continue reading...

Parent company ByteDance, under pressure in China not to give in to US demands, said the plan ‘does not involve the transfer of any algorithms’A new company set up to allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States plans to float on the stock market in an effort to increase transparency and show the Trump administration that it will adhere to regulatory oversight.TikTok Global plans to hold a public listing, its Chinese parent company ByteDance said Monday, after announcing a deal over the weekend that would avert a shutdown of the popular app in the US. Continue reading...

Rumours of a leap forward in technology to be announced this week have energised an already bullish marketCarmakers’ annual meetings can be drab affairs: executives reading from a script, votes decided by big investors who don’t bother turning up, and perhaps the odd small shareholder deciding to take a pop at management. Tesla is different. This week’s event will be livestreamed around the world, with investor hype over what the company is teasing as its “battery day” reaching Steve Jobs/iPhone levels of fever pitch.Tesla has already achieved astonishing things, almost singlehandedly spurring the car industry towards its electric future while growing its own revenues from $100m in 2010 to $24.6bn in 2019. Now investors hope that chief executive Elon Musk will be revealing a technological leap relating to battery power on Tuesday to put it further ahead of its rivals. Continue reading...

Melbourne financial planner’s videos on his quest have surprised him in going viral, with some gaining more than a million views, and he isn’t done yetPeople get famous for plenty of bizarre reasons, but even in the age of the internet, it’s hard to imagine a more inexplicable or heartwarming rise to popularity than that of Rohit Roy.The 41-year-old financial planning assistant from Melbourne has amassed hundreds of thousands of devoted and loving fans on TikTok by simply not drinking fizzy drinks. Continue reading...

The new Netflix docudrama is a valiant if flawed attempt to address our complacency about surveillance capitalismSpool forward a couple of centuries. A small group of social historians drawn from the survivors of climate catastrophe are picking through the documentary records of what we are currently pleased to call our civilisation, and they come across a couple of old movies. When they’ve managed to find a device on which they can view them, it dawns on them that these two films might provide an insight into a great puzzle: how and why did the prosperous, apparently peaceful societies of the early 21st century implode?The two movies are The Social Network, which tells the story of how a po-faced Harvard dropout named Mark Zuckerberg created a powerful and highly profitable company; and The Social Dilemma, which is about how the business model of this company – as ruthlessly deployed by its po-faced founder – turned out to be an existential threat to the democracy that 21st-century humans once enjoyed. Continue reading...

Donald Trump’s decision to ban downloads of the Chinese-owned platform prompts realignment of tech spaceChina has accused the United States of “bullying” and suggested it may take unspecified countermeasures after Washington banned downloads of popular video app TikTok and effectively blocked the use of the Chinese super-app WeChat.“China urges the US to abandon bullying, cease (its) wrongful actions and earnestly maintain fair and transparent international rules and order,” a statement by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said on Saturday. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Guardian analysis prompts calls for new drive to combat conspiracy theories

Incident in Düsseldorf could be first death caused by a cyber-attack, says UK’s former head of cybersecurityGerman prosecutors have opened a homicide investigation into the case of a patient who died after a hospital in the city of Düsseldorf was unable to admit her because its systems had been knocked out by a cyber-attack.The female patient, suffering from a life-threatening illness, had to be turned away on the night of 11 September by the city’s university hospital and died after the ambulance carrying her was diverted to Wuppertal, 30 km (20 miles) away. Continue reading...

Government to ban WeChat on Sunday to ‘safeguard national security of the US’, while TikTok to be banned by 12 NovemberThe US government will ban downloads of the Chinese-owned video sharing app TikTok and the use of China’s popular messaging and payments app WeChat to “safeguard the national security of the United States”.Related: 'He’s paying attention to people like us': Trump’s messages resonate in Wisconsin Continue reading...

Adding a few paragraphs and photos can boost revenue by £100,000 for small citiesForget glossy travel brochures and whizzy online sites; one of the most cost-effective ways tourism chiefs can drive business to their towns or cities is by updating their Wikipedia page.An experiment by economists at the Collegio Carlo Alberto in Turin, Italy, and ZEW in Mannheim, Germany, found that a few simple edits to a Wikipedia page could lead to an extra £100,000 a year in tourism revenue for a small city, underscoring the power of the free online encyclopaedia. Continue reading...

Extension on Firefox browser will allow users to record information about videos recommended by siteYouTube viewers are being asked to become “watchdogs” and record their use of the site to help uncover the ways in which its recommendation algorithm can lead to online radicalisation.Mozilla, the non-profit behind the Firefox web browser, has produced a new browser extension, called RegretsReporter, which will allow YouTube users to record and upload information about harmful videos recommended by the site, as well as the route they took to get there. Continue reading...

Company releases new versions of operating systems with just a day’s notice

Engineer, academic and activist who sought to transform the relationship between human skill and technologyThe innovative thinking and political campaigning of Mike Cooley, who has died aged 86, influenced generations of trade unionists and advocates of a sustainable, green and socially just economy.It was while working as a highly skilled design engineer at Lucas Aerospace during the turbulent 1970s that Cooley, who was also a mililtant trade unionist, first made his mark. He believed that a radically different relationship between technology and human skill was needed for social transformation. At the heart of his philosophy was a conviction that the supposed conflict between these forms of labour should be transformed into a mutually reinforcing partnership. Continue reading...

Cheaper, lighter, crisper screen and more power make for potent standalone virtual reality escapismThe Oculus Quest 2 is Facebook’s second iteration of its popular standalone virtual reality headset. It is more powerful, has a better screen and is cheaper, ready to be your ticket to a virtual escape from the misery of Covid-19.The Quest 2 costs £299 and comes with everything you need to start playing – there’s no powerful gaming PC required. The original Quest released in 2019 marked a defining moment in the evolution of VR breaking it free from the shackles of cables and expensive computers – and proving more popular than expected in the process. Continue reading...

UK government urged to intervene in SoftBank’s $40bn deal with US tech firmOpposition to the $40bn (£31bn) sale of the UK’s largest tech firm, Arm Holdings, is mounting, as the trade union Unite said staff concerned about their future had been “fobbed off” and the company’s local MP urged the government to act.The US software company Nvidia said on Monday it had agreed to buy Arm, a global leader in designing chips for smartphones, computers and tablets, from the Japanese tech investment business SoftBank. Continue reading...

Top Apple smartwatch has new blood oxygen sensor, while SE has main features at reduced price

If the US is free to close its market to Huawei, then why can’t Britain act in the national interest over Arm?

Tech giant fails to convince court it doesn’t carry out business in Australia as privacy regulator accuses Facebook of breachesFacebook has been dealt a blow in its fight to fend off Australian legal action surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal, with the tech giant failing to convince the federal court it does not carry out business in Australia.In March, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) sued Facebook for allegedly breaching the privacy of more than 300,000 Australians between March 2014 and May 2015. Continue reading...

Hybrid smartwatch tracks heart rate, ECG, sleep, blood oxygen and activity with smartphone alertsThe new Withings ScanWatch is one of the most advanced health trackers you can buy and comes in the form of a hybrid smartwatch with a traditional analogue face and a 30-day battery life.The ScanWatch comes in two sizes, with either a black or white face. The 38mm size costs £249.95 but it is the larger 42mm size costing £279.95 that is reviewed here. Continue reading...

Young influencers have made US slang and accents cool in British schools. But that’s OK, academics tell parentsAs Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers once sang, the difference between British and American English used to come down to whether someone said “tomato” or “tomAto”.Now though the lines are becoming increasingly blurred as the words, intonation and accent used by US internet stars are adopted by their young British fans. Continue reading...

Post-Brexit bid to boost innovation is troubling Conservatives with its socialist overtones, and exasperating BrusselsBoris Johnson wants the freedom to pump hundreds of millions of pounds into tech startups with a view to promoting businesses that can emulate Apple, Facebook or Alibaba – China’s answer to eBay.Related: Why Boris Johnson's tech vision lacks the support of investors Continue reading...

Dramatic swings in stock prices are causing serious alarm – but these huge companies are no longer fragile startups‘Everybody loves a party ... but, inevitably, after a big party there’s a hangover,” billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller said last week as stock markets seesawed amid fears that a new tech bubble was about to burst. “Right now, we’re in an absolute raging mania,” he said.And at times it did look like a tech bubble was about to burst again. Last Tuesday, Tesla’s shares fell 21% and Elon Musk’s net worth plunged $16.3bn (£12.7bn), the largest single-day wipeout ever for a member of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, lost $7.9bn. The whiplash continued throughout the week but, for many market watchers, it is still too soon to call time on tech’s stellar rise. Continue reading...