Technology | The Guardian

I witness horror stories of social media algorithms turning young people into extremists. But why cede this space to the far right?

Widespread adoption of remote work amid Covid could reshape a city that has become unaffordableThrough free massages, decompression capsules, and limitless nitro cold brew, San Francisco’s tech companies spent the last decade making their offices considerably comfier than the average cubicle farm. Beyond making the workday pleasant, they attracted workforces whose six-figure salaries altered the city’s demographics, spurring widespread displacement and years of head-scratching over the exact moment San Francisco lost its bohemian soul.Now, nearly six months after the Covid-19 crisis began, those same startups and tech giants have started to dangle the ultimate perk: the ability to work remotely, indefinitely. Continue reading...

From basic models to those with smart features, these clocks mean you don’t need to rely on your mobile phoneIf you want to eject your smartphone from the bedroom but currently use it to get you up in the morning, you need something else to do that job instead. From basic models, to smart alarms, what are the best options for your bedside table? Continue reading...

Commissioning GPT-3 was a fun – and strange – lesson in artificial intelligence. Here’s how we did itThis summer, OpenAI, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company co-founded by Elon Musk, debuted GPT-3, a powerful new language generator that can produce human-like text. According to Wired, the power of the program, trained on billions of bytes of data including e-books, news articles and Wikipedia (the latter making up just 3% of the training data it used), was producing “chills across Silicon Valley”. Soon after its release, researchers were using it to write fiction, suggest medical treatment, predict the rest of 2020, answer philosophical questions and much more.When we asked GPT-3 to write an op-ed convincing us we have nothing to fear from AI, we had two goals in mind. Continue reading...

Subscription deal will combine products including Apple TV+ and Apple Music, leak suggestsApple is preparing a new bundle of all its subscription products called Apple One, according to a leak in the source code of one of its apps.The bundle, which has been rumoured for some time and could be launched as soon as next week’s press event, will combine a number of Apple services including Apple Music, Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade in one subscription for a discounted fee. Continue reading...

Platforms will target unverified claims of election rigging and premature results declarationsPremature claims of victory will be blocked from Twitter and Google in the run-up to November’s US presidential election, as both companies follow Facebook in trying to fight the prospect of a stolen vote.Under its new rules, Twitter will treat as harmful misinformation any tweet which makes false claims about election rigging, or prematurely claims to announce the election results. Continue reading...

Companies are waging a scorched-earth regulatory battle to avoid providing basic benefits to their drivers in CaliforniaUber and Lyft are waging a scorched-earth regulatory battle to avoid providing basic benefits to their drivers, now considered essential workers, in their largest US market: California. In response to a lawsuit by the California attorney general, Xavier Becerra, a judge found the companies’ drivers to be employees and ordered Uber and Lyft to act accordingly – including by providing a living wage, unemployment benefits, state-mandated sick leave and full reimbursements for expenses like cleaning and personal protective equipment.The companies have responded by threatening to lay off tens of thousands of workers. Their goal is to extend the crisis until November, when Proposition 22, a referendum written and sponsored by the gig companies, will be voted on. Prop 22 would create a special exemption from California employment laws just for these companies, while also pre-empting local regulation. The companies have taken a page from big tobacco’s political playbook to avoid complying with wage laws and basic aspects of the social safety net in exchange for the labor of their majority immigrant and people-of-color workforce. Continue reading...

Military intelligence behind 2016 hack of Democrats attempted similar intrusions into computer systems of political partiesThe same Russian military intelligence outfit that hacked the Democrats in 2016 has attempted similar intrusions into the computer systems of organizations involved in the 2020 elections, Microsoft said Thursday.Those efforts, which have targeted more than 200 organizations including political parties and consultants, appear to be part of a broader increase in targeting of US political campaigns and related groups, the company said. Continue reading...

The man who brought my Amazon package had already handled half a million jobs. He still seemed to be enjoying himselfI have always been against the use of names and personal stuff in commercial transactions. And by that I don’t mean someone addressing me by my first name or anything like that; I am on about that business in Starbucks when they demand you identify yourself so they can write your name on a paper cup. For some reason, I have all sorts of problems getting across that my name is Adrian. This might be my accent, which I am told makes my “A” sound like an “I”. You would be amazed how many different spellings there are of my name. I have taken to calling myself Tim, to avoid confusion.Boden catalogues used to annoy me, too. They would put the models’ names next to the photos, which were of no interest to me, and also their favourite film, song, sandwich or whatever. I am not sure if they still do this because I never bought anything from Boden in protest. Continue reading...

Update adds new conversation features, privacy controls, quick smart device controls and moreGoogle has released its latest big update called Android 11 “R”, which is rolling out now to the firm’s Pixel devices, and to smartphones from a handful of third-party manufacturers.Announced at the end of February, Android 11 brings with it enhanced privacy, new chat-related features and smarter media and device controls, as well as some Pixel-exclusive additions. Continue reading...

Court filings reveal Apple may delay return even if developer backtracks in App Store disputeFortnite could be banned from iPhones and other Apple devices for a year, the game’s developer, Epic Games, has revealed, as the court battle between the two companies continues.The scale of the ban was revealed in a legal filing from Epic, which asks the court to force Apple to allow the game back on the iOS App Store while the wider lawsuit winds its way to a full hearing. Continue reading...

Online retail giant says potentially higher corporation tax bill was offset by infrastructure investmentsAmazon’s key UK business paid just 3% more tax last year when profits rose by more than a third as the online retailer benefited from the switch to home shopping.The group’s warehouse and logistics operation, which employs more than two-thirds of its 30,000-plus UK workforce, Amazon UK Services, said its corporation tax contribution was £14.46m in 2019, up from £14.03m the year before. Pretax profits at the division soared 35% to nearly £102m as revenues rose by 29% to nearly £3bn, according to accounts about to be published by Companies House. Continue reading...

Graphic footage originally broadcast on Facebook has spread across social networkTikTok is battling to remove a graphic video of a livestreamed suicide, after the footage was uploaded to the service on Sunday night from Facebook, where it was initially broadcast.Although the footage was rapidly taken down from TikTok, users spent much of Monday re-uploading it, initially unchanged, but later incorporated into so-called bait-and-switch videos, which are designed to shock and upset unsuspecting users. Continue reading...

Firm tells Information Commissioner’s Office it is being pressured into breaking EU privacy lawsThe ride-hailing app Wheely has written to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) after claiming it is being pressured into potentially breaking European privacy law by handing over data on its journeys to the Moscow Department of Transportation (MDOT).The company, which has its headquarters in London, last month had its Russian subsidiary suspended from operating by a Moscow court for 90 days, after it refused to hand over the information that it argues could be used to breach the privacy of individual customers. Continue reading...

PS4, Xbox One, PC; Vicarious Visions/Activision

Palantir powers Ice immigration raids, the defense sector and police surveillance. It is the big tobacco of the tech world

PeaceData, seemingly a leftwing news outlet, offered me a column. I should have known it was too good to be trueOn 8 July, I was contacted via direct message on Twitter by a man who introduced himself as an associate editor for PeaceData. @Alex_Lacusta described his organization as a “young, progressive global news outlet that was seeking young and aspiring writers” and was looking to grow its presence on social media. Would I want to write a weekly column and be paid $200 to $250 per piece?My interest was piqued. I had lost my part-time job in the food industry amid the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic, and I was in need of income and an outlet to build my portfolio. The opportunity to write a column could be the break I was hoping for. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Testimony of HGV drivers from ex-Soviet countries raises fresh questions over supply chainHaulage drivers delivering to Amazon distribution centres across Europe allege that safety records are being deliberately manipulated and wages withheld in a breach of the e-commerce multinational’s pledges about working conditions in its supply chain.HGV drivers recruited from former Soviet-bloc countries have told the Guardian that they were instructed to cheat tachograph machines that log their working hours, so that they could drive illegally long and unsafe stints in western Europe. Continue reading...

My father, Richard Zobel, who has died aged 81, was a pioneering computer scientist at the University of Manchester, birthplace of “Baby”, the world’s first stored-program computer.He rode the wave of the information technology revolution, starting in the early 1960s on military flight simulators for the electronics and equipment company Sperry’s – the valve analog computers they used ran so hot that he had to work in the cool of the night – and in later years recommending improvements to the distant early warning system (Dews) protecting Indian Ocean coastlines from tsunami, but it was his 40-year academic career that defined his professional life. Continue reading...

Internet Research Agency also hired real, unwitting freelance reporters in operation Facebook has removedThe Russian agency that interfered in the 2016 US election created a fake leftwing news publication, staffed it with fake editors with AI-generated photos and hired real freelance reporters as part of a fresh influence operation detected and removed by Facebook, the company said on Tuesday.The latest operation by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) was still in its early stages when it was detected thanks to a tip from the FBI, according to Facebook’s head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher. The network had 13 accounts and two pages, with about 14,000 total followers. Continue reading...

Move is part of effort to make virtual inroads with voters at a time when many traditional campaign events are considered unsafeLorilei Storm, an American who has lived in Ireland for the last decade, has signs supporting Joe Biden all over her front yard – not in front of her Dublin flat, however, but the one surrounding her home in the wildly popular Nintendo game Animal Crossing.“Campaign signs aren’t as much of a thing here, so I was really excited to find them in the game – I put up as many as I could,” Storm said. Continue reading...

Lateness in rolling out pure fibre networks to blame for low ranking, says analystThe UK has plummeted down the global broadband speed rankings to rate as one of the slowest countries in Europe, with a typical household taking more than twice as long to download a movie than the average home in western Europe.Britain has dropped 13 places in an annual study ranking the average broadband speeds of 221 countries and territories, placing it 47th fastest in the world. Last year, the UK ranked 34th for average broadband speed. Continue reading...

Stock split is merely cosmetic for company whose valuation seems to be controlled by pure psychologyYou have to admire Elon Musk’s stage management. On Monday, the Tesla founder delivered a crowd-pleasing five-for-one stock split, transforming a $2,300 share price into a smaller figure to make ownership “more accessible”. The economic effect of the change was precisely zero – investors just got four additional shares for each one they owned – but Tesla’s shares surged 12% anyway.On Tuesday, Musk produced a twist. Since investors are clearly keen to throw money at Tesla at almost any price, the company will issue new shares to raise $5bn for “general corporate purposes”. The explanation was gloriously vague but, in Tesla’s shoes, you can afford to be loose. With a stock valuation of $460bn, the new shares represent minimal dilution for existing investors. It would almost be silly not to take advantage. Continue reading...

Index down almost quarter in year tech firm has thrived as people turn to digital servicesApple has notched up another milestone by overtaking the combined market value of the entire FTSE 100 index of the UK’s biggest publicly listed companies.The iPhone and iMac maker has had a stellar performance this year with its share price rising an astonishing 75%, and last month it became the first US company to reach a $2tn (£1.48tn) market value. It has since climbed even further, reaching a new record of $2.268tn (£1.69tn) in early US trading on Tuesday. Continue reading...

The billionaire entrepreneur loves to make headline-grabbing claims, but behind the hype his innovations are often underwhelmingHere is a philosophical conundrum: if no one is talking about Elon Musk, does he really exist? The entrepreneur needs attention the way mortals need oxygen. If the 49-year-old is not in the news for a couple of days, he finds a way to shoehorn himself back into the headlines – even if it means piggybacking on international efforts to rescue children trapped in a cave, or calling his child X Æ A-12.Behold the billionaire’s latest stunt: a bionic pig. On Friday, Musk livestreamed a “progress update” on Neuralink, his neuroscience startup. The star of the show was Gertrude, a pig with a chip in her brain. Musk is betting we will all soon be clamouring to get what Gertie has, which is what Musk described as “a Fitbit in your skull”. Neuralink’s ambition is to develop mass-market brain-computer interfaces that allow you to control things with your mind, as well as to cure depression, spinal injuries and neurological disorders. Continue reading...

Great design, screen, performance, battery and health-tracking, with long support and sustainabilitySamsung’s latest, the Galaxy Watch 3, is an all-round refinement of its previous excellent smartwatch efforts – slimmer, lighter and with a larger screen.The £399 Galaxy Watch 3 comes in two sizes (41mm or 45mm), two colours and with or without 4G, aiming to be the Apple Watch of Android, here reviewed in black with a 45mm case. It sits alongside the smaller, fitness-focused Galaxy Watch Active 2 and works with any brand of Android with access to the Google Play Store as well as an iPhone running iOS 9 or newer. Continue reading...

Facebook phishing schemes charge fans to view events’ free live streams

NBN Co claims just 4% of fibre-to-node broadband users are not getting the legally required minimum speeds. Share your experiencesAs people continue to work and study from home, relying solely on their home internet connection, the almost-finished National Broadband Network should be making life easier, but tens of thousands are still finding the network not up to scratch.Data released in the federal parliament last week shows 139,963 premises were not able to get 25 megabits a second download speeds as of May this year. Continue reading...

Amazon and IBM get Covid screening systems from companies that use their technology to oppress minority groups

Does taking back control mean transferring authority from Westminster to Washington? It must do because Boris Johnson won’t say otherwise as sovereignty over unique British microprocessor know-how slips into US handsThe collision of political rhetoric and commercial reality in Cambridge’s “Silicon Fen” threatens to expose the government’s industrial strategy for what it is: draping a union jack over the wilder edges of global capitalism. Earlier this summer, Boris Johnson sought new powers to block outsiders from picking up British firms, especially hi-tech ones. Weeks later, it emerged that the jewel in the crown of UK computing may depart from these shores. Ministers said nothing.That may be because the ownership of the company in question – the world’s most important chip-design firm Arm – was previously decided by Brexit politics. Just after the 2016 vote, Theresa May, having vowed to defend UK firms from foreign takeovers, blessed Arm’s sale to SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate, for £24bn. That move came with conditions to double the workforce and keep Arm’s headquarters in Cambridge for five years – a pledge that expires next July. SoftBank is now in talks to sell Arm to Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chip company. Continue reading...

Facebook, Amazon and Google all have their problems, but Apple is losing friends fasterFacebook may be the home of international conspiracy theories, Amazon the bane of high streets everywhere and Google slowly tightening its grip on the entire web but it is Apple that is rapidly becoming the most friendless of the big tech companies.Even its attempts to make new allies are starting to come back to bite. Continue reading...

Facebook CEO points to ‘operational mistake’ by teams meant to bar organizations deemed dangerousMark Zuckerberg blamed an “operational mistake” by contractors for Facebook’s failure to remove the “call to arms” of a Kenosha, Wisconsin, militia before the shooting on Tuesday night that left two people dead and another injured.The Kenosha Guard militia had established a Facebook page in June 2020 and this week used a Facebook event page to invite “any patriots willing to take up arms and defend out [sic] City tonight from the evil thugs”, referencing those protesting about the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Facebook has admitted that both the page and the event should have been banned under the company’s new policy addressing groups linked to violence, such as militias. The company nevertheless failed to remove the page or event despite multiple users who reported the content to Facebook, the Verge reported. Continue reading...

Halo’s always-on microphones and requests for body selfies worry privacy campaigners

Tech giant urges MPs to ‘carefully consider the proposal to ensure it operates in the best interests of Australians’Google is lobbying Labor and crossbench MPs to oppose a proposed code that would require digital platforms to pay news media companies for content, urging them to “carefully consider the proposal to ensure it operates in the best interests of Australians”.The direct lobbying effort supplements the tech giant’s major digital campaign, which includes a post on Google’s home page, and pop-up advertisements on Google Search, Chrome and YouTube to mobilise its huge user base against the proposal. Continue reading...

Operating system update will allow opt-in to coronavirus exposure notifications without need of an app

Acquisition by firm which streams virtual reality gigs will offer ‘next-generation’ serviceA British music tech startup has struck a surprise $70m (£53m) deal to buy Napster, one of the pioneers of the music streaming revolution.MelodyVR, which films and streams gigs fans watch with virtual reality headsets, is taking over Rhapsody International, which operates as Napster and is owned by Nasdaq-listed RealNetworks. Continue reading...

PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch; Metronomik

Good sound and long battery life with a repairable and unusual open-fit design make great alternative earbudsSamsung’s latest Galaxy Buds Live true wireless earbuds are different from anything else on the market. They are shaped like kidney beans that you put in your ear – which is precisely why they are good.The Galaxy Buds Live cost £179, have active noise cancellation (ANC) and sit above the excellent £159 Galaxy Buds+ as Samsung’s top Bluetooth earbuds. Continue reading...

Firm behind video-conferencing app says it has now fixed the problem, which mainly affected users in the east coast of the US and Europe

App says in blogpost it strongly disagrees with White House position that it is a national security threatTikTok, the fast-growing video sharing app, announced it was suing the US government on Monday over an executive order banning transactions with the Chinese company in the US.In a blogpost, TikTok said it strongly disagreed with the White House’s position that the company was a national security threat, saying it had “taken extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s US user data”. Continue reading...

Dispute over in-app purchases is seen as proxy war over future of App StoreMicrosoft has joined the court battle between Apple and Epic Games, filing a legal brief supporting the Fortnite developer’s right to carry on developing software for Mac and iOS while the case continues.The submission, signed by Kevin Gammill, the executive in charge of supporting developers on Microsoft’s Xbox console, is further evidence that the lawsuit over in-app purchases in Fortnite is set to become a proxy war over the future of the App Store. Continue reading...

The controversial app’s users are ignoring geopolitical battle over its digital security, says Richard WaterworthTikTok’s UK chief has strenuously denied the video-sharing app, which Donald Trump has threatened to ban, shares data with China.Richard Waterworth told the Observer that the UK and European arm of TikTok was growing quickly, despite the “turbulent” geopolitical battle in which the Chinese-born app has found itself. Continue reading...

Chinese-owned app says it will challenge executive order that requires it to find American buyer or be shut down in the USTikTok has said it will mount a court challenge to the Trump administration’s crackdown on the popular Chinese-owned service, which Washington accuses of being a national security threat.Amid tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, Donald Trump signed an executive order on 6 August giving Americans 45 days to stop doing business with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance – effectively setting a deadline for a potential pressured sale of the viral video sensation to a US company. Continue reading...

As tech firms scramble to keep up with reality of coronavirus, some experts say users must change

For four decades the game has tried to recreate how it feels to fly. Now, writes qualified pilot Oliver Holmes, it has succeededThere’s a half-kept secret among pilots of small planes that is guaranteed to scare the hell out of people. It comes from the assumption that pilots are constantly relying on fancy equipment to track where they are at all times. The truth is, they don’t.So how do we get around? Often, we simply look out of the window. Continue reading...

From befriending dogs and composing haikus to stealing jets, these sprawling video games offer up much-needed escapismAfter revolutionising 3D games once with 1998’s Ocarina of Time, Nintendo rewrote the rulebook again here, sculpting a colossal world of staggering complexity. It gives you the basic tools you need and then simply sets you loose, leaving you to paraglide from soaring peaks, cook a steak dinner, make a dirigible out of monster guts, befriend a dog, or motorbike through a desert at your leisure.

Lyft had announced planned suspension in blogpost as it awaited landmark decision which would enforce labor law AB5A California judge has granted Uber and Lyft a temporary stay, heading off a shutdown by the two platforms at the last minute in an ongoing case that would require the ride-hailing giants to classify drivers as employees.Lyft and Uber have been awaiting a landmark decision from a court in the state, which would enforce a new labor law known as AB5. The law, which went into effect in January, would require the companies to classify its drivers as employees and provide them with a minimum wage and benefits. The decision, which was expected on Thursday, has been postponed until October. Continue reading...

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New rules come after ‘lockdown parties’ blamed on platform by B&B operators in the UK

My mother, Sheila Hawton, who has died aged 91, liked in her later years to surprise people with the fact that her first job was as a computer programmer.After graduating from Royal Holloway College, which was then an all-women’s college of London University (and is now Royal Holloway London), with a master’s in aerodynamics, in the early 1950s she headed to Ferranti in Manchester and worked with the mathematician Conway Berners-Lee (the father of Tim Berners-Lee) on the Ferranti Mk 1 computer and later the Pegasus computer. Marriage and the arrival of children ended her programming career, as it so often did at that time. Continue reading...