by Gwyn Topham Transport correspondent on (#596HS)
Government set to update law to ban drivers from using hand-held phones in any way, not just calling and textingDrivers who use hand-held phones in any way behind the wheel will face £200 fines and possible bans when changes in the law take account of smartphones.While making calls or texting on a hand-held mobile while driving is already illegal, taking photos, scrolling through a playlist or even playing games on phones has not been outlawed until now – allowing drivers to escape charges when spotted with a phone. Continue reading...
Amazon has helped many in lockdown, and reaped soaring profits. But the company must be held to accountIt was hard to miss the fact that Amazon Prime had a sale this week. Newspapers and magazines covered the event as a celebration of consumption. This on top of a coronavirus pandemic that has accelerated the collapse of already struggling bricks-and-mortar retailers.It is not surprising that so many of us shop with Amazon. The prices seem low. Purchases arrive promptly. But an examination of this gift horse’s mouth also raises serious concerns. Even before the pandemic Amazon’s aggressive pricing strategies made it difficult for smaller companies to compete. This is exacerbated by the fact that the company does not pay enough back to the state. In 2018 it paid £14.3m in corporation tax on £13.7bn in UK revenues. Without shops on the high street, it pays less in business rates than more traditional competitors such as Tesco. Continue reading...
Move follows criticism from Republicans and others over story about Joe Biden’s sonTwitter has softened its policies against the sharing of hacked material after the backlash over its decision to block a New York Post story about Joe Biden’s son.Republican senators declared their intention to subpoena the Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey next week, forcing him to explain the decision, after he apologised for the lack of communication about the blocking. Continue reading...
CMA investigation found Facebook-owned platform was not doing enough to tackle problemInstagram is to crack down on social media influencers and celebrities in the UK who post without telling followers they have been paid to do so, following an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority.The CMA said on Friday it had investigated the issue of “hidden advertising” and was concerned that the Facebook-owned platform Instagram was not doing enough to tackle the problem. Continue reading...
The Perfect Weapon reveals the new international cold war: cyber-attacks, hacks and disinformation campaigns happening under our nosesIn early 2010, scientists at a uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, Iran, watched their infrastructure malfunction at an unprecedented, inexplicable rate. Technicians inspected their equipment, but could find no explanation for why the plant’s centrifuges – machines to isolate the uranium isotopes needed for nuclear power – were spinning at irregular rates, and then failing.Five months later, cybersecurity responding to a seemingly separate network malfunction in Iran inadvertently discovered the culprit: a malicious string of code which instructed computers, and the centrifuges they controlled, to vary in speed until their parts broke down, while simultaneously mimicking normal operator instructions, as if playing security footage on a loop in a heist movie. It was computer malware capable of physical, real-world destruction – the world’s first digital weapon, originating from US national intelligence. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#595MP)
The 4a’s big brother is simple to use and has a great camera, but can’t compete with rivals in terms of processing powerThe Pixel 5 is Google’s top smartphone for 2020. It comes with 5G and a simplified design that’s very similar to the excellent, cheaper Pixel 4a.It’s available in either black or green and costs £599, fitting in above the larger but cheaper £499 Pixel 4a 5G and the smaller £349 Pixel 4a. Continue reading...
by Hannah Verdier and Esther Opoku-Gyeni on (#595KB)
The TV hard man and his reality star daughter turn agony aunts, while French and Saunders reunite for unapologetic laughs in Titting AboutSorted With the Dyers
Millions of users left unable to tweet or share stories for more than an hourTwitter has suffered multiple outages in many countries across the world, leaving millions of users unable to post to its platform.The company confirmed that an “inadvertent change” made to its internal systems had caused the crashes throughout the US evening and Australian morning. Continue reading...
The company says it will remove conspiracy theory content used to justify real-world violence after Facebook announced a similar moveYouTube said Thursday it will begin banning some content related to QAnon, a massive and baseless online conspiracy theory movement that has been tied to real-life violence.The online video service said in a blogpost it would remove conspiracy theory content used to justify real-world violence from its network. It comes after Facebook announced similar but more extensive measures, banning all QAnon content outright. Continue reading...
I was left without the service for four months while trying to work from homeI’ve had no home broadband for the past four months and have spent more than 50 hours trying to resolve this with Vodafone. It’s made lockdown extremely difficult as I’ve been working from home and need to keep in touch with my family who are abroad. I’ve been variously told by Vodafone that it needs to do work underground, it needs to do work in my building, it needs me to reset my router yet again. In the meantime, they’re supposed to be giving me unlimited data on my tablet while I pay for broadband I can’t use, but that, too, is proving impossible to achieve.
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#594GW)
Top phone with great screen, good battery life and software undercuts competitionThe OnePlus 8T replaces the OnePlus 8 released just six months ago, with a flatter and faster screen and incredibly quick charging.The smartphone costs £549 or £649 depending on storage and sits between the mid-range £379 OnePlus Nord and top-end £799 OnePlus 8 Pro. Continue reading...
Social media platforms move to limit spread of article amid questions over its veracityFacebook and Twitter took steps on Wednesday to limit the spread of a controversial New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, sparking outrage among conservatives and stoking debate over how social media platforms should tackle misinformation ahead of the US election.In an unprecedented step against a major news publication, Twitter blocked users from posting links to the Post story or photos from the unconfirmed report. Users attempting to share the story were shown a notice saying: “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.” Users clicking or retweeting a link already posted to Twitter are shown a warning the “link may be unsafe”. Continue reading...
We asked Australian comedians to unearth gems from the turgid muck of the internet. Josh Earl found these shiny specimens for youHello the internet. The Information Super Highway. The World Wide Web. You really are the best. Yes, I know you are also the worst but I am old enough to remember when you weren’t around, and if you think the internet is a horrible place well I dare you to go live in a time where if you were bored your options were to watch A Country Practice (even though you missed Monday night’s episode so Wednesday night’s episode makes absolutely no sense) or read a book. Yuck. Who wants to read anymore? I know I am asking this of someone reading this article but are you really reading it, or are you just clicking on the videos?Here are 10 videos that I have spent the better part of three years honing and perfecting. Why do I like them? Because they are funny. That’s it. They won’t make you smarter, they won’t make you a better person. In fact you may come out the other side dumber and meaner, but that is the internet for you. Enjoy. Continue reading...
Analysts expect rivals to follow as Apple addresses gender-bias cricitisms with smaller handsetApple unveiled its new range of iPhones on Tuesday and analysts suggested its biggest success of the season could be its smallest new product: the iPhone 12 Mini.It will be Apple’s smallest flagship iPhone since the iPhone 6, which was introduced in 2014, and tech experts said it could mark an about-turn in the trend for ever-larger phones – and be a particularly big hit with women. Continue reading...
Game action on Switch steers cars round obstacle courses you create in your living roomMario Kart has been a family favourite since the early 1990s thanks to its potent combination of cute characters, speedy but simple racing and an array of red shells, banana skins and other eye-wateringly unfair tools of playful sabotage. Nintendo’s latest experiment in the toy world, made in collaboration with Velan Studios, is an actual Mario remote-controlled kart that comes with a game. Instead of confining all the action to a screen, this lets you race a little car around your living room, using a Nintendo Switch to control it.Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit is a “mixed-reality” game, meaning that what you see on the Switch screen is an enhanced version of what’s actually going on in your living room. In reality, the car is zipping around on the floor, weaving between table legs and under cardboard arches. On the screen are all the things you’d expect from Mario Kart: power-ups, sandstorms that blow the kart around and make it harder to control, and other characters to race against. Continue reading...
US tech company’s third-party sellers face a 2% rise in the amount they payAmazon will not have to pay the UK’s new digital services tax on products it sells directly to consumers but small traders who sell products on its site will face increased charges.The tax, which aims to get tech companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook to pay more tax in the UK, is forecast to eventually bring in about £500m annually to the exchequer. Continue reading...
Site will still allow ads focused on vaccine policy as it launches campaign to provide flu vaccine informationFacebook will ban ads that discourage people from getting vaccinated, the social media company announced on Tuesday, as it launches a new public health campaign aimed at spreading flu vaccine information.The changes are a departure from Facebook’s previous policy, which prohibited ads with vaccine misinformation but allowed ads expressing opposition to vaccines if they did not contain false claims. Continue reading...
International survey nominates social media giant as worst offender, ahead of elected officialsThe majority of journalists covering the pandemic say Facebook is the biggest spreader of disinformation, outstripping elected officials who are also a top source, according to an international survey of journalism and Covid-19.The social media platform, which announced this week it was updating its hate speech policy to ban content that denies or distorts the Holocaust, was identified by 66% of journalists surveyed as the main source of “prolific disinformation”. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#592NV)
New designs and cameras revealed alongside smaller HomePod smart speakerApple has unveiled its delayed iPhone 12 line of smartphones in a range of sizes with new designs and 5G connectivity.Unveiled as part of a online-only event, which was pushed back by more than a month due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the new iPhones mark some of the biggest changes to Apple’s smartphones since the iPhone X in 2017. Continue reading...
Four new iPhones unveiled, Apple’s first 5G devices, as well as new HomePod mini and MagSafe technology7.17pm BSTThat’s it, the event’s done, new phones have been revealed, well done everyone, we made it. Here’s what you’ve already forgotten was just announced:iPhone 127.07pm BSTThe iPhone 12 Pro will cost from $999 and the iPhone Pro Max from $1099, both starting at 128GB, and shipping from October 23. The iPhones 12 will follow a month later, on November 13. Continue reading...
From Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales to Demon’s Souls and Destruction AllStars, we look at the games lineup for those lucky enough to secure Sony’s new PlayStation 5 console
Campaigners ask consumers to consider plight of retailers struggling due to CovidCampaign groups and small business representatives have called on consumers to shun this week’s Amazon Prime extravaganza and support small retailers instead.On Tuesday and Wednesday the tech giant will host its annual Prime Day event, with thousands of tempting bargains – many at up to half price. Continue reading...
A new advert suggesting a ballerina retrain for a job in ‘cyber’ has faced a backlash. What were they thinking?Name: Fatima.Age: Early 20s. Continue reading...
Twin sisters vie for musical supremacy and an arranged marriage gets the supernatural treatment in the horror company’s collaborations with AmazonKicking off the second batch of Welcome to the Blumhouse, the horror outfit’s collaboration with Amazon, Nocturne (★★★★☆) is played firmly in the key of Black Swan, and it is a confident interpretation. The setting isn’t ballet, but an elite music academy where out-of-sorts pianist Juliet (Sydney Sweeney) looks sure to be eclipsed by her outgoing twin (Madison Iseman) in a competition to decide the school’s year-end concerto soloist. Then she stumbles on a notebook – covered in esoteric scrawls depicting a satanic pact – that belonged to the competition’s original winner, who recently jumped off her balcony. Juliet is suddenly fired up to take on Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No 2, aiming to gazump her sister, who is playing the same piece. It’s the most sanity-threatening keyboard pick since Rachmaninov’s Third in Shine. Continue reading...
Social media addiction isn’t a failure of parenting. It’s a feature of the tech industry“Chill out, Mum, you’re overreacting. Watching TV is just as bad,” my daughter yells as I beg her and her brother to put down their devices for just five minutes. My daughter can see me getting agitated and gives me the “you are a loser” eye-roll that all 12-year-olds seem to master.I’m trying to convince her that mindlessly scrolling Instagram for hours is not good for her. I explain that unlimited social media is dangerous – a bit like being able to have as many Big Macs as you like, at any time you want: you end up feeling sick and empty inside. In the same way my daughter is mindful of what food she puts in her body, I want her to be mindful of what she feeds her brain. I call it “junk tech”. No brain required. Continue reading...
English National Ballet will return to the stage soon, but dance’s wider future looks precarious. The company’s artistic director tells us about bubbles, business models, and ballet classes in her kitchenTamara Rojo may be a great tragic dancer on stage, but in person she is far from the voice of doom. “The performing arts and dance have survived millennia,” she says, sitting in her office looking out onto a floor of empty desks. “They’ve survived pandemics and hundred-year wars and all kind of disasters. Getting together to share stories is intrinsic to humanity. People will gather, live performance will continue to exist.” Just maybe not quite in the way we’re used to, yet.Ballet is finally putting its pointe shoes back on for a live audience. This month there are performances by the Royal Ballet, Northern Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet – and English National Ballet, where Rojo is artistic director, has just announced two live shows. In November, a live version of their upcoming digital season will feature five new short ballets at Sadler’s Wells, and in December there’s a slimmed-down version of The Nutcracker at the London Coliseum. Christmas isn’t quite cancelled after all. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5915Q)
Louder, more bass and better sound for Google Assistant speaker made of recycled plastic bottlesGoogle’s first smart speaker has finally got a much-needed upgrade in sound with the new Nest Audio.The speaker replaces the Google Home and costs £89.99, fitting in between the £49 Nest Mini and £299 Google Home Max. Continue reading...
Government urged to use influence it has through £630m of state contracts with firmThe UK government should use the influence it has over Amazon through £630m of state contracts to compel the company to improve conditions for workers, trade unions have said.The TUC issued a report criticising Amazon’s employment practices on Monday, the eve of Prime Day – an annual event when the online retailer offers deals but that unions have said pushes hardworking staff to their limit and beyond. Continue reading...
Site offers diverse material that traditional media do not, says Ben McOwen WilsonYouTube’s UK boss has said his platform is more representative of modern Britain than broadcasters such as the BBC, saying that television channels are falling behind because they do not provide material that speaks directly to all parts of the country.The Google-owned video service is on the cusp of overtaking the BBC as the dominant media source for 16- to 34-year-olds in the UK, with the average adult internet user watching 46 minutes of YouTube per day. Continue reading...
Criminals are adapting their tactics to take advantage of those spending more time at home and feeling vulnerableIt began with a text purportedly from O2. The message informed Stephen Frew that his latest payment could not be processed and asked him to update his card details via a link. Frew duly obliged. Within a week the £21,330 he was about to use as a deposit on a flat was stolen from his bank account.He is far from alone. The senior hospital nurse, who is in charge of Covid admissions, is one of thousands to have lost their life savings in an online scam known as Authorised Push-Payment (APP) fraud, which has intensified as fraudsters exploit the pandemic to target stressed customers. Over £200m was lost to APP fraud in the first half of this year according to new figures from trade association UK Finance. Continue reading...
Donning the Marigolds need not be a chore, according to a new breed of influencers who say cleaning is fun and aspirationalThere were fears that this autumn’s bumper crop of books would see some titles overlooked – but one volume definitely didn’t get brushed under the carpet. This Is Me by Sophie Hinchliffe, better known as the Instagram cleaning sensation Mrs Hinch, was the runaway hit of Super Thursday on 1 October, fighting stiff competition from almost 800 other hardbacks published that day to top the UK charts and shift more than 90,000 copies in its first week.It’s no surprise: Mrs Hinch’s three previous books have been bestsellers, and the 30-year-old comes with a readymade audience thanks to her “Hinch Army” of 3.8 million Instagram followers. Continue reading...
The tech activist on his new sci-fi novel and why we mustn’t treat the moral downsides of social media as a necessary evilCory Doctorow, 49, is a British-Canadian blogger, science fiction author and tech activist. He has worked for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and helped found the Open Rights Group – he is an advocate of liberalising copyright law. He has held various academic posts and is a visiting professor of the Open University. His latest novel, Attack Surface, was published earlier this month.The protagonist in your new novel tries to offset her job at a tech company where she is working for a repressive regime by helping some of its targets evade detection. Do you think many Silicon Valley employees feel uneasy about their work?
The influencer industry is worth billions – but Instagram and YouTube content creators are often exploited. What happens when a personal brand joins a union?Amy Hart earned her 1.2 million Instagram and 99,000 Twitter followers by appearing on 2019’s Love Island, where she had her heart broken while wearing a denim minidress. Like many of the show’s former stars, she is now an influencer: she tells fans where to buy clothes, makeup, even teeth like hers. But on 12 May this year, Hart influenced her followers in an entirely different direction. “Join a union!” the 28-year-old wrote on Twitter, above a 14-second video. “We’re in a really uncertain time when it comes to work and your rights and legislation,” she said. “If I can give you one piece of advice: join a union. They were my absolute saving grace when I was employed by a big company.”The video went viral, with more than 2,000 retweets and 10,000 likes. A former British Airways flight attendant, Hart says she was motivated by BA’s recent announcement of mass redundancies. Her video struck a chord with young people, who created supportive Karl Marx memes. “People were calling me a socialist icon,” Hart laughs. (She now uses the phrase as her nickname on WhatsApp.) Continue reading...
We review some of the popular gadgets helping to keep dogs and cats healthy and occupiedTechnology for pets is increasingly popular, with gadgets entering the market that promise to keep our dogs and cats in trim, healthy and occupied, and we pet owners in sync with their needs.The increasing humanisation of pets means more and more of us are treating them as fluffy family members. Spending on cats and dogs has increased hand in hand with this trend. Total spending on pets in the UK reached a record high of £6.9bn in 2019, an increase of about £3.5bn since 2009, according to the Office for National Statistics. Continue reading...
Social network says accounts tied to Turning Point USA sought to influence conversations by flooding news articles with commentsFacebook has removed hundreds of fake profiles it has linked to the conservative group Turning Point USA for carrying out organized attacks on the site, including attempts to influence public conversations by flooding news articles with pro-Trump comments and misinformation.The move was prompted by reporting last month in the Washington Post that found Turning Point Action, an affiliated pro-Trump group, was paying teenagers to post coordinated messages on the site, a violation of Facebook’s rules. Continue reading...
Alok Sharma asked to explain what plans US buyer Nvidia has to keep jobs in CambridgeThe head of parliament’s business committee has asked the business secretary what his department is doing to protect British tech firm Arm, adding to pressure on the government to review the controversial $40bn (£31bn) takeover of the business by the US chipmaker Nvidia.In a letter to the business secretary, Alok Sharma, Darren Jones, the chair of the business select committee, asked what assurances Nvidia had provided on retaining jobs in the UK if the deal went through. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#58WZV)
Absence of ECG and blood oxygen features saves you £110, but lack of always-on display likely to disappointThe Apple Watch SE is a cheaper version of Apple’s smartwatch that offers most of what makes it good while cutting out some key features.The Watch SE comes in two sizes, 40mm or 44mm, and is made of aluminium. Prices start at £269 – £100 less than the top Apple Watch Series 6 – and tested here in the 44mm space grey version with 4G and costing £349. It requires an iPhone and cannot be used with Android. Continue reading...
As Chinese demand for pork grows and grows, traditional small-scale farms are being replaced by vast, AI-assisted operations that feel more like smartphone factories than bucolic countryside havensIn November 2018, I travelled to Guangzhou, a city of about 14 million people in southern China. Late autumn is the time for making lap yuk, a type of preserved pork that is a local speciality, and across town I would often spot slabs of meat hanging from high-rise apartment balconies, tied up with string and swaying next to shirts and sheets left out to dry. To make lap yuk, a piece of raw pork belly is soaked in a blend of rice wine, salt, soy sauce and spices, then hung out to cure in the damp, cold autumn air. The fat becomes translucent and imparts a savoury-sweet taste to any stir-fried vegetable dish. A relative of mine claims that only southern China can make preserved pork like this. The secret is the native spores and bacteria that are carried on the wind there.Guangzhou was the first stop on a journey I was taking in order to try to understand how artificial intelligence is transforming China’s pork industry. The country is the world’s largest producer of pork, and the story of how it has ramped up production in recent years to feed its growing middle class is sometimes described as “China’s pork miracle”. While overall meat consumption still trails behind countries such as the US, China’s annual pork consumption of 54m tonnes – the highest total worldwide, though some countries still consume more per capita – is only expected to grow in the coming years. Now, in a bid to satisfy this growing demand, farmers are turning to AI. Continue reading...
It’s not the final product but we’ve been testing a preview unit of Microsoft’s new console – and we’re impressedUntil now, it’s all been marketing. Every feature, every technological advancement, promised for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, have been untested. But over the last three weeks, Microsoft has been sending out preview units of the Series X to journalists around the world. Just as the company blinked first and announced the price and launch date of its next machine before Sony, it is now allowing proper scrutiny of the hardware before its competitor.The console we’ve been testing for the past week is not the final product and its user interface is apparently not what we’ll see at launch – this is usual for the initial run of review consoles, which tend to be based on the debug units used by game developers. Consequently, we’re limited in terms of what we can cover. But even at this stage, and with these limitations, this is an impressive and exciting console. Here’s what we found. Continue reading...
Concern over job ads referring to monitoring of ‘hostile leaders’ and union ‘threats’A cross-party group of MEPs has written to Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, demanding information on the online retailer’s monitoring of trade union activists and politicians in response to deleted job postings that described unions as “threats”.The letter, from 37 members of the European parliament, said they were concerned Amazon deliberately targeted workers seeking to organise, and also questioned whether the company had “spied” on politicians. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian