Jeff Bezos is richer than hundreds of countries, and earns my entire salary in under a minuteWe all know Jeff Bezos is very rich – but wouldn’t you love to know how long it would take him to, for example, earn your entire years’ salary, tackle your entire student debt or pay off your mortgage?A new website will you give you these exact numbers, as they apply to Bezos and 14 other tech moguls. The company – a text messaging company – says it uses data on salary, bonuses, earnings from equity and other forms of compensation from 2019 SEC filings to let you calculate just how quickly people like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Susan Wojcicki of YouTube and Reed Hastings of Netflix could pay off all of your expenses. Continue reading...

Foreign affairs spokesman accuses US of hypocrisy and editorial in state-run newspaper decries choice between submission at ‘mortal combat’The US has offered China the “choice of submission or mortal combat in the tech realm”, state media in Beijing have said, as the two rival powers manoeuvred on the thorny issue of splitting up TikTok.The popular video-sharing app has joined Huawei to become a technology flashpoint, with Chinese officials and media rushing to defend it following Donald Trump’s threat of a US ban. Continue reading...

Acquisition plans confirmed hours after Mike Pompeo says Chinese firms feeding data to Communist partyDonald Trump on Monday said Microsoft can buy the Chinese-owned video app TikTok, but said the purchase would have to be completed by 15 September.Trump also said the US Treasury should receive payment as a portion of any deal between the social media platform and a US company. The president didn’t explain how that process would work. Continue reading...

Video app’s owner ByteDance already has 800 of its European workforce in UK and IrelandThe Chinese firm behind the TikTok video app is weighing up plans to open a headquarters in London, with Boris Johnson reportedly prepared to risk Donald Trump’s anger by rolling out the red carpet for the company.The US president has been openly hostile to TikTok, amid widespread concern in the country about Chinese companies’ ties to the Communist party and the risk posed to customers’ personal information. Continue reading...

Action needs long-term commitments to be is more than ‘PR stunt’, employees sayCurrent and former Facebook moderators have called for the unprecedented advertiser boycott of the site to be extended to prove that the action is more than a “PR stunt”.Speaking to the Guardian, one current moderator who asked to remain anonymous because they feared for their job, said that without long-term commitments, this was a “PR stunt that will pass when they get enough of the reports that they want”. Continue reading...

Novelist says details from careless Google search are ‘quite funny’ and he will leave his book as is after reader spots Octoroks and Lizalfos in his new book

Bishop from Togo among 1,400 individuals alerted by WhatsApp to malware attack

Congress grilled Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon last week, and their pitiful replies show Democrats may be set to curtail them at lastThe most striking thing about Wednesday’s congressional interrogation of the leaders of Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon was the absence of deference to the four moguls. This was such a radical departure from previous practice – characterised by ignorance, grandstanding and fawning on these exemplars of the American Way – that it was initially breathtaking. “Our founders would not bow before a king,” said the House antitrust subcommittee chairman, David Cicilline, in his opening remarks. “Nor should we bow before the emperors of the online economy.”If we wanted a radical departure from the legislative slumber of previous decades, this looked like it. And indeed, to a large extent, it was. One saw it, for example, in the aggressiveness of the questioning by the Democrats. At times, one was reminded of the proceedings of the US supreme court, where the justices constantly interrupt the lawyers before them to cut off any attempt at lawyerly exposition. The implicit message is: “We’ve done our homework. Now get to the point – if you have one.” It was like that on Wednesday. Continue reading...

Customers in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne were worst hit, but telco has said no personal data was compromised

The tech giants’ latest machine-learning system comes with both ethical and environmental costsUnless you’ve been holidaying on Mars, or perhaps in Spain (alongside the transport secretary), you may have noticed some fuss on social media about something called GPT-3. The GPT bit stands for the “generative pre-training” of a language model that acquires knowledge of the world by “reading” enormous quantities of written text. The “3” indicates that this is the third generation of the system.GPT-3 is a product of OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research lab based in San Francisco. In essence, it’s a machine-learning system that has been fed (trained on) 45 terabytes of text data. Given that a terabyte (TB) is a trillion bytes, that’s quite a lot. Having digested all that stuff, the system can then generate all sorts of written content – stories, code, legal jargon, poems – if you prime it with a few words or sentences. Continue reading...

Proposed deal would see Microsoft take over TikTok in US, insiders say, after president said he would ban video appChina’s ByteDance has agreed to divest the US operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House, after Donald Trump said on Friday he had decided to ban the popular short-video app, two people familiar with the matter said on Saturday.US officials have said TikTok under its Chinese parent poses a national risk because of the personal data it handles. ByteDance’s concession will test whether Trump’s threat to ban TikTok is a negotiating tactic or whether he is intent on cracking down on a social media app that has up to 80 million daily active users in the US. Continue reading...

Ten years ago, Silicon Valley had written off Zoom. Now it’s used by everyone from princes to piano teachersOn 6 January, a day after the World Heath Organization first reported a strange cluster of pneumonia-like cases in Wuhan, China, a party invitation dropped online. “Mark your calendars”, read the invite sent out by Zoom, a video-conferencing company based in California, “for Zoomtopia 2020!” Innocently enough, Zoom was announcing a real-world get-together for its most ardent clients and fans – at the time, these were mostly customers in enterprise and education, who chose to use Zoom over any number of video-chat competitors because of its easy interface and the relative smoothness of its connections.But while it was well regarded in tech and business circles (and floated on the US stock exchange in 2019), Zoom was a marginal force in the world in January. This wasn’t Apple. This wasn’t Uber. Guests on their way to Zoomtopia would have to explain to cab drivers and hotel concierges what Zoom was. Then that strange cluster of Wuhan cases began its unstoppable global spread, and by the end of March about half the planet’s governments had locked their citizens indoors, leaving them to figure out how to work and socialise from home. Suddenly, we were all in Zoomtopia. Continue reading...

Whether you want good sound, the cheapest or an alarm clock replacement, here are the optionsAfter almost six years on the market, smart speakers now come in a variety of sizes, shapes, capabilities and prices.Whether you want a cheap speaker to keep the kids entertained, one that doubles as a digital photo frame or one that sounds so good you’ll want to yell “turn it up to 11”, here’s a quick guide to the best on the market. Continue reading...

Three men charged in hack that saw accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Elon Musk compromised in bitcoin scam

Microsoft is reported to be looking into buying the TikTok’s US operations as the app’s data privacy practices have come under fireDonald Trump will reportedly order the parent company of TikTok to sell the popular video sharing platform because of national-security concerns.Trump on Friday again suggested the US may take action against the Chinese-owned social media platform. Continue reading...

Social media company suffered major security breach this month that saw hackers take control of public figures’ accountsTwitter said a large hack two weeks ago targeted a small number of employees through a phone “spear-phishing” attack.The social media platform said the hackers targeted about 130 accounts, tweeted from 45, accessed the inboxes of 36, and were able to download Twitter data from seven. Continue reading...

Analysis: heated exchanges raise concern over anticompetitive behavior as chair warns of companies’ ‘monopoly power’After hours of grilling top tech executives in a historic antitrust hearing on Wednesday, US lawmakers suggested unprecedented antitrust enforcement might be on the horizon.In his closing remarks, Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, said evidence put forward in the investigations and testimony showed just how entrenched the tech companies were in the US economy and day-to-day life. Continue reading...

Jerry Nadler unimpressed with Mark Zuckerberg’s answer on Instagram deal, while Amazon boss Jeff Bezos accused of hypocrisy

Part-time chief Jack Dorsey’s company is mired in high-profile hacks and concerns over leadershipA month of crisis at Twitter has reignited concerns that the company’s part-time chief executive and years of accumulated “technical debt” have left it dangerously vulnerable to malicious attackers and lacking the leadership required to take rapid action or controversial decisions.In mid-July, Twitter suffered an unprecedented security breach as hackers seized control of the accounts of major public figures and corporations, including Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac; Polygon Treehouse/United Label

Fed up of brightly-coloured shootouts against teenagers dressed as bananas? These games will test your teamwork, planning and accuracy in tense, real-world scenariosTwo years after its release, Fortnite still dominates the online gaming space, sucking all the air out of the room with its 350 million players, massive celebrity endorsements and ruthlessly compelling dance routines. But, far away from that game’s rainbow-coloured cartoon scapes, there are team-based shooters requiring patience, strategy and cooperation; where real-world physics, weapons and environments replace laser pistols and super powers, and where a single wrong move can blow the whole operation. If you’re looking for a tactical step up from run-and-gun blasters, here are seven of the best examples. Continue reading...

Amid the anger over Wiley’s bigoted tirade, let’s not forget the newspapers that have been peddling prejudice for years

Chief executives of Amazon, Google and Apple will also testify as part of high-powered investigation into tech industry“Companies aren’t bad just because they are big,” Facebook executive Mark Zuckerberg is set to tell Congress on Wednesday, as the world’s most powerful technology companies face a historic investigation into their size and power.Zuckerberg plans to argue to Congress that Facebook became successful “the American way, by starting out with nothing and providing products that people find valuable”, according to a written testimony that was made public on Tuesday. Continue reading...

President’s son had shared a viral video published by Breitbart that contained false claims about hydroxychloroquineTwitter limited some of Donald Trump Jr’s account features on Tuesday, after the president’s eldest son shared false claims about the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a coronavirus treatment.Related: Anthony Fauci denies Trump claim that he misled US public about coronavirus Continue reading...

Tech giant will allow all global staff to work from home until July 2021 as building work in King’s Cross continuesGoogle has reaffirmed its commitment to its new central London headquarters, a horizontal skyscraper known as the “landscraper”, and will move thousands of workers there once it is completed.This is despite the tech firm’s decision to allow all of its global employees to work from home until July 2021. The vast majority of the US tech firm’s 4,500 UK employees continue to work remotely. Continue reading...

Call for companies to withdraw advertising comes as Wiley is suspended from platform over Instagram postsAn unprecedented boycott of Facebook is moving across the Atlantic, as the coalition of activist groups behind the Stop Hate for Profit campaign have called on companies in Europe to join in the action.The campaign has already gained the support of more than a thousand brands in the US, including Coca-Cola, Unilever and Ford, some of which have extended their boycotts globally. Now, the coalition, coordinated in Europe by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, is calling on British and other European companies to join in the movement. Continue reading...

Extraordinary hearing will see some of the richest men in history called to account for their firms’ market dominanceSome of the richest men in history representing the most valuable companies ever created will be grilled by Congress on Wednesday , as US authorities get increasingly serious about whether tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Alphabet have become too powerful.Related: Clashes in Portland as Trump’s actions light fuse under protests in other cities Continue reading...

Sainsbury’s and John Lewis are trialling virtual queueing on your phone, so you can wait in your car instead. But does anybody want to stop standing in line?Name: The queue.Age: As old as Britain. Continue reading...

Improved specs and faster release mechanism update still-novel laptop with detachable screenMicrosoft’s unique power-laptop with detachable tablet screen is back for its third iteration, and other than new chips nothing has changed.Costing from £1,599, this isn’t your average laptop or tablet. The Surface Book 3 is Microsoft’s workhorse for those who need oodles of power, available in a 13.5in version (as reviewed here) and a larger 15in version. Continue reading...

Attack on Roger Torrent seen as possible act of domestic espionageWhatsApp has confirmed that the mobile phone of a leading pro-independence politician in Catalonia was targeted over its messaging app in a 2019 attack that has been condemned as a possible case of domestic espionage in Europe.In a letter to Roger Torrent, the speaker of the Catalan parliament, and obtained by the Guardian and El Pais, the company confirmed that his personal WhatsApp account was “targeted in an attempt to gain unauthorised access to data and communications on the device”. Continue reading...

Filings allege employees had to share equipment and were not allowed extra time to account for social distancingAmazon is under investigation in California for failing to protect its warehouse employees from the new coronavirus.California’s attorney general Xavier Becerra, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health, and the San Francisco department of public health “have all opened investigations into Amazon’s practices” around the pandemic, San Francisco superior court judge Ethan Schulman wrote in a court filing on Monday. Continue reading...

Sundar Pichai reportedly made the decision last week after debate among an internal group of top executivesGoogle will keep its employees home until at least next July, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, marking the largest tech firm to commit to such a timeline in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.Related: Women at Google miss out on thousands of dollars as a result of pay discrimination, lawsuit alleges Continue reading...

Russian cybercrime gang is believed to be responsible for taking Garmin services offlineA ransomware attack that took the GPS and smartwatch business Garmin entirely offline for more than three days is believed to have been carried out by a Russian cybercriminal gang which calls itself “Evil Corp”.Garmin began to restore services to customers on Monday morning, after being held hostage for a reported ransom of $10m, although some services were still operating with limited functionality. Continue reading...

The Tesla CEO says ‘there’s not much I can do’ to take care of his infant son. What planet is he on?Name: Babies.Age: Young. Continue reading...

The head of Xbox Studios says the machine removes the need to think about technical constraints – and discusses controversial Halo: Infinite and Fable demosThe era of video game design being defined by technology is over, according to Microsoft. Two hours after the Xbox showcase event livestreamed on 23 July, I’m speaking to the company’s head of studios, Matt Booty, via video call. The showcase revealed 22 games, “built to launch exclusively on Xbox consoles”, nine coming from first-party teams – a clear response to Sony’s live event in June, which concentrated on exclusive PlayStation 5 titles. But there was no mention of hardware during the one-hour stream, and now Booty is keen to make the point that projects developed for Xbox Series X, due this Christmas, will not be as delineated or constrained by hardware specifications as they have been in the past.“We’re at a point where the technology is out of the way,” he says. “In previous generations, the hardware and its limitations would leave a pretty clear fingerprint on a game. I remember the first early games that used sprite scaling and then suddenly every game had all these objects flying around the screen. You’d build a game around technical advances like that. But now we’re at the point with the tech where we can just let the stories and the characters that the teams have in mind reach the screen.” Continue reading...

Young people are getting information about protests, police actions and stay-at-home orders from their social media feeds – but the trend isn’t harmlessFor many young people, clicking on to Instagram to get the latest news is now as second nature as picking up a daily newspaper once was to generations before. For a site that has traditionally been a platform for sharing lifestyle content rather than hard news, this is a shift in millennials and Gen Z, at a time when news updates seem more important than ever.Recently published data exploring how people accessed news and information about the coronavirus pandemic found, in the US, for 18- to 24-year-olds (the age group most likely to use social media as a source), over a quarter of respondents used Instagram to access news content within the last week, while 19% used Snapchat and 6% turned to TikTok. In comparison, only 17% used newspapers to access information. Globally, figures reached even higher levels – in Germany, 38% of 18- to 24-year-olds used Instagram alone to access the news, and in Argentina, this reached as high as 49%. Continue reading...

Our leading technology writers discuss Facebook, the inexorable rise of misinformation, the success of Black Lives Matter … and the simple joys of a bird feederJulia Carrie Wong, senior technology reporter, Guardian US: Good morning from Oakland. To kick us off, I’d love to hear how tech reporting has changed for you since the lockdowns began?Alex Hern, UK technology editor: Well, on the positive side, it’s got a lot more efficient. Stripped of the ability to invite me halfway across the city for a “friendly chat”, the largest companies in the world are now easier to get hold of on the phone, which saves everyone some time and me the cost of a tube fare. Continue reading...

Facebook and America are now indivisible, says the Observer journalist who broke the Cambridge Analytica scandal – and the world is a sicker place for it

The ex-CIA officer on why she lasted only six months at the tech giant and her fears about its role in the forthcoming US election

Thanks to dithering and ineptitude, we may never have contact tracing on our smartphones

Garmin servers are offline but you can still share your runs, rides, swims and walks with Strava. Here’s howGarmin Connect and Express have been taken offline by a reported ransomware attack, leaving runners, cyclists, walkers and others unable to sync their activities to Strava. But don’t worry – there is a manual way to upload your activities to Strava while Garmin is down. Here’s how:What you need: Continue reading...

Terror capitalism uses tools such as facial recognition to extract profits from marginalized people. Big tech and governments are collaborating

US company forced to shut down call centres, website and some other online services

In a packed hour of trailers, Microsoft revealed the Halo: Infinite campaign, plus the next Forza Motorsport and a new Fable6.27pm BSTHere’s a summary of what was shown tonight for the Xbox One X:6.13pm BSTThank you for watching with us! Next stop: release dates and prices! Continue reading...

Withdrawal follows criticism over alleged use of game streaming site to attract recruits

Hack affected more than 100 accounts including those of Elon Musk and Kanye West

PC, Mac, PS4, Xbox One; Superhot Team

Online meetings | Bank scams | Civil service | Pro-EU masks | Zizi JeanmaireInstead of worrying about looking good on Zoom (Bidisha, 20 July), try giving people something else worth looking at. If you are able to sit in front of a window looking out on to a tree, this has the edge on shelves full of books. And during the conversation, you too can watch the branches swaying in the breeze. A restful image need not reduce the quality of decision-making.