Technology | The Guardian

The CEO argues essentially, that the arc of the moral universe is long, but as long as people have a voice (on Facebook) it bends toward justiceI was a 20-year-old college junior when I first signed up for Facebook on 9 February 2004, a date that I will henceforth refer to as The Day Mark Zuckerberg Gave Me a Voice. If this sounds like an absurd premise – my parents, siblings and childhood friends who listened to me jabber and moan for the first two decades of my life would certainly be surprised to learn of my retroactive voicelessness – then consider the bizarre and fundamental wrongness of Zuckerberg’s treatise on “free expression”.In the speech at Georgetown University, Zuckerberg presented a defense of Facebook that relied on defining the social media platform as a tool that gives people a voice. He extended this proposition to laughably unsupportable lengths, delivering lines such as, “A lot more people now have a voice – almost half the world,” in all apparent earnestness. Continue reading...

CEO faces quick backlash over highlighted policies, including on hate speech and voter suppressionMark Zuckerberg touted Facebook as a champion of “free expression” in a wide-sweeping speech, offering a staunch defense of the social media giant following several rocky years characterized by allegations against the platform of censorship and bias.Speaking at Georgetown University on Thursday, the Facebook CEO invoked Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr and Black Lives Matter as a means of positioning Facebook as a champion for freedom of speech. Continue reading...

Sanders and Warren want to break up the industry. That has not dented their popularity with its workers, Guardian analysis findsElizabeth Warren’s crusade against Silicon Valley has not dented her popularity among employees of major tech companies, according to the latest campaign fundraising filings. The progressive Democratic senator and her fellow leftist candidate, the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, are outraising their more centrist rivals among tech workers in the presidential campaign, a Guardian analysis found.Related: Ocasio-Cortez endorsement gives Sanders shot in the arm at critical time Continue reading...

Phone network with 10m UK customers apologises for voice, text and data problemsMillions of Three UK mobile phone network customers were unable to use their phones after a network meltdown.The company, which has 10 million users in the UK, said the the problem started on Wednesday night and service had started to be returned to some customers on Thursday. The network advised customers to switch their phones off and on again to restore service. Continue reading...

PC/Mac; Denki, Curve Digital

Colin wants a laptop with easily replaceable parts such as memory and hard drivesI just read last week’s answer about upgrading or replacing a six-year-old ThinkPad laptop. I want a laptop where I can easily replace components such as memory and hard drives. How does one go about finding out which modern laptops are modifiable by users? ColinThe one-sentence answer is that consumer laptops often can’t be modified by users, while business laptops can. There are lots of exceptions, but it’s a reasonable rule-of-thumb. Continue reading...

Sale is a sealed-bid auction, in which each potential buyer is blind to what others offer, but is expected to get $300,000 or moreWhat is democracy worth? Later this month a broadly philosophical question will be put to a material test.On 25 October at 5pm, the web domain democracy.com goes up for auction. The site is currently administered by the veteran social activist Talmage Cooley. The advertised price, according to Heritage Auctions, is $300,000 or higher. Continue reading...

South Korean-based site accepted digital currency for access to videos, with victims rescued in US, UK and SpainHundreds of people have been arrested in a worldwide operation over a South Korea-based dark web child sexual abuse site that sold videos for digital cash.Officials from the United States, Britain and South Korea described the network as one of the largest operations they had encountered to date. Continue reading...

Climbdown follows difficulties with implementing plan to ensure users are over 18Plans to introduce a nationwide age verification system for online pornography have been abandoned by the government after years of technical troubles and concerns from privacy campaigners.The climbdown follows countless difficulties with implementing the policy, which would have required all pornography websites to ensure users were over 18. Methods would have included checking credit cards or allowing people to buy a “porn pass” age verification document from a newsagent. Continue reading...

Ookla report rated Australia 61st in the world for fixed broadbandNBN Co chief executive Stephen Rue has argued Australia’s poor showing in global speed test rankings cannot be relied on because the data is “unrepresentative” of broadband available in the rest of the world.Broadband speed reports released by companies such as Ookla, M-Lab and Akamai show how each country fares for broadband, with Australia lagging behind. Continue reading...

John Lewis says sales of portable video cameras are ‘non-existent’. This may mark the end of an era defined by the hulking around of VHS monsters to create poor-quality home movies, but the alternative is even more troublingSad news for amateur film-makers; according to John Lewis, camcorders are practically a “non-existent” market, with sales down 33% this year. If they keep tumbling like this, it’s likely that they will soon join other anachronistic items that the department store chain stopped selling this year, such as clutch bags and fish kettles.But wait, people are still buying camcorders? In an age when the majority of people permanently carry around a smaller, sharper, better video recorder in their pockets, people are still committed to owning a separate device? Apparently so. Admittedly, many of the camcorders available on the John Lewis website include functionality not readily available on a phone – almost half are GoPros, which are basically camcorders you can strap to your head, while another has a built-in projector – but really? Camcorders in 2019? Isn’t that a bit of a pain? Continue reading...

In 12 months, Australian welfare payments were stopped an extra 1m times thanks to automated technologies. Money is stopped first and questions asked later, causing untold misery

Claimants are given a 12-digit number linked to their data, and if something goes wrong they can be refused foodMotka Manjhi had been back and forth to the ration shop four or five times, his wife said, but on each occasion he returned empty-handed. His thumbprint, needed to prove his identity, wasn’t registering on the new system.He was told to do an online update. But to do so he would need to get to a private centre – a four-mile journey from his village in Dumka, in the state of Jharkhand, north-east India. This would mean missing at least a day’s potential work, which he desperately needed to buy food. And even if he made the trek, there was no guarantee that the system, which often suffers from network outages, would be working properly. What was to be done? Continue reading...

UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty says in devastating account big tech companies are being allowed to go unregulated in ‘human right free-zones’ and not held accountable

Competition-beating performance, super-smooth experience and new 90Hz screen are a steal at £549The OnePlus 7T takes the best bits of the brilliant OnePlus 7 Pro and condenses them into a smaller, cheaper package.Released less than four months after the last version hit the shelves, the new £500 7T doesn’t mess much with the winning formula, simply adding a better camera and market-leading 90Hz screen technology. Continue reading...

When Isaiah Hickland revealed he was behind the popular @emoblackthot Twitter account, fans felt scammed and pushback was swiftThe Twitter account @emoblackthot was a virtual therapist and best friend for over 170,000 followers – many of them people of color and/or queer. She would post gentle reminders to wear sunscreen every day and stay hydrated, rave about the latest songs she was obsessed with and share her struggles with anxiety and depression. If followers were experiencing anxiety attacks, @emoblackthot was there to talk them through it over DMs.On a platform overflowing with trolls and angry callouts, @emoblackthot stood out through her promotion of self-care and vulnerability and, as a consequence, quickly became viral. There was only one problem: she was not the person she claimed to be. Continue reading...

Blogpost sheds new light on how tweets will be treated but is unlikely to satisfy those calling for Trump’s censorship

Urgent action needed to prevent ‘abuse and deception’ of democratic process, say expertsBritain needs to take concerted action to reduce the risk of malicious actors in the UK and abroad from contaminating the results of a looming general election, according to a new study that warns of the risks of public “abuse and deception”.A group of experts say government, political parties and social media companies all need to take immediate action, at a time when there is rising concern within Whitehall about the integrity of the democratic process. Continue reading...

Smartphone comes with radar tech and is joined by revamped Nest Mini, Pixelbook Go and other devicesGoogle has launched its latest iPhone-competitor, the Pixel 4 and 4 XL, with new radar technology, dual-camera and a lower price.Google’s consumer hardware division unveiled a series of new devices in New York, led by the Pixel 4 smartphone and including an updated Nest Mini smart speaker and Nest Wifi system, among other products. Continue reading...

It’s back on! Out of the black hole, a whole new world begins, bringing fresh characters, weapons and maybe a redesigned progress systemIt begins. In familiar Fortnite fashion, the first news of the game’s future arrived throughout Monday night, not via official channels, but via the army of celebrity YouTubers and specialist leak accounts spread across social media. Rumours suggested the game may launch at any point in the next few hours.Then we got the cinematic trailer for what will be known as Fortnite Chapter 2 Season 1, showing four new characters arriving at dawn on a brand new island, featuring a beach area and gloop-spewing power plant. At the close of the trailer, the battle bus arrives, filled with familiar superstars from the game’s previous seasons, including our own personal favourite, Cuddle Team Leader. Continue reading...

Technological advantages in South Korea have helped make it fertile ground for startupsIn a country where the biggest companies are still king, Seoul’s burgeoning startup sector is finding its feet.Out in the west of the South Korean capital, a nine-storey building dressed in bright colours with a giant red bull outside is home to more than 100 startups. From one-person operations running out of a locker and a laptop on the ground floor, to fully-fledged offices on the upper levels, Seoul’s startup hub has supported 1,282 operations in various stages of growth in the past two years. Continue reading...

Season 10 of Fortnite climaxed in apocalyptic fashion – sucking gamers into a black hole. Whatever the future brings, it has transformed video-game storytellingOn Sunday evening, more than 6 million people gathered online via streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube to watch the end of the world. Not our world, thankfully, but the world of Fortnite, which was sucked into a black hole, taking the whole game and all player characters with it. If you try to load Fortnite today, you’ll be presented with a blank screen. When developer Epic Games called the finale of Fortnite Season 10 “The End”, it wasn’t kidding.OK, before confused parents start celebrating, let’s be clear: Fortnite will be back, it’s just that Epic has closed out the first chapter of the game, which has amassed 250 million players since the launch of its Battle Royale mode in September 2017. And amid all the hype, hysteria and controversy that has surrounded the gigantically successful title over the past two years, one aspect has been overlooked outside its fanbase: this has been one of the most innovative story experiments of the decade. Continue reading...

Vulnerable claimants already reporting problems, even before further DWP digital transformation

Marriage market for entrepreneurs and investors could be sign of a flourishing sector – or suggest bubble about to burstIn a wood-panelled auditorium in central London, a procession of entrepreneurs are explaining to more than 100 investors how they will change the world. They just need a few million pounds first.One promises to solve hair loss with a gadget in a cap; another will make fabric out of CO2: all come armed with PhDs, slick presentations and rictus grins. Continue reading...

Ad claims CEO backs Trump – then admits it’s not true – after company admits letting politicians make false statementsFacebook has been taking heat all week for its decision to allow politicians to make false statements in paid advertisements. Now the Democratic senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is taking the fight to the social media company’s own turf by taking out a series of Facebook ads that make false statements about Facebook and its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.“Breaking news: Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook just endorsed Donald Trump for re-election,” the ads read, above a photograph of a recent Oval Office meeting between the billionaire tech executive and the president. Continue reading...

Several large companies have announced their departure, including Visa and Mastercard, a week after PayPal exitedNearly every payment firm that initially agreed to join Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra has backed out, in a potentially fatal blow to the social network’s plan for a worldwide digital currency.Visa and Mastercard said on Friday they would no longer participate in the Libra Association and Latin American payment system Mercado Pago announced it would back out as well. Several other large companies have announced their departures . Continue reading...

Profits on social media app surged by more than 50% to £97m in latest tax yearFacebook’s UK operations paid £28m in corporation tax last year despite achieving a record £1.6bn in British sales.The social media company’s latest UK accounts show that gross income from advertisers rose almost 30% last year to £1.65bn, and pretax profits surged by more than 50% from £63m to £97m. Continue reading...

At a time when companies are forced to pick sides, Zuckerberg’s refusal is a choice in itselfIt can be hard to remember from this side of a successful foreign intervention in a US presidential election, but in April 2016, Mark Zuckerberg was widely praised when he spoke out – however obliquely – against Donald Trump’s then longshot presidential candidacy.“I’m starting to see people and nations turning inward against this idea of a connected world,” the Facebook chief executive said in a speech. “I hear fearful voices talking about building walls … It takes courage to choose hope over fear.” Continue reading...

Digital currency must be subject to measures such as stress tests to gain approvalThe Bank of England has hardened its stance on Facebook’s Libra digital currency, telling the social media company it must meet its highest standards to get the green light for launch in Britain.In its toughest intervention to date, the central bank’s financial policy committee (FPC) said digital currencies such as Libra would need to reach the same high standards as those of traditional payments. Continue reading...

In court documents, Tesla CEO says he regrets attacking man who helped save young soccer players trapped in underwater caveElon Musk has claimed he was fooled by the investigator he hired to get dirt on a British diver, according to new court documents.“I’m a fucking idiot,” Musk said, according to documents surfaced in court on Tuesday, in the latest development in a bizarre defamation case brought against the Tesla CEO over comments made in 2018. Continue reading...

A cracking camera, great screen and 32-hour battery life – but at an eye-watering priceApple’s iPhone has gone “pro” for its 11th iteration, with dramatically improved cameras and longer battery life, which make the smaller iPhone 11 Pro the king of more manageable phones.Costing from £1,049 the iPhone 11 Pro is one of a rare breed: a premium flagship smartphone that doesn’t have a ginormous screen and is therefore small by today’s standards. Continue reading...

(House House; Panic Inc; Switch, PC, Mac)

Kamala Harris urged Twitter’s CEO to ban Trump. Is she right, or would it amount to an assault on free speech?Should Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world, be banned from Twitter?Kamala Harris thinks so. On Tuesday she sent a letter to Twitter’s chief executive arguing that Trump has been violating the platform’s user agreement. Harris pointed to recent tweets Trump had sent harassing the Ukraine whistleblower and the House intelligence committee chairman, Adam Schiff, as well as Trump’s tweet threatening civil war. Continue reading...

Self-driving vehicles reach UK milestone with first demo in ‘complex urban environment’ in StratfordWork to bring driverless cars to Britain’s streets has reached a milestone with the first demonstration of an autonomous fleet driving in a “complex urban environment” in London.Ford Mondeos fitted with autonomous technology from the UK tech firm Oxbotica operated on public roads around the former Olympic Park in Stratford this week. Directors of the £13.6m Driven programme, a partially government-funded consortium, said it had “exceeded their initial plan” and was a significant step in confirming autonomous vehicles could operate in real-life situations in a large European city. Continue reading...

According to a new study, two-thumb texters are almost as fast as keyboard users. We take to the streets to see if the public are up to speedThe human thumb, being opposable, is a blessed thing: we can hold a pen, send a text or play thumb war as the mood takes us. Today’s digital natives will have learned to type before they crawl, and are capable of bashing out a “Hey, you up?” text faster than the brain can process that it is a bad decision. But not everyone is as lightning-fast: all of us know a one-finger typer, whether it is the co-worker who takes an eternity to reply to an email, or the beloved grandparent who pauses every few seconds.For the most part, we have typed faster on computer keyboards than phone screens – until now. A study of more than 37,000 volunteers from 160 countries has found that people can type almost as quickly on a screen as they can on a keyboard. Those who used two thumbs were able to type on average 38 words a minute - making them just 25% slower than the average computer keyboard user. We took to the streets to put the study to the test and find out how fast the general public could type the same three-sentence, 38-word phrase (lifted, of course, from a Guardian article on the UK economy). Move over Mavis Beacon: the keyboard is dead. Long live the phone screen. Continue reading...

Despite an extensive incident report, Australian National University is unable to say who is behind the cyber-attackMedia reports blaming China for a massive data breach at the Australian National University revealed in June 2019 are speculative and “harmful” because the university has been unable to establish the motivation and attribution for the attack, its chief has said.The ANU vice-chancellor, Brian Schmidt, made the comments to Guardian Australia on Wednesday, ahead of the release of an extensive incident report. Continue reading...

Leaked recordings published by the Verge show Zuckerberg fears ‘existential threat’ if Democratic contender becomes presidentFacebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said his company will “go to the mat” if Elizabeth Warren is elected president and seeks to fulfil her promise to break up America’s tech giants.Related: Trump impeachment: public support grows as scandal widens – live news Continue reading...

Apple’s lower cost model has latest chips and longer battery life but is identical on outside to predecessorThe iPhone 11 is Apple’s latest lower cost smartphone for 2019 that’s clearly aimed at a broader market, offering most of what its top phones do but for £320 less.Costing from £729, the iPhone 11 is also £20 cheaper than last year’s iPhone XR was on launch – the phone it has now replaced. Continue reading...

The latest crossover from DS is certainly stylish. The only question is have you got what it takes to carry it off?DS 3 Crossback

Lucie Morris-Marr, Andrew Bolt and a splash turned sour. Plus, the predictable parade of hate for Greta ThunbergLucie Morris-Marr, the first journalist to reveal that Victoria police were investigating George Pell over allegations of child abuse, has detailed in her new book what she endured at the Herald Sun after breaking the story on the tabloid’s front page.In Fallen: the inside story of the secret trial and conviction of Cardinal George Pell, Morris-Marr says elation over her scoop quickly turned sour, and she ended up suffering from severe stress after attacks from Pell and her colleague Andrew Bolt. Continue reading...

Chinese-owned social media app bans such content even in countries where homosexuality has never been illegalTikTok’s efforts to provide locally sensitive moderation have resulted in it banning any content that could be seen as positive to gay people or gay rights, down to same-sex couples holding hands, even in countries where homosexuality has never been illegal, the Guardian can reveal.The rules were applied on top of the general moderation guidelines, first reported by the Guardian on Wednesday, which included a number of clauses that banned speech that touched on topics sensitive to China, including Tiananmen Square, Tibet and Falun Gong. ByteDance, the Beijing-based company that owns TikTok, says the moderation guidelines were replaced in May. Continue reading...

Hollywood star is the first celebrity voice to be rolled out on the virtual personal assistantInteractions with Amazon’s virtual personal assistant Alexa could soon become considerably more entertaining – and profane – after actor Samuel L Jackson signed up to lend his voice to the device.The Hollywood star is the first celebrity voice to be rolled out on Alexa, in a feature that will be made available to users later this year for a fee, according an announcement by the tech and retail giant on Wednesday. Continue reading...

There are dangers of teaching computers to learn the things humans do best – not least because makers of such machines cannot explain the knowledge their creations have acquiredBrad Smith, Microsoft’s president, last week told the Guardian that tech companies should stop behaving as though everything that is not illegal is acceptable. Mr Smith made a good argument that technology may be considered morally neutral but technologists can’t be. He is correct that software engineers ought to take much more seriously the moral consequences of their work.This argument operates on two levels: conscious and unconscious. It is easy to see the ethical issue that appeared to arise when, as a result of a series of its own confusing blog posts, Microsoft appeared to be selling facial recognition technology to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement while the Trump administration was separating children from parents at the US’s southern border. This was, as Microsoft later confirmed, false. The moral stance of more than 3,000 Google employees who protested about its Maven contract – where machine learning was to be used for military purposes, starting with drone imaging – with the US Department of Defense should be applauded. Google let the contract lapse. But people with different ethical viewpoints can take different views. In the case of the Maven contract, a rival with fewer qualms picked up the work. Much is contingent on public attitudes. Opinion polls show that Americans are not in favour of developing artificial intelligence technology for warfare, but this changes as soon as the country’s adversaries start to develop them. There is an economic aspect to be considered too. Shoshana Zuboff’s insight, that the exploitation of behavioural predictions covertly derived from the surveillance of users is capitalism’s latest stage, is key. What is our moral state when AI researchers are paid $1m a year but the people who label and classify the input data are paid $1.47 an hour. Continue reading...

A new California law will finally give thousands of misclassified workers the rights and protections that everyone deservesHave you ever taken a ride using the Lyft app? There’s a chance I drove you.I’ve worked in the gig economy for over four years, mostly as a Lyft driver. I started driving to make money during my hour-long commute to work. When I lost my full time job, Lyft became my primary source of income. Continue reading...

Dutch firm asks £200 above the norm for a smartphone that might help change the industryWhat if you could buy a phone that will last five years, can be easily repaired and is made as ethically as possible? That’s the aim of the latest Fairphone 3 – and on many counts it succeeds.Ethically creating a phone is a lot harder than it may sound, but you have to start somewhere. Amsterdam-based Fairphone turned from an awareness campaign about conflict minerals into a phone company in 2013, and aims to source as many materials as possible in both human and environmentally kind ways. Continue reading...

From Switzerland to Singapore, police, fire and ambulance departments are laying down their tools, and their bodies, to take part in a new craze

Proposal put to internet service providers earlier this year would have targeted high-volume users of video streaming servicesNBN Co has shot down an idea for a “Netflix tax” for high-volume users of video streaming services, as the company also looks to target people holding out from moving on to the NBN because it is too expensive.In a proposal put to internet service providers earlier this year, NBN suggested breaking out how streaming video traffic was treated in NBN’s wholesale pricing, with media reports at the time labelling the suggestion as a “Netflix tax” aimed to address the growing demand for streaming video on the NBN. Continue reading...

As London’s iconic shopping street gets ready to celebrate its 200th anniversary, you can get into the spirit with one of the country’s largest free car showsRegent Street Motor Show

Lo-fi videos about life on the road also fill blindspot travel industry has in catering for women of colourThe YouTube channel of a 21-year-old woman who lives in a van with her pet snake Alfredo is at the centre of a debate about race, travel and gender in the online world.Jennelle Eliana’s channel, which documents her day-to-day existence as a “vanlifer”, has become an internet phenomenon after gaining 1.9 million subscribers since June. Continue reading...