Technology | The Guardian

This chilling documentary lays bare the cynicism and chaos surrounding the data research company that harvested information from millions of Facebook users‘Data rights are human rights” is the rallying cry of this gripping, challenging documentary by Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, about the biggest scandal of our time: the gigantic question mark over the legality of the Brexit vote.It is about the Trump campaign, the Leave.EU campaign and many other reckless electoral adventures all over the world and their connection with Cambridge Analytica, the British data research company that cunningly harvested information from millions of Facebook users and their friends via an innocuous-seeming “personality” questionnaire. They put this gigantic database to lucrative work with machine-tooled marketing campaigns for Trump and the Brexiters; after the company declared bankruptcy, its documentation may never come to light. Continue reading...

Get the latest news on our investigation delivered straight to your email inboxGuns and Lies in America is the Guardian’s year-long series on the dramatic decline of gun violence in the Bay Area – one of America’s most rapidly gentrifying areas, and the people who made it happen.Sign up to our newsletter to hear about our investigation’s latest installment. Continue reading...

Telecom giant announces plan amid diplomatic crisis between Canada and China over detention of executiveThe embattled Chinese telecom giant Huawei has unveiled plans to deploy high-speed wireless internet to dozens of underserved communities in Canada’s remote northern regions.The move – mostly 4G deployments and not the superfast fifth-generation or 5G – comes with Huawei under sanctions in the United States over national security concerns and amid a diplomatic crisis between Canada and China over the detention of a Huawei executive in Vancouver. Continue reading...

Chinese tech firm’s equipment will continue to be used in UK’s 5G mobile networks for nowHuawei equipment will continue to be used in the UK’s 5G mobile networks for now after the government delayed a decision on whether it should be restricted or banned over concerns that the Chinese government could use it to spy on countries.Jeremy Wright, the culture secretary, said the UK had no choice because it is still gauging the impact of US sanctions on Huawei. Continue reading...

Company denies that warehouse workers urinate in bottles and says it offers industry-leading payUnion workers have staged the final in a series of protests outside an Amazon warehouse in Doncaster over “unsafe” and “appalling” working conditions. According to the GMB union, workers urinate in plastic bottles rather than go to the toilet during their shifts, and pregnant women are forced to stand for hours on end.The protest follows international campaigns last week to coincide with the retail giant’s Prime Day promotion, with demonstrations being held outside seven British warehouses – what the company calls “fulfilment centres” – and in seven US cities. Continue reading...

The social media giant is set to unveil its second-best results this week, despite a privacy ruling and fears over LibraFacebook is expected to report its second most profitable quarter ever on Wednesday, even in the wake of a $5bn (£4bn) fine and an unprecedented level of scrutiny over its plans to launch a new global currency.While regulatory struggles and digital money plans have hogged the spotlight in recent weeks, investors and analysts remain convinced that the social media juggernaut can continue to expand. Continue reading...

Omission of Chinese firm’s role in building 5G networks will reopen divisions among ministersA long-awaited government review will fudge taking a critical decision on controversial Chinese technology company Huawei being allowed to build 5G networks in the UK.Industry sources said the move means the company, which is already building networks for EE and Vodafone, can continue developing and selling 5G technology in the UK, a move that will alarm critics who claim its equipment could help the Chinese government spy on other countries. Huawei, which is subject to stringent oversight by the UK’s spy agency, GCHQ, denies the claim. Continue reading...

Books by James Williams and Carles Boix offer fascinating takes on how we can combat anger and distraction onlineWe’re having problems with the internet and big tech, principally Alphabet (Google/YouTube), Amazon, Apple and Facebook. The government has taken note.Related: 'Facebook is dangerous': tech giant faces criticism from Congress over Libra currency Continue reading...

‘Ruthlessly systematic’ research achieves qubit communication 200 times faster than ever beforeAn Australian research team led by the renowned quantum physicist Prof Michelle Simmons has announced a major breakthrough in quantum computing, which researchers hope could lead to much greater computing power within a decade.Simmons, a former Australian of the Year, and her team at the University of New South Wales announced in a paper published in Nature journal on Thursday that they have been able to achieve the first two-qubit gate between atom qubits in silicon, allowing them to communicate with each other at a 200 times faster rate than previously achieved at 0.8 nanoseconds. Continue reading...

App was launched by Russian developer in 2017 and uses AI to change people’s featuresThe developer of a popular app which transforms users’ faces to predict how they will look as older people has insisted they are not accessing users’ photographs without permission.FaceApp, which was launched by a Russian developer in 2017, uses artificial intelligence allowing people to see how they would look with different hair colour, eye colour or as a different gender. Continue reading...

House members challenge company over its plans to protect data and question its goals in latest clash on Capitol HillFacebook once again faced intense questioning from US lawmakers over the future launch of its cryptocurrency project Libra, in a combative hearing that highlighted deep skepticism over the tech firm’s possibly entering the banking world following a slew of privacy scandals.Members of the US House financial services committee grilled the Facebook executive David Marcus for more than five hours on Wednesday, asking him how the company plans to protect user data, challenging its purported goals of bringing banking services to underserved populations, and demanding more accountability to regulatory bodies. Continue reading...

Consumer watchdog says the contracts made restaurants financially liable for ‘elements outside of their control’UberEats in Australia has agreed to change an “unfair” contract that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said made local restaurants liable for refunds for delivery errors – even if the restaurants were not at fault – following an investigation.Previously, if a customer requested a refund, that money could have been deducted from the restaurant – even if the deliverer or Uber itself made the mistake. Continue reading...

Alleged killer Brandon Clark’s post with the caption ‘I’m sorry, Bianca’ shared and reposted hundreds of timesSocial media companies have come under fire after images of a murdered teenage girl’s body were posted online and were widely shared on Instagram as well as other sites including Discord and 4chan.Bianca Devins, a 17-year-old girl from Utica in New York, was brutally murdered on Sunday. Police allege she was killed by Brandon Clark, 21, after the pair, who met on Instagram, attended a concert together. Continue reading...

As if bewitched by their level of access, the BBC ditched critical distance, rolled over and let out one giant cheer for the global techno-oligarchy. Unfriend!

Home affairs says agencies are pushing for data to be held for more than two years for complex investigationsGovernment agencies are pushing for telecommunications companies to be forced to retain customer data for law enforcement agencies for longer than the current two-year requirement.Under the mandatory data retention legislation that passed in 2015, companies such as Telstra, Optus and Vodafone are required to store customer metadata, like number dialled, time of call and call location for two years. Continue reading...

US president vows to look into claim about firm’s relationship with Chinese governmentDonald Trump has suggested Google might be working treasonously with China and claimed he would look into the matter.In a tweet on Tuesday the US president – claiming to quote Fox News – said the tech billionaire Peter Thiel “believes Google should be investigated for treason. He accuses Google of working with the Chinese government.” Continue reading...

Between 2000 and the 2008 financial crash, tech’s brave new world unleashed changes that were meant to make us happierWhen did our country lose grip of its senses? Some will argue that we never had any in the first place, but others find a sharp contrast between the edgy, neurotic, angry, irrational country we find ourselves living in now and a Britain that was, not that long ago, vaguely commonsensical and, at base level, fundamentally civilised.Researching my new novel, which focuses on the period between millennium eve and the financial crash of 2008, I was left in very little doubt about when it all started. Although I touch on trends in economics, immigration, property (my protagonist is an estate agent) and much besides, many of the forces I discovered were technological – but found their expression psychologically. In short, I believe this is when Britain embarked on its journey towards a full-blown nervous breakdown. Continue reading...

Peter Csemiczky takes issue with comments made by victims’ commissioner Vera BairdI am writing to express my concern about the comments made by Dame Vera Baird regarding the “digital consent forms” given to rape complainants (Victims’ commissioner warns of intrusive CPS demands in rape cases, 8 July).Ms Baird appears to claim that the police use these forms to demand rape complainants hand over highly personal information, no matter its relevance to the allegation. A failure to do so may result in a dropped prosecution, Ms Baird implies. Continue reading...

The founder of the online classifieds site is a survivor from the era of internet optimism. He has given significant sums to protect the future of news – and rejects the idea his website helped cause journalism’s financial crisisAs the Craig in Craigslist, the free online noticeboard that changed everything, Craig Newmark can surely get his hands on just about anything. His new home in Greenwich Village, New York, contains everything from an ancient Roman mosaic to 18th-century British portraits to Simpsons figurines to artworks by his beloved Leonard Cohen. But something is missing. Something vital.“We’re low on bird seed now,” Newmark observes anxiously. “That’s a crisis.” Continue reading...

Scientists are discovering innovative ways to help the natural world adapt to environmental changeLast week, scientists from the University of Texas identified a gene in a species of coral that is activated when coral becomes heat stressed. Warmer waters as a result of climate change often cause stressed coral to expel the algae they depend upon for energy in a process known as bleaching, leading to mass coral decline. Scientists believe this gene to be present in many coral species and hope to use it to detect stressed coral before bleaching occurs, allowing them to prioritise conservation of these species. Continue reading...

The top-of-the-range model does 0-62mph in 3.2 seconds. Should get you down the supermarket sharpish…Mercedes-Benz AMG GT 4-Door

The trailblazing computer scientist talks about being in charge of the software for the 1969 Apollo moon landingComputer pioneer Margaret Hamilton was critical to landing astronauts on the moon for the first time on 20 July 1969 and returning them safely a few days later. The young Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) computer programmer and working mother led the team that created the onboard flight software for the Apollo missions, including Apollo 11. The computer system was the most sophisticated of its day. Her rigorous approach was so successful that no software bugs were ever known to have occurred during any crewed Apollo missions. “She symbolises that generation of unsung women who helped send humankind into space,” said President Barack Obama in 2016 when he awarded Hamilton the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian award. In 2017, she was one of a handful of Nasa women to be immortalised as a Lego figurine.On the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, Hamilton, 82, looks back on her trailblazing work in computing.What got you into software engineering? There were no computer science degrees when you were starting out…

Chefs around the world are fed up with so-called social media influencers offering ‘exposure’ – and they’re biting backOne day in April Duncan Welgemoed, chef and part owner of Africola, was checking his emails when he saw a request from a contestant on the Australian reality TV cooking show My Kitchen Rules. She wanted to dine for free in his restaurant. In return she would post some stories on Instagram, giving him exposure.Africola didn’t need the exposure. It’s one of Australia’s hottest restaurants. Celebrities such as Katy Perry dine there when in Adelaide and pay for their food. And anyway Welgemoed had a direct line to the MKR hosts. Plus his own Instagram account had far more followers than the influencer. Continue reading...

The company restored access late Thursday afternoon, but some users were still experiencing issuesTwitter experiencing outages for several hours, with users across the US and elsewhere reporting not being able to access the platform throughout the day.Access was restored on Thursday afternoon, with the company tweeting from its official account “miss us?” at 3.58pm ET . Continue reading...

To fight a housing crunch of their own creation, tech companies are planning company towns worthy of Gilded Age robber barons

Labor says transport minister’s speech ‘curious’ and plan would carry major privacy risksFacial recognition could be used to replace swipe cards on public transport, the New South Wales government has suggested, but the opposition and digital rights groups say it would pose a risk to privacy.The transport minister, Andrew Constance, said on Tuesday he wanted commuters “in the not too distant future” to be able to board trains using only their faces, with no need for Opal cards, barriers or turnstiles. Continue reading...

Commonwealth Ombudsman calls for Peter Dutton’s ability to censor its reports on the process to be revokedNew encryption powers to seek assistance from tech companies to spy on users have been used at least five times by federal and New South Wales police.The Commonwealth Ombudsman has revealed to an inquiry into the encryption act that agencies are already using the powers and called for the home affairs minister Peter Dutton’s ability to censor its reports on the process to be revoked. Continue reading...

ICO imposes fine after personal data of 339 million guests was stolen by hackersThe international hotel group Marriott is to be fined almost £100m by the Information Commissioner’s Office after hackers stole the records of 339 million guests.In November, Marriott International, the parent company of hotel chains including W, Westin, Le Méridien and Sheraton, admitted that personal data including credit card details, passport numbers and dates of birth had been stolen in a colossal global hack of guest records. Continue reading...

Royal Court, London

ICO says personal data of 500,000 customers was stolen from website and mobile appBritish Airways is to be fined more than £183m by the Information Commissioner’s Office after hackers stole the personal data of half a million of the airline’s customers.The ICO said its extensive investigation found that the incident involved customer details including login, payment card, name, address and travel booking information being harvested after being diverted to a fraudulent website. Continue reading...

Australia’s consumer watchdog alleges electronics giant deceived customers with claims made in more than 300 adsThe consumer watchdog is taking Samsung to court, accusing the technology company of misleading consumers by telling them that many of the four million Galaxy phones sold in Australia were water resistant, while knowing they were not.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has instituted federal court proceedings against Samsung, alleging the electronics giant misled and deceived customers with its claims about various Galaxy phones across more than 300 advertisements since February 2016. Continue reading...

Intrusive software collects emails and texts and could be used to track movement

A remarkable analysis identifies ‘Mao 2.0’ as the west’s new cold war adversaryKai Strittmatter is a German journalist who writes for Süddeutsche Zeitung and is currently based in Copenhagen. From 1997 until recently, he had been a foreign correspondent in Beijing. Prior to those postings, he had studied sinology and journalism in Munich, Xi’an and Taipei. So he knows China rather well. Having read his remarkable book, it’s reasonable to assume that he will not be passing through any Chinese airport in the foreseeable future. Doing so would not be good for his health, not to mention his freedom.We Have Been Harmonised is the most accessible and best informed account we have had to date of China’s transition from what scholars such as Rebecca MacKinnon used to call “networked authoritarianism” to what is now a form of networked totalitarianism. The difference is not merely semantic. An authoritarian regime is relatively limited in its objectives: there may be elections, but they are generally carefully managed; individual freedoms are subordinate to the state; there is no constitutional accountability and no rule of law in any meaningful sense. Continue reading...

New studies show that the latest wave of automation will make the world’s poor poorer. But big tech will be even richerSo the robots are coming for our jobs, are they? Yawn. That’s such an old story. Goes back to Elizabeth I and the stocking frame, if my memory serves me right. Machines have been taking our jobs forever. But economists, despite their reputation as practitioners of the “dismal science”, have always been upbeat about that. Sure, machines destroy jobs, they say. But hey, the new industries that new technology enables create even more new jobs. Granted, there may be a bit of “disruption” between destruction and creation, but that’s just capitalist business as usual. Besides, it’s progress, innit?We have now lived through what one might call Automation 1.0. The paradigmatic example is car manufacturing. Henry Ford’s production line metamorphosed into Toyota’s “lean machine” and thence to the point where few humans, if any, are visible on an assembly line. Once upon a time, the car industry employed hundreds of thousands of people. We called them blue-collar workers. Now it employs far fewer. The robots did indeed take their jobs. In some cases, those made redundant found other employment, but many didn’t. And sometimes their communities were devastated as a result. But GDP went up, nevertheless, so economists were happy. Continue reading...

Through video games, live-action role-playing games and interactive documentaries, developers are challenging the conversation around reproductive rightsThe year is 1972. You’re part of an underground network of feminists in Chicago that provide illegal (at the time) abortion services to vulnerable, pregnant people with few options. Despite the risk of imprisonment, and the ways that your personal experiences may not always perfectly align with your activism, you persist.It’s emotionally complicated. It’s politically fraught. It’s a live-action roleplaying game by Jon Cole and Kelley Vanda called The Abortionists, which requires three players, one facilitator, six hours and a willingness to dig deep into the painful history of reproductive rights in the United States. That history has terrifying relevance in 2019, as numerous states pass laws that put their residents in a reality where abortion is functionally illegal. Based on the real-life work of a 1970s activist group called Jane, it challenges its participants to think about the “internal landscapes” of its players, and how they deal with the larger political and personal landscape of their world. Continue reading...

The Gaia theorist, at 100 years old, is infectiously optimistic about the prospect of humanity being overtaken by superintelligent robotsIn an acerbic 1976 article on AI research, the computer scientist Drew McDermott was the first to contrast the phrases “artificial intelligence” and “natural stupidity”. Four decades later, researchers warn of the threat posed by computer “superintelligence”, but stupidity is still a far greater peril: both the age-old natural stupidity of humans and the newfangled artificial stupidity displayed by algorithms – such as chatbots supposed to be able to diagnose illness, or facial-recognition software that throws up false matches for ethnic minorities – in which we place far too much trust.An alternative reason to be cheerful about the coming machine takeover is offered here by the eminent scientist and inventor James Lovelock. A chemist by training, who invented instruments for Mars rovers and helped to discover the depletion of the ozone layer, Lovelock is most celebrated in pop culture for his “Gaia hypothesis”. First formulated in the 1960s, it proposes that Earth and its biosphere comprise a single, self-regulating system. Life alters its habitat (eg, as plants seeded Earth’s atmosphere with oxygen) as surely as the habitat alters life. The hippyish name “Gaia”, originally suggested to him in the pub by the novelist William Golding, probably worked against the idea (also called “geophysiology”), but modern disciplines such as Earth Systems Science have absorbed many of Lovelock’s central points. Continue reading...

Bitcoin was radical and utopian, a way to avoid both government and big business. What happened?Eight years ago, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal, which together make up more than 97% of the global market for payment services, cut off funding to WikiLeaks (you could still donate to the Ku Klux Klan, the English Defence League or Americans for Truth about Homosexuality). The blockade, backed by Republican senators, was political: WikiLeaks had published Chelsea Manning’s material documenting US military drone strikes and civilian killings in Iraq; stopping inflowing cash silenced Julian Assange’s outfit, albeit temporarily.What could be done? Perhaps it was time for a cryptocurrency to stride from the proverbial phone booth, underpants over its tights, and save the day? After all, bitcoin’s philosophy was that it would cut out the middleman, whether state functionary or corporate lackey, and realise a radical future in which, for instance, Afghan women, prohibited from opening bank accounts, might work and get paid in bitcoin. Continue reading...

Study shows 20m jobs will be lost worldwide by 2030 with every robot costing 1.6 manufacturing jobsBritish workers are being shut out of decisions over the rising use of robots in the UK economy, according to a report.According to the commission on workers and technology, run by the Fabian Society and the Community trade union, almost six in 10 employees across Britain in a poll said their employers did not give them a say on the use of new technologies. Continue reading...

I wonder about the extent to which employers go in their desire to control those who have the misfortune to depend on them for their livelihood, writes Prof Anita J PrazmowskaStanding waiting for my English breakfast tea in the Last Word cafe in the forecourt of the British Library. A supervisor breezed in and interrupted service to scoop up mobiles from the counter staff. These were retrieved from bags and from a lower shelf. As she departed with her hands full, I asked what was the reason for this intriguing performance. She was called back and explained to me that this was because the contract of employment stipulated that staff should not have their mobiles on their bodies while serving. I pointed out that there is an obvious difference between an obligation not to have or to use mobiles while serving on the one hand, and their duty to hand over their mobiles to their supervisor. Since clearly I did not understand, the rules were patiently explained again to me. Staff had to sign a contract that stated they could not have their mobiles while working.After going over our respective different interpretation of the “rules”, I gave up. But the image is with me. The staff were adults. They were trusted to work with electrically powered equipment and furthermore with equipment that generated hot water and steam. But they could not be left to comply with clearly stated rules. Transgression against these rules, which have potential safety implications, presumably carried sanctions of which they were aware. So why this need to subordinate themselves to the supervisor’s whim? What else will an employer feel that she/he has the right to sequestrate in a bizarre ritual of preventive action? Continue reading...

For the first time in its long history, one of the world’s most famous producers of seductive sports cars is turning its hand to SUVsAston Martin DBX

Change due on 15 July halted because government failed to inform EU of plansThe UK’s age-verification system for online pornography will be delayed for around six months because the government failed to inform the EU of its proposals, the culture secretary has said.The already delayed policy, which will require all adult internet users wanting to watch legal pornography to prove they are over 18 by providing some form of identification, was due to come into force on 15 July. Continue reading...

Artists, activists and models join in condemning confusing guidelines leading to account suspensionsDozens of adult performers picketed outside of Instagram’s Silicon Valley headquarters over guidelines about photos containing nudity. The inconsistency of the rules, they say, has led to hundreds of thousands of account suspensions and is imperiling their livelihoods.Adult performers led the protest on Wednesday, but other users including artists, sex workers, queer activists, sex education platforms and models say they have been affected by the platform’s opaque removal system. The action was organized by the Adult Performer Actors Guild, the largest labor union for the adult film industry. Continue reading...

Incidents occurred over weekend during Download music festival at nearby parkDetectives have launched an investigation after three drones disrupted flights at an airport during a nearby music festival.Leicestershire police said a pilot of one of the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) had been interviewed by officers after it was reported to police at 9.30am on Saturday near the Download festival at Donington Park. Continue reading...

Data breach included names, addresses and phone numbers of parents who asked for adviceA charity that supports transgender children has apologised and referred itself to the information commissioner’s office following a data breach that led to the publication of parents’ personal emails online.Mermaids, a UK charity providing support and advice to transgender or non-gender-conforming children, said it immediately took action after being made aware of the data breach on Friday afternoon. Continue reading...

Officer Robert Davies is on paid leave after being charged with communicating with a minor to commit a felonyA California student used a “gender swap” filter on Snapchat to pose as an underage girl in a vigilante effort that led to a police officer’s arrest.After a friend told him she was sexually assaulted as a child, Ethan, whose last name has not been revealed, set out to lure potential pedophiles into speaking to him on the dating app Tinder. Continue reading...

Charity’s report into effects of technology on under-18s warns of threat to mental healthChildren aged five and under are at risk of becoming addicted to the internet in a trend that could damage their mental health, according to Barnardo’s.The charity said very young children – one as young as two – were learning to access websites, for example YouTube and those related to children’s television programmes, as a result of their parents giving them access to smartphones or tablet computers to distract or entertain them. Continue reading...

Having announced its next video game console at E3 2019, Microsoft is being tight-lipped on further details – but the clues are there if you’re lookingThere still isn’t much that’s clear about Project Scarlett, Microsoft’s follow-up to the Xbox One, which was revealed for the first time at the E3 conference in Los Angeles on 9 June. But we do have some answers.Related: Project Scarlett: new Xbox console details announced at E3 Continue reading...

Vice-chancellor says hack involved personal and payroll details going back 19 yearsThe Australian National University is in damage control after discovering a major data breach a fortnight ago in which a “significant” amount of staff and student information was accessed by a “sophisticated operator”.The university has confirmed an estimated 200,000 people have been affected by the hack, based on student numbers each year and staff turnover. Continue reading...

Eight proposals up for vote were defeated, including plans for an independent board chair and to reform the company’s share structureA specter is haunting Facebook’s shareholder meeting – the specter of a giant, inflatable angry emoji. The eight-foot frowny face that protesters took to Facebook’s annual meeting Thursday in Palo Alto, California, was just one of numerous manifestations of investor and activist anger at the social media company.Investors voted on eight independent shareholder proposals, all aimed at reforming a company that has seen its reputation shredded in recent years over concerns including data misuse, anti-competitive behavior, incitement of genocidal violence, and the hijacking of democratic elections. Continue reading...

Ed wants to buy a Windows laptop that will last as long as possible, and is willing to pay up to £2,000I want to buy a Windows laptop that is as future-proof as possible. I have been looking at ones with at least a Core i7 processor, 16GB of memory, USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports and a 13-14in high-resolution screen. I am really struggling to identify the one I should get.I realise the specs are perhaps overkill for my mixture of office productivity programs and media use. However, I intend to keep this laptop for seven to 10 years, and I want it to cope with updates and new software in the future. My budget is about £1,500-£2,000. EdIt’s not easy to buy a future-proof laptop because the industry is moving in the opposite direction. The trend is towards ultra-thin laptops where the processor, memory and storage chips are all soldered in and cannot be upgraded. Further, sealed cases are making it increasingly difficult to replace failing keyboards, cracked screens and glued-in batteries. Unless laptops are still under warranty, it may be simpler to replace them than to repair them. Continue reading...