Technology | The Guardian

Guardian investigation finds knockoff items and used goods sold as new on MarketplaceAmazon is rife with potentially dangerous counterfeits and other knockoff goods despite years of attempts to crackdown on mis-selling on its platform, a Guardian investigation can reveal.The global internet giant, which this week revealed that its daily revenues had hit a record $550m (£400m) a day, now spans a huge range of businesses from TV production to web hosting but faces an ongoing challenge to police its own online retail platform. Continue reading...

A consensus says that something must be done with the all-powerful tech platforms. But how far do governments go?Facebook has finally been dragged to testify to politicians in Washington and London, and there is now a global consensus that something must be done about powerful internet platforms.Not only has Mark Zuckerberg taken up semi-permanent residence on Capitol Hill, but next week senior Facebook officials will appear before the House of Commons fake news inquiry, whose chairman, Damian Collins will attempt to unpack what went wrong in the entanglements between Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, and whether these have facilitated the hacking of western democracy. And the House of Lords has opened an inquiry on internet regulation. Within months, the debate has shifted from “you can’t regulate the internet” to how, and by whom, internet platforms should be regulated. Continue reading...

Executive apologises over Cambridge Analytica scandal as Tory MP accuses Facebook of bullyingFacebook has been accused of being a “morality-free zone” that bullies journalists and threatens academics, as one of its executives appeared in front of MPs.The Conservative MP Julian Knight told the social network’s chief technical officer, Mike Schroepfer, that the company’s reaction to the Cambridge Analytica scandal suggested a “pattern of behaviour” that included “bullying journalists, threatening academic institutions, and potentially impeding investigations by lawful authorities”. Continue reading...

Belgium’s Gaming Commission has decided that ‘loot box’ mechanics in three popular video games encourage children to gamble. The games industry doesn’t need themYesterday, the Belgian minister of justice, Koen Greens, announced the result of an investigation that the country’s Gaming Commission conducted into video game “loot boxes”, a mechanic that lets players pay real money for a chance at winning virtual items. It found that three popular games – Overwatch, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Fifa 18 – were in violation of gambling legislation. This is a significant finding, because controversy over loot boxes has been raging for at least six months: are they actually a form of gambling? Worse, are they a form of gambling that is particularly appealing to children?Belgium’s Gaming Commission has decided that, yes, they are, and the publishers in question should remove loot boxes from their games or face fines. (EA and Blizzard, publishers of two of the games in question, did not respond to requests for comment on how they plan to comply; a Valve spokesperson said that the company is “happy to engage with the Belgian Gambling Commission and answer any questions they may have.”) There might be no financial incentive to buying loot boxes – you never win any money – but they are still a game of chance. “A dialogue with the sector is necessary,” said Groens: “It is often children who come into contact with such systems and we can not allow that.” Continue reading...

The retail giant’s critics say contrived financial arrangements are at the heart of its successWhen Jeff Bezos was looking for a home for his fledgling online bookseller, amazon.com, in 1994, his first choice is said to have been a Native American reservation. The location would have presented generous tax breaks if the state of California had not intervened and halted the plan.Next stop was Seattle, selected because of Washington state’s small population. At the time only those retailers with a physical presence in a state paid sales taxes, so a home state with a small population meant the lowest possible sales tax burden. Sales made into other more populous states would not be taxed.

The first Harry Potter game in years is out today on Android and iPhone. Here’s what to expectI won’t lie: on my 11th birthday, a tiny part of me hoped that I might get a letter from Hogwarts. By that age I had long accepted that my toys would not spring to life, I would not find a snowy fantasy realm in the back of a closet, and I was not a secret warrior princess – but the existence of a secret school in the Highlands of Scotland still seemed just possible. Edinburgh’s Fettes College was down the road from where I grew up; I imagined Hogwarts would be much the same, but for wizards instead of extremely posh children.The first Harry Potter game in more than five years, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery, attempts to fulfil that childhood fantasy. Released today for Android and iPhone, it is a gentle narrative game that offers a pared-down Hogwarts experience, letting you pick your house, form friendships and rivalries and master spells in the famous castle. I was really hoping it would be good. On first impressions, it’s not the lazy cash-in I’d feared. Continue reading...

Smart replies, greater offline access, expiring emails and improved safety features headline Google’s major redesignGoogle is implementing the biggest overhaul of its popular Gmail webmail service in five years, bringing a new look, advanced AI-powered features and improved privacy.Two years in the making, the redesign is intended to help Google better compete with Microsoft’s Outlook on the business side and modernise consumer email by bringing features from its Inbox email client into the main Gmail experience. Continue reading...

A year after the Guardian revealed Facebook’s secret rules for censorship decisions, the company has released a public versionA year after the Guardian revealed Facebook’s secret rules for content moderation, the company has released a public version of its guidelines for what is and is not allowed on the site, and for the first time created a process for individuals to appeal censorship decisions.The disclosure comes amid a publicity blitz by the company to regain users’ trust following the Observer’s revelation in March that the personal Facebook data of tens of millions of users was improperly obtained by a political consultancy. Continue reading...

Advertisers are seemingly able to access accounts with no input from the userOn one of Facebook’s myriad setting screens, a place where few dare tread, is a list of places you’ve probably never heard of, all of whom insist that they know you. It’s emblematic of the data protection issues Facebook is struggling to address in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, of the fact that these problems spread far beyond Facebook, and of the easy solutions the company could take if only it had the courage.This list is the collection of “advertisers you’ve interacted with”. You can find it halfway down your ad preferences screen, below a list of algorithmically suggested topics that Facebook thinks you’re interested in (if you’re a heavy user, these may be scarily accurate; if you’re not, they’ll likely be hilariously off). Continue reading...

Tech giant behind Android corrals phone operators around the world to launch a unified SMS replacementGoogle has unveiled a new messaging system, Chat, an attempt to replace SMS, unify Android’s various messaging services and beat Apple’s iMessage and Facebook’s WhatsApp with the help of mobile phone operators.Unlike traditional texting, or SMS, most modern messaging services – such as Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or Apple’s iMessage – are so-called over-the-top (OTT) services, which circumvent the mobile phone operator by sending messages over the internet. Continue reading...

Deborah O’Neill on the failings of automation at Tesla and elsewhere, and Matt Meyer and Nick Lynch on the House of Lords AI select committee reportElon Musk’s comment that humans are underrated (Humans replace robots at flagging Tesla plant, 17 April) doesn’t come as much of a surprise, even though his company is at the forefront of the technological revolution. Across industries, CEOs are wrestling with the balance between humans and increasingly cost-effective and advanced robots and artificial intelligence. However, as Mr Musk has discovered, the complexity of getting a machine to cover every possibility results in a large web of interconnected elements that can overcomplicate the underlying problem. This is why so many organisations fail when they try to automate everything they do. Three key mistakes I see time and again in these situations are missing the data basics, applying the wrong strategy, and losing the human touch.There are some clear cases where automation works well: low value, high repetition tasks or even complex ones where additional data will give a better outcome, for example, using medical-grade scanners on mechanical components to identify faults not visible to the human eye. But humans are better at reacting to unlikely, extreme, or unpredictable edge cases, for example being aware that a music festival has relocated and extra cider needs to go to stores near the new venue rather than the previous location. Continue reading...

Jim doesn’t want his emails scanned for targeted ads, but while there are ways to avoid it, surveillance-based advertising is rifeWhat’s the best free email service provider that does not scan or use the data in your emails for advertising? JimFree email services are usually paid for by showing you advertisements. Some email services scan your emails in order to show you personalised or targeted ads. You could argue that that’s a benefit, because you’ll see ads in which you might have some interest. You could also argue that your emails are private, so it’s an invasion of privacy. Either way, it’s different from scanning your emails to stop viruses and phishing attempts, which nobody wants to stop.

Users will be asked to review information about targeted advertising but some say opting out is deliberately difficultFacebook has started to seek explicit consent from users for targeted advertising, storage of sensitive information, and – for the first time in the EU – application of facial recognition technology as the European general data protection regulation (GDPR) is due to come into force in just over a month.The company is only required to seek the new permissions in the European Union, but it plans to roll them out to all Facebook users, no matter where they live. The move follows Mark Zuckerberg’s stated goal to apply the spirit of GDPR worldwide. Continue reading...

America’s founders didn’t envision the power of the corporation. We need a new structure for self-governance that can counter 21st-century monopoliesLast week, Senator Dick Durbin asked: “Mr Zuckerberg, would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night?”The Facebook CEO froze and then answered: “No.” Continue reading...

A global conflict is taking place on the internet – and your router may be more attractive to a foreign operative than you thinkAnother day, another hacking attack – or, in Monday’s case, another few million hacking attacks. Russia has been blamed by the US and the UK for a global hacking campaign that involves breaking into millions of computers and other devices, including wifi routers.Tens or hundreds of thousands of the devices they have targeted are reportedly in the UK – so why is Vladimir Putin apparently so keen to break into your internet connection? Continue reading...

Statement comes as company faces US lawsuit over facial recognition feature launched in 2011 and planned to expand to EUFacebook has released more information on the social media platform’s tracking of users off-site, after its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, failed to answer questions about the process from US politicians and as the company prepares to fight a lawsuit over facial recognition in California.In a blog post, Facebook’s product management director, David Baser, wrote that the company tracked users and non-users across websites and apps for three main reasons: providing services directly, securing the company’s own site, and “improving our products and services”. Continue reading...

Corey Pein took his half-baked startup idea to America’s hottest billionaire factory – and found a wasteland of techie hustlers and con menThe most desirable career of the 21st century, with numerous advantages over other fast-growing occupations such as hospice carer and rickshaw driver, is being a billionaire. Prior to the incorporation of US Steel in 1901, the world didn’t have a single billion-dollar company, much less a billion-dollar individual. Today, more people than ever are becoming billionaires – 2,000 and counting have made the great leap upward, according to the “global wealth team” at Forbes. And the US’s hottest billionaire factory is located in the most hyped yet least understood swath of suburban sprawl in the world: Silicon Valley.Despite what you may have heard, hard work in your chosen trade is absolutely the stupidest way to join the billionaires club. In Silicon Valley, the world’s most brilliant MBAs and IT professionals discovered a shortcut to fabulous riches. Ambitious Ivy Leaguers who once flocked to Wall Street are now packing up and heading west. The Valley’s startup founders, investors, equity-holding executives and fee-taking middlemen have thrived above all. Inspired by their success, my idea was to move to Silicon Valley, pitch a startup and become obscenely rich. I left home with some homemade business cards showing my new email address, futurebillionaire@aol.com, and a bunch of half-baked ideas. Continue reading...

Ombudsman finds there were 22,827 complaints about service quality and connection delaysComplaints about the national broadband network soared more than 200% over the last six months of last year, according to a new report from the telecommunications industry ombudsman, with rising customer dissatisfaction about phone and internet services prompting a new government review.With the NBN Co chief executive, Bill Morrow, due to address the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday, the latest report from the TIO finds there were 22,827 complaints lodged between July and December 2017 about the broadband network – 14,055 about service quality and 8,757 about delays in establishing an NBN connection. Continue reading...

Christine Lagarde believes revisiting crypto-assets could ‘harness gains and avoid pitfalls’The advance of bitcoin and other digital currencies could make the global financial system safer despite the prospect of “inevitable” accidents waiting to happen, the head of the International Monetary Fund has said.Christine Lagarde said some tools built using the technology behind bitcoin, which are known collectively as crypto-assets, hold the potential to revolutionise the world of high finance by making it faster, cheaper and safer. Among them, there are “real threats and needless fears”, she said.

In all the company has spent about $20m on security and private planes for Zuckerberg since 2015. The security funds were required ‘due to specific threats to his safety’Facebook increased its spending on security for Mark Zuckerberg by 50% last year, the company has disclosed, paying more than $7.3m (£5.1m) to protect its top executive.The security funds were required “due to specific threats to his safety arising directly as a result of his position as our founder, chairman, and CEO”, the under-fire social media company said in a new filing to US regulators. Continue reading...

A theory denying the existence of the country is gaining ground. But the suggestion that countries and cities are mere figments of our imagination is a meme that dates back to the birth of the webAustralia doesn’t exist. The signs were there the whole time: in what country is the only thing more poisonous than the snakes the spiders? How did we ever believe that kangaroos were a thing?This discovery, believed by some to be a joke or a conspiracy theory, has been circulating on social media in recent weeks after being formulated on Reddit in early 2017. Except it turns out not to be the only theory of its kind: through the years, online sleuths have found that all sorts of places don’t exist. Continue reading...

What do we really know about the influence of the ‘voter button’?On the morning of 28 October last year, the day of Iceland’s parliamentary elections, Heiðdís Lilja Magnúsdóttir, a lawyer living in a small town in the north of the country, opened Facebook on her laptop. At the top of her newsfeed, where friends’ recent posts would usually appear, was a box highlighted in light blue. On the left of the box was a button, similar in style to the familiar thumb of the “like” button, but here it was a hand putting a ballot in a slot. “Today is Election Day!” was the accompanying exclamation, in English. And underneath: “Find out where to vote, and share that you voted.” Under that was smaller print saying that 61 people had already voted. Heiðdís took a screenshot and posted it on her own Facebook profile feed, asking: “I’m a little curious! Did everyone get this message in their newsfeed this morning?”In Reykjavik, 120 miles south, Elfa Ýr Gylfadóttir glanced at her phone and saw Heiðdís’s post. Elfa is director of the Icelandic Media Commission, and Heiðdís’s boss. The Media Commission regulates, for example, age ratings for movies and video games, and is a part of Iceland’s Ministry of Education. Elfa wondered why she hadn’t received the same voting message. She asked her husband to check his feed, and there was the button. Elfa was alarmed. Why wasn’t it being shown to everyone? Might it have something to do with different users’ political attitudes? Was everything right and proper with this election? Continue reading...

The creator of Bafta award winner Edith Finch is pushing the boundaries of storytellingWhat Remains of Edith Finch was a surprise best game winner at the Bafta Games awards on Thursday night. The indie release had been nominated in several other categories, but its top prize victory was such a shock that its creative director, Ian Dallas of Giant Sparrow, claimed not to have prepared a speech. “I wrote a speech for all the other awards, but this one I figured there would be something in Japanese,” Dallas told the BBC, a joke referring to Nintendo, which dominated elsewhere with Super Mario Odyssey and the stunning The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game so all-encompassing it seems to have the special ability of making time disappear.Edith Finch is a remarkable little game, though to call it little is, perhaps, to do it a disservice. It is short, at two to three hours (and as a result, relatively cheap), but it is vast in its imagination, scope and literary ambition. Dallas has spoken before of the influences behind this eerie and beautiful story of a girl returning home to explore the history of her cursed family, citing HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe and particularly Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude as reference points. Continue reading...

Businessman wins legal action to force removal of search results about past convictionA businessman has won his legal action to remove search results about a criminal conviction in a landmark “right to be forgotten” case that could have wide-ranging repercussions.Related: Google cases are a battle between right to privacy and right to know Continue reading...

Arunima wonders if one external hard drive will keep cherished pictures safely available for decades, but it’s not that simpleI read your article from June 2016 on What’s the best way to organise and store my digital photos? Is it not sufficient to save my pictures on one external hard drive? Must I save them on two? Also, for how many years will an external hard drive keep the pictures safe?

Steve Huffman says communities can set own guidelines, but racism is permitted on wider site as people have ‘different beliefs’Racist slurs are permitted on Reddit, says the popular social news and discussion site’s chief executive, Steve Huffman.Within a discussion thread that followed the publishing of the site’s transparency report on Russian propaganda, Huffman, in reply to a question from a Reddit user about whether “open racism, including slurs” are allowed on the platform, said their use was not against Reddit’s rules. Continue reading...

Like you, I have no idea how to wean myself off the platform, but acknowledgement is the first step to recovery

The CEO’s privacy is as vulnerable as ours, and the social network faces a regulation battle

Facebook’s chief executive on the right to privacy, banning Cambridge Analytica and the things he is taking responsibility for

Case of New York company’s alleged information collection under guise of academic research echoes Cambridge Analytica scandalFacebook has suspended a company from its site while it investigates claims it harvested user information under the guise of academic research, in a case with echoes of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.Related: Facebook employs psychologist whose firm sold data to Cambridge Analytica Continue reading...

Kemi Badenoch, now an MP, admits altering site a decade ago to ‘say nice things about Tories’Harriet Harman has said she has accepted an apology from a Tory MP for hacking into her website and altering its contents.Kemi Badenoch, the MP for Saffron Walden and a rising star in the Conservative party, made the confession in a video interview unearthed this week. Continue reading...

New headset can listen to internal vocalisation and speak to the wearer while appearing silent to the outside worldResearchers have created a wearable device that can read people’s minds when they use an internal voice, allowing them to control devices and ask queries without speaking.The device, called AlterEgo, can transcribe words that wearers verbalise internally but do not say out loud, using electrodes attached to the skin. Continue reading...

Rejecting official information channels, Rio’s citizens are navigating their city using crowdsourced data on shootings and robberies as they happen“A red spot on the map means gunfire, so I avoid going there,” says Leonardo Duarte, who works on the streets for a rehabilitation clinic in Rio de Janeiro. Shootings and violence are routine in his neighbourhood of Vigário Geral, a slum in the grip of conflict between rival drug-trafficking gangs. To stay out of danger when navigating the city he has a strategy: never go anywhere without checking his phone for live crime data.An increasing number of Rio residents are subscribing to crowdsourcing apps and following the social network pages of crime-watch groups such as Basta de Violência (No More Violence) and Realidade do Rio de Janeiro (Reality of Rio de Janeiro). Continue reading...

Father of Nasim Najafi Aghdam says he reported his daughter missing before the attack, and warned police she may be heading to YouTubeThe woman who allegedly opened fire at YouTube’s headquarters in a suburb of San Francisco, injuring three before killing herself, was apparently furious with the video website because it had stopped paying her for her clips.Police in California named the shooter as Nasim Najafi Aghdam. Continue reading...

From Twitter to Tumblr, swiping through your mobile’s apps is the new doing something while doing nothing at all. Is it simply a case of new technology, same old humans?Horizontal. Phone propped less than 10cm away from your face: minimum hand muscles engaged. Twitter: meme (it’s funny, but you don’t laugh). Instagram: cat picture (it’s cute, but you don’t smile). Facebook: acquaintance complaining (it’s sad, but you don’t frown). Tumblr. Snapchat. Back to Twitter. Repeat for an hour or two, until bodily functions force you to get up – and even then, wait until you are in actual physical pain before going to the loo, so deep are you in your trance-like state.No, this isn’t an extract from the diary of a depressive. This is how we members of Generation Z, the name given to those dull young things born between (roughly) 1998 and 2010, spend much of our free time, locked in “phone boredom”. The Daily Beast reports that this involves being on your phone, but largely just opening and closing up to 20-30 apps and finding nothing that interests you. Doing something, while doing nothing at all: technology has created a new way for Generation Z, to go out of their minds with boredom. Continue reading...

Overall, men are much more likely to commit murders than women are, according to FBI dataOne of the reasons that the shooting at YouTube’s California headquarters on Wednesday stood out was that the suspect, police said, was a woman. America’s high-profile gun attacks are rarely carried out by female shooters.An FBI study of 160 “active shooter” incidents between 2000 and 2013 found that only 6 incidents, or 3.8%, were perpetrated by a female shooter. All six of these female shooters used handguns, according to the FBI study. The deadliest of these shootings, at a post office in Santa Barbara, California, in 2006, left six victims dead. Five of the six incidents involved women opening fire on current or former coworkers at their workplaces, including at the University of Alabama, a supermarket in Florida, and a factory in Philadelphia, all in 2010. Continue reading...

The idea that people’s HIV status and physical location should be used by advertisers is unsurprising in the tech world and horrifying outside it. Outrage at this is justifiedThe gay hookup app Grindr, used by millions of people every day to find sexual partners, has been sharing its users’ HIV status with third parties. There could not be a more dramatic illustration of the pervasive nature of the data economy. The first thing to note is that no one was compelled to hand this information over to the people they hoped to meet through the app or the company that runs it, all of them complete strangers. It is most unlikely that users imagined that such potentially damaging and certainly deeply private information would be shared with further companies they had never heard of, and whose business is hard for any outsiders to understand.Whether the users were at fault for excessive trust, or lack of imagination, or even whether they were at fault at all for submitting information that would let their potential partners make a better informed choice, as liberal ethics would demand, the next thing to scrutinise is the role of the company itself. Grindr has now said that it will no longer hand over the information, which is an admission that it was wrong to do so in the first place. It also says that the information was always anonymised, and that its policy was perfectly standard practice among digital businesses. This last is perfectly true, and perhaps the most worrying part of the whole story. Continue reading...

Facebook says ‘bug’ resulted in videos being kept, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg hits back at Apple chief Tim Cook’s ‘extremely glib’ attackFacebook continues to deal with the fallout of the Cambridge Analytica files, announcing policy changes and bug fixes aimed at undoing some of the company’s more controversial data collection features.On Monday, Facebook apologised for storing draft videos which users had filmed and then deleted, saying a “bug” resulted in them being indefinitely stored instead. Continue reading...

A king recruits his subjects, and neighbouring rulers, to share in his quest for a fairer new worldOnce the obvious decrees have been made – free sweets, everlasting school holidays! – most children, if asked to reign for a day, would surely wish for peace and plenty for their kingdom. So it is with Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum, a prince made, in sudden and bloody circumstances, an exiled king who, together with a growing band of friends, supporters and assorted strays, must build an empire and an alluring constitution to draw subjects to his freshly birthed nation.Rendered in the Studio Ghibli aesthetic – defined here by artist Yoshiyuki Momose and composer Joe Hisaishi, who both worked on the Japanese studio’s Oscar-winning Spirited Away – the newly released Ni no Kuni II’s non-threatening whimsy is stylish but childlike. And for the first few hours, while searching for a patch of unclaimed land on which to settle a capital, it’s a likable adventure. You bumble over hill and dale, slaying monsters, incrementally upgrading your swords and sandals, and sleeping off the effort at local inns. Continue reading...

Everything you need to know about the videos your children are watchingYou don’t need to attend a VidCon meet-and-greet to be across the fact that young people are watching a lot of online video content; a casual glance around any bus, tram, cafe or quadrangle will reveal smartphones, tablets and laptops glued to favourite channels. The international phenomenon of teen YouTube stars is, by now, well-trodden ground – but who are the young YouTube superstars in Australia, and what are they peddling?It happens to us all: one day, we wake up and realise that we’re no longer at the crest of the internet wave. For some of us, this can be shattering. Continue reading...

Trump is after Amazon, Congress is after Facebook, and Apple and Google have their problems too. Should the world’s top tech firms be worried?Trump is going after Amazon; Congress is after Facebook; Google is too big, and Apple is short of new products. Is it any surprise that sentiment toward the tech industry giants is turning sour? The consequences of such a readjustment, however, may be dire.Related: Trump lashes out at Amazon and sends stocks tumbling Continue reading...

Ready Player One takes gaming culture and represents it as male-dominated, elitist and not dissimilar to the ‘alt-right’Steven Spielberg’s new blockbuster, Ready Player One, is the most significant Hollywood depiction of gamer culture to date. For the first time in mainstream cinema, it presents video games not merely as the cliched subcultural world of geeks and nerds, but as a significant force shaping the future of entertainment, communication, love, and politics.In this way, it does justice to the importance of video games, which have an increasing role in social and cultural life. On the other hand, it’s fraught with gender problems, reverence for elitism, and a rightwing endorsement of the importance of culture over political and economic conditions. As such, the celebrated director is showing the worst side of gamer culture. Continue reading...

Steven Spielberg’s film mashes together Jessica Rabbit, Sonic the Hedgehog and the Iron Giant, without much thought to how they would all get alongOn paper, it sounds like a utopia. Steven Spielberg’s new film Ready Player One presents itself as a party to which everyone is invited, its fictional VR dimension playing host to familiar faces from every blessed corner of the pop-culture universe. In the virtual plane known as the Oasis, players can captain the Millennium Falcon or the fluffy beast Falcor. They can try to sweet-talk Jessica Rabbit or befriend Sonic the Hedgehog. Brave warriors may fight alongside Freddy Krueger or Solid Snake, Mecha-Godzilla or the Iron Giant.Except that the Iron Giant is a lover, not a fighter. Tricking out the character with death-lasers goes against everything that he’s about, directly contradicting his native film’s guiding theme of pacifism in the face of violence. The way Ready Player One deploys the character undermines everything we understand about him. But the film doesn’t get hung up on this, quickly cutting to the next big-ticket cameo. Was that Samus Aran from Metroid just now? Continue reading...

Scandals are rife in Silicon Valley and its greatest minds not as popular as when they first created some of the world’s most impressive technology. Jordan Erica Webber asks whySubscribe and review: Acast, Apple, Spotify, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud. Join the discussion on Facebook, Twitter or email us at podcasts@theguardian.comIn March 2018, a whistleblower called Christopher Wylie revealed to the Observer that a company called Cambridge Analytica had used personal information harvested from Facebook to target voters with personalised political advertisements. The story was so huge that it triggered a movement represented by the hashtag #DeleteFacebook, which garnered support from big names like WhatsApp’s co-founder Brian Acton, SpaceX and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk, and even Playboy.

Mark Zuckerberg’s refusal to testify in the UK shows us what we can expect as a small nation adrift on its own, says HD LewisWhy should MPs be surprised that the head of one of the world’s most powerful companies should ignore British appeals but agree to go before the US Congress (MPs ‘astonished’ by Facebook chief’s refusal of third call to testify, 28 March)?Britain is one small nation that will soon be on its own among other small nations, having chosen – well, at least a minority of its voting-age citizens chose – to leave one of the strongest political and economic units in the world. Continue reading...

The president escalated his attack on Amazon, alleging the company shortchanges taxpayers and puts traditional retailers out of businessPresident Trump escalated his attack on Amazon on Thursday, alleging the retail and cloud-hosting behemoth shortchanges taxpayers and attacking its use of the US Postal Service and its impact on traditional retailers.“I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the election,” he wrote on Twitter. “Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our postal system as their delivery boy (causing tremendous loss to the US), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!” Continue reading...

Users complain of phone and text data collected by the company despite never having agreed to practiceFacebook began logging the text messages and phone calls of its users before it explicitly notified them of its practice, contradicting the company’s earlier claims that “uploading this information has always been opt-in only”.In at least one previous version of the Messenger app, Facebook only told users that the setting would enable them to “send and receive SMS in Messenger”, and presented the option to users without an obvious way to opt out: the prompt offered a big blue button reading “OK”, and a much smaller grey link to “settings”. Continue reading...

Company to shut down Partner Categories feature to ‘improve people’s privacy’ but analysts question potential impact of changeFacebook is shutting down a feature that allowed “data brokers” such as Experian and Oracle to use their own reams of consumer information to target social network users, the company has announced.The feature, known as “Partner Categories”, will be “winding down over the next six months”, Facebook announced in a terse blogpost. The company says the move “will help improve people’s privacy on Facebook.” Continue reading...