When Guardian reporter Olivia Solon was sent a rape threat, she posted a screenshot on Instagram. Then the Facebook-owned company made it an adInstagram used a user’s image which included the text “I will rape you before I kill you, you filthy whore!†to advertise its service on Facebook, the latest example of social media algorithms boosting offensive content.Related: Facebook to tighten ad targeting after antisemitic 'fail', says Sheryl Sandberg Continue reading...
Counter-terrorism expert says that, contrary to Theresa May’s assertion, technology companies are treating the problem of terrorist content seriouslyFacebook’s senior counter-terrorism strategist has dismissed Theresa May’s demand that the company should go “further and faster†to remove material created by terrorists and their supporters, describing the claim that it does not do enough as unhelpful.Artificial intelligence programs are being created to identify such material, and hundreds of people are employed to search for content that should be removed, said Brian Fishman, who manages the company’s global counter-terrorism policy. Continue reading...
Google is acquiring a $1bn chunk of HTC’s smartphone arm, including 2,000 employees and access to intellectual property, as it bets big on hardwareGoogle has announced it’s acquiring a $1.1bn chunk of HTC’s smartphone business, and with it providing the once leading Taiwanese phone brand a much needed lifeline. But what does Google want with part of a smartphone business?Google isn’t buying the whole of HTC, just a relatively large part of the Taipei-based company’s smartphone business and not its Vive virtual reality headset business. Google gains half of HTC’s research and development team – about 2,000 people – and a non-exclusive license for HTC’s intellectual property, allowing it to take advantage of some of HTC’s advances in smartphone technology. Continue reading...
Deal will not involve purchase of direct stake and HTC will continue to run its remaining phone businessGoogle has announced a deal to acquire part of Taiwanese firm HTC Corp’s smartphone operations for about $1bn.The deal will not involve the purchase of a direct stake and HTC will continue to run its remaining smartphone business. Continue reading...
A privileged young white woman gallivants around the developing world in search of adventure … is it Lara Croft or White Saviour Barbie?Remember White Saviour Barbie? It was big on Instagram last year. White Saviour Barbie only had one joke, but it was a doozy: it followed the adventures of a wide-eyed Barbie doll as she travelled through the developing world on a gap year in the naive assumption that she was somehow helping. “What better way to bless the villagers than a fresh coat of paint?!†she asked in one post. “Many of them don’t know the calming effect that just the right color can provide. I’m just doing what I can to help these huts become homesâ€.White Saviour Barbie is so popular that they’ve now made a movie about her, starring Alicia Vikander. True, they’ve called the movie Tomb Raider for some reason, but anyone with half a brain can see from the trailer that it’s really about White Saviour Barbie. Let’s run through some quick comparisons. Continue reading...
Apple’s latest software update has enraged companies who have been using cookies to track users across the webApple is cutting down on how many cookies advertisers can force on to your devices, with changes coming to iPhones, iPads and Macs. The advertisers, naturally, are not happy.Digital cookies are small text files that can be used to track users as they surf the web, helping to build up a detailed profile of which sites they visit, what they do while they are there, and how long they do it for. Continue reading...
New media-focused Android device has hands-free Alexa, faster processor, better screen and longer battery life – all for £150Amazon has unveiled a new, improved and cheaper large-screen Fire HD 10 Android tablet, now featuring hands-free Alexa integration, a much better screen and longer battery life.
Arkane’s standalone game is a bit of an indulgence, but it offers a beautifully dark and detailed world of grand interiors and dimly lit streets to get lost inDishonored’s new standalone adventure has quite the setup: you have to murder a god.Throughout the five year history of this steampunk stealth adventure series, this eponymous deity, the Outsider, has been at the centre of everything – dealing in regicide, revenge and all the juicy stuff in between. He’s an omnipotent force who watches and intervenes from the void – a mysterious place between worlds – giving mortals like Billie Lurk, our new protagonist, spectral powers. Continue reading...
The artificial intelligence expert’s new book, Life 3.0, urges us to act now to decide our future, rather than risk it being decided for usAfew years ago the cosmologist Max Tegmark found himself weeping outside the Science Museum in South Kensington. He’d just visited an exhibition that represented the growth in human knowledge, everything from Charles Babbage’s difference engine to a replica of Apollo 11. What moved him to tears wasn’t the spectacle of these iconic technologies but an epiphany they prompted.“It hit me like a brick,†he recalls, “that every time we understood how something in nature worked, some aspect of ourselves, we made it obsolete. Once we understood how muscles worked we built much better muscles in the form of machines, and maybe when we understand how our brains work we’ll build much better brains and become utterly obsolete.†Continue reading...
Beijing orders exchanges to stop trading in bitcoin amid fears increasing number of consumers in market could spark wider financial problemsThe value of bitcoin collapsed below $3,000 (£2,200) at one point on Friday after Chinese authorities announced a crackdown on the digital currency.Bitcoin is the first, and the biggest, "cryptocurrency" – a decentralised tradable digital asset. Whether it's a bad investment is the $70bn question (literally, since that's the current value of all bitcoins in existence). Bitcoin can only be used as a medium of exchange and in practice has been far more important for the dark economy than it has for most legitimate uses. The lack of any central authority makes bitcoin remarkably resilient to censorship, corruption – or regulation. That means it has attracted a range of backers, from libertarian monetarists who enjoy the idea of a currency with no inflation and no central bank, to drug dealers who like the fact that it's hard (but not impossible) to trace a bitcoin transaction back to a physical person. Continue reading...
A coalition of activists and consumer groups are banding together to express concerns over an FCC proposal to rewrite the rules governing the internetNet neutrality advocates are planning two days of protest in Washington DC this month as they fight off plans to defang regulations meant to protect an open internet.A coalition of activists, consumer groups and writers are calling on supporters to attend the next meeting of the Federal Communications Commission on 26 September in DC. The next day, the protest will move to Capitol Hill, where people will meet legislators to express their concerns about an FCC proposal to rewrite the rules governing the internet. Continue reading...
Hollywood power is in flux, as traditional broadcast and cable networks, which for decades shaped popular culture, try to keep up with technology companiesIn Hollywood, the screenwriter William Goldman once observed, nobody knows anything. But that was before technology companies rolled in sure of one thing: to conquer television you have to spend, spend, spend.The geeks are raiding their digital vaults to transform themselves into lords of entertainment – or at least owners of content – and in the process shape what we watch and how we watch. Continue reading...
The researchers behind the illusion, which went viral last month, explain how the plan was actually to see how people react to self-driving vehiclesIn early August, residents of Arlington, Virginia, spotted an unmarked silver Ford Transit van cruising around town without a human behind the wheel.Local news publication ARLnow caught the ghostly vehicle on camera and speculated that it was part of Virginia Tech’s autonomous driving research. A couple of days later, NBC reporter Adam Tuss approached the vehicle on foot and peered inside, only to see hands poking out from the driver’s seat holding the steering wheel. The “driverless†car had a driver – but he was disguised as a car seat. Continue reading...
Embarrassing discovery that Facebook let advertisers target users interested in antisemitic topics comes as the social network’s ad practices are under scrutiny
Exclusive: Women say Google denied them promotions, telling the Guardian they were forced into less prestigious jobs despite qualificationsGoogle systematically pays women less than men doing similar work, according to a class action-lawsuit accusing the technology company of denying promotions and career opportunities to qualified women who are “segregated†into lower-paying jobs.
The digital currency lost 10% of its value after the JP Morgan boss described it as fraud – but it has come a long way since it was started in 2009Bitcoin is a digital currency started in 2009 by a mystery figure named Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity is still unknown. It is unlike traditional currencies because it has no central bank, nation state or regulatory authority backing it up.The “coins†are made by computers solving a set of complex maths problems. To spend them, users buy bitcoin and conduct transactions with them using exchanges such as San Francisco-based Coinbase. Rather than a central authority validating transactions, they are all recorded on a public ledger, called the blockchain. Continue reading...
Bungie has improved its sci-fi shooter with a less lonely game for those who don’t have online friends and a more rewarding one for those who doThere are three reviews of Destiny 2 that need to be written.The first is Destiny 2: the campaign, the game that you can sit down and play through from start to finish. It’s a genuinely good experience, with a plot that makes sense, characters who have actual personalities, and a narrative delivered through more than just text inserts and mission descriptions. Continue reading...
Jamie Dimon claims cryptocurrency is only fit for use by drug dealers, murderers and people living in North KoreaBitcoin is a fraud that will ultimately blow up, according to JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon, who said the digital currency was only fit for use by drug dealers, murderers and people living in places such as North Korea.Speaking at a conference in New York, the boss of America’s biggest bank said he would fire “in a second†anyone at the investment bank found to be trading in bitcoin. “For two reasons: it’s against our rules, and they’re stupid. And both are dangerous.†Continue reading...
Despite leaks and a hiccup during a demo of its new Face ID unlocking feature, analysts say this year’s launch puts Apple in an ‘extraordinarily strong’ position
US National Transportation Safety Board said operational limitations in the Tesla Model S played a major role in the death of 40-year-old Joshua Brown from OhioThe chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Tuesday that “operational limitations†in the Tesla Model S played a “major role†in a May 2016 crash that killed a driver using the vehicle’s semi-autonomous Autopilot system.The limits on the autonomous driving system include factors such as Tesla being unable to ensure driver attention even when the car is traveling at high speeds, ensuring Autopilot is used only on certain roads and monitoring driver engagement, NTSB said. Continue reading...
Felix Kjellberg, the highest-paid YouTuber in 2016, says he learned nothing from previous racist controversies and that ‘there are no excuses for it’YouTube star PewDiePie has apologised for using a racial slur during a livestream, saying that he is “disappointed in himselfâ€.In a short video posted to his YouTube account , the vlogger – real name Felix Kjellberg, the highest-paid YouTuber in 2016 – said he was “not going to make any excuses†as to why he said the n-word in the middle of a game of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, “because there are no excuses for it.†Continue reading...
The electric-car giant gave customers a lifeline by remotely boosting their vehicles’ battery capacity. But this act of kindness also highlighted that it had been selling identical cars at different pricesTesla drivers who fled Hurricane Irma last weekend received an unexpected lesson in modern consumer economics along the way. As they sat on choked highways, some of the electric-car giant’s more keenly priced models suddenly gained an extra 30 or so miles in range thanks to a silent free upgrade.The move, confirmed by Tesla, followed the request of one Florida driver for a limit on his car’s battery to be lifted. Tesla’s cheaper models, introduced last year, have the same 75KwH battery as its more costly cars, but software limits it to 80% of range. Owners can otherwise buy an upgrade for several thousands of dollars. And because Teslas software updates are online, the company can make the changes with the flick of a virtual switch. Continue reading...
Games developer Campo Santo files copyright takedown requests against Felix Kjellberg after racist comment, and urges others to follow suitYouTube’s best-paid star Felix Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, has yet again used a racial slur on the video-sharing site.The 27-year-old video blogger called an opponent a “fucking nigger†while live-streaming playing the online game Playerunknown Battlegrounds, before correcting himself to “fucking assholeâ€, adding: “I didn’t mean it in a bad way.†Continue reading...
My former colleague and friend Peter Bird has died aged 82. Today computers are ubiquitous and have transformed many aspects of business administration and how we live our daily lives. But the so-called information age ushered in by computing and communications technology dates only from the middle of the last century.Peter, who had worked with J Lyons & Co, the food company famed for its teashops, and the unlikely pioneer of the use of computers in business from the 1950s, chronicled the Lyons initiative in his groundbreaking book LEO: The First Business Computer (1994), and later the story of J Lyons itself in The First Food Empire: A History of J Lyons & Co (2000). Both books were meticulously researched and compiled, with original photos from the respective eras. Continue reading...
As robots grow more lifelike, and religious faith in our uniqueness wanes, it is a challenge to understand what it means to be mortalPerhaps the best way to think of what makes a human being human is to look at something that seems almost human and subtract the difference. Whatever is left over is what is unique to us. That seems to be the thinking behind the Finnish photographer Maija Tammi’s One of Them Is a Human #1, a portrait of Erica, the Japanese android who was declared the most realistic female human robot of 2016. The photograph caused a stir last week because it was shortlisted for the National Portrait Gallery’s prestigious Taylor Wessing prize, despite the rule that “all photographs must have been taken by the entrant from life and with a living sitterâ€.Related: Why the rise of the robots could allow humans to flourish again | Giles Fraser: Loose canon Continue reading...
US-based credit ratings firm says records of UK citizens were among those unlawfully accessed during cyber-attack in JulyEquifax, the US credit ratings firm victim to an unlawful breach of security, has been told to inform British residents “at the earliest opportunity†if their personal information has been put at risk, the Information Commissioner said on Friday.Equifax says it holds details on over 44 million Britons, and said that records of UK and Canadians citizens were among the unlawfully accessed confidential data for 143 million Americans. Continue reading...
Online services are challenging our model of primary care – the NHS must find a way to incorporate new approaches into the mainstreamThe irresistible entrepreneurial spirit of Silicon Valley is slamming into the immovable object of UK healthcare regulation, with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) exposing significant concerns with at least 10 online clinical services.
The lives of tech entrepreneurs aren’t always as glamorous as they’re made out to be, as I learned living among them on a dangerous San Francisco streetFor the past 12 months of my life, I paid the bargain price of $1,250 per month to sleep diagonally in a bunk bed in a 10ft x 10ft room that I shared with a 32-year old man. Because I am 6ft 4in, sleeping diagonally in my undersized accommodation was the only way I could make it through the night without getting cramps.Welcome to my life in the hacker house. Continue reading...
Lauri Love is charged with masterminding a 2013 attack by Anonymous on US government websites. Will Britain allow him to spend the rest of his days in an American prison?In October 2013, Lauri Love was drinking coffee in his dressing gown in his bedroom at his parents’ house in the village of Stradishall, Suffolk, when his mother called upstairs to say there was a deliveryman at the front door. Love, whose first name is pronounced “Lowryâ€, like the English painter, clomped downstairs. In the front doorway was a man dressed in a UPS uniform. “Are you Lauri Love?†the man asked. “Yes,†Love said. In a single motion, the man grabbed Love’s arm while presenting, not a package, but a pair of rattling handcuffs.For the next five hours, while dusk turned to evening outside, Love, then 28, and his parents sat in the front room as a dozen or so men from the National Crime Agency, which investigates organised crime and other serious offences, checked the computers in the house. In Love’s bedroom, they found two laptops, and a PC tower humming on his desk. Among the bewildering Rolodex of open tabs in Love’s internet browsers, the officers found accounts logged into several hacker forums and arcane internet chatrooms. Downstairs, Love, who knew that anything said in these limbo moments of investigation could be later used against him, kept the conversation to small talk about the weather and football. Continue reading...
Amazon is looking to build its second home, promising it will be a full equal to current Seattle base, but has a list of key demands from potential candidatesAmazon has launched a $5bn (£3.8bn) search for a site for a new headquarters, asking cities across the US and Canada to make their pitches.The new HQ will be the world’s largest e-commerce company’s second in North America, and “will be a full equal†to its current headquarters in Seattle, Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos said. Continue reading...
Social media company’s advertising data doesn’t tally with census data for millennial and other demographics to the tune of millions of peopleFacebook claims that it can reach more millennials and people in other demographics than actually exist in the UK, US, Australia, Ireland and France, according to census data.In the UK, Facebook says it can reach 7.8 million users aged between 18 and 24. The Office of National Statistics, however, says there were only 5.8 million people in that age group in the whole in the country in 2016. Continue reading...
For his new book, America 51, the Slipknot frontman has been examining the sicknesses at the heart of US culture – and from Donald Trump to modern dating, here’s his exclusive guide to navigating themHe is so ineffectual. Everyone was worried about the crazy things he’d do, but there’s nothing that he’s done that can’t be changed in another administration, like the Paris agreement. There’s no need to panic. Too many – I don’t want to say liberal lambasts – are hitting the panic button too quickly, instead of bringing up issues and talking about them. For me it’s really a case of: what’s going on with the senators, what’s going on on a local level? Continue reading...
Cybersecurity firm Symantec says ‘Dragonfly’ group has been investigating and penetrating energy facilities in US, Turkey and SwitzerlandA hacking campaign is targeting the energy sector in Europe and the US to potentially sabotage national power grids, a cybersecurity firm has warned.The group, dubbed “Dragonfly†by researchers at Symantec, has been in operation since at least 2011 but went dark in 2014 after it was first exposed, secretly placing backdoors in the industrial control systems of power plants across the US and Europe. Continue reading...
From a cookie that’s definitely not a cookie to a yellow flag when everyone else sees red, sending emojis is fraught enough without manufacturers changing thingsIt’s a tricky life, being an emoji designer. Unicode, the consortium that controls the key standard used to digitally encode writing, picks which emojis need to be included, but until recently offered little guidance beyond a name and a black and white illustration.Then there’s the problem that every individual operating system needs to design its own emoji because the little glyphs are copyrighted, so it won’t do to simply use the same ones as your competitor. Continue reading...
While so many books, TV shows and films has used schools as a setting, very few video games take place in and around the classroomThis week sees thousands of children throughout the country wake up and realise with stark horror that the summer holidays are over and school beckons.Most adults can remember the sudden system shock of these mornings; the alarm going off unreasonably early, the shivering cold of the bathroom, the family gathered in stony silence around the table, munching forlornly on soggy toast. Games such as Resident Evil or Silent Hill have conjured few horrors that compare with entering a new classroom and meeting an unfamiliar teacher who may or may not prove to be an authoritarian sociopath. Continue reading...
Aloneness and not knowing are fundamental to being human – let’s leave the virtual world and return to the real one, says Peter HindleyHoward Jacobson expresses surprise at his dependence on his smartphone (Weekend, 2 September). I recently lost mine, and it made me confront the two sources of anxiety my phone assuaged for me. First, the fear of being alone: my phone gave me the illusion that I could always be in contact with someone or something. Second, fear of uncertainty: my phone could always provide me with an answer for any question I wanted to ask. Aloneness and not knowing are fundamental to being human and drive much of our communication and creativity. Surely it is time for the Guardian to encourage us to give up our phones and celebrate the delights of being disconnected from the virtual world but truly connected to the real world.
With no home button on the new iPhone, something’s got to give, and that something might just be your power buttonIf you are a fan of Siri, then good news: Apple’s voice assistant looks like it will be getting a promotion in the near future, thanks to the combination of iOS 11 and the “D22†iPhone (the leaked model thought to be the forthcoming “iPhone Pro, 8 or Xâ€). If you’re not a fan of Siri, well, look away now – some of this isn’t pretty.For the first time, Siri will sync across devices, letting details it has picked up from your phone affect how it answers on your iPad or computer. The service is also seeing a slight refocus: Siri isn’t just a voice assistant anymore, since “Siri†will also be responsible for suggesting topics in Apple News based on your web browsing, or for suggesting a calendar event if you make a booking online. Continue reading...
Cities attract wild ideas, from Qinhuangdao’s straddling bus to London’s bike lanes in the sky. As Musk’s Boring Company starts tunnelling, could his plans for underground roads and Hyperloop trains prove the doubters wrong?In early August, the city council of Hawthorne, California, held a special meeting. It had set aside this time to discuss a major construction project proposed by a high profile company based there in the sprawling Los Angeles basin.The company was Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, or SpaceX, the rocket-building offshoot of the electric car company Tesla, run by the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. SpaceX had recently spun off another entity, this one aimed at disrupting the tunnel boring business, cheekily named the Boring Company – and it needed the City of Hawthorne’s cooperation. Continue reading...
Techies are pushing the trend of intermittent fasting for weight loss – made popular by diets like the 5:2 plan – to the extreme. Are they crazy?The last time any food passed Phil Libin’s lips was a day ago, when he ate yakitori at a restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission district. He’ll next eat in three days time on Thursday evening, when he has a reservation at one of the fanciest sushi restaurants in town. In the intervening four days it’s just water, coffee and black tea.Over the last eight months the former CEO of Evernote and current CEO of AI studio All Turtles has shunned food for stretches of between two and eight days, interspersed with similar periods of eating. He’s lost almost 90lbs and describes getting into fasting as “transformativeâ€. Continue reading...
From Google to Uber, Silicon Valley’s tech giants have a woman problem. Meet Lawless & Lawless, the sisters fighting backOn the wall of Lawless & Lawless’s San Francisco office is a framed, full-page newspaper advert with a black background and just two words in white text: “Thanks Ellenâ€. The ad, taken out in March 2015 in a Silicon Valley freesheet, referred to Ellen Pao, who had recently fought a $16m sexual discrimination suit against her former employer, venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins. Pao claimed she was passed over for promotion and excluded from meetings after she accused a senior partner of sexual harassment.Although Pao lost the suit, coverage of the case shone a bright light on Silicon Valley’s gender problem. More legal suits followed, this time against Facebook and Tesla. The common denominator? The lawyers representing the women: Therese and Barbara Lawless. The formidable sisters, who have been practising employment law together since the late 1980s, have become the go-to attorneys in the battle against what they describe as America’s “wild west†of gender discrimination and sexual harassment. Continue reading...
The company, which offered pre-sold packets of diced fruits and vegetables that users plugged into its $400 machines, launched only 16 months agoJuicero, a Silicon Valley juicer startup that raised $120m from investors and was widely ridiculed after the $400 machines were revealed to be the equivalent of two hands squeezing a juice box, is shutting down.The death of Juicero, announced on Friday, is the latest case of a San Francisco tech startup collapsing after raising substantial funds under the guise of innovation and disruption, but failing to build a profitable business. Continue reading...
by Joanna Walters in New York and Sabrina Siddiqui in on (#30YK2)
The president to make a decision on Daca, as Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and Tim Cook among tech leaders urging him not to end the programDonald Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Friday that the president would announce his decision on whether to kill off special legal provisions offered to “Dreamersâ€, people brought to the US illegally as children, on Tuesday.Related: 'The fear is great': 'Dreamers' on edge as Trump threatens to end Daca program Continue reading...
Prof Martyn Thomas had first-hand experience of fighting the millennium bug, and dismisses the idea that it never posed a serious threat to the world’s computer systemsPlease don’t perpetuate the falsehood that the millennium bug was a myth (Hard to stomach, G2, 30 August). The widespread use of two-digit years in computer systems was a serious threat. I led the Y2K teams for Deloitte Consulting internationally in the 1990s and those of us who spent years successfully finding and fixing many of the huge number of problems resent the implication that our work was unnecessary or fraudulent. Despite all the worldwide work (coordinated by a special UN team), many failures did occur, including 15 shut-downs of nuclear reactors around the world. Details and authoritative references from Gresham College can be found online at tinyurl.com/zcd8tqd.
On 12 September Tim Cook’s company will hold its first event at the new Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California. Here’s what they will (probably) talk aboutApple will hold a press event on 12 September to unveil its much anticipated new iPhones, which are expected to introduce a whole new design and set the tone for the next few years.Unlike previous years, much is known about at least one of the new iPhones thanks to a large software leak from Apple that revealed several of its key details. But new smartphones are not the only new thing Apple is expected to announce, with the event taking place in the just-built Apple Park and its Steve Jobs Theatre. Continue reading...