Timnit Gebru, an eminent Black scientist, says she was fired last year in clash over research on marginalized groupsTwo Google engineers have quit over the treatment of Timnit Gebru, a prominent Black artificial intelligence researcher whose exit from the company sparked widespread outrage in the tech industry.
Users watching videos will see a banner near the top of the feed if the content has not been validatedTikTok is to feature banner warnings on suspect content in a bid to dissuade users from sharing videos featuring misinformation.Its new tool, which will launch in the UK on 22 February, is one of the first from a major social platform to target not just content that has been shown to be false, but also that has not, or cannot, be conclusively proved to be true. Continue reading...
The gigantically tall character in a wide-brimmed hat has become the latest meme to light up social media with speculation, fan art and barely concealed lustWhen Capcom launched a new trailer and demo for its forthcoming horror sequel Resident Evil Village at the end of January, the company probably didn’t realise it was about to have a global internet meme on its hands. But, as players downloaded and explored the short interactive trailer for the game, thousands were left equally terrified and spellbound by the figure who bursts in at the climax: a gigantically tall woman in a wide-brimmed hat and cleavage-hugging pleated dress, who then comes at the player with a Freddy Krueger-style knife glove.Who was this giant woman? Why was she so alluring? Gaming Twitter lit up with speculation, screenshots, fan art and very quickly, barely concealed lust. Continue reading...
In A Glitch in the Matrix, film-maker Rodney Ascher speaks to people who are convinced that the world we’re living in isn’t realRodney Ascher’s new documentary A Glitch in the Matrix opens, as so many nonfiction films do, with an interview subject getting settled in their camera set-up. In this instance, a guy named Paul Gude is Skyping in from a setting familiar to anyone who’s spent the last year trapped in video-chats. He’s sitting in what appears to be a bedroom made to double as an office, the fisheyed webcam lens catching some dirty laundry, a shelf full of books and decorative toys, some homemade-looking art on the walls. But the eye is instantly drawn to Gude himself, a hyperreal computer-generated creature with shiny copper skin, warrior armor, a scar stretching from his forehead to his cheek, and a mane of shifting polygons in jewel-tone ruby red making his head look like a 20-sided die. He could be a distant cousin of Lion-O from the Thundercats, and he’s here to tell us that everything we know may be a lie.Related: A Glitch in the Matrix review – deep-dive into simulation theory Continue reading...
Platform popular with US far right has faced an uncertain future after being essentially forced offlineParler, the social media platform favored by the US far right, has dismissed its CEO John Matze. Continue reading...
Analysis: Running the online retailer should be a dream job, but where and how to grow will challenge Andy JassyA pain-free departure of a visionary founder is a difficult trick to pull off for any business. The stakes are even higher for a company the size of Amazon, as Jeff Bezos steps back from his day-to-day management role.The decision by Bezos, 57, to quit as chief executive later this year took analysts by surprise, but the first step has already gone smoothly, with Andy Jassy appointed as his successor without any public power struggle. Continue reading...
The internet might not be as funny as real life but it is funny. We ask comedians to tell us how funnyYears ago an electrician came around to replace the light fittings at my ex-girlfriend’s all-female sharehouse. He walked in, announced he’d forgotten his toolbox, asked to use the bathroom and proceeded to take the largest, smelliest poo I have ever smelt or witnessed (no doubt the build-up of years of morning starts fuelled by ice coffees and servo meat pies).He left the bathroom, excused himself before mumbling “someone else will come around to finish the job”, leaving what can only be described as a warzone in the girls’ bathroom. Continue reading...
Paying $14.99 a month for workout videos when you can find them free on YouTube might seem pricey, but Josh Taylor finds some advantagesI abandoned my paltry selection of panic-bought fitness equipment and the hastily cobbled-together workout videos from my local gym fairly quickly over the course of Melbourne’s 2020 lockdowns. But there was one thing that kept me moving: closing my rings.With the launch of Apple Fitness+, a streaming workout video service that costs A$14.99 a month, Apple is definitely targeting those iPhone users who have been stuck at home during the ongoing lockdowns across the globe. Continue reading...
by Matthew Castle, Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, Sarah Maria on (#5DPFP)
From lonely birds to legal eagles, our critics share their favourite digital diversions to combat the boredom and uncertainty of the Covid eraI’m not sure why I keep going back to Cloudpunk (PS4, Xbox, PC, Switch). The sprawling, dystopian city of Nivalis is every bit the future imagined by the cyberpunk fiction of the 1980s, a technocracy full of staggering inequality and endless skyscrapers rising into the clouds, embroidered with neon. I finished the game, in which you play a driver delivering packages in a flying car, months ago. And yet I keep returning to race aimlessly across its gleaming airborne highways and luxe high-rises, soothed by the hum of my engine. Continue reading...
Movement to unionize workers in Alabama faces tough opposition as the retail giant launches aggressive anti-union driveA push to unionize workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama is running into tough opposition as the retail giant, whose profits have boomed during the coronavirus pandemic despite concerns over worker safety, has launched an aggressive anti-union drive.Related: Jeff Bezos to resign as chief executive of Amazon Continue reading...
Bezos, who founded the company in 1994, will step down after company recorded $100bn in sales for last three months of 2020Jeff Bezos, billionaire founder of Amazon, will step down as chief executive, the company announced on Tuesday.Related: Biden pledges to 'undo moral shame' of Trump era with new orders on immigration – live Continue reading...
Acquisition of Drizly, which will be integrated into Uber’s Eats platform but maintain separate app, pushes share price up 6.5%Uber is acquiring on-demand alcohol platform Drizly for about $1.1bn as the ride-share company looks to expand delivery services that have flourished during the pandemic.Related: Trump impeachment defense team recycles lies about election fraud – live Continue reading...
Lack of exclusive content for streaming gaming service hits plan to compete with Nintendo and SonyGoogle has shuttered its internet game development studio, the company has announced, and is all but abandoning the idea that Stadia, its groundbreaking streaming service, could be a top-tier competitor to traditional games consoles.In a blogpost from Phil Harrison, the former Microsoft and Sony exec who was hired to mastermind Google’s push into console gaming, the Stadia general manager confirmed it was scaling back its ambitions, but insisted that the company’s core vision, of “having games streamed to any screen”, was still achievable. Continue reading...
Cryptocurrency rises above $38,000 after Tesla boss changes his biography on Twitter to ‘#bitcoin’The price of bitcoin rose on Monday after Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla chief executive, said he was a “supporter” of the cryptocurrency.“Bitcoin is a good thing,” Musk said in comments broadcast on social audio app Clubhouse on Monday. Musk said he was “late to the party” in backing bitcoin. Continue reading...
Paul Fletcher plays down Google threat and says government will not back down on news media codeMicrosoft’s Bing is ready to swoop if Google makes good on its threat to remove search from Australia when the mandatory news code becomes law, the government has revealed.The communications minister, Paul Fletcher, said Google dominated in Australia with a market share of 93% but there were other players, including Microsoft and DuckDuckGo, that were talking to the government about replacing it. Continue reading...
It just won’t believe that I did not buy £437-worth of earphonesI am at my wits’ end. Last July my Amazon account was hacked and two purchases made – for £8 vape coils and four sets of Huawei wireless earphones costing £437.I spotted the Amazon Marketplace purchases within 12 hours but was told, when I called to complain, that because the delivery address was my father’s house – a stored Amazon contact – I should wait for them to arrive and then return them. Continue reading...
Treasurer says Facebook founder had not managed to convince federal government to back downFacebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg has lobbied senior federal ministers about the proposed code forcing the digital giants to pay media companies, and the prime minister has engaged with Microsoft amid threats from Google about removing its search engine from Australia.With a lobbying offensive in overdrive with Labor expected to endorse the Morrison government’s code after a shadow cabinet meeting this week, and with a Senate inquiry continuing to hear from stakeholders – the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, confirmed the conversation with Zuckerberg on Sunday. Continue reading...
Jeff Bezos’s company is set for sales topping $100bn last quarter, and while rivals are nibbling, its position looks secureThe earliest references to the “one-stop shop” emerged during the first decades of 20th century as the fast-growing US economy spurred rapid retail innovation. A single location for various products provides obvious benefits: removing the hassle of travelling around town to visit different stores.Jeff Bezos redefined that logic for the internet age, making Amazon a dominant (and perhaps ambivalent) force first in selling books, and then in pretty much everything else. Before 2020 Amazon was a phenomenon, but the coronavirus pandemic has made it all but ubiquitous. Continue reading...
The Reddit forum is at the center of a war between Wall Street and an army of small investors over the store – and Jaime Rogozinski is still getting to grips with itJaime Rogozinski always knew WallStreetBets, the Reddit forum he founded, was part of something big – but even he wasn’t prepared for quite how big.Related: GameStop: how Reddit amateurs took aim at Wall Street’s short-sellers Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5DFHX)
New smart TV gadget is step up from basic Chromecast with new interface, apps and voice remoteGoogle’s latest Chromecast streaming media dongle is a bit different. Instead of just streaming or “casting” content from your mobile or computer like its predecessors, the new device acts more like a modern smart TV.With a full interface and a remote, the new Chromecast with Google TV costs £59.99 and sits above the basic £30 Chromecast. You can still Google Cast to the new device, but the new flat plastic dongle is more than just a simple receiver, running the full Android TV software similar to the Nvidia Shield or smart TVs from Sony and others. Continue reading...
by Hannah J Davies, Hannah Verdier and Madeleine Finl on (#5DFGC)
Lucy Fallon and Pearl Mackie star in the audio drama Sour Hall. Plus: Alan Carr is a ray of sunshine, and 10 Things That Scare Me considers our deepest fearsSour Hall
Facebook says group, which has 157,000 members, was taken down for allegedly violating policies unrelated to stock price surgesFacebook has taken down the popular Wall Street discussion group, Robinhood Stock Traders, in a move that its founder described as backlash for conversations buoying shares of GameStop Corp and other companies this week.GameStop, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc and BlackBerry have been at the centre of a market battle as individual investors coordinating on social media including Reddit, and using trading apps such as Robinhood, bought shares and squeezed hedge funds that had bet that those struggling companies would tank. Continue reading...
by Presented by Anushka Asthanawith Kate O'Flaherty; on (#5DFN7)
A routine update to WhatsApp’s privacy policy resulted in a public relations fiasco earlier this month, when viral posts questioning the changes prompted users to try out alternative apps. Kate O’Flaherty breaks down what’s next for WhatsAppWith a user base of 2 billion people, WhatsApp’s dominance has long seemed indisputable. But in recent weeks, millions have suddenly flocked to competitors such as Signal and Telegram.It all began with an ill-phrased notification to WhatsApp users, informing them of modifications to the app’s privacy policy. Freelance journalist Kate O’Flaherty tells Anushka Asthana why alternative messaging platforms suddenly seem so attractive to users, and how WhatsApp has reacted. Continue reading...
Tim Cook lambasts firms ‘built on misleading users, data exploitation, on choices that are not choices at all’Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, has launched his strongest attack on Facebook yet, as the two companies face off over Apple’s plans for new privacy features that would severely limit online advertising.Speaking to the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection conference on “Data Privacy Day”, Cook defended Apple’s decision to introduce the features, called App Tracking Transparency (ATT). Continue reading...
Report by ACCC says tech company has ‘ability and incentive’ to favour own business interestsThe Australian government looks set to open another front in its fight against Google, with the Australian competition watchdog warning the company could potentially be misusing its market power in the $9.1bn online display advertising market.As part of its long-running digital platforms inquiry, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission launched an inquiry in March into the complex world of online ads, and issues with the markets where those ads are bought and sold. Continue reading...
Social media platforms have become information monopolies with runaway scale, an ideal place for conspiracy theories to festerDonald Trump’s election lies and the 6 January attack on the US Capitol have highlighted how big tech has led our society down a path of conspiracies and radicalism by ignoring the mounting evidence that their products are dangerous.But the spread of deadly misinformation on a global scale was enabled by the absence of antitrust enforcement by the federal government to rein in out-of-control monopolies such as Facebook and Google. And there is a real risk social media giants could sidestep accountability once again. Continue reading...
The video game retailer has become one of the hottest stocks this year in a tale that illustrates the changing face of investingThe coronavirus pandemic hit GameStop hard. Like many retailers, already suffering from the shift to online sales, the video games chain is losing money and plans to close 450 stores this year. And yet, surprisingly, GameStop has become one the hottest stocks of the year.The 37-year-old chain store group is now the focus of a David-and-Goliath battle between an army of small investors and Wall Street that shows no signs of abating and has highlighted some fundamental shifts in investing. Continue reading...
Draft Congress report claims AI will make fewer mistakes than humans and lead to reduced casualtiesThe US should not agree to ban the use or development of autonomous weapons powered by artificial intelligence (AI) software, a government-appointed panel has said in a draft report for Congress.The panel, led by former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, on Tuesday concluded two days of public discussion about how the world’s biggest military power should consider AI for national security and technological advancement. Continue reading...
Fine from by the Norwegian Data Protection Authority is 10% of Grindr’s global annual revenueGrindr has been fined 100m krone (£8.6m) by the Norwegian Data Protection Authority after an investigation revealed the dating app was sharing deeply personal information with advertisers, including location, sexual orientation and mental health details.The fine is 10% of Grindr’s global annual revenue and is particularly high because of the personal nature of the information shared. Continue reading...
Company has faced growing calls to better combat misinformation, particularly after the 2020 presidential electionTwitter will allow users to flag and annotate misleading or inaccurate tweets in ongoing efforts to address misinformation on the platform. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5D8Y3)
Top sound, noise-cancelling and comfort with long battery life, plus connection to two devices at onceSony’s top of the line noise-cancelling headphones have long had a winning formula and the latest edition has a much-requested addition – multiple device connectivity – to make them the best of class.The WH-1000XM4 have an RRP of £350 and on initial inspection little has changed for the fourth edition of the 1000X line, with its understated design. The high-quality plastic body is well made and lightweight at 254g but doesn’t feel as premium as some metal or carbon fibre competitors that weigh more than 300g. Continue reading...
Electric car maker was $6 a share when Baillie Gifford-managed fund started buying; now it is $846Elon Musk has made so much money from Tesla that he is now the richest person on the planet. However, the second-biggest winners are investors in an Edinburgh-based investment manager that began backing Musk’s electric car company in 2013.Baillie Gifford’s investments in Tesla have made an extraordinary $29bn (£21bn) for investors including pension funds, foundations and charities, according to figures released to the Guardian. Continue reading...
by Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor on (#5D8BT)
Exclusive: former cybersecurity chief calls for law change and warns situation is ‘close to getting out of control’Insurers are inadvertently funding organised crime by paying out claims from companies who have paid ransoms to regain access to data and systems after a hacking attack, Britain’s former top cybersecurity official has warned.Ciaran Martin, who ran the National Cyber Security Centre until last August, said he feared that so-called ransomware was “close to getting out of control” and that there was a risk that NHS systems could be hit during the pandemic. Continue reading...
Poorly-executed change to terms of service sends messaging app’s subscribers flocking to competitorsA poorly explained update to its terms of service has pushed WhatsApp users to adopt alternative services such as Signal and Telegram in their millions.The exodus was so large that WhatsApp has been forced to delay the implementation of the new terms, which had been slated for 8 February, and run a damage limitation campaign to explain to users the changes they were making. Continue reading...
After skewering YouTubers, the comic’s quick-witted mockumentary returns to take aim at the ecosystem around online celebritiesPls Like (BBC Three) has a problem: how do you spoof the unspoofable? The quick and quick-witted mockumentary, written by and starring Liam Williams, spent two series teasing YouTubers and the like, but now, in the age of TikTok, you have to wonder how it will manage to make comedy out of something with such a rapid turnover. To spend 10 minutes on TikTok is to be bombarded with gags and jokes and memes and viral trends that either refuse to make sense as a point of principle, or only make sense if you know the galaxy of stuff that went before it.Williams has made a smart choice here, by focusing on the influencer industry – with the emphasis on industry – as much as he does on the surreal, rapid-fire humour of the influencers themselves, although he does have plenty of fun with that, too. After the first two series, “greying millennial” Williams (the Pls Like character, not the real one) has decided to reinvent himself, moving away from documenting vlogging culture into the more demanding field of political films, with the ultimate goal of making a feature film called Squad Coals. However, there is not quite the audience he anticipated for his no doubt visceral work on John Prescott, so he attempts to figure out how he himself can become an influencer and get people to pay attention to his serious art. Continue reading...
The Facebook-owned messaging service has been hit by a global backlash over privacy. Many users are migrating to Signal or Telegram. Should you join them?Earlier this month, WhatsApp issued a new privacy policy along with an ultimatum: accept these new terms, or delete WhatsApp from your smartphone. But the new privacy policy wasn’t particularly clear, and it was widely misinterpreted to mean WhatsApp would be sharing more sensitive personal data with its parent company Facebook. Unsurprisingly, it prompted a fierce backlash, with many users threatening to stop using the service.WhatsApp soon issued a clarification, explaining that the new policy only affects the way users’ accounts interact with businesses (ie not with their friends) and does not mandate any new data collection. The messaging app also delayed the introduction of the policy by three months. Crucially, WhatsApp said, the new policy doesn’t affect the content of your chats, which remain protected by end-to-end encryption – the “gold standard” of security that means no one can view the content of messages, even WhatsApp, Facebook, or the authorities. Continue reading...
Can a virtual four-day art class come anywhere close to visiting the famous archipelago? Maybe not, but for our writer it turns out to offer something far more valuableThe creature comes into view quite slowly. It’s like staring into the bushes, realising there is something there, then picking out its parts, assembling the whole that, suddenly, magically, comes alive and steps gently forward. A giant tortoise. Mary-Anne, our guide, laughs: “A tortoise’s mouth always remind me of my grandmother.” As if hearing this, the animal’s wrinkled lip curls slightly, into a sad old grin. The panels on its shell catch the light and the shadows under the leading edge deepen, catching subtle flashes of magenta and ultramarine. I would never have noticed such details without Mary-Anne pointing them out.“There,” she says, “I think we’re finished.” And puts down her brush. Continue reading...
Josh Frydenberg says tech companies’ threats to pull services out of Australia did them a ‘big disservice’Josh Frydenberg has warned the internet giants it is “inevitable” they will pay for news content and their threats to shut down core functions in Australia do them a “big disservice”.At a doorstop on Sunday, the treasurer said the Morrison’s government intended to become a “world leader” in regulating social media and search companies, who he accused of shifting the goalposts in their opposition to the proposed bargaining code of conduct. Continue reading...
The MG ZS EV brings electric cars into the realm of financial possibility for many more families. But is there a gap between possible and practical?The big question facing a lot of prospective electric car owners is: will it make my life easier or harder? It’s a question that I desperately want to answer. As the owner of a VW Tiguan with a dirty secret (the company lied about how bad its emissions were and misled regulators) I am more than ready to embrace the new era of zero-emission cars. But I was not convinced that any electric vehicle on the market would cope with my life – city bound, apartment dwelling, with two kids and a large, often very sandy and badly-behaved dog.Related: Dirty lies: how the car industry hid the truth about diesel emissions Continue reading...
Doom scrolling, oversharing, constantly updating social media feeds – the internet shapes how we see the world, and now it’s changing the stories we tell, writes author Olivia SudjicTowards the end of 2020, a year spent supine on my sofa consuming endless internet like a force-fed goose, I managed to finish a beautifully written debut novel: Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson, which comes out next month. And yet despite the entrancing descriptions, I could barely turn two pages before my hand moved reflexively toward the cracked screen of my phone. Each time I returned to the novel I felt ashamed, and the shame only grew as I realised that, somehow, though the story was set in the present, and involved an often long-distance romance between two young people with phones, it contained not one single reference to what by then I considered a hallmark of present-day humanity: mindless scrolling through social media.There was something sepia-toned about the book thanks to this absence, recalling love stories from previous eras even as it spoke powerfully to more urgent contemporary issues. Azumah Nelson’s narrator mentions phones in the context of calls and private text messages, but the characters are never sullied by association with Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Was this because they were too sensible, ethical or self-assured to use such things, or is the omnipresence of these platforms now so implicit, in literature as in life, that they hardly seemed worth mentioning? Continue reading...
Analysis: tech firm’s refusal to pay news publishers comes as it agrees to do exactly that in FranceThe biggest companies in technology love an ultimatum but rarely do they spell out their threats. This week, however, Google has done exactly that, telling an Australian parliamentary hearing that a proposed law forcing the company to pay news publishers for the right to link to their content “would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia”.The threat, from the company’s Australian managing director, Mel Silva, is the latest escalation in a war of words over the proposal, which seeks to undo some of the damage online business models have dealt to the country’s publishing industry. Continue reading...
House oversight chair seeks inquiry into platform’s potential use to facilitate planning and ties to RussiaAmerican lawmakers have asked the FBI to investigate the role of Parler, the social media website and app popular with the American far right, in the violence at the US Capitol on 6 January.Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House oversight and reform Committee, asked the FBI to review Parler’s role “as a potential facilitator of planning and incitement related to the violence, as a repository of key evidence posted by users on its site, and as a potential conduit for foreign governments who may be financing civil unrest in the United States”. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5D4HN)
Great screen, performance and battery plus new camera with dual 3x and 10x lenses for super zoomingThe Galaxy S21 Ultra is Samsung’s new superphone for 2021 – and comes out firmly as the best of its type, with a price to match.Equipped with a new more powerful camera system – with not one but two optical zoom lenses on the back for a huge 10x optical zoom – it costs from £1,149 and leads Samsung’s 2021 mobile line, which also includes the smaller and cheaper £769 S21 and £819 S21+. Continue reading...
British MP asks firm why it is introducing end-to-end encryption that will ‘put more children at risk’Facebook’s plans to implement end-to-end encryption on all its messaging products will lead to continued exploitation of some of the British children it would otherwise help to safeguard, the company has admitted to a House of Commons committee.The firm operates a number of programmes to find and prevent child exploitation on its platforms, from scanning private messages to acting on referrals from law enforcement and other social media sites. Between them, according to evidence submitted to the home affairs committee, these programmes report around 3,000 at-risk children to the British National Crime Agency each year. Continue reading...
by Mark Sweney Media business correspondent on (#5D3VZ)
Live sport major draw for Prime Video, while Netflix second with 17% share in fourth quarterAmazon proved more popular than Netflix in the run-up to Christmas as live Premier League and international rugby helped it attract half of all new UK subscribers to streaming services in the final quarter last year.There were almost 1.3m new subscriptions to services such as Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime, which includes access to Prime Video as well as perks such as free delivery on purchases, as bored Britain turned to streaming in record numbers to stay entertained during the pandemic. Continue reading...
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