New owner the New York Times says the hit game will (initially) remain free, but we look at some back up options if it ends up behind a paywallThe New York Times acquisition of Wordle has left devotees of the mega-hit word guessing game fearful that it will – like the newspaper’s crossword and other puzzles – end up locked behind a paywall, despite the Times’ assurances to the contrary.While it’s unlikely that any other game will achieve the viral success of Wordle, there are free, browser-based alternatives out there to puzzle over as you sip your morning coffee. Continue reading...
Founder Daniel Ek’s bid to make the anti-vaxxer controversy go away ignores the fact that it is paying the US comedian to appear on its serviceTwo decades ago, the late and much-lamented David Bowie said something that was eerily prophetic. “Music itself,” he observed, “is going to become like running water or electricity.” His point was that in 2002 we were still carrying our music in little bottles called iPods, just as Victorian travellers in India carried bottles of drinking water because you couldn’t rely on their being a safe and sanitary public supply.Spool forward 20 years and Spotify, the Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded in 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, is, in Bowie’s terms, the global music authority, providing sanitised recorded music everywhere, on demand. At the moment, it has something like 406 million active monthly users, of whom more than 180 million pay for its “premium” (advertising-free) service. Continue reading...
The Uruguayan photographer on snapping a sunbather in São Paulo, BrazilAfter moving from Uruguay to São Paulo, Brazil, during the pandemic, photographer Pablo Albarenga revelled in exploring his new home by bike. It felt like a safe, freeing way to familiarise himself with its vastness; the Brazilian city is the fourth largest in the world, and often referred to as a concrete jungle.
With KP Snacks the latest cyber-attack victim, firms must learn to defend themselves against a mounting menaceThe January snow lay thick on the Moscow ground, as masked officers of the FSB – Russia’s fearsome security agency – prepared to smash down the doors at one of 25 addresses they would raid that day.Their target was REvil, a shadowy conclave of hackers that claimed to have stolen more than $100m (£74m) a year through “ransomware” attacks, before suddenly disappearing. Continue reading...
Proposed laws require tech firms to prevent publication of harmful content or face substantial finesJoining digital pile-ons, sending threatening social media posts and deliberately posting hoax bomb threats are among the new criminal offences that could result in jail sentences under proposed online safety laws.Tech firms will also be required to prevent users from being exposed to content such as revenge porn, fraud and the sale of illegal drugs, or face the threat of substantial fines under the proposed changes. Previously, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter had to take such content down if it was flagged to them but now they would be legally required to prevent users from being exposed to them in the first place. Continue reading...
Zuckerberg blames ‘headwinds’ from Apple’s new iOS and changes in privacy for the record drop in valueMark Zuckerberg blamed “headwinds” this week after investors wiped about $220bn off Meta’s market value. One of the biggest blows came from longtime rival Apple.Apple has long marketed itself as a champion of privacy, explicitly positioning itself in opposition to Facebook. Tensions between the two giants escalated with the release of Apple’s new operating system, which Meta feared would hamper its revenue model. Continue reading...
Move follows warnings Mark Zuckerberg’s plan for metaverse could lead to increased online harassmentMark Zuckerberg’s virtual reality business is to introduce a mandatory distance between people’s digital avatars after warnings that the social media tycoon’s plans for a metaverse will lead to a new wave of online harassment.Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is making a multibillion-dollar bet on VR as the next source of growth for his empire but his strategy has already been dogged by warnings that virtual worlds are rife with abuse. Continue reading...
Paul Dowling, Janet Fraser, Rob Doran and Ian Elliott remember playing earlier versions of the game before Wordle’s viral explosionI was amused to read your editorial (2 February) about the internet game Wordle, created by Josh Wardle for his partner and subsequently sold to the New York Times.I used to play this game on paper in the 1990s with my wife at the time and have included a brief discussion of it in my book Sociology as Method. I describe the game as a recontextualisation of a board game called Mastermind, which was played with coloured pegs rather than words. One player placed an arrangement of pegs hidden at one end of the board, and the other had to try to deduce the arrangement before the board was filled with their incorrect attempts. Continue reading...
Analysis: shares in Meta fell by 25% after latest results revealed first-ever decline in daily users• Facebook’s first ever drop in daily users prompts Meta shares to tumble
KP Snacks also warns of supply problems for McCoy’s and Tyrrells crisps after ransomware attack hits IT systemsA cyber-attack targeting KP Snacks could lead to a shortage of some of Britain’s most popular snacks including Hula Hoops, McCoy’s and Tyrrells crisps, Butterkist, Skips, Nik Naks and KP Nuts.The company has sent a letter to stores saying the ransomware attack, which has crippled its IT and communications systems, could lead to supply issues until “the end of March at the earliest” as it “cannot safely process orders or dispatch goods”. Continue reading...
Subscriber outlook overshadowed fourth-quarter earnings as the company’s shares fell nearly 18% in late tradingSpotify on Wednesday forecast current-quarter subscribers lower than Wall Street expectations, but executives sought to reassure investors that growth had not cratered even as it deals with the fallout from the controversy around the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.The company’s shares fell as much as 18% in late trading after Spotify reported the subscriber outlook. Continue reading...
Will the hit game imminently be locked behind a paywall or stay as it is? What about ads? The NYT’s head of games explains the planIn a month of spectacular video game industry buyouts, symbolised by Microsoft’s incredible $68bn swoop for Activision Blizzard, there is one purchase that has sent paroxysms of fear across the planet. On Monday, the New York Times revealed that it had bought the viral megahit Wordle for a “low seven figure sum”. The web-based word puzzle, which launched in October, was originally intended as a gift from software engineer Josh Wardle to his partner. But it has become a viral sensation, amassing an audience of millions – and key to its appeal is the fact that it’s free, with no ads.So what does a big newspaper like the New York Times want with a game like Wordle, and what happens next? Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: a radical rethink of how the company uses cookies seems at first to be a win for privacy advocates. Here’s what you need to know
Watch Duty, launched last year, sends users push notifications about new and spreading fire, giving them vital time to prepareGrowing threats from wildfires loom large across the American west as blazes burn with greater ferocity and frequency. Alongside them, residents’ calls for on-demand information during disasters has only continued to grow.In California, just hours north of the tech hub in Silicon Valley, a new app called Watch Duty has jumped into the void. The budding platform promises to alert and warn users about encroaching wildfires in real time – and it’s free. Continue reading...
Jack Sweeney, who wants Tesla CEO to hand over $50k to remove flight tracker bot, sets sights on other celebritiesThe Florida teenager demanding Elon Musk hand over $50,000 to stop him tweeting the location of the billionaire’s private jet has said he is creating dozens more accounts tracking the movements of other rich and famous people.Jack Sweeney, a 19-year-old college student and aviation enthusiast, said he had created 16 automated Twitter accounts, or bots, similar to @ElonJet to follow jets owned by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (@GatesJet), Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban and the rapper Drake. Continue reading...
The feud between major artists and Spotify has overlooked problems faced by those with less power and financesThe past week has seen artists such as Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash and Nils Lofgren stand up to Spotify, boycotting the streaming giant because of Covid-19 misinformation spread on its popular and exclusively available The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. Their protest has been applauded by many, but indie rapper Open Mike Eagle tweeted a very different perspective.“I love Neil Young but i’m not following that crazy rich man anywhere,” he wrote before adding: “what’s the protest option for non set for life musicians?” Continue reading...
The Netflix documentary unravels the financial and emotional cons of Simon Leviev, who scammed women who thought he was their friend or boyfriendWhen Cecilie Fjellhøy first met the man she knew as Simon Leviev for a 10am coffee date at the Four Seasons Hotel in London in January 2018, he seemed to align with his Tinder profile. His pictures were flashy – designer clothes and expensive sunglasses in luxury cars and private jets – and his in-person demeanor was equally debonair. “He has this magnetism,” Fjellhøy recalls of her first impression in the Netflix documentary The Tinder Swindler, out this week. “There’s something about this guy that is special.”Fjellhøy, then a 29-year-old Norwegian graduate student living in London, was charmed by the man who claimed to be the “prince of diamonds”, a billionaire heir to the diamond fortune of the Israeli magnate Lev Leviev. And she was surprised: Simon had to leave that afternoon for a business trip in Sofia, Bulgaria. Would she like to go with him via private jet? She agreed – “I felt I would be stupid if I said no,” she says – and the film, directed by Felicity Morris, stitches together the trip through the documentation on Fjellhøy’s phone. There’s a “Yolo” WhatsApp message to her friends; photos of Leviev’s security team aboard the private jet; video of the woman and toddler Leviev said were his ex and child, and one in which Fjellhøy kisses him on the cheek. They spent the night together in the hotel, and she flew back to London the next day, smitten with the man with whom she began exchanging messages daily. Continue reading...
Whether you’re boycotting the service over Joe Rogan or just looking for something new, it’s a cinch to cancel and you can take your playlists tooHow do you switch over from Spotify to another music service? What are the options? And which service pays artists the most?The ongoing controversy over Spotify’s flagship podcaster Joe Rogan, whose vaccine misinformation has led to musicians pulling their music from the platform, has also caused a lot of listeners to look for alternatives. Spotify reportedly accounts for 31% of the total music streaming market, more than double its nearest competitor – Apple Music – at 15%. Continue reading...
The puzzle’s global success has turned Josh Wardle into a megastar in the gaming world and bemused his familyHe is the toast of New York, of London – and of a small village called Llanddewi Rhydderch.Just four months after Josh Wardle invented the wonderfully simple and soothing puzzle Wordle, he is a megastar in the world of games and is a great deal wealthier after the New York Times acquired his creation for a seven-figure sum. Continue reading...
‘Rolling stop’ lets vehicles go through intersections with all-way stop signs at up to 5.6mphTesla is recalling nearly 54,000 cars and SUVs because their “Full Self-Driving” software lets them roll through stop signs.Documents posted on Tuesday by US safety regulators say Tesla will disable the feature with an over-the-internet software update. The “rolling stop” feature allows vehicles to go through intersections with all-way stop signs at up to 5.6mph (9 km/h). Continue reading...
This weird postmodern drama sees a lonely teenager join a virtual world where she becomes a hugely successful singerThere’s some amazing big-screen spectacle in this weird postmodern emo photo-love drama from Japanese anime director Mamoru Hosoda, whose previous film Mirai elevated him to auteur status. Suzu, voiced by Kaho Nakamura, is a deeply unhappy and lonely teenager at high school, who lives with her dad. Her mum died some years ago, attempting (successfully) to save a child from drowning and Suzu can’t come to terms with the zero-sum pointlessness of this calamity: a total stranger was saved but her mother died. Or not zero in fact: while her loss increased the sum-total of unhappiness, the most popular boy in school – a friend since they were little – is tender and protective towards Suzu.Her life is complicated further when she is persuaded to join a virtual reality meta-universe called U, a glittering unearthly city like a next-level Manhattan or Shibuya. (Presumably entry into this fantasy world needs a VR headset, although oddly this is not made plain.) Participants have their biometrics read and get an enhanced avatar of themselves and Suzu finds that she is now “Belle”, an ethereally beautiful young woman with quirky freckles and a wonderful singing voice. To her astonishment, Suzu finds that Belle is becoming a colossally famous singer – but at the very high point of this meta-success she comes across the Beast, who disrupts one of her concerts: a brutish, aggressive outcast figure loathed by the self-appointed vigilante guardians of U. Continue reading...
Puzzle creator Josh Wardle ‘thrilled’ that newspaper is taking over internet sensationThe New York Times has acquired the viral word game Wordle for an undisclosed seven-figure sum, the publisher announced on Monday.Created by a Reddit engineer and launched in October, Wordle gives players just six guesses to determine a five-letter word that changes every day. The soothing daily puzzle has become a hit since its launch, quickly attracting hundreds of thousands, then millions, of players. Social media posts about its game of the day have become ubiquitous, along with screenshots of the game’s distinctive grid. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5VKNY)
Good sound, noise cancelling and spatial audio, with six-hour battery, Android support and cheaper priceA new, cheaper alternative to the AirPods Pro is here – and it is also from Apple. The Beats Fit Pro have many of the same features but cost £40 less, are more workout-friendly than their cousins and work with Android, too.Priced at £199 ($199.99/A$299.95) they offer the same noise-cancelling as the AirPods Pro and features such as spatial audio virtual surround sound. Continue reading...
Modern TVs gather data that can be monetised. How much of this surveillance can you avoid without turning your smart TV dumb?Watching TV feels like a benign pastime, but as all TVs become “smart” – connected to the internet via your router – they are gaining the ability to watch you too. As soon as you switch them on, smart TVs made by the likes of LG, Samsung and Sony are gathering data from the TV itself, as well as from the operating system and apps. Then there are the devices you plug into your TV, such as Google’s Chromecast, Apple TV and Amazon’s Fire Stick.A TV is no longer just a device for showing you content – it has become a two-way mirror allowing you to be observed in real time by a network of advertisers and data brokers, says Rowenna Fielding, director of data protection consultancy Miss IG Geek. “The purpose of this is to gather as much information as possible about your behaviour, interests, preferences and demographics so it can be monetised, mainly through targeted advertising.” Continue reading...
Facebook’s plans to build a $10bn virtual reality world were ridiculed yet the rest of Silicon Valley has serious Fomo and is piling inOnce upon a time, a very long time ago – until Thursday 28 October 2021, to be precise – the term “metaverse” was known only to lexicographers and science fiction enthusiasts. And then, suddenly, it was everywhere. How come? Simply this: Mark Zuckerberg, the supreme leader of Facebook, pissed off by seeing nothing but bad news about his company in the media, announced that he was changing its name to Meta and would henceforth be devoting all his efforts – plus $10bn (£7bn) and thousands of engineers – to building a parallel universe called the metaverse.And then, because the tech industry and the media that chronicle its doings are basically herds of mimetic sheep, the metaverse was suddenly the newest new thing. This was news to Neal Stephenson, the writer who actually invented the term in his 1992 novel, Snow Crash. “Since there seems to be growing confusion on this,” he tweeted, “I have nothing to do with anything that FB is up to involving the metaverse, other than the obvious fact that they’re using a term I coined in Snow Crash. There has been zero communication between me and FB & no biz relationship.” Continue reading...
As part of his drive to use tech to close social divides, the California Democrat has written a book, Dignity in the Digital AgeShortly after Silicon Valley sent him to Washington, Ro Khanna visited “Silicon Holler”, a name coined by a colleague, Hal Rogers, for the fledgling tech sector in eastern Kentucky.The two congressmen’s districts had little in common. Khanna’s was among the wealthiest, most diverse and most Democratic. Rogers’ was among the poorest, whitest and most Republican. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5VGRY)
Novel device aims to be a multi-tasking power house, but gaps in hardware and software let it downMicrosoft’s second attempt at its interesting dual-screen Android smartphone corrects some mistakes of the original, but falls short of a revolution due to a series of oddities created by its physical laptop-like form.Looking more like a tiny convertible computer than a phone, the Surface Duo 2 starts at £1,349 ($1,499/A$2,319), a lot for a regular smartphone but slightly cheaper than folding-screen rivals. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hannah Verdier and Hollie Richardso on (#5VGQQ)
The Obamas-backed podcast The Big Hit Show dives deep into the hit vampire tales, and the misogynistic hatred its female fans receive. Plus: trickster psychics are exposedThe Big Hit Show
Jack, 8, became enamoured with Joe Danger but Apple iOS updates left mobile game defunct, prompting his father to seek developer’s helpAn eight-year-old boy has inspired a developer to relaunch a popular mobile game after it became defunct, leaving his father desperate to find a solution.Jack, who was diagnosed with autism, became enamoured with the game Joe Danger – a motorbike-riding daredevil who takes players on a race across the desert – as a source of joy and a way to cope with stress. Continue reading...
Apple surpasses analysts’ predictions with 11% higher revenues compared with last year despite supply chain issues and Omicron surgeApple reported record sales in the holiday quarter, beating estimates as it benefited from high iPhone demand in China and withstood constraints caused by supply chain disruptions and the Omicron variant.Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, had warned in October that chip shortages were affecting the manufacturing of most Apple products and could lead to over $6bn in lost sales. But on Thursday, the company celebrated a successful quarter in a call with investors. Continue reading...
by Harriet Sherwood Arts and culture correspondent on (#5VG27)
Singer thanked for ‘standing up against inaccuracies' after the streaming service refused to remove Joe Rogan’s podcastThe World Health Organization chief has backed the veteran rock star Neil Young in his dispute with the music streaming behemoth Spotify, thanking the musician for “standing up against misinformation and inaccuracies” around Covid vaccinations.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director general, tweeted that “we all have a role to play to end this pandemic and infodemic” – in particular social media platforms. Continue reading...
Urged on by his millennial daughter, Dominik Diamond is only eight or so years late to this particular party, and finds that an ending can really make or break a game‘OK, Dad, this is an incredible essay on the effects of grief and grey morality in a postapocalyptic society,” says the eldest child, AKA the millennial. “It’s got proper female characters, progressive takes on sexuality and tonnes of rain.”“They’ve made a video game of The Handmaid’s Tale?” Continue reading...
Center for Countering Digital Hate research calculates that anti-vaccine figures could be making $12.5m from the online platformA group of vaccine-sceptic writers are generating revenues of at least $2.5m (£1.85m) a year from publishing newsletters for tens of thousands of followers on the online publishing platform Substack, according to new research.Prominent figures in the anti-vaccine movement including Dr Joseph Mercola and Alex Berenson have large followings on Substack, which has more than 1 million paying subscribers who sign up for individual newsletters from an array of authors who include novelist Salman Rushdie, the writer musician Patti Smith and former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings. Continue reading...
Elon Musk says continuing profitability ‘makes us a real company at this point’Tesla posted record fourth-quarter and full-year earnings in what it called a “breakthrough year”, despite supply chain struggles.The company made $5.5bn last year compared with the previous record of $3.47bn in net income posted in 2020. It was the electric vehicle and solar panel maker’s third straight profitable year. Continue reading...
Machine was ‘significantly better’ than humans at tricky procedure to connect two ends of intestineThe robot surgeon will see you now.For years, the world of medicine has been steadily advancing the art of robot-assisted procedures, enabling doctors to enhance their technique inside the operating theatre. Continue reading...
The new Double J Weekends host loves being online, be it watching a TikToker reading out court transcripts or enjoying strangely threatening tweetsI am a child of the internet. I was always drawn to computers and tech, and used to beg my dad to bring us to his office on a weekend so we could use the high-speed internet to play Neopets games. As I got older it was all MSN, MySpace, Paramore fan forums, Tumblr, Twitter and now TikTok. I want nothing more than to zone out and look at my little pictures.One of my favourite things about the internet is that it allows you to see everyone’s best joke. The moment in their life where they were at their absolute funniest – whether it be because they had a moment of brilliant wit or because they got pulled through a panel roof while practising for a high school play (I assume). Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: meet the vehicle for newly-minted online millionaires to throw their influence into the real world – and the frontier for the next wave of crypto chaos
The software company’s success can be attributed to its cloud computing businessMicrosoft reported a profit of $18.8bn for the last three months of 2021, ahead of analysts expectations, but its share price initially slumped over 5% after another rocky day on Wall Street.The Seattle-based software giant reported revenues of $51.7bn, an increase of 20% compared to the same period last year and ahead of expectations. But the news was not enough to impress investors who appear to have soured on the tech sector after a historic boom in share prices during the pandemic. Continue reading...
Activists claim they could paralyse trains moving Russian forces for potential attack on UkraineCyber-activists opposed to the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, say they have penetrated the state-run railway’s computer system and threatened to paralyse trains moving Russian troops and artillery to the country for a potential attack on Ukraine.Their goals include freeing political prisoners, removing Russian soldiers from Belarus and preventing Belarusians from “dying for this meaningless war”, a person involved in the attack told the Guardian. Continue reading...
Lack of trust in official currency has led to surging interest in cryptocurrencies – despite their volatility and government oppositionIn the offices of Altcointurk, a cryptocurrency hub tucked away in a sidestreet in Istanbul’s bustling Kadıköy neighbourhood, two wall-mounted TV sets showed the live value of currencies bitcoin and Ethereum, both graphs sloping downwards.Altcointurk’s all-male inhabitants were not worried – in the chaotic world of cryptocurrency, their fortunes could soon change. Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: whatever reservations we have about the merger, it’s a chance to bring meaningful, positive change for the people who actually make games
A report found the app that will be used to monitor athletes’ health and travel data has a ‘devastating’ encryption flawWith the Beijing Olympics just weeks away, concerns are mounting over a mandatory health app for competing athletes, after a new report revealed the app contains security flaws and a list of “politically sensitive” words that have been marked for censorship.The report, published by University of Toronto’s research and strategic policy unit Citizen Lab, found that the My2022 app, which will be used to monitor athletes’ health and travel data, has a “devastating” encryption flaw that leaves users’ files and media vulnerable. Continue reading...
