Deadline pushed back amid ongoing wave of US election misinformationFacebook has announced it will extend its ban on political ads in the US for at least another month, as it continues its effort to keep tabs on the wave of misinformation washing over its platform in the wake of the US election.The ad ban, which started a week before the vote and was initially projected to last just one week after, frees Facebook from having to make difficult calls about whether individual adverts are potentially harmful to the democratic process. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5A9JT)
Small, spherical speaker packs a sonic punch for its size but is only for those all-in on Apple’s ecosystemApple’s HomePod mini is finally here – the iPhone maker’s attempt to break the Amazon Echo-Google Home duopoly and put itself back into the voice assistant race.The HomePod mini costs £99 and sits below the full-sized HomePod costing £279. Continue reading...
Neto’s outspokenness landed him on Time’s most influential people list, but also made him the target of a vicious fake news campaignFelipe Neto is an irreverent YouTuber with 40 million followers on his channel where he plays computer games, pokes fun at celebrities and riffs on social media trends.With another 25 million followers on Instagram and Twitter, he is one of the biggest names on Brazil’s boisterous internet. Continue reading...
Video baselessly questioning the collection of valid ballots is retweeted more than 70,000 timesTwitter took more than an hour to flag a highly misleading video shared by Donald Trump, which baselessly pushed claims of ballot fraud and was retweeted more than 70,000 times before the platform took action.The president, who lost the US election to Joe Biden last week, shared a video of election workers in Los Angeles collecting valid, mail-in ballots that were posted on or before election day from a ballot drop box. The video, which has been shared thousands of times in recent days, falsely suggested something unusual was under way and has been repeatedly debunked. The Los Angeles county registrar confirmed that the ballots were collected on 4 November from a box that was locked at 8pm on election day and were later processed and counted. Continue reading...
Platform says it’s received ‘no clarity’ from government about status of proposal to place app under control of US companiesThe popular video-sharing app TikTok says its future has been in limbo since Donald Trump tried to shut it down earlier this fall and is asking a federal court to intervene. Continue reading...
As the Xbox Series X and Series S are released, Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer says the next games generation is all about how many players you have, not how many consoles you shiftThe launch of the Xbox Series X this week marked the start of a new video game console generation – historically a super-exciting time for players, as better technology unlocks new dimensions for games. But despite the usual competitive crowing about teraflops, frame rates and resolutions, there’s a different dimension to the console wars this time around. The looming Netflix-ification of video games threatens to upend the whole idea of video game consoles. Amazon and Google are both working on game streaming services that let people play cutting-edge games without paying for a box that sits under the TV. And Microsoft has spent the past five years spending billions on game developers to shore up its star service: Xbox Game Pass, a monthly subscription that lets you play hundreds of games for a monthly fee.It’s been clear for a while that Microsoft sees the future of gaming in subscriptions, streaming and services. Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox since 2014, is known to players as the guy who shows up on stage at press conferences in video-game T-shirts. Under his leadership, Microsoft has massively broadened its stable of game developers, started selling Xbox games on PC, and engineered its own streaming service to let people play on any screen, known in prototype as Project xCloud. Subs and streaming have already transformed other creative industries, with varying effects on artists – Spotify has been a disaster for musicians, where Netflix has arguably been good news for TV producers. With Microsoft already clearly committed to this direction of travel, what will its effect be on the games industry? Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5A74R)
First M1-based Macs promise big leap in performance and battery life after ditching Intel chipsApple has announced the first in its series of ARM-powered Mac computers with the new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac mini, as it begins the transition from traditional Intel processors to those that run in the iPhone.The new machines mark the first stage of Apple’s huge effort to change the underlying technologies of its Mac computers, replicating the switch it made from PowerPC to Intel processors in 2006, but this time to chips of its own design as used to great effect in the firm’s iPhones and iPads. Continue reading...
New MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac Mini revealed as the company parts ways with Intel6.51pm GMTAnd finally, and unsurprisingly, the UK pricing for the new Macs is a straight symbol-swap for the US pricing. So that means the new MacBook Air starts at £999; the new 13-inch MacBook Pro starts at £1299; and the new Mac mini starts at £699.6.47pm GMTHaha, “one more thing” at the very end – John Hodgman shows up, for a reprise of his role in the “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” adverts. “I’m fast too! Look at me!” Continue reading...
Artificial intelligence is being used to create new songs seemingly performed by Frank Sinatra and other dead stars. ‘Deepfakes’ are cute tricks – but they could change pop for ever‘It’s Christmas time! It’s hot tub time!” sings Frank Sinatra. At least, it sounds like him. With an easy swing, cheery bonhomie, and understated brass and string flourishes, this could just about pass as some long lost Sinatra demo. Even the voice – that rich tone once described as “all legato and regrets” – is eerily familiar, even if it does lurch between keys and, at times, sounds as if it was recorded at the bottom of a swimming pool.The song in question not a genuine track, but a convincing fake created by “research and deployment company” OpenAI, whose Jukebox project uses artificial intelligence to generate music, complete with lyrics, in a variety of genres and artist styles. Along with Sinatra, they’ve done what are known as “deepfakes” of Katy Perry, Elvis, Simon and Garfunkel, 2Pac, Céline Dion and more. Having trained the model using 1.2m songs scraped from the web, complete with the corresponding lyrics and metadata, it can output raw audio several minutes long based on whatever you feed it. Input, say, Queen or Dolly Parton or Mozart, and you’ll get an approximation out the other end. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5A4HT)
A comfortable fit, with solid battery life but big case and no onboard volume controlsBose has finally launched its noise-cancelling Bluetooth QuietComfort Earbuds, a pair that hope to replicate the success of the firm’s legendary overhead QC35 headphones that dominate flights and rail commutes alike.The new earbuds cost £249.95 and sit above the £179.95 Sport Earbuds, which do not have noise cancelling. They look more like small Bluetooth headsets rather than earbuds, similar to Sony’s design for its top noise-cancelling earbuds. Despite being large and relatively heavy at 8.5g each (most earbuds weigh under 6g), they have a light and comfortable fit, thanks to their soft and well-shaped silicone tips. Continue reading...
Our £40,000 Passat GTE completely died just outside its three-year warrantyOur VW Passat GTE – a plug-in electric hybrid – completely died a few months ago. Because it is just outside its three-year warranty, VW wants to charge me more than £2,500 to fix it.The car refused to turn on and, instead, displayed a “hybrid system error”. My breakdown firm took it to my local dealership . They thought they’d fixed it and charged me several hundred pounds. Continue reading...
Tesla and China have stolen a huge march – but the UK’s automotive sector still has the capability to close the gapCarmakers talk a good game. Even the biggest petrolhead automotive executives are now practised at conjuring images of a zero-emissions future, but that future always seems to be just a bit further off. And even while they increase production of electric cars, many insist that there is a stubbornly long line of consumers who will still want the internal combustion engines that also happen to boost their makers’ profits.There are obvious exceptions, led by Tesla, the US electric car pioneer, as well as a bevy of Chinese imitators. In the UK, Bentley last week became the first to break ranks. On Thursday it announced that its Crewe factory would stop making internal-combustion-engined cars completely by 2030, making it the first large British carmaker to do so. Continue reading...
Biden plans to push through aid stimulus amid the pandemic, undo Trump’s corporate tax cuts, and crack down on big techWhen Joe Biden enters the White House on 20 January, he will face arguably the biggest set of challenges a president has had to tackle since the end of the second world war. The coronavirus is raging through the US, millions of Americans are still losing their jobs each month, and the climate crisis – ignored by the Trump administration – is deepening.Biden has set out his economic and policy plans, but without control of the Senate he may struggle to realise them. Official GDP figures for the third quarter showed the size of the economy was still almost 4% below its previous peak, despite a 7.4% recovery from the spring lockdown. Continue reading...
Investment manager Baillie Gifford says rise is no fluke as manufacturer stands to benefit from move away from fossil fuelsOne of the biggest investors in Tesla has defended the explosive growth in the US electric carmaker’s share price, arguing that it is “far from an aberration”.Baillie Gifford, the Edinburgh-based investment manager that runs the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMIT), has been the second-biggest winner from Tesla’s rocketing share price, beaten only by Tesla’s outspoken chief executive, Elon Musk. Continue reading...
by Hannah Verdier, Hannah J Davies and Danielle Steph on (#5A135)
The University Challenge and Newsnight cross-examiner makes a foray into a chattier interview style in his new podcast. Plus: a grim new chapter in season two of Dr DeathThe Lock In with Jeremy Paxman
by Alexis Petridis, Keza MacDonald, Alison Flood, Luc on (#59ZYW)
As parts of the UK enter another month – at least – of being stuck indoors, our critics pick out top music, games, books, TV, dance and art fixes to lift your spirits
I can see how a live-action TV series based on the hit video game series might just work. Forget the tortured mythology – just stick to running around and fightingFew video games have endured like Assassin’s Creed. Twelve different versions have been released since the game was introduced in 2007, each of them more or less clinging to the same highly enjoyable formula. Like history? Like climbing things? Like stabbing people in the skull? Like being intermittently scowled at by Danny Wallace? Like spending the final hour of any pursuit genuinely confused about why an alien has come out of nowhere to instruct you to murder everyone with a sort of glowing death apple? Then Assassin’s Creed is for you.So the news that Netflix has just commissioned a live-action Assassin’s Creed series should be cause for celebration. After all, one of its biggest hits of last year was The Witcher – a series that was based on a game that was based on a book – which shows that there’s plenty of demand for this sort of thing. If done well, the Assassin’s Creed series could be relentlessly entertaining. It could be – and this is not a phrase I use lightly – Game of Thrones with parkour. Isn’t that everything you ever wanted? Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#59Y36)
Apple’s more expensive model has zoom camera and lidar but uses heavier stainless steelApple’s more luxurious version of the iPhone 12 takes the best of the iPhone 4’s looks, adds some polished stainless steel and a third camera on the back – and an extra £200 to the price.The new iPhone 12 Pro costs from £999 and sits between the slightly smaller £699 12 Mini, the same-size £799 12 and the larger, more expensive £1,099 12 Pro Max, which will have a more powerful camera when launched on 13 November. Continue reading...
Musicians condemn payola-style deal to give some songs an algorithmic boostSpotify has been accused of trying to create digital “payola”, after announcing a feature that would give artists an algorithmic boost on the company’s playlists – if they agree to take a cut in the royalties they get paid for the relevant songs.The feature, which Spotify is describing as an “experiment”, will affect playlists including the company’s Artist Radio, which plays songs similar to a particular band, and Autoplay, which continues to play similar music after a playlist has run out of tracks. Continue reading...
A supreme court decision, Trump falsely claimed, would allow ‘rampant and unchecked cheating’ on election dayTwitter on Monday evening flagged a tweet from Donald Trump, which baselessly claimed a recent supreme court decision would lead to voter fraud, as misinformation. Continue reading...
by Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor on (#59W8Z)
Criminal gangs target NHS while hostile states hit vaccine research, says cybersecurity centreBritain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has dealt with 194 coronavirus-related incidents involving hostile states and criminal gangs, which led to the overall number of serious hacker attacks reaching an all time record of 723 over the past year.The intelligence unit said that while Russia and other states – such as China – had targeted British vaccine research, it was criminal gangs who frequently targeted other parts of the NHS, often to attempt online fraud. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#59V02)
Smaller, lighter, slightly cheaper version of the flagship triathlon watch ticks almost every boxGarmin’s latest multisport smartwatch is the Forerunner 745, which takes almost everything from the firm’s top model and squeezes it into a smaller, lighter and cheaper device that’ll track pretty much anything.The new model costs £450, putting it between the £250 Forerunner 245 and the top £520 Forerunner 945. With the same sized screen as the other two models, it is only 1.5mm wider, 1.1mm thicker and 8.5g heavier than the cheaper version, making it a compact sports watch. Continue reading...
The first iterations of ultra-fast 5G have now been switched on in some parts of the countryThe arrival of 5G in Australia will provide much-needed high speeds for areas left lagging behind by the National Broadband Network, but for most mobile users the day-to-day difference will not be immediately noticeable.The thing about internet access is that you only really notice it when you don’t have it, or if it isn’t working well. Continue reading...
Brothers Khaled and Mohammad Aljawad offer a rare insight into life as a refugee in the UK with this powerful choose-your-own-adventure playEvery foreign humanitarian crisis forces a government to balance compassion and restraint. To what degree should a country fulfil its moral obligation to offer aid and sanctuary to refugees? At what point does national benevolence threaten national stability? Sober deliberation soon descends into hysterics. Respondents to a 1940 poll that asked British citizens to estimate the number of refugees from Nazi Germany who had come to Britain in the previous six years put the number at 2-4 million. The true figure was just 73,500.Abuses – everything from verbal hatred to anti-immigration posters – are predicated on such fears and manipulative exaggerations. This is one of the clear lines drawn by Have Your Passport Ready, an interactive work of autobiography by Syrian-born brothers Khaled and Mohammad Aljawad. Continue reading...
Latest move in an ongoing saga comes after CEO Jack Dorsey was grilled by Republican lawmakers during a Senate hearing on WednesdayTwitter said on Friday it had changed its policy and lifted a freeze it placed on the account of the New York Post after the newspaper published controversial articles about Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.It is the latest move in an ongoing saga that called into question the moderation policies of social media platforms. Both Twitter and Facebook took measures to limit the spread of an article published by the New York Post on 14 October, which claimed to be based on documents gleaned from an abandoned computer belonging to the Democratic candidate’s son. Continue reading...
The platform has a confusing cultural appropriation policy, but it deserves some credit for attempting to tackle the issue at allDo you suffer from Justin Trudeau-esque levels of judgment when it comes to fancy dress? Are you scrambling to find a last-minute Halloween costume? Pinterest is here to help save you from yourself! The visual social media platform, which many people use to search for Halloween inspiration, has said it is limiting recommendations for “costumes that appropriate cultures”. This builds on a policy from 2016 prohibiting advertisements with “culturally inappropriate costumes” and making it easy for users to report culturally insensitive content.But what exactly does Pinterest consider “culturally inappropriate” or “culturally insensitive”? The company doesn’t make that clear. Nor does it make clear what “limiting” means. (I reached out to Pinterest for comment but didn’t hear back.) My own research didn’t provide much clarification: when I searched for “Native American Halloween costume”, for example, plenty of examples came up. There were also plenty of results for “Geisha Halloween costume” and “Arab Sheikh Halloween costume”. And when I searched “terrorist Halloween costume” a picture of a little white boy dressed as an Arab suicide bomber came up. Continue reading...
by Hannah J Davies, Hannah Verdier and Charlie Philli on (#59Q9W)
Resistance offers unsanitised tales from the frontline of the movement for black lives. Plus: warmth and assurance from Gen Z pop star YungbludResistance
Tech platforms have an increased responsibility with increasing threats from conspiracy theories, the government – and even the presidentFour years ago, foreign actors leveraged social media to interfere in the US presidential election. This year, too, misinformation is among the greatest threats to American democracy, experts warn.With conspiracy theories such as QAnon flourishing, a president who regularly uses social media platforms to demonize his opponents or spread falsehoods about the election process, and a federal government that has done little to combat foreign election interference online, tech platforms’ responsibility in the 2020 election process has only grown. Continue reading...
Victoria’s privacy commissioner has questioned why the food delivery service needs to take photos of driver’s licences or other ID at allUber’s food delivery drivers are now required to take a photo of the driver’s licence or other ID of people who order alcohol but, Uber Eats has insisted, the pictures won’t be retained.Uber Eats has advised Victorian customers ordering alcohol that from Thursday 29 October “delivery partners will need to take a photo of your ID before each delivery in order to verify your age”. The company doesn’t deliver alcohol in other states and territories. Continue reading...
Facebook, Twitter and Google chiefs to argue against law’s repeal amid unsubstantiated claims of anti-conservative biasThe CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google are expected to tell lawmakers in a rare appearance before Congress that a federal law protecting internet companies is crucial to free expression online. Continue reading...
Canadian police officer tells extradition hearing Washington asked for phone and laptop to be put in ‘Faraday bag’ to prevent data being ‘erased remotely’A Canadian police officer has testified about his arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a US extradition warrant, revealing that Washington had requested that data on her phone and laptop be secured so that it could not be “erased remotely.”Royal Canadian mounted police constable Winston Yep – the first witness to testify in the extradition case – arrested the Chinese telecom giant’s chief financial officer in December 2018 during a stopover in Vancouver. Continue reading...
From Fallout 4 to A Short Hike, games with an autumnal setting not only provide beautiful visuals – but a melancholic hit of fleeting time, tooThere is something about the clocks going back that I inextricably associate with video games. Perhaps it is the prospect of all those long evenings, hiding from the weather, snuggled up in an easy chair with a joypad and a mug of tea, lost in some fantastical role-playing adventure. This is also the period in which the year’s biggest games are released in time for Christmas, so there is the extra pleasure of discovering new characters, new worlds, as the endless drizzle falls outside.There are games that simply provide us with beautiful autumn environments. Firewatch envelops us in the rolling, red-tinged forests of Wyoming; the mountain walks in A Short Hike present the soft auburn hues of the season in an almost impressionistic style; and Forza Horizon 4 perfectly replicates the wet, leaf-scattered roads of October country lanes. The richness with which modern visuals capture the reds and oranges of the season, the way HDR technology simulates that particular low, coppery sunlight as it glints across the screen, gives these games the cosiness of an open fire. Continue reading...
The tech giant claims that no one is forced to use its search engine. All power to regulators set on proving otherwiseSundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is a mild-mannered software engineer who is not good at games of verbal fisticuffs with US politicians. He received a drubbing last month during the “big tech” congressional hearing.Pichai can, however, summon lawyers and lobbyists galore as soon as the game gets more serious, which it definitely has. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) last week launched a huge and historic antitrust case against Google, accusing the tech company of abusing its position to maintain an illegal monopoly over internet searches and search advertising. Continue reading...
In Ubisoft’s next game, populism has morphed into authoritarianism in a virtual, futuristic London. It’s up to you to lead the fightbackArmed militia stroll around London, picking fights where they please and shutting down small gatherings of masked protesters demanding their freedoms on street corners. Drones buzz above, monitoring citizens’ movements and following anyone suspicious. In Watch Dogs Legion’s future dystopian British capital, Brexit happened years ago, Scotland has seceded from the union, and the country has been overtaken by private, corporate interests who’ve wrested control from the government and framed a collective of hacker protesters, DeadSec, for a series of terrorist attacks. People are pissed off, and ready to rise up. You, the player, are the catalyst that makes that happen.Like Grand Theft Auto, Watch Dogs conjures a huge living city out of code, filled with thousands of individual characters who go about their lives, going to work, visiting their sister, driving around in the rain. But unlike Grand Theft Auto, your weapon here isn’t a gun: it’s a smartphone. You can hijack drones and security cameras, hack into laptops and terminals, and view a precis of someone’s recent internet search history and talents by looking at them and pressing a button. If they seem useful, you can recruit them to your cause. Continue reading...
The streaming service offered nuggets of TV fit for the commute – and then we stopped going to the office. Now it’s folding, but were any of its shows worth watching?
It had big backers and star names, but short-form Netflix rival failed to deliver content in the way people want to consume itWhen some of the biggest names in Hollywood and Wall Street linked arms with some of the best-known business executives and tech firms, it looked like their plan to become the Netflix of mobile streaming – with bite-size TV and film content designed to appeal to viewers on the move – would be a sure-fire winnerBarely six months after launch, Quibi, named after the “quick bites” of content of less than 10 minutes, has become the first casualty of the streaming wars. Continue reading...
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar livestreamed the video game on Twitch – and by every metric their unusual voter outreach event was a successOn Tuesday night, US members of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar held what is perhaps the most unusual voter outreach event in recent memory. They signed on to play a livestreamed video game on Twitch, and joined a crew of online strangers to build a spaceship and try to get away with murder – literally.Related: Why are 400,000 people watching AOC play the game Among Us on Twitch? Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian