by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5YS09)
Solar charging GPS watch has excellent health and fitness tracking and rugged designGarmin’s latest rugged solar-powered smartwatch, the Instinct 2, promises unlimited battery life. You just have to stay in the sun.Looking more like a rugged digital watch such as Casio’s legendary G-Shock than an Apple or Samsung smartwatch, the Garmin feels made to take a beating with its monochrome screen, physical buttons and sturdy body. Continue reading...
Andrew Rea’s ‘try, fail and try again’ YouTube cookery show – in which he often cooks food from films and cartoons – gets more viewers than Nigella, Jamie Oliver and Tom Kerridge combined. But its massive, viral success nearly cost the self-taught chef his mental healthAndrew Rea is one of the biggest chefs in the world, though that’s no guarantee you’ve heard of him. He has no TV show. No restaurant ever bore his name. He has never worked as a chef, nor attended culinary school. He is almost entirely self-taught, he says, from watching cookery videos online. This isn’t hard to believe. To watch Rea cook is as much an instruction of what not to do. Sauces are surrendered. Soufflés are sunk. He once took seven attempts to make cacio e pepe, a pasta dish famous for including just cheese and pepper. He succeeds mostly because he fails. It’s part of the charm. He’s not, he’ll happily admit, a professional cook in any meaningful sense – apart from the fact that he now earns millions doing it.Rea’s YouTube cookery channel, Babish Culinary Universe – named after his favourite character from The West Wing, a slightly incongruous call that rapidly became too big to fiddle with – currently boasts 9.5m subscribers. That’s a lot. Nigella Lawson’s latest TV series – Eat, Cook, Repeat, which aired during England’s second national lockdown – was considered a ratings smash with 3m viewers, over 1m more than her previous show. Rea’s videos, meanwhile, regularly rack up hits in the tens of millions. Continue reading...
The Washington DC shooting was the most recent to spawn out of the extremist culture of unregulated ‘chan’ message boardsWhen police in Washington DC burst into a fifth-floor apartment building on 22 April in search of a man who allegedly had shot four people at random, they found Raymond Spencer dead by his own hand, a cache of guns and ammunition, and a poster with an ironic white supremacist meme.The poster invoking the meme, popular on the extremist online forum 4chan, was a stark reminder that this attack blamed on Spencer, 23, was only the most recent mass casualty attack to spawn out of the ugly extremist culture of unregulated internet message boards such as 4chan. Continue reading...
Musk’s acquisition of the media platform will be a boon for free speech, he says. Governments are the ones to judge thatOn Friday 8 January 2021, Twitter kicked Donald Trump off its platform and an eerie calm enveloped parts of our global public sphere. Depriving him of his online megaphone was a compelling demonstration of how a tech platform had acquired an awesome power – the ability effectively to silence an elected president.But what kind of power is it really? Many years ago, in a landmark book, Power: A Radical View, the sociologist Steven Lukes wrote that power comes in three varieties: the ability to stop people doing what they want to do; the ability to compel them to do what they don’t want to do; and the ability to shape the way they think. Continue reading...
Scams relating to digital ‘coins’ are growing – but data reveals authorities are making record seizures of assets tooIn July 2021, specialist police officers in Manchester swooped on an international cryptocurrency scam, seizing USB sticks and an online safe containing £16m worth of digital coins, mostly ethereum.A month earlier, Leicestershire police had confiscated 10 types of cryptocurrency after raiding the home of a drug dealer who used digital assets to buy and sell class A drugs. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hollie Richardson, Hannah Verdier a on (#5YMYD)
The actor takes a hopeful look at the ideas to save our environment, alongside guests from Adam McKay to Prince William. Plus: five investigative podcasts we couldn’t switch off
What is driving the box-office success of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, reboots of classic games such as Crazy Taxi and even talk of a Sega Cinematic Universe?Sega, it seems, is having a moment. The veteran publisher’s movie sequel Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has become a huge box office success, hitting $300m in revenue, despite lukewarm reviews. It was also revealed that a film version of classic brawler Streets of Rage is in development, scripted by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad; some are postulating that this could be the beginning of a Sega Cinematic Universe. And last week, sources within the company revealed to Bloomberg that reboots of classic early 2000s titles Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio are in development, part of a new Super Games initiative to build Fortnite-like communities around its titles.Why so much Sega? Why now? Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has perhaps arrived at a good time with families venturing out to cinemas once again, desperate for something lighthearted that everyone can enjoy – and not having much choice when they reach the multiplex. And whatever you think about the finer points of the movie, it’s fast and fun, with an amusing performance from Idris Elba as Knuckles and Jim Carrey back to his hammy, gurning best. It captures the feel of those original Mega Drive games, with their madcap, screwball energy and bright, blue-sky optimism. Continue reading...
Unicef says virus is ‘canary in the coalmine’ that shows up the gaps in vaccination campaigns for preventable illnessMeasles cases have surged nearly 80% worldwide this year amid disruption caused by Covid-19, the UN has said, warning that the rise of the “canary in a coalmine” illness indicated that outbreaks of other diseases were likely to be on the way.The coronavirus pandemic has interrupted vaccination campaigns for non-Covid diseases around the world, creating a “perfect storm” that could put millions of children’s lives at risk, the UN’s children’s agency Unicef and the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement. Continue reading...
The Facebook parent company is continuing a major rebrand of its products and focusing more heavily on the metaverseMeta made a cautious recovery on Wednesday with its first earnings report since a disastrous fourth quarter, sending shares up 13% in after-hours trading.The company’s reported total revenue for the quarter was $27.91bn, missing analysts’ estimates of $28.20bn, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Wednesday’s earnings are Meta’s first since a dramatic report in February, when Meta lost a record $230bn in market value after revealing that Facebook had recorded its first-ever drop in daily user numbers. Continue reading...
Acquisition agreement allows Musk to tweet about deal but not to disparage firm or its representativesControversy grew on Wednesday over tweets from Elon Musk engaging with criticism of Twitter employees, despite a promise from the entrepreneur not to “disparage” the company or its representatives while he completes the deal to acquire the social media platform.The world’s richest man agreed to restrictions on his tweets as part of a 95-page agreement covering his $44bn acquisition filed on Tuesday. Continue reading...
For his own good, my soon-to-be-18-year-old needs to understand sport. It’s the only way he’ll survive. Unfortunately, 90s video games are of limited useMy son Charlie will be 18 soon. Like all Scottish males before him, he will be dropped on a Hebridean island with nothing but a rusty knife and his own anger. If he can’t make it back to the mainland, he will live the rest of his life among feral, abandoned Scottish sons, and he will only survive if he likes sport, because that’s how any group of men get through enforced time together.He tried sport as a kid, but as he is on the autism spectrum, he was obsessed with rules to the point where if he felt another kid broke them, he would pick the ball up and stop the game. He was basically human VAR. It never ended well. So I’ve decided I’m going to use my favourite 90s video games as a Trojan horse. And there is only one place to start. Continue reading...
David Kaye, Jillian York, Jeff Kosseff and Roger NcNamee discuss the choices at the billionaire’s disposalHere’s a juxtaposition that many American observers may have missed in the hubbub over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter: just last Friday the European Union provisionally agreed to the most far-reaching internet regulation in a generation. The Digital Services Act, or DSA, will force the largest online platforms to be transparent about their activities and assess and mitigate the harms their products may cause. And it’s just the start. Governments around the world have their sights set on regulating big tech. It’s a big enough issue for the billionaire owners of other platforms; imagine the pressures Musk will face when governments dangle benefits for Tesla or SpaceX in exchange for tougher content moderation against their critics.David Kaye is a law professor at UC Irvine and author of Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet Continue reading...
Supply issues, inflation and war in Ukraine fuel Google parent company’s first-quarter strugglesAlphabet’s first quarter revenue fell below analysts’ expectations on Tuesday, as the company confronts supply chain problems, inflation concerns, and fallout from the war in Ukraine.In its quarterly earnings report, Google’s parent company said it had made a quarterly profit of $16.436bn, or $24.62 per share, missing expectations of $25.76 per share. Continue reading...
Analysis: Experts warn against reinstating banned accounts and neglecting moderationWelcome back Donald Trump, Katie Hopkins, David Icke and Alex Jones? These are just some of the Twitter accounts that could be reinstated if the platform’s new owner-in-waiting, “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk, practices what he preaches.All of those accounts have been permanently suspended from the platform for infractions that include, most notoriously, the former US president’s alleged support for the Capitol riot on 6 January last year. Their reinstatement now appears to be back in play given that the world’s richest man has agreed a $44bn (£35bn) takeover of the platform that banned them and has stated that “free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy”. Continue reading...
The ultimate shitposter has bought up Twitter, and its denizens are angry – how entirely appropriateSpeaking a few hours ago about Twitter purchaser Elon Musk, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey declared: “I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.” Bless. This feels like the first flashback scene we see in a dystopian drama after the words “SIX MONTHS EARLIER …” Quite where we’ll be in six months’ time as far as Twitter is concerned remains tantalisingly unclear, but it seems difficult to imagine it will be either a more or less pleasant space. It’s a social media platform. I’m not sure what further evidence humanity needs before we cotton on to the idea that such a thing might be an intrinsically toxic concept. Of course, there will always be some people who think it just hasn’t been done right yet. Like communism, or a British version of The Daily Show.Anyway, if Musk’s takeover goes through, he’ll assume control of a platform where the people on the right are incredibly angry about free speech, and those on the left are incredibly angry about hate speech. Which is to say: they have so much in common. As the tech visionary Jaron Lanier has long been excellent at pointing out, the best way to keep people on platforms is to make them angry. So the platforms are designed to make them angry. You might consider the anger worth it for your version of advertising (I myself will post this column on Twitter), but even then it is a weirdly grim cost of doing business that just conceivably ought to be weighed far more carefully than it is.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
Trevor Jacob parachuted from the single-engine aircraft and filmed it as it crashed into a remote forest in CaliforniaThe US Federal Aviation Administration has revoked a YouTuber’s pilot license after it concluded that he intentionally crashed his plane for the sake of gaining online views.On 24 November 2021, Trevor Jacob was flying over California’s Los Padres national forest in his small single-engine plane when his propeller stopped working. Continue reading...
The billionaire’s purchase of humanity’s ‘digital town square’ is a culmination of his controversial past on the platformOne of Twitter’s most controversial users became its owner on Monday, after Elon Musk brokered a $44bn deal to buy the company.The move was in many ways the culmination of the billionaire’s long history with the platform. Musk has been on Twitter since 2009 and tweeted as early as 2017 expressing interest in buying it. He has also been a vocal critic of Twitter, calling for changes including rolling back content moderation and prioritizing a “societal imperative” of free speech. Continue reading...
Company close to accepting offer price of $54.20 a share, with deal valuing business at $43bnTwitter is poised to agree a sale to Elon Musk after he put together a $46.5bn (£36.4bn) funding package to acquire the social media platform, according to reports.The company is close to agreeing to Musk’s offer price of $54.20 a share, multiple reports said on Monday, and an announcement could be imminent on a deal valuing the business at $43bn. Continue reading...
A new book exposes Silicon Valley’s use of spiritual concepts and practices to optimise their workers’ productivityCarolyn Chen is a sociologist and UC Berkeley professor who researches religion, race and ethnicity. Her new book, Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, features in-depth interviews with employees and employers to explore how spirituality begets productivity in the world’s tech hub.As a professor of religion, what sparked your interest in Silicon Valley?
Experts say Wales has huge potential for generating renewable marine power, yet, so far, ambitious schemes have been ignoredOn the stunning and craggy coastline of Holy Island in north Wales, work has started on a construction project to generate energy from one of the world’s greatest untapped energy resources: tidal power.The Morlais project, on the small island off the west of Anglesey has benefited from £31m in what is likely to be the last large grant for Wales from the European Union’s regional funding programme. It will install turbines at what will be one of the largest tidal stream energy sites in the world, covering 13 square miles of the seabed. Continue reading...
For older people, the internet plays on the part which is in all of us, that is alone and unknown, says Philippa PerryThe question As a retired woman living alone, I felt isolated during the various lockdowns. The answer seemed to be to rely on technology, which was fine when it worked, but it often made me feel more cut off from the world. For example, when I didn’t know how to unmute myself on a video call it was like having locked-in syndrome. Emerging from the pandemic, things are better, except Covid has made technology the way forward and I can’t always get it to work for me.I’ve been to a pub where I had to forgo lunch because I couldn’t order on the app. I know people who have gone abroad for holidays, but I’ve been too scared to go because of the passenger locator form, which you had to complete online while out of the country (how?). I have a mobile phone I often struggle with – for months I didn’t know how to answer a call, so I had to wait for people to ring off, then I had to call them back. Continue reading...
After losing a record $230bn in market value due to a disappointing earnings report in February, analysts are hoping to see progressMeta experienced a historic nosedive in value earlier this year amid a major rebrand and shake-ups to its business model – and investors are bracing for another difficult quarter.Meta lost a record $230bn in market value after a disappointing earnings report in February, in which it revealed Facebook had recorded its first-ever drop in daily user numbers. Continue reading...
Billionaires like Musk use their vast wealth to build a world unconstrained by laws, shareholders or accountabilityElon Musk has now put together a $46.5bn financing package to buy Twitter – two thirds of it from his own assets, and a third from bank loans secured against Twitter’s assets. It’s the biggest acquisition financing ever put forward for one person.Twitter’s founder and top managers don’t want Musk to take over the company. They offered him a seat on the board but he didn’t want it because he’d have to be responsible to all other shareholders. Now they’re adopting a “poison pill” to stop him. But Musk plans to buy shares directly with a tender offer that shareholders can’t refuse. After all, it’s a free market.Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com Continue reading...
The platform has been a source of a growing wave of climate misinformation and said denialism ‘shouldn’t be monetized’Twitter chose Earth Day to announce it will ban advertisements that deny the scientific consensus on climate crisis.“We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,” the company declared on Friday. Continue reading...
Electric vehicle maker Arrival is gambling that small sites, a ‘Lego-block’ manufacturing system and lots of robots will bring it successThe last year has been tricky for electric vehicle startups. After a burst of investment mania in which companies raised billions on the mere promise of battery propulsion, valuations have come back down to earth.One of the loudest thuds has come from Arrival, the closest to what could be called a British electric vehicle champion. Its market value on the Nasdaq has fallen from $15bn (£11.6bn) in March 2021, when it first completed a merger with a listed cash shell, to about $1.75bn. Continue reading...
The London-based photographer on his serendipitous avian encounter when capturing a plane and a fleeting rainbowPhotographer Josh Edgoose has always tried to capture “moments that feel a bit strange”. Until recently, photography was a hobby, and when lockdown first hit, he was limited to the area surrounding his home in Hounslow, London, for inspiration.“We live under a flight path, so planes go by every 10 minutes or so,” Edgoose says. “This beautiful rainbow appeared and I went out hoping to capture it as one flew over. I knew I had only two or three shots before the rainbow faded. The bird was complete luck. There is even another one peeking out from behind the chimney pot.” Continue reading...
A class-action lawsuit brought by users, including church groups, states they were bombarded with abusive messages and imageryThe Covid-19 pandemic brought on a surge of “zoom-bombing” as hackers and pranksters crashed into virtual meetings with abusive messages and imagery. Now, Zoom has agreed to a “historic” payout of $85m as part of a class-action settlement brought by its users, including church groups who said they were left traumatized by the disruptions.As part of the settlement agreement, Zoom Video Communications, the company behind the teleconference application that grew popular during the pandemic, will pay the $85m to users in cash compensation and also implement reforms to its business practices. Continue reading...
The Daily Mail dropped two stories detailing Activision’s Bobby Kotich’s abuse of an ex after threats by Meta executive, WSJ reportsSheryl Sandberg, the Meta executive, allegedly pressured the Daily Mail to drop unflattering stories about her then-boyfriend Bobby Kotick, the Activision Blizzard CEO, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.The Journal reports that she persuaded the digital edition of the Mail not to run stories revealing that an ex-girlfriend of Kotick had obtained a temporary restraining order against him in 2014. Kotick reportedly said that Sandberg, who he dated for three years until 2019, told the Mail in 2016 that if the article were published, it could damage the outlet’s relationship with Facebook. Sandberg allegedly contacted the Daily Mail in 2016 and 2019 to put a stop to the articles, and both times the stories never ran. Continue reading...
Time-lapse satellite images show glacial retreat at Mount Kilimanjaro, Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching, deforestation in Germany and Greenland glacial meltGoogle is marking Earth Day with time-lapse satellite images showing melting glaciers, retreating snow cover, deforestation and coral bleaching to remind its users about humanity’s impact on the climate and environment.The 2022 Earth Day Google doodle includes four Gifs created from satellite imagery and photographs from The Ocean Agency that will rotate throughout the day. Continue reading...
In a keynote address at Stanford University, the former president made his most extensive remarks yet about the tech landscapeTechnology companies must be reined in to address the “weakening of democratic institutions around the world”, Barack Obama said Thursday, in a sweeping keynote speech on the perils of disinformation.Speaking at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, the former president made his most extensive remarks yet about the technology landscape, which he said is “turbo-charging some of humanity’s worst impulses”. Continue reading...
Tesla CEO is putting $21bn of his own money in the package, according to US watchdog filingElon Musk has secured $46.5bn (£35.6bn) in financing to fund a possible hostile bid for Twitter and is putting up $21bn of his own money as part of the package.On top of that equity, Musk is raising a further $12.5bn for the offer via a margin loan secured against his shares in Tesla, the electric carmaker that he runs as CEO. Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, is leading a group of financial institutions providing $13bn in debt financing. Continue reading...
by Alexi Duggins, Hannah Verdier, Hollie Richardson a on (#5YCZS)
In this week’s newsletter: an American nurse sent anti-vaxxers into a frenzy after fainting on TV after her vaccine – NBC’s Brandy Zadrozny finds out why. Plus: five podcasts to help you find love
Electric car company reports $18.8bn in revenue for the first quarter, up 81% from a year beforeTesla smashed Wall Street estimates for revenue and profit in another record quarter on Wednesday, despite a tumultuous few months for its CEO, Elon Musk, and ongoing supply chain concerns.The electric car manufacturer reported $18.8bn in revenue for Q1 of 2022, up 81% from a year earlier. The report beat analyst expectations of $17.8bn, sending Tesla shares up 4% in after-hours trading. Continue reading...
You can see Van Gogh’s brush strokes being applied or watch aliens dancing. But true immersion should mean more than just access to the latest techPeek through the gallery window and you’ll see a holographic alien dancing in space. Venture inside, and an eerie, indeterminate soundtrack plays while the smell of woodsmoke floats through the air. Five VR headsets greet entrants, each offering a different simulation of extraterrestrial life. Put the pair of goggles on and you may find yourself, as I did, surrounded by a shoal of electric-blue pixels that move in concert like a jellyfish. That part left me feeling slightly unsteady, as if my neurons had been massaged.This experience is part of Alienarium 5, a new exhibition by the French artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster at the Serpentine Gallery. Installation art that uses technology such as augmented and virtual reality to “immerse” viewers, merging the physical world with digital experience, has become popular in recent years. There have already been immersive exhibitions of David Bowie and Abba, while an immersive Avicii experience has just opened in Sweden with a Prince one due to follow in Chicago later this year. There are so many immersive Van Gogh experiences that the phenomenon has its own Wikipedia page. These projects vary hugely in scope, from elaborate, hi-tech installations to Instagram-friendly projection shows of deceased painters. Continue reading...
The east African state was the first in the world to use drones to deliver blood and essential medicines to rural hospitals. The breakthrough came following an agreement between the government and US manufacturer Zipline, and two centres now operate in the east and west of the countryPhotographs by Gianluca De Bartolo Continue reading...
Proposed interim measures include making insurance companies liable for accidents in self-driving vehiclesUsers of self-driving cars will be able to watch films on the motorway under planned changes to the Highway Code, although it will remain illegal to use mobile phones.The update, proposed by the Department for Transport (DfT), will allow those in the driver’s seat to use a car’s built-in screens to watch movies and TV programmes. Continue reading...
Company asks officials to further investigate allegations as it seeks chance to settle California litigationTesla has asked a California judge to pause a lawsuit against the company alleging widespread racial discrimination at its flagship assembly plant.In a Monday court filing, Tesla said the state should further investigate allegations brought against it by the state’s department of fair employment and housing (DFEH) and allow a chance to settle the litigation. Continue reading...
by Dan Sabbagh Defence and security editor on (#5YB4G)
Peter Ricketts’ warning comes as UAE accused of using Pegasus spyware to hack into mobile phone at Downing StreetBoris Johnson should “pay close attention” to basic rules of cybersecurity, a former national security adviser has said, after it emerged that the United Arab Emirates was accused of hacking into a mobile phone at Downing Street.Peter Ricketts, who held the post between 2010 and 2012, said the cyber-attack demonstrated that “commercially made” Pegasus software from NSO Group allowed a “wide range of actors” to engage in sophisticated espionage. Continue reading...
Pere Aragonès says the Spanish government must have known about the spying, but it denies all wrongdoingThe Catalan president has called on the Spanish government to launch an “official and independent investigation” into how and why he and more than 60 figures associated with the regional independence movement reportedly had their mobile phones targeted using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.Pere Aragonès told the Guardian that the alleged targeting, revealed by Citizen Lab cybersecurity experts on Monday, constituted a violation of individual rights, an attack on democracy, and a threat to political dissent. Continue reading...
No 10 subjected to UAE-linked spyware attack, says report, but Israeli firm suggests allegations are falseBoris Johnson has been told his Downing Street office has been targeted with “multiple” suspected infections using Pegasus, the sophisticated hacking software that can turn a phone into a remote listening device, it was claimed on Monday.A report released by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said the United Arab Emirates was suspected of orchestrating spyware attacks on No 10 in 2020 and 2021. Continue reading...
Victims said to include Pere Aragonès and Carles Puigdemont, but Israeli firm suggests claims are falseDozens of pro-independence Catalan figures, including the president of the north-eastern Spanish region and three of his predecessors, have been targeted using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, according to a report from cybersecurity experts.The research published on Monday by Citizen Lab, considered among the world’s leading experts in detecting digital attacks, said victims of the mobile phone targeting included Pere Aragonès, who has led Catalonia since last year, as well as the former regional presidents Quim Torra, Carles Puigdemont and Artur Mas. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5Y98N)
Great screen, top performance, good camera and fully charges in 20 minutes – but it’s no match for SamsungXiaomi’s new top phone for the start of 2022 is the 12 Pro featuring high-end specs, svelte design and triple 50-megapixel cameras but at a decidedly premium price.“China’s Apple” as Xiaomi was once called, is more frequently known for top-spec phones that undercut the competition on price. But the 12 Pro is different – a direct challenger to Apple and Samsung costing £1,049, which is as much if not more than rivals.Screen: 6.73in QHD+ OLED (522ppi) 120HzProcessor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1RAM: 12GB of RAMStorage: 256GBOperating system: Miui 13 based on Android 12Camera: Triple 50MP rear camera: wide, ultra-wide, 2x telephoto; 32MP selfie cameraConnectivity: 5G, USB-C, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.2 and locationWater resistance: noneDimensions: 163.6 x 74.6 x 8.2mmWeight: 205g Continue reading...
As company faces rising pressure in west, it is investing in digital infrastructure elsewhereWhen government officials in the southern Nigerian state of Edo set about radically improving poor internet access for its population of 4 million, they didn’t have to look far for help. MainOne, a company responsible for laying a vast network of fibre-optic cables across west Africa, was an obvious partner. Another, perhaps less obvious one, was Facebook.A joint agreement was signed to install fibre-optic cables running across the state’s capital, Benin City. Since 2019, 400km (250 miles) of cables have been laid in Edo, about a quarter via the partnership between the two companies and the government. Continue reading...
Gardeners are looking for a more environmentally friendly machine, but which is right for you?Gardeners want to make their grass even greener. As petrol prices rocket and people become ever more conscious of their environmental impact, many are turning to the latest generation of lawnmowers to keep their gardens looking good.While the fronts of our houses are gradually seeing the replacement of petrol cars with electric vehicles, advances in lithium-ion batteries have meant that the trusted back garden mower has also been given a modern overhaul – but at a price. Continue reading...
It disrupted the market and has more than 200m subscribers. But with slower growth, some say Netflix must change its gameTwelve years ago Jeff Bewkes, then chief executive of Time Warner, compared Netflix to the Albanian army. “It’s a little bit like, is the Albanian army going to take over the world? I don’t think so,” Bewkes told the New York Times, disparaging the streaming service’s ability to take on the established media players.Well, the Albanian army won. Time Warner followed Netflix into streaming, NBCUniversal and Disney came after and so it carried on. In Britain, BBC and ITV invested in their streaming portals. Media was now living in Netflix’s world. Continue reading...
The firm is doing well, but it will have perform amazingly to merit its position as the world’s most valuable carmakerSpare a brief thought for Elon Musk’s bankers and lawyers. One week he is posting earnest polls about freedom of speech on Twitter, and the next he is spending billions of dollars on a major stake in the social media site, before attempting an all-cash take-private deal complete with by-now-compulsory stoner meme. (And possibly – no, let’s be honest, probably – sticking two fingers up to US regulators at the same time.) Just another fortnight in the life of the world’s richest man.Musk’s all-or-nothing ultimatum has made for box-office corporate drama, and nervous times in Twitter’s boardroom. But social media executives may not be the only ones feeling queasy: Tesla shareholders are also watching closely. Shares in Musk’s electric car company dropped by 3% on Thursday. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian